As soon as the rift closed, it opened right back up again. Raphael stepped out first, looking exactly the same as he had before. It was like no time had passed at all. Then Lucifer stepped out. He was wearing the same clothes, and his hair and facial hair looked the same, but something had changed. He wasn't the same Lucifer I knew. There was no sign of the tension and stress and misery from before. He was free. Liberated even.

He pulled me into a hug without warning. He held it longer than normal, but not too long. He stepped back with his hand still on my shoulder and said, "Man, is it good to see you, Dave. It's almost like I don't even know you anymore, and I know you better than anyone."

"I guess it was a good session, then?" I asked.

"Good for him? Yes," Raphael said. "I'll be honest. I strangled him a few times. I'm no worse off than I was before, but he can be frustrating sometimes."

"I feel great!" Lucifer said, stretching his arms and back.

"How long were you gone? He doesn't even seem like the same person anymore," I said.

"I'm not sure. I lost count after 10 billion years," Raphael said, scratching his head.

"Are you ready for the next step?" I said to Lucifer.

"What would that be, my dear friend?" He said, smiling clearer and brighter than most people could ever accomplish.

"Well, it's logical. You forgave your father for what he did. The step is asking him to forgive you," I said, gesturing with my hands.

The look on Lucifer's face instantly went from the epitome of peace to severely offended. "Why would I ever have to do that? I did nothing wrong!"

"Oh no. I fucked up," I said, putting my hand over my face. After a moment had a passed, I put my hands together is a steeple position and said, "Lucifer. I'm going to be very restrained when I say this, so please listen very carefully. You've forgiven your father, but you still refuse to acknowledge that often times fault lies on both sides when it comes to fights and family feuds? What the fuck is wrong with you? I gave you infinite time to work on your mental health and heal and grow, and you threw it in my face! I ought to kill you! Actually, I'm going to do just that. I'm going to fucking kill you, you son of a bitch. Fuck you!"

I tackled Lucifer to the ground and began to strangle him. He grabbed my wrists and tried to push my hands off his neck, but he either couldn't or wouldn't do it. His face started to turn red, then purple.

"Stop it! You're going to kill him! Despite his pride, he's not the same Lucifer he used to be. He'll let you kill him. You're his savior in his mind. You healed him. Don't undo all of that, because he still has a few screws loose. Everyone does. Let it go, Dave!" Raphael said, talking me down from the ledge.

I loosened my grip and let go of Lucifer's neck. "I'm sorry Lucifer," I said, tears dropping from my eyes and onto his face. "I guess I just hoped I could fix you all in one go. That was my pride talking and I'm sorry for blaming you for it. I'm know I'm not perfect either. Can we still be friends?"

I stood up and put out my hand to lift him up. He took it. "Sure, Dave. We can still be friends. I'm sorry I disappointed you. I really expected you to be proud of me, but I guess I have a long way to go."

"It's ok, Lucifer. We both do. We both do. You're my best friend. You know that, right?" I said, hugging him.

"Thank you, Dave. That means more to me than you know," he said, hugging me back. "But I do feel obligated to point out that I'm not a son of a bitch. I don't have a mother, remember?"

I squeezed my eyes shut harder and a few tears escaped. "I know, Lucifer. I know. I'm sorry. I'm so sorry."

"Don't cry Dave. We still have an apocalypse to stop. If you cry, what do you think that's going to do to me? Lead by example, buddy," he said, smiling, a single tear trailing down his cheek.

"You're right," I said, wiping away my tears. "How are we going to stop the apocalypse, though? I'm still dead. You can go back to earth, but if I did, I suppose I'd just be a ghost."

Lucifer looked me in the eye and laughed. "Do you really think God hasn't seen what you've done? What you've sacrificed to try to heal his family? God sees everything."

"What do you mean? He's going to bring me back to life or something?" I said.

"Maybe. I don't presume to know what my father will or won't do, but I know he'll do something, and it'll be enough to save the world. Or enough to allow others to do it for him. He doesn't like to get his hands dirty, but he'll go above and beyond to help those who would do it for him," Lucifer said.

"What then, should I just sit around here waiting for him to do something? I don't see him summoning me or bringing me to life right now," I said. I looked up at the red sky. "God? Are you there? Every second that goes by could mean Steve kills another person. If you're going to do something, do some—"

Everything went dark for a moment, and then I appeared in a white room, sitting at a table across from a man in his twenties with a clipboard and a pen. He wore a white shirt and a black tie with another pen neatly tucked into the breast pocket of his shirt. He had black hair and amber eyes.

