Call Us By Name

[madimpossibledreamer]

Uriel looks like SPN Uriel but has Lucifer Uriel’s Rube Goldberg machine powers.  Sorry.  Looked like and had.
Lucifer’s wings were seen on the show.  Michael’s are a burnished gold.

also, I did it. I deleted the sherlock icons.  I'll figure out replacements eventually.  protesting the moff and his "women only belong in motherhood roles" won't do much but it makes me feel better.

Main Points:
Supernatural AU (now a Lucifer crossover!)
Summary: Michael and Lucifer finally get to talk after centuries.
Word Count: 3226
Rating: Teen

 

        Michael swims into consciousness floating on a cloud.  That has him panicking for a moment before he realizes why: whatever drug they have him on is inducing content, unquestioning feelings, which have, in his experience, only meant one thing.  One place.
        No, there’s something else—a hand on his shoulder, tracing comforting circles.  He pries open his eyelids to see a smile he hasn’t seen for millennia.
        He missed that smile.
        “Sleep, Michael.”  It feels like the rest has allowed him to recharge, if only a little.  He wants to ask about the Winchesters, something, anything, but instead he allows himself to sink again, one non-manifested wing curling close around his brother since he can’t manage to move any other limb.

        The next time he wakes, it’s in a bed that’s more comfortable than anything his vessel has experienced.  He doesn’t want to move, but he doesn’t have time for this, as unfortunate as that is.  Apocalypse time crunch.  (They never had figured out the plural there, had they?)  So instead he stands up and wanders out, and there’s no doors, but he follows the sound of music.  Of course.  So he hasn’t lost his baby brother.  Once he gets to the rock-column thing (so sue him, he’s not an interior architect), though, he pauses, leaning against it.  He’s scared, scared of rejection, and yeah, okay, so they might both be worried about that, but knowing that doesn’t make the fear go away.
        “Kept me waiting, brother.”  He sounds unaffected, casual, and he doesn’t have his wings now, to give away his feelings.  Michael tries to respond, but the second he opens his mouth a yawn comes out instead.  Sometimes he feels too human.  He’s running low on Grace (hit the nearest holy gas station, Michael thinks, and then starts giggling drunkenly, Luce appearing concerned).  Rather than explaining his ridiculous mind, Michael goes and joins his brother at the piano, humming along, since his vessel had definitely never learned the piano.
        “For too long,” he agrees, and knows whether he wants them or not there are tears in his eyes.  He blinks them away, trying to distract, because it’d just be presumptuous to try to make Luci’s pain all about him.  “So, the Winchesters?”
        Lucifer presses himself against his twin’s side, a warm reassurance.  “Are fine—well, as fine as can be.  The hospital insisted on the lot of you staying for observation, and I had to check you, specifically, out against doctor’s orders.  Fortunately, as he owed me a favor, he didn’t make too much of a fuss.” 
        Michael cocks his head on his side, trying to make out what Luce is trying to hide behind that little song flourish and casual words—aha.  That Grace is familiar.  And, now that he thinks about it, one of his wings appears to be missing a few feathers.  He wraps it around his twin’s shoulders anyway.  “You…healed them and used a few feathers to replenish what you used?” he pieces together.
        “Never your forte, as I remember.  Never mine, either, but I picked up a few things from Raphael.”  So modest, but then, he hadn’t brought the specifics up himself, wanting to gloss over it.  Was he…embarrassed?  “So, then, I’d like to call in my first favor.”
        Michael wants to complain.  He feels well enough for an errand, but he’d barely been here.  Then again, he’d done this before, on purpose.  “Wait, first?”
        Luci’s fingers don’t pause on the keys, not once.  “You weren’t part of the first deal, as you reminded me.  I decided you could ‘owe me one’.”  That’s…something a Winchester would do.  Maybe there’s a good reason why the True Vessel thing is what it is.
        “I can’t say I’m not grateful.  Fine, I’ll owe you two.  Lay it on me, then.”  He’s not that worried about what they might entail.  He owes Luce a whole lot more than two, but if that’s how his brother wants to play it, he’ll play, too.
        “Everything that’s been going on.  Tell me.”  The compulsion Luci tries to use is accidental, Mike thinks.  Even demons would shrug off the power, though they’d follow it anyway, Lord of Hell and all.  And his brother might not have his wings, but he can sure feel Michael’s fidget.  He glares.  “Don’t go back on your word.  It’s the favor I want.”
