Raphael sat down in the therapist's chair, folding his wings neatly behind the back, and crossing one of his legs over the other. "Lucifer, I'd like to take this opportunity to get to know you better. What do you do in your free time?"

"Well, I like clubbing baby seals, knocking the ice cream off kids' ice cream cones, and long walks on the beach," he said sarcastically.

"Lucifer, while I can appreciate your sense of humor, avoiding the question will not make it go away. Understand, I want to know who you are. Who Lucifer really is. Not the Devil, or Satan, but you, Lucifer Morningstar," Raphael said.

He was off to an incredible start. He really did seem to learn and absorb the information about therapy and psychology in those books. He wasn't even talking like Raphael, the archangel, anymore. He was talking like Raphael, the therapist.

"I don't know if I can do that. What if you hate me? The real me?" He said, suddenly seeming very small.

"Lucifer, I could never hate you. You're my brother. I love you. This isn't very therapist of me, but I'm aware of a vast majority of your decisions, in heaven and in hell, and I don't hate you. What would revealing your inner thoughts do to change that?" Raphael said.

"Well, I think mostly of myself and my needs before the needs of others. I take what I want, regardless of how it affects other people. I hate a vast majority of the people I've met, including a large portion of our family, yourself not included anymore. I've hurt millions of people to get what I want, and I'm about to be the reason the world ends," he said, poking his index fingers together.

"Brother, no offense intended here, but I already knew all of that. Is there anything else you think could change my mind about you?" Raphael said.

"Well, I stole someone from heaven because I wanted her to be my girlfriend," he said, looking down.

Raphael cleared his throat and leaned forward slightly. "Could you clarify what you mean by that?"

"I tricked someone who was perfect in every way. She was surely destined for heaven, and I tricked her into selling me her soul. I thought she was so good that she could make me whole. Make me a better person, he said.

"What happened?" Raphael said, his grip on the arms of the chair tightening slightly.

"She was too good. She hates me. She wants nothing to do with me. I tried to give her back, but apparently that's against the rules. Once a soul has been bargained, that's it. They belong in whatever realm or dimension that the person they bargained with belongs in," he said, crying with his head in his hands.

"She lives in a wing of my castle now and never comes out. All she does is watch hallmark movies all day and drink wine coolers. And cries. She cries a lot. I wish I didn't have such good hearing. I can hear everything she does. Especially the crying. I moved to the other side of the castle, thinking I wouldn't be able to hear her anymore, but I was wrong."

I noticed a flaw in his logic. Or at least a way to correct his mistake. If bargained souls had to stay in the dimension that the person they bargained with belong in, he could simply make himself belong in Heaven again.

If he did that, then she would be able to enter Heaven and be happy and heal from her negative experiences in Hell. That would require Lucifer to make a great sacrifice of his pride, and apologize to God for his hubris and ask for forgiveness, but it was an option.

Raphael let go of the chair's arms and relaxed back into his seat. "Did you learn anything from that experience?"

"Yes. Don't trick people into bargains. Only make deals with people who want to," he said.

"That's very good, Lucifer. Is there anything else you would like to say?" he said.

"Yes, there is. I'm sorry for stealing your robes, so you had to wear the same one every day. I did it because you liked me and I thought if I did it, you would know it was me and hate me for it. I thought that if I made you reject me, I would feel in control and less vulnerable, but you never noticed. So I had to watch you suffer every day and still care about me. I'm sorry," Lucifer said, still crying.

"That was you? That, I did not know, but it makes sense. You seem to engage in self-destructive behaviors in an attempt to feel safe, but it doesn't work, does it?" Raphael said.

"No. It doesn't. I don't know why I keep doing it, thinking something is going to change. I know I have to change to make my life better, but it seems so impossible that I give up at the first sign of difficulty," Lucifer said, wiping his eyes.

"I think we've made a lot of progress today, but I don't want you to experience emotional or mental fatigue, so I'm going to stop the session here. We can pick it back up tomorrow," Raphael said. "I'm going for a walk." He walked towards a wall, materialized a door and went through it, closing it behind him.

"He could do that this whole time?" I said.

"So can I," Lucifer said, snapping his fingers, and another door appeared.

"Right," I said. I'm going to sleep. Wake me up when the next session happens.

It was obvious that Lucifer's confession had affected Raphael. He was going on a walk to cool off, so he didn't display his emotions to Lucifer. That would undo the progress Lucifer had made today, and Raphael was starting to act like a professional instead of strangling Lucifer when he got angry.

If we made this level of progress every day, we'd be done in less than a year. None of that 10 billion years non sense.

I didn't want to have to do this, but I'm going to reveal my true motives for this wish. Ultimately, my goal all along has been self preservation. As soon as I heard about the apocalypse plot, I knew I had to be involved, not out of some altruistic goodness of my heart, but because somewhere deep down, I knew that if I didn't get involved, the plan to stop it would fail. Now you might call that hubris or pride, but I call it intuition.

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It's what got me to the final table in many tournaments and sometimes allowed me to win the whole thing. That is, until I realized none of my success made me happy and I drank myself into gambling debt and enforcers started breaking my fingers.

When I'm sober, though, my intuition works like a well-oiled machine. It allows me to figure out solutions to problems with seemingly impossible odds, and even though I don't know how I beat Lucifer at the bet, I know following my intuition was at least partially responsible.

So, while I liked helping my friend grow and heal, that wasn't my only goal from this wish. My goal was to find a way to come back to life and stop the apocalypse. Since Lucifer couldn't bring me back to life, I knew I had to involve God. What does God like? He likes selfless acts, sacrifice, and helping others. Giving up my wish to help Lucifer become a better person fulfilled all those requirements. The only thing I didn't foresee was how hard it would be to do that.

