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“So, lemme get this straight,” Dean drummed his fingers on the cheap, stained-wood table. “You secretly escaped from the Cage in our half-brother’s meatsuit, and you were…undercover this whole time?" 

“We had to make sure Amara didn’t know. If she thought Lucifer posed the only threat, she won’t account for much else.” Michael watched his own bottle drip condensation on to the coaster. He had his own questions for Dean on the matter, but he wasn’t sure he wanted to know the answers just yet. Amara and her brazen possession of his true vessel struck a nerve with them both.

After taking another swig of beer, Dean scoffed. “Does that matter?” he asked plainly. “She destroyed, I mean, literally swallowed an army of angels. Somehow, I doubt God’s sister worries about the cavalry comin'."  

“No,” Michael allowed. “But the finer points of strategy were never her forte. It’s why we were able to seal her away in the first place." 

Dean raised his eyes at that. “Right, so what was that about?”   

“She had to be locked away for Creation to happen.” said Michael. “None of this—the universe, your planet— would exist if she wasn’t." 

“Right, ‘cause she’s the Darkness,” Dean suddenly smirked, sharp with contempt. “Hey, that why your Dad figured it was no big deal? Y’know...telling us to kill our own brothers? Because that’s how He did it?" 

Michael felt his vessel’s lungs empty in surprise, its skin break into goosebumps under a chill that coursed past his body to strike at the core of his grace. 

“Dean.” he warned softly. The whole room trembled around that syllable, shaking at the seams until several lights blew out in a shower of sparks and plunged the bar into further dimness.   

Luckily, the sound of other patrons yelping in shock and the acrid smell of burnt circuitry seemed to snap Dean out of it, and he groaned in dismay at his own behavior. Michael didn’t miss the way he rubbed at his forearm either—the spot where Amara’s seal used to be at the time when Dean Winchester was all that stood between Creation and the entirety of her oblivion. The same spot where she no doubt wormed her way into his soul. 

“Shit. Hey, look,” Dean exhaled and steeled himself like he was about to ask for something more terrible than drinks with his old antagonist. “Your batteries are full. There any chance you can make this stop?" 

Stop what? Michael opened his mouth to ask, but it quickly dawned on him when he saw the haunted look in Dean's eyes. “You were angry on her behalf.” he realized, although any concerns about blowing his cover faded under the razor bite of ill-concealed, possessive chagrin. “You and Amara, it’s—" 

“Don’t you fuckin’ dare say desire!” Dean growled back. He was angry again, but now he exuded fire instead of reptilian disdain. “It ain’t that, or…love, or—" 

“You don’t drown in quicksand because you love the earth,” Michael lifted his chin and stared meaningfully at his true vessel. “Her gravity is simply more powerful than what you are." 

“Amara is an abyss, Dean,” he continued softly, after a pause. “All of Creation circles her mouth eventually. It’s nature; you might even say destiny, but it is not love." 

Dean hid the despair flashing across his face by draining the last of his beer. “So, what do we do?” he asked, massaging his forehead restively. “How do we stop her?" 

His body slumped back against his chair in a gesture that Michael himself understood rather well these days. In lieu of an immediate answer, the archangel took the first sip of his own beer, and quickly made a face at the taste of microbes and molecules.   

“With what’s left of Father’s power, I suppose,” he answered, sounding doubtful even to himself. “She has to be locked up again, and this time, we’re going to throw away the key. Or, at least, that’s the plan, but I’ve…” 

Michael frowned at the admission pivoted at the tip of his tongue. For the first time, he was about to sound less than confident and he didn’t like the reason why. At all. “I’ve never fought alone before. Father was always there to guide me; if not with His presence, then—"  

“He left you a manual, but only till the apocalypse,” Dean finished and nodded wryly. “Yeah, I know how that goes." 

“It’s not easy." 

“No, it ain't,” A mirthless smile pulled at the hunter’s lips. “But you gotta keep going anyway. No matter what.” 

“And it’ll all work out in the end?” Michael folded his arms and glanced out over the crowd before turning back to present company. “Is that your advice? How romantic." 

“Well, it’s all us unimportant little ants got,” Dean frowned in mild exasperation. “If you or your feathery frat brothers know something we don’t, I’m all ears." 

Michael conceded to his point with a shrug. He couldn’t exactly argue, given their history. “I don’t have to tell you that Amara is a whole different ballgame. Even for us." 