        All Michael wants to do is protect his brother—but then, perhaps it’s time he started treating him as if he’s mature.  It’s been millennia, after all.  Little brother’s not so young anymore.  None of them are.  So he doesn’t argue, just realizes something amusing.  “It’s very Amber.”
        Lucifer blinks, music faltering briefly.  “What?”
        “Human series, Roger Zelazny, featuring the world’s deadliest soap opera.  Our family dynamics are warped enough, and there’s something about the whole ‘we were mortal enemies but now we’re allies and either way we’re going to gossip about the family’ that seems…accurate.”  He waves that off, though if his little brother’s still the nerd angel he remembers, he’ll probably devour the books the instant he gets the time.  He wishes him a good read.  “Uh.  Sorry, trying to figure out where to start.”
        There’s a lot, so much, but…eh.  He’s wanted to say this ever since Sam asked about Free Will.  “I didn’t want anything to do with it, but I didn’t have a choice.  I didn’t have Free Will.  I was utterly incapable of ignoring an order, and I have regretted nothing in my existence more.”
        “That’s not what I asked,” Luci growls, and his twin can actually feel the temperature rise with the Hellfire within.
        If it wouldn’t be seen as condescending, he’d reach out and pat him on the arm.  “I promise it’s relevant.  So, when I said nobody’s heard from Dad for centuries, I wasn’t exaggerating.  Everybody thought he was just, I dunno, done with everyone.  There were a lot of really scared angels, trying to be on their best behavior, because a single question’s enough to get rid of you and a single argument’s enough to get rid of Mom.  We all bought the propaganda about it being a rebellion because we didn’t have a choice, and beyond that I think we all wanted to believe it.  Doubt led to a Fall, and we were all scared we’d be next.  If there was rhyme and reason, if it wasn’t just a whim, we’d be fine.  Everything was fine—everything seemed fine for a while, but it couldn’t be because you weren’t there.  Gabe stuck around long enough to tell a lady she was pregnant and then buggered off.  Somewhere on Earth’s the guess, but a lot of us thought he’d been killed because obviously he’d come back if he was alive.  He hadn’t Fallen, that was a choice none of us would make, all sarcasm intended.  Sometime after that, we all noticed that Dad wasn’t talking to anyone.  It took a little while for us to realize what was going on.  He’d been giving orders through Metatron for a while, and mostly talking to Joshua, so we all figured, you know, we’re being punished for—for not being good enough.”
        “He wasn’t good enough for us, as a father,” Lucifer corrects, comforting, hand brushing a wing, and Michael’s thankful, because being lost in those memories is…not of the good.
        “I—thank you.”  It doesn’t make the fear of being abandoned, of not being good enough disappear, but it dulls the pain a little. 
        Luci snorts.  “Thank my therapist.  She’s very good.”
        That’s…actually kind of sweet.  “Maybe I will.  But I’m guessing you want me to finish the story.  Took longer still for us to work out that he wasn’t just hiding from everyone.  He was missing, gone walkabout like Gabriel.  Who knows if he’s even in this universe anymore.  It’s not common knowledge.  I think a bunch of us kept it to ourselves.  There’s a bunch of angels in charge of keeping angels from getting Free Will, and I don’t even know if that’s an order or a choice they made because they thought it would make Dad happy.” 
        He doesn’t know if they’ve done anything to him.  He’s spent so long justifying everything, telling himself everything was fine if they stuck to the Plan because he couldn’t handle a reality where throwing Lucifer out was the wrong thing to do.  That in a world where Free Will was apparently a choice angels could take, he couldn’t Fall even for his little brother.  Mike takes a deep breath, because this is the point he’s told no one, not even Dean.  “I wasn’t an exception, or anything.  I decided to start the Apocalypse.  Pretty much just throwing a tantrum looking for Dad’s attention.”
        “I can’t imagine hunters agree with the ending of the world as we know it,” Luce’s voice is chilly.  As expected, he doesn’t approve.  But then, the world is pretty…swell?  Rad?  What even is his mind doing?  Maybe it’s the pretty-close-to-death thing—oh.  That’s why Luci’s staying close.  Again, maybe there was something to this Vessel thing.  Metaphors or parallels or whatever.