That wasn't a problem, though. I just had to put in some extra work. What was a million or even a billion years or more in the face of an eternity in Hell? I figured if I saved the world from an apocalypse, I could at least buy myself into Purgatory, to avoid all that Hell business. While I didn't mind temporary suffering, I sure as hell didn't have it in me to endure eternal suffering. Maybe if I saved the world a few more times, I could get into Heaven when I die again. Who knows?

The next few sessions were slower than the first. It felt like every session he would take two steps forward, but then one step back before the next session. I wished he would just take one step forward and stay there instead of giving me false hope we were going to get there quicker.

Lucifer built his own room out of the side of the therapy room. Every day he would show up in more and more casual clothes until one day he showed up in booty shorts and a mesh shirt. Raphael and I made him change.

After that, he just showed up in sweat pants and some graphic t-shirt that was too on the nose for my taste. One day the shirt said "Hell's angel," the next it said "Why do I smell sulfur?" and the next it said "I'm with stupid" but the arrow pointed up at his own face. That last one I actually liked. I agreed with the statement.

I basically lived on the couch. None of us had to eat or use the restroom or drink water, so we didn't have any facilities for that. Technically, we didn't even have to change clothes, because I was a soul and they were angels. Our bodies didn't get dirty or oily over time like humans did. Man, did I miss food, though. It created such a nice mental break where you could relax and just enjoy the sensations in your mouth. That sounds weird.

"Can we have food breaks?" I said one day.

"What, you mean like meals?" Raphael said, reading a book written by a celebrity.

"Yeah. I feel like it would help with our mental health. I know it would help with mine," I said.

"Sure," he said.

"And fiction books, and music, and TV. And personal space," I said.

After that day, the dimension slowly turned into a house. With a park outside for walks. We all got our own rooms and spaces and TVs. It started to turn into a mansion, but we decided to downsize because it was talking too long to walk to the therapy room. Then it was just a large house with a therapy room.

I sat in on every session, but I rarely said anything. I liked to watch Lucifer make progress. It made me feel like I was actually accomplishing something. Our relationship grew outside of therapy. I had won the last five rounds of Slap-Five and Lucifer and I would watch TV and movies together. We were starting to become real friends. Raphael would join us occasionally, but he intentionally kept some distance to maintain the appearance that he was a professional therapist.

He seemed to be doing well mentally, though, when I would check on him. He was always doing something creative, like painting, or writing, or playing an instrument. He wrote a lot of poems and short stories. I would read them on occasion.

He even held small concerts where Lucifer and I would listen to him play piano or classical guitar. I would join him in painting on occasion too, but my work was never as good as his. He was so skilled he could recreate the Mona Lisa, and no one would be able to tell the difference.

Lucifer never pursued anything really creative. He was more into games. We would play poker together sometimes, but I would always win. Mostly because he had gotten so easy to read. I wouldn't say I was particularly skilled at reading people, but most doctors wouldn't say they were particularly skilled at treating people either. Trust me, I've asked.

He also liked to play computer games. His favorite was a role playing game where he got to play a knight who would go on quests and save damsels in distress. It was called Dungeons and Damsels. I played it a few times, but I couldn't get into it. At least not as much as him. The dungeons were decent but saving damsels always went the same way.

There was a woman trapped in a tower of a castle and you had to save them from some monster, like a dragon or a vampire. You'd save them, then they would always profess their love to you and would want to make love immediately to express their eternal gratitude.

I was always worried that more monsters would show up, but they never did. The scenes were also a little too steamy and romantic for my taste. Lucifer seemed to eat it up, though. I think he secretly wanted to be the hero in his life's story. Not the villain that he was always made out to be. I wanted that for him, too.

Whenever a TV show or movie portrayed the Devil as a villain, he would immediately change it to something else. I think he cried about it sometimes, because one time I walked by the bathroom, which we had now, since we were eating food again, and I heard him sobbing. I assumed it was because of how others or he perceived himself, but I suppose he could have just been having a hard time in the bathroom.

On Friday nights, Raphael would cook an extravagant meal for all of us. We called them Raphael's Chef Nights. We weren't particularly good at naming things. It always got us chatting and socializing. Lucifer would always talk about the latest TV show or movie he had watched or the latest damsel he had saved. Raphael would always talk about his creative pursuits. And I just enjoyed the company.

It all ended on a rainy Sunday. Raphael had instituted weather outside the house, because he said it was therapeutic. I didn't disagree. Sun was good for the mind and rain was good for the soul.

Lucifer was deep in introspection that day. "I always hurt people because I'm afraid of being hurt. If I was truly strong and powerful like I pretend to be, I could handle rejection, but instead, I reject others before they can reject me. I did it to my brothers, I did to my father, and I did it to you, Dave. I'm sorry. I don't want to be that person anymore."

Raphael took down some notes and said, "I think that's where we'll end today's session, and I think that concludes our last session. It was great working with you, Lucifer, and you, Dave. I think Lucifer is ready for the next step."

"What step would that be?" Lucifer said through teary eyes.

"Apologizing and asking for forgiveness from father. Remember?" He said.

"Oh, yeah. I think I might actually be ready to do that now. If I can apologize in here, I can surely apologize out there to him," he said optimistically.

I think he was underestimating how hard it was going to be, but I didn't want to bring his spirits down or discourage him. "Good job, Lucifer," I said, with a smile that I didn't feel. Instead of joy, I felt anxiety and fear. Fear that it wouldn't last. Fear that he would fail. I wasn't going to let him see that, though. He needed to go into it with a clear mind.

And with that, the house began to dismantle and fall apart around us until we were standing in space again. A rift opened in front of us and we all stepped through.