--

Little Castiel certainly maintained an interesting vessel. It was noticeably attractive, but his look of angelic constipation did wonders to keep the rabble at bay. In fact, by the time Lucifer made his way from door to counter, everyone who’d sent him a second glance thought better than to approach, which left him free to cut a straight line through the crowd toward the one person who was too focused on a far away game of pool to see him walk in. 

“You know, Michael, you really shouldn’t be this close,” he murmured, just for the satisfaction of seeing the other archangel jump. 

He wasn’t disappointed, but the gratification didn’t last long either. Michael went from startled to disapproving in record time. 

“Lucifer, did I just sense--”

“Yeah, you did,” Lucifer interrupted testily. “Do feel free to thank me for watching your back when you couldn’t be bothered.”

Michael’s response was a reproachful, yet predictable frown. But it wasn’t was if he had a leg to stand on; not when he’d allowed himself to be distracted by Dean Winchester for the better part of an hour. 

Actually, half the men in this bar were glancing enviously in Dean’s direction, but only Michael looked personally offended at each and every woman in the group coyly lining up so the handsome, unattached stranger could ‘teach them pool’. In any other instance, Lucifer would have been happy to leave his brother to his Dean-shaped problems. However, these weren’t normal times.

Pushing himself into Michael’s space, Lucifer wasted no time pressing his lips to this brother’s. It helped that Michael looked good in his new vessel, limned in real light as opposed to the stormy darkness of their shared confinement-- a circumstance for which they had Rowena to thank. For all that the witch was ambitious and clever, the true intricacies of heavenly architecture were a bit beyond her. She had been too starstruck by her celebrity crush, who only had eyes for his true vessel, who in turn only had eyes for his inconvenient rescue party, and the whole doe-eyed daisy chain had overlooked the other, very incendiary, occupant of the Cage. 

Lucifer hadn’t lied when he said prison life didn’t suit Michael, but no amount of show tunes or self-love could keep him from seizing the opportunity to escape. So while Lucifer stumbled through his dubious reunion with Sam, it was Michael who ruthlessly stitched Adam Milligan’s unraveling body together long enough to slip from the Cage undetected. 

It pushed the lowest bounds of what could pass for a vessel. There were parts of Michael's grace that would never again be the same, thanks to this furtive dash from Hell. Lucifer didn’t even have to look very deeply to see unsettling clusters of dead grace standing out like sunspots against Michael’s usual incandescence.

But all this pain wasn’t without its tactical silver lining. 

Their most ancient enemy didn’t know that Heaven’s general walked the earth. Given that Raphael and Gabriel were out of the equation, given the near decimation of the angelic host, given that Darkness was turning Creation inside out and their Father still preferred to play hideaway, the element of complete surprise was the only real advantage they had against Amara. If they could keep it, of course. 

“Brother, I’m serious,” Lucifer dragged his fingers along the rough expanse of Michael’s cheek. “She’s bound herself to him now. You don’t know what she can see."

Michael pulled away brusquely. “I know,” he replied. Although, the tightness in his jaw implied he was less than pleased about it. 

Lucifer made an irritated noise. He understood, of course: to be near a true vessel after enduring Hell was euphoric. The need to scrub foreign stains of darkness from the person made perfect for them, desperate. But they were well and truly at war, and if he had no more tenderness left to spare for vessels who’d rejected them one too many times-- 

Dean’s brash laughter carried from his end of the room to their’s, and Lucifer braced under a wave of heartsickness for Sam. He closed his teeth around the tip of Michael’s ear, tasting the grace simmering just behind the skin of this brittle vessel.

Michael shifted, clearly uncomfortable. “Lucifer..." 

“That’s me,” Lucifer dug his nails into the side of Michael’s throat. “New dress, same old bunk buddy." 

“You’re wearing Castiel,” Michael retorted with no small amount of distaste.

“So what?” Lucifer asked without pulling away. “Is it weird because he’s our baby brother or because he’s the only angel you want to smite more than me?"

“Can’t it be both?" 

Lucifer grinned against Michael’s temple because, apparently, it wasn’t beneath their firstborn to be grumpy, but at least he wasn’t mooning over Dean when he was. Lucifer followed his restless gaze out the window to the dusky sky outside. “The choirs, Lucifer,” Michael was saying. “I can’t believe I hear so few of them…" 

It had been a while since Lucifer heard any of them. “I’ll take your word for it.” he replied dryly, but sighed when Michael’s stormy rumination upon Castiel’s sins didn’t fade. With a single gesture, he rearranged the bones in the seraph’s vessel and brightened its hair until it shone like a halo under the dim lights. 

