Set my sights on the setting sun

[thedevilwhorose]

Who: Lucifer
When: July and August
Where: Thorne, Horizon
What: Catch-all
Warnings: me apparently not being able to label prompts correctly alphabetical




Heaven talks, but not to me
'Cause Heaven knows that nothing good comes free ♫
[Will match style.]

Comments

[thedevilwhorose]

It was bound to happen that he got under Michael's skin. He wasn't even completely trying like he had been when he got here.

It was bound to happen that Lucifer would rise to it with a heat of his own.

"I didn't lose my grace from my demons I lost it from," that he doesn't spit you is impressive, but he may has well have, "him!"

And for what? For a spell? Because ohhh why would the ruler of the planet, wanting to explore other worlds, other possibilities, deign to use his own grace.

"So you act in Dad's. And he tried to kill you, isn't that right? Sure seems like your eternal loyalty was really paid off!"

It's the first mention Lucifer's dared to make of their disastrous time in the Feywilds, so it makes sense it would come out in the form of anger. Like most things from Lucifer.

[familysucks]

Water off a duck's back. His mirror self's acts are not his own and Michael will accept no guilt for them.

(It's reason to sucker-punch the other him if he ever shows his face here, though.)

Lucifer's reminder of their last conversation hits its mark. To have been so easily stripped of a part of himself is embarrassing, and the memory of being unmade still hurts. It will always hurt. How does one recover from having the very foundation of their existence swept aside?

Michael stands, roiling grace and stiff feathers beneath a stony expression, and stalks his way up to the altar. His narrowed eyes never leave Lucifer.

"What would you know about loyalty? Last I saw you—before this place—you betrayed me for a chance to serve Him again. You rebelled to prove a point to Him and you'll die in His name. For all your insults, no one is more desperate for His attention, His approval, than you."

[thedevilwhorose]

That's not fair.

"That wasn't me," he growls.

But