It was heartbreaking for Michael; to know that his closest brother had left them. Lucifer had no right--no right—to leave. Not without a note, or a whispered curse in the dark when he thought Michael was sleeping, but wasn't. Michael hardly slept, especially after arguments between the siblings.

Gabriel always wanted more. Raphael was like a mediator and instigator all in one; constantly bickering with Lucifer but siding with Michael. Lucifer—Michael's bane—had been his closest companion. Four boys and a somewhat lackluster father in one household was a bit hard to tolerate, but Michael followed Chuck's orders and kept the others in line, albeit begrudgingly.

Dinner came and went, leaving Michael to read alone in his bedroom, Lucifer's belongings mostly remaining, though a few sets of clothes, a backpack and a heavy winter jacket were missing from his closet. Michael had spent the better part of the night buried in his book until he could finally handle it no longer, the book tossed aside. The springs in Lucifer's mattress squeaked as Michael climbed on board, burying his face in the pillow and crying himself to sleep.

Weeks passed.

Michael feared that what their father had said was right; Lucifer had left of his own free will and wasn't about to return.

He wondered if he had done something to aggravate the situation. Michael thought aloud while in the shower, on whether or not he had driven Lucifer to it; arguments about how lax their father had become in disciplining the younger pair, or why they had such differing opinions on important world events.

Chuck was still home-bound; writing his books and spending the rest of the time tearing Gabriel away from the fridge and keeping Raphael from performing surgery on the neighborhood dogs. The writer was sure that Raphael was going to be a doctor—if they could afford medical school—but Gabriel...was another story altogether. Likely suffering from ADHD and with a severe eating disorder—bordering on hoarding when it came to sweets—Gabriel seemed innocently ignorant to it all.

Michael needed his free space and the job he'd procured after high school kept money in his pockets—and treats in Gabriel's—but it had also afforded him the luxury of a car. It was old, but well-loved. He kept it clean and kept the gas tank topped up. On days when he needed his space, Michael would often drive through the city in the evenings to see its wildlife; the drug addicts, the prostitutes, the police officers offering both.

During the day, he shopped for things the household needed—despite Chuck's ability to afford anything they needed and provided for the lot of them—and slowed down to cruise past the seedier parts of the city again, this time to see how changed it all was during the daylight hours.

Outside of The Kasbah; a strip club that pretended to be a legitimate bar and restaurant, Michael slowed right down, seeing something out in front of the place that caught his eye. The boy sitting against the brick wall—the purple paint peeling to reveal filthy, soot-damaged terra cotta—had a hoodie on that Michael almost recognized, though the hood was up and the skinny form underneath was hardly anyone he knew.

He took the first road that led left and circled the block, the print on the hoodie haunting him a little; he knew it, but couldn't place it. The black hoodie, with the silver, lacy pattern upon it, faded cross-like decorations with wings curling over the shoulders.

It was the wings that sold him.

That forced him to double park the car in a No-Parking zone, with a meter maid less than a block away. Michael left his hazards flashing and hauled himself out of the car too quickly, catching himself on the seat belt and swearing out loud.

The figure against the wall lifted his head, the sunken cheeks and deep-set eyes a ghostly reminder of the brother Michael had once cherished. That he still cherished, but had now come to equally disdain. The seat belt freed, Michael covered the sidewalk distance in two steps and fisted his hand in Lucifer's shirtfront, hauling him up to his feet with a look of surprise on his face.

Lucifer had been the bigger of the two; not fat but built more solidly. The boy before Michael now was gaunt and weak, his face sallow like melted candle wax. Michael felt a tightness in his chest when he noticed how dirty his brother was, the ruined baseball cap at their feet holding barely a dollar's worth of change.

“I'd ask if you could spare a buck, but you're as tight with your money as you are a jerk,” Lucifer managed, his voice rough.

Michael sneered a little bit, angry and shocked and relieved all at once. He wanted to hug Lucifer until he heard his ribs crack. He wanted to throw him into the back of his car and get him home for a bath. The grin on Lucifer's face was almost maddening, only egging Michael's rage on even further.

“You think this is funny, Luce? I've been looking for you, for weeks. Dad said you just up and left. Figured you were going somewhere for the weekend, but you never came back!”

Lucifer struggled to get out of Michael's grip, passersby ignoring them and crossing the street, as if an all-out brawl were about to happen. He brushed himself off a little, the grime still sticking to his hands and face, his clothes a mess. Even the boots Lucifer had loved so much—a pair of once-brand new work boots Chuck had brought home from a sale for his second-born—were dirty. It had only been a few weeks, but life on the streets in a big city was hard.

“Bet you all had a fucking blast without me. Parties, cake and ice cream, staying up late. Gabriel's moved right in, hasn't he? Taken over my bed in our room, sucking up to his big bro?”