He nipped at Michael’s shoulder when it was done. “Better now?"

“Hm...?” Michael’s heartbeat sped up, but for all the wrong reasons, of course. Dean Winchester was making his way toward the bar. 

Lucifer watched his brother stare, eyes wide with open hunger for his true vessel, and unsubtly kicked his shin. “Let’s go.” he demanded. “If you’re going to blow something, I’d rather it not be your clever disguise.” 

--

There was another thing he hadn’t been entirely facetious to Sam about—moving to LA. It was as good a place as any, especially while it held on to the last vestiges of sunlight that settled mutely atop their chosen perch, and limned Michael’s back until it was impossible to tell where that sunlight began and his grace ended.  

“I might pass on the crime-solving gig, though,” Lucifer said, winding his fingers through Michael’s dark hair as his brother kissed a hurried path from brow to throat. “Eventually, it’ll all come back to her. Not much of a mystery there...”

“If you say so.” 

Lucifer felt Michael settle comfortably between his legs and take nominal advantage of the friction there, but he was too distracted to try for much else. They were both aroused, unquestionably, but trust his big brother to be consumed by random imperatives even in the midst of all this. 

Michael cupped one side of this face before stating plainly, “Lucifer, we’re at war." 

“I noticed."

“We have to act while she’s wounded, with or without the Winchesters.” continued Michael. ”We can’t afford to waste time."  

As if Lucifer had other ideas. “Mm, so might I suggest you spit it out?"

“With Heaven as it is and Dad being…well.” Michael’s eyes turned bright, green irises reflecting the light of Lucifer’s grace. He looked truly perturbed. “Brother, for once, I’m uncertain about the end of this fight."

Oh, of all the worthless--

“I want you to take care of yourself."

Lucifer stilled, raising his eyes to meet Michael’s staring back with a vehemence he’s only seen a few times before. Indeed, these things had been much easier in that Before—as easy as wrapping Michael (ever on the way to engage some enemy on their Father’s behalf) in his bountiful white wings and whispering I love you, brother, make sure you come back to me. 

Nowadays, it was more difficult. Nowadays, there were fewer wings between them than teeth, to be bared against the very real possibility that they might lose each other without a chance to say goodbye.

But in this moment, Lucifer nipped at his brother’s thumb as it strayed too close to his lips. “I’ll be fine, Michael,” he replied. “Don’t worry about me.”

Of course, going up alone against the kind of scum that had no problem using infant blood and live organs as ingredients in a spell was never a good idea, but getting to land a bullet in the monster's face was worth all the telekinetic gutting that came after.

 Dean exhaled sharply, breath punched out of his lungs in a way that once again confirmed that any spellcaster this far into the dark side was also stupidly, stupidly powerful. He was pulled upright before he could reach for his gun, and pinned to the wall by an intangible, hateful energy that made his skin crawl. 

 “You ruined my altar,” the warlock informed him. “But not to worry. You’re no innocent lamb, but your heart will do just fine."

 Dean grunted at the pain in his chest; at the horrifying sensation of muscles and sinew being wrenched apart to get at the pulsating thing behind them. His vision turned a bloody white when the first rib broke, but it wasn’t until the second began to splinter that he gathered the breath to ask for a miracle. The first thought which rose from the throes of his pain was a prayer to Castiel, but the invocation that wound around his tongue was older and much more potent than the wry soundbites he used to call on the seraph.

 The syllables of this terrific poetry that tasted like warm copper on his tongue manifested as a burst of coruscating light that streamed into the windowless basement through the very pores of the walls. 

 Everything quaked; brick dust rained from the roof, and what couldn’t hold its structure under the force of this approaching cataclysm, shattered. Including the warlock, Dean realized, because in between gasping for air and searching for his gun, he hadn’t even noticed the harrowing whine of an angel’s true voice above far more human screams.

 He stood up clutching his chest, staggering like a wounded animal in the eye of a storm made of holy light.

“You summoned an archangel? You?!” the warlock screeched in spiteful disbelief. “Who are you?!” 