"I don't mean to be rude, but what took so long?" I said. I assumed he wasn't God or my eyes would probably be on fire right now, if biblical mentions were to be believed.

"Well, you are rude, so there. What took so long, you ask? We experienced some interference with our instruments from a rift in time and space that you wished into existence," he said.

"You know, if you hadn't interfered with Raphael's investigation, this whole apocalypse debacle could have been avoided. It would have fizzled out like so many attempts before it."

"But—" I said.

"Fzzz," he interrupted.

"B—" I said.

"Fzzzzzzzzzzzz," he interrupted again.

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"Would you stop that?" I said.

"Sure," he said.

"Thanks. I was trying to say, didn't we grow as people along the way, though? Didn't Lucifer and I become better people? Isn't moral growth just as important as the goal of stopping an apocalypse?" I said.

"No, it's not, but I will say that is why God allowed it. Your interference, I mean. He, in his infinite wisdom, wanted to see if you would accomplish something he has been trying millennia to do unsuccessfully. Bring his wayward son back into the fold. Oh, and grow into a better person yourself, of course," he said.

"You were this close too," he held his index finger and his thumb together, "but you goofed up the wording of your wish and didn't succeed in what you were trying to do."

"Wait! You're right! My wish didn't do what I wanted it to do. Do you know what this means?" I said, excited.

"No. What does it mean?" he said, losing his patience.

"It means I get another wish!" I said. "I can try again. Oh my God, I could hug you."

"Please don't," he said, irritably. "I just ironed this shirt."

"Fine. Can you send me back? I want to try again," I said.

"You didn't explain why this gets you another wish," he said.

"Oh. In the original bet with Lucifer, the deal was if I won, I would get a wish. But, if he didn't deliver on what I wanted when making the wish in its entirety, regardless of how I worded it, it wouldn't count, and I would get another wish," I said.

"That is a lot of words to say that he had to adhere to the spirit of the wish rather than the literal interpretation," he said.

"I suppose you could put it that way too, but I like my way of saying it better," I said.

"Of course you do," he said, sighing.

"So?" I asked.

"So what?" he replied.

"So, can I try again?" I said.

"I suppose that is alright with me, and I know it will be alright with God," he said, sighing again.

"Ok send m—" I said.

I appeared back in Hell, in front of a stunned Lucifer and Raphael.

"Where'd you go?" Lucifer said. "Did my father summon you?"

"Our father, but yes, did he summon you? And if so, why are you back?" Raphael said.

"Because Lucifer owes me another wish," I said. "And no. It was an angel."

"I do?" Lucifer said.

"Yes. I stipulated that if you did not adhere to my wish the way I intended rather than the way I said it, I would get another wish. Remember?" I said.

"Oh, yeah. I do remember you saying something like that," Lucifer said. "I bet I know what you're going to wish for."

"What's that?" I said.

"A pony," he said.

"When did I get replaced by a twelve-year-old girl in your mind?" I said.

"A few minutes ago," he said.

"Right. Well, wish time. I wish for you to go into a dimension outside of time with Raphael and have him give you therapy until you acknowledge your part in your banishment from Heaven and are willing to ask God for forgiveness and mean it," I said.

"Damn it. That's a pretty good one. Well, we better get started, Raph," Lucifer said.

Lucifer did the same concentration and hand gestures as before, and a rift opened in front of us.

Raphael sighed and looked at me. "You're going to kill me, kid."

"Sorry," I said. "At least I'll be going with you this time, so you'll have back up."

"You're what?" Raphael said.

"Dave, you'll die," Lucifer said.

"I'm already dead. For eternity, baby!" I said.

"He's got us there," Raphael said.

"You can come, but you better not interfere with my therapy," Lucifer said.

"Oh. Lucifer, I'm hurt. Why do think I would do such a thing?" I said, holding my hands over my heart.

"Because I know you," he said.

"Fair," I said. "Well, either way, it's part of my wish, so you have to let me come with."

"You didn't say anything about coming with though," Lucifer said.

"I didn't have to. Spirit of the wish, remember?" I said.

"He tricked you, Lucy. You got tricked," Raphael said.