        “I don’t either, anymore.  I’m sorry I even kickstarted the damn thing.  But then, at the time, I still didn’t have Free Will, and there were orders…”  He blinks, trailing off, because that part’s…fuzzy.  Maybe they’d gotten to him, too.  At the time, all he’d known about was Cas, and he’s still too guilty to even face the poor little fledgling.  Never mind that he’s not sure how a conversation between them will even go.  He’s pretty sure Cas suspects, and isn’t about to forgive him for the part he played in all this.  “I don’t know.  There was definitely a prophecy.  Metatron passed it along.  Something along the lines of There Shalt Be An Apocalypse, and To It Luce Will Wear Sam Winchester and Mike Will Wear Dean Winchester.  A whole prison break sequence involving breaking the Seals to let you out of Hell, except you were already here—”
        “The Seals to the Cage?”  Luce sounds a little horrified.
        But why?  He was already topside.  “Uh.  Yeah?  Except you weren’t—”
        Luci doesn’t even let him finish.  “No.  I wasn’t.  Mum was.”
        “….And she’s probably on board with this whole Apocalypse thing.”  Mike sighs.  “Uh, okay.  One thing at a time, I guess.  No time for the panic attack now.  So, to get ready for the party, I decided to take a temporary Vessel, get a few things ready here on Earth.  Except it ended up not being quite so temporary, and he gave me the gift of Free Will.  And, as these things do, the doubt did a number on my Grace, given, you know, not True Vessel, so I was not only stuck but I was weak.  A bunch of demons captured me and were torturing me when I finally got a prayer through to Dean to come save my ass.  Which shouldn’t be possible, except I think the True Vessel thing is probably real and has some extra special side effects no one took into account.”
        “Demons?  On Earth?”  What, were they not supposed to be?
        “…Yeah?”  As far as he knows, they’ve been topside for years and years.  At least long enough for Azazel to make his move.
        “Possessing people?”  Now the tone is almost insulted.
        Oh.  He gets it now.  “Yeah.  Which I’m guessing you banned, or something.  Yeah, though they definitely got a lot more bold five years ago, which is when they said—oh.”  When they said Luce started his club.  So maybe they stopped seeing him as quite so much of an authority, but also, pretty short-sighted.  With Luce walking the earth, it was only a matter of time ‘til he’d run into some poor schmuck of a demon that didn’t plan as good as the others, and then the jig would be up.
        He’s still trying to come to some sort of equilibrium between his immediate inclinations as far as language goes and his vessel’s.  And Dean isn’t helping.
        “So was it the demons that hurt you?”  Luci’s voice burns with the desire for punishment.  Yet another similarity with the Winchesters, but not one that he likes hearing.  He knows it’s impossible, but he misses his innocent little kid brother.
        He’d wanted to keep him out of this, but then—no, if the others found him, he wouldn’t be any safer.  Less so, without his wings.  “Nah.  Zach—Zachariah—finally caught on that I wasn’t on board Team Apocalypse anymore.  Bunch of angels came at us, and it turns out you don’t need Azrael’s blade to kill an angel if you just do enough damage to the Grace, and they did their damndest.  Left the Winchesters alive, just enough that they could say yes, but I can’t and that’s—that’s not even a Vessel, is it?”
        “Made for me—by Father, I thought.”  Luce shrugs.  “It was waiting for me when I got to Hell.  I was going to abandon it, but, well, some demon got it into their head to make off with it, and I had to stake a claim.”
        “So you could probably leave, if you wanted to, but I still can’t, so they can’t have their fated battle—”  The situation’s catching up with him, apparently.  This is shock, what’s left of the human in his Vessel informs him. “Not like it would stop them; I think they’ve gotten so impatient for the end they’re willing to do anything, and since they’re…I don’t know, reprogramming angels, they can probably pull it off without anyone knowing the difference.”
        Lucifer’s jaw clenches, like he wants to reach out and hug Michael, but he doesn’t move.  “I killed Uriel,” he announces, as if he’s trying to tick his brother off, only it isn’t working.
        “Good.”  By the blazing fury in his eyes, Luce has to know he means it.
        He doesn’t take it well.  “Good?  What about killing yet another of our siblings is good?”
        “He forced Dean to torture again.  Just like Dad forced you to do.  And he was one of the ringleaders behind this whole apocalypse plan and was working with demons.  I’m sorry you had to be the one to do it, but not that he’s dead.”  The sob catches him by surprise.  “I’m sorry it wasn’t me.  You shouldn’t have had to do that.  I’ve made you and Dean and so many more suffer, and the humans might die because of what I’ve done, and worse than any of that I don’t know if I can undo any of this, to stop what I started, and I would’ve said you should kill me if not for the fact that you need every soldier you can find—”