 Dean barely registered the demand. There was a pyroclast at his back, folded into human form with deceptively sweet green eyes, who filled the acrid lair with an equally sweet, green smell of earth and pine. Michael’s footsteps were soft and purposeful as he approached. Dean sensed his grace rippling in askance.

 “I’m your true vessel,” he gasped roughly, still glaring at the thing he came to hunt. “That’s gotta mean something, don’t it?"

 “It means everything." Michael did not hesitate, as if the mere inkling of Dean’s wishes drew the words from his mouth. 

 “Good,” Dean had his hands around the warlock’s throat even before he finished that single syllable, and Michael slid his own palm over the hunter’s shoulder. Now, they were both that pyroclast—what was Michael flowed through Dean, like a river and its branch for him, but much worse for the warlock whose eyes and mouth exploded into flames. Pure holy fire seared away the monster’s flesh and the profane stanch of black magic until it was nothing more than a handful of ashes. Time seemed to slow, but the last of the embers died eventually and Dean shivered.

 Tied to a comet was an apt description—it felt like his body contained a swarm of stars, and the contradiction between their immensity and his own smallness was giving his brain vertigo. Dean was only vaguely aware of Michael’s arm looping around his chest to steady him; he was fascinated by his palms, which perversely didn’t look any different even after roasting a person alive?

 “Holy shit!” Dean exclaimed, when the magnitude of the act finally hit. “That was—uh…”

 “I know,” Michael hummed against the nape of his neck, as if he just knew the human tongue couldn’t possibly describe what had occurred. For Dean’s part, the pain in his chest was no more, but the archangel’s normally comforting warmth made him feel more lightheaded. Divine wrath was different when it was under one’s own skin, like a solvent that was too harsh, that cleansed a little too deeply and left a patch of the world stripped bare instead of merely tidy.

 Dean swallowed thickly and swept his eyes at the debris of dark witchcraft still scattered just beyond their hallowed radius. “I thought it’d be more satisfying,” he explained, more steadily than he felt. “but maybe I’m getting old.”

 Michael patted his flank in response, his vessel’s fingers slipping under the torn jacket that made up Dean’s FBI disguise. “This kind of vengeance is never about satisfaction,” he replied softly, the rolling timbre of his voice pulling Dean’s attention back to into their single square space containing just them. “It’s about burning the weeds. To save the whole garden, so to speak.”

 Instinctively, Dean wrapped Michael’s arms tighter around himself, to ground the angel as much as himself. “Yeah, well, maybe it’s best if I stick to my own weed-whacker from now, and leave yours to you.”

 Michael laughed at that, and the swooping plumes of light that Dean now recognized as the archangel’s wings threw dramatic shadows against the decrepit walls. “Whatever you say, Dean.”

 -

 From the fringes of the operation, Dean watched the local police raid the warlock’s house and a team of paramedics receive a shivering kids who’d gone missing over the last few days. There was nothing more heartwarming than the sound of families reuniting. Unless, of course, it was his own.

 “That was the stupidest thing you’ve ever done!” Sam was yelling, despite the police chief and at least one deputy side-eyeing his decidedly un-FBI like behavior. “All you had to do was wait a couple minutes and—“

 “Come on, Sam, you’re making a scene,” Dean interrupted, flashing the cops a placating gesture before turning back to his infuriated brother. “You know damn well you’d have gone in after those kids, too. And it all worked out, didn’t it?”

 Sam looked anything but impressed. “Did it?” he countered. “Dean, do you have any idea how lucky you were that an archangel happened to have his ears on?”

 The beginnings of Dean’s reply were lost in a sudden flutter of wings, and Michael’s formidable reappearance to inform them that the lair had been purged of supernatural booby traps.

 “Trouble in paradise?” the angel asked, looking at the two of them over a small bundle he held in his arms.

 “Eh, Sam’s just hangry,” Dean replied and promptly earned an appalling bitch-face from his brother. The hunter frowned warily when the bundle in Michael’s arms began to move. “Uh, what is that?”

 “Oh, this?” Michael asked innocently even as he deposited said ‘this’ into Dean’s arms. It was a baby, one of the ones kidnapped by the psycho they’d just taken care of, and whose cherubic serenity lasted for two whole seconds before the crying began.

 “Oh man, come on—“ Dean floundered, but it wasn’t long before the sound attracted the attention of a paramedic and a tearful woman who’d been restlessly hovering behind the police tape. There was a general ruckus headed their way after that, led by desperately relieved mantras of ‘you found her, you found my baby!’