"You done got tricked, son. Pew, pew, pew," I said, doing finger guns.

"Fine. Come on. We don't have all day," he said.

"Awesome!" I said.

We all walked through the rift, and it closed behind us. I stood in the middle of floating space. I don't mean I was floating in space. That's different. I mean, I was standing on a hard surface and images of space surrounded us, but the hard surface was invisible. It was just there.

"So when did it start? Your impotence, I mean," Raphael said to Lucifer.

"I'm not impotent, you fool! I'm omnipotent!" Lucifer said.

"No, you're not," I said, idly, as I looked around.

"No, you're right. I'm not. I just thought it would sound clever," he said.

"Mission accomplished then. But where's the furniture? Also, don't you think space is kind of depressing?" I said.

"I guess we never really thought about it," Raphael said.

"Wait, so you've just been doing stand up therapy for billions of years? No wonder you tried to kill each other!" I said. "Make a therapist's chair for you, a chaise lounge for Lucifer to lie down on, and a guest chair or couch for me."

Raphael clapped his hands together twice and a chair, a chaise lounge, and a couch appeared.

"What the hell was that?" I said.

"What?" Raphael said.

"That clap thing you did," I said.

"Oh, that's what I do when I activate my powers to make something appear," he said.

"Oh. I guess I'm just so used to Lucifer snapping his fingers that I assumed all angels, fallen or otherwise, did that," I said.

"Nope. I clap. Twice," Raphael said.

"I fart when I activate my powers," Lucifer said.

"No, you don't! Now lay down on the lounge chair," I said, pointing at the chaise lounge.

"Yes, mother," he said.

"Raph, can you make a therapy room around us? Put a bookcase here, a white board here, and make the sound system come from here, here, and here," I said, pointing at different parts of the room. "Oh, and put psychology books in the bookcase. Also, add a few random life advice books written by celebrities."

Raphael clapped twice and everything appeared as I asked him to.

"Good. Now this feels like real therapy," I said.

"Also, maybe read some of those psychology books," I said.

"Don't you think if I could make them appear, that I would know what they contain already?" Raphael said.

"I guess that's a good point, but do you?" I said.

"I do not," he said, hanging his head.

"How are you supposed to be a therapist if you don't know anything about therapy? No wonder it took you over 10 billion years the first time!" I said.

"Fine. As you wish," Raphael picked out a book titled, "Therapy for Weenies." Then he sat down in the chair and began reading. Like a normal human. Slowly.

"You don't know how to speed read?" I said.

"I do not. Other than divine magic, like Lucifer, I don't know how to do a lot of things. We're not humans. We've never had to actually live on Earth. So we have no earthly skills."

"I see. Does that include social skills?" I asked.

"Unfortunately, yes," Raphael said.

"Speak for yourself, bud! I have great social skills!" Lucifer said.

"What are you talking about? You're like the most antisocial person I've ever met!" I said.

"Doesn't mean I don't have social skills," Lucifer said, crossing his arms and looking away from me.

"Uh, it kind of does," I said.

"Agree to disagree," he said.

"You're making my point for me," I said.

"Whatever," he said, pouting.

"Wow. Ok. Well, Raph, just read all those books, and then we can get started," I said.

"Ok," Raphael said.

One year passed this way. Then another. And another. Raphael was a really slow reader and his comprehension skills were garbage. No offense to him. He just didn't have any practice at it.

After a few years, Lucifer and I developed a game we called Slap-Five, and it worked like this. You had to wind your arm as far back as it could go in whatever direction you wanted to start your slap. Then you would try to slap your opponent. You could slap them anywhere, but only the face counted for points. Person being slapped could block the slap by either high-fiving the slapper's hand or clasping their hand into a handshake. The first person to get ten points won that round of the game.

The beauty of the game was that there was no formal start or end time for the rounds. When one round ended, the next began. So you could catch your opponent unawares and slap the shit out of them. And since we were all invincible, including me, it didn't really hurt. It was just surprising.

One day, I was reading a celebrity book from the bookcase and Raphael said, "Done."

"What?" I looked over at him. That was when Lucifer struck. He slapped me so hard, I tumbled off the couch.

"Reading. I'm done reading," Raphael said.

"Nice. Now we can start therapy. Get ready Lucifer, you're about to get therapized," I said.

After several years in the time rift, we were getting to the real work. I was excited.