        What catches him even more by surprise is Lucifer pulling him into a hug, fierce and bright and less in pain than he had been, because Michael should have realized, should have known—
        “Hush, Michael.  You’re here now, and I’ve got you.  There we go, take it easy…”  Michael unfurls all his wings at once and wraps them around his brother, because he’s the one that deserves to feel safe.  Michael deserves nothing.  “Do you know how happy I was?”  It’s a rhetorical question.  Mike has to assume that it’s something he’s learned from the therapist, who indeed sounds excellent as such things go.  “I was afraid, and furious, of course.  I thought, Uriel failed, of course Michael has come to finish the deed, but if anything, it sounds like this was part of the conspiracy.  Did you know anything about it?”
        Mike shakes his head, tears still falling into Luci’s very nice fitted suit.  He hadn’t taken any interest in any humans other than the True Vessels, though of course he wasn’t the only one giving orders.
        “But I have missed you,” he continues, voice trembling a little as he continues.  “My older twin.  You don’t look at me and see an abomination anymore, if you ever did.  You have granted me the gift of family again, and for that, dear brother, I would ask you not cut our reunion short so easily.”
        Michael pulls away to see the wonder and affection on the body’s face, in what remains of Luce’s Grace.  And if being here is in any way helping…  “We still probably shouldn’t stay too long.  We’re putting you in danger.”
        Lucifer’s eyes narrow, and he raises an eyebrow.  “For now, I suppose.  Perhaps I should purchase you a phone, so you stay in touch.  Even without my wings, though, don’t count me out of a fight, particularly if we find Mum.”
        That’s…a really good point, actually.  “I will definitely call,” he promises.  “It might rely a little on Dean’s schedule, given that he’s the one planning things at the moment, but…”
        His brother doesn’t answer immediately.  From the way Luce is staring at him, Mike knows he’s given something away.  It’s made clear what when he smiles, a pleased, childlike, amused sort of smile that would make Mike smile back if he didn’t have the feeling he’ll be embarrassed shortly.  “Your interest in Dean, that’s…a human desire.  You like the man.”
        If he was in his true form, the light pollution could be seen from space.  “Luci, please…”
        He waves that off casually.  “Oh, no, don’t mistake me, I’m happy for you.  Have you had sex yet?  It’s one of those human pleasures that are truly worth Falling for, if anything is.  Just ask Amenadiel.  I’d be more than happy to lend you anything you might need.”
        “Shut up,” Michael responds, only it’s not dismissive.  It’s not even annoyed.  It’s amused and affectionate.
        Lucifer blinks.  “Is this what having a human sibling is like?”
        Michael’s quiet for a moment, then snorts.  “Given that Sam and Dean tend to call each other ‘bitch’ and ‘jerk’…yes, very possibly.”  He takes a deep breath.  “I haven’t told him, and no, you’re not to tell them either.  And also, please don’t give me or Dean any sex toys, and I don’t need to know about the birds and the bees or anything.  You’re my brother.  That’s just weird.”
        Luci sighs.  “Ah, but there’s no real point in continuing to deprive yourself unnecessarily…”  He stops with a look.  “Fine, I won’t bring it up to them, but I do sincerely wish you happiness, Michael.”
        “There’s one other brother I know of on our side, Castiel.  I think Raphael’s still against us, and like I said, no one’s heard from Gabriel in ages.  Anna was, but the last we saw she was on the run.”  Withdrawing into formalities, yes, perhaps, but he’s very, very embarrassed at this point.
        “I’ll do what I can,” Lucifer promises, and rolls his eyes at the panic trembling through Mike’s wings.  “Don’t worry, I won’t move unnecessarily.  Given what you said about the demons, I would suspect I need to be even more careful when dealing with them, but if we can gain allies, that would be helpful.  Crowley, for example, might take the opportunity to rise through the ranks, and he’s always been reasonable for a price.”  He pauses, then adds, “I suppose that’s my second request, Michael.  Stay until I can meet your fine man and his brother and until you’re at least a little more healed, and then you may go.”
        Michael’s itching to leave, but Luci’s done a fine job thus far ‘flying under the radar’, so to speak, and he probably isn’t ready for another fight.  “Fine.  My Vessel’s a little hungry…?”
        Luci beams.