Michael was livid, giving Lucifer a violent shove that sent the skinny, malnourished boy against the peeling brick. Lucifer cringed—his body sore from sleeping on the concrete as it was—but didn't fight back, staring at Michael with the smile already returning.

“Like hell, we did! Gabriel's been crying for you and Raphael's up in the middle of the night hearing things. Dad's been quiet and writing a lot more than usual; you know, buried in work and grief over his son disappearing on him!”

Lucifer's eyes darkened and he pushed off from the wall to get closer to Michael, his smile fading and his brows kitting together.

“Buried in work and grief? Are you fucking kidding me?! That asshole threw me out! Said I was causing shit between the rest of you and Gabriel was too young to be seeing that kinda behavior. Christ, Mike. You think I just left?”

Michael's mouth gaped like that of a fish, his shock stunning him into silence. Had Chuck really tossed Lucifer out on his own for something like that? Yes, it was true that the boys fought and Lucifer was usually the root of the problem, but Michael was so often the mediator that Chuck barely had any say in their issues any longer.

He reached out a hand in apology, to either curl around Lucifer's shoulders and direct him back to the car, or just hug him outright, Michael wasn't certain. Lucifer batted the hand away and snatched up his measly haul from the past few hours' worth of panhandling, the hat tucked into his pocket.

It was the silverware, that caught his eye first. The vesseled creature, enjoying his freedom on the open sea, smiled as he made it back to his First Class cabin, the body he inhabited attractive and in gloriously good shape for a man in his early forties.

Of the 3,327 people on board the RMS Titanic, Lucifer was the only passenger smiling as the ship's cabins began to take on water, no less than a half hour after the initial impact with the iceberg. Lucifer, really Nathaniel Verdun; a wealthy socialite from London who shunned the church and welcomed the devil into his body, stowed the silverware—cunningly hidden in the pockets of his three-piece suit during dinner service that evening—in the jewelry compartment of the bright blue steamer trunk he had boarded with. It was a shame he had to leave before the really exciting things started to happen, but after hauling the trunk up onto the ship's main deck and finishing off his cigarette, the monster vanished—trunk in tow—and reappeared on a nondescript wharf in Gloucester, Massachusetts.

It was only a short train ride to Boston from there, and Lucifer had a considerable amount of land, wealth and storage space, with which to fill with his treasures. The silverware, the jewelry pinched from the wealthy ladies he had romanced during the trip. He had even managed to stow two dresses in the trunk; one belonging to the Captain's wife, and the other to a Second Class girl of about seventeen, who had agreed to let him keep it after a night of unusually wild sex. Not that Lucifer wasn't wild, nor Nathaniel's body unwilling to perform, but for a girl of her age and upbringing, Catherine had been remarkably well-versed for a virgin.

It mattered little that Catherine would drown in the Third Class lounge with the man she had been with that night; Lucifer had what he came for, and the Indian silk with the Chinese embroidery would look stunning draped over any number of his already-claimed possessions.

Time moved quickly for the Lord of Hell; decades moved by far too fast and no items were collected for nearly a hundred years, until Lucifer took a break from once again ruling Hell, to surface and take a new vessel. Nick was sturdy and pretty to him; something he could enjoy looking at in the mirror, but it was Sam Winchester that Lucifer wanted the most.

Oh, but it was easy to steal Sam's things, his lust for hoarding personal items returning almost as quickly as his need to once again be seen. No one cared for religion the way they used to in America; Lucifer was a name given to pets and television personalities joked about 'the end of days' as if it were some sort of in-joke no one understood. The freedom to return topside was as liberating as the thefts themselves and Lucifer grinned at himself in the bathroom mirror of Sam and Dean's motel room, Sam's shaving mirror held up so that only Lucifer's mouth could be seen reflected in it.

“Gonna keep this forever, Sam,” he said softly, watching his—Nick's--mouth move, the teeth pearly and only mildly stained. “Put it in the brass box from Greece. Twelfth century antique meets white trash chic. ...shoulda been a poet. ...could still be a poet. Next time, next time.”

It wasn't enough to feel hated by creatures that held little stock in his future, but when Adam was torn from a particularly blinding moment of intense pain and noticed Sam was missing from the cage, he felt the click of a switch in the back of his head, the sound deafening. Michael had become a hollow, silent shell; making no sounds at all as he rocked in the corner of the enormous enclosure, Lucifer's rage finding him more often than not, in the form of physical violence. Brothers in Heaven but now enemies in Hell, the pair studiously ignored Adam unless he outright drew their attention. "They're like animals, you know," a grating, drawled voice said softly, directly behind the cowering human. "They'd rut if they could, brothers or not." Adam was more than a little shocked about being addressed--without actually being addressed--and he turned to peer through the closely-spaced bars, the roughness and sharpness of the slim stone giving him only a partial view of what lay beyond the cage. His throat was raw from the oppressive heat and from screaming through one of Lucifer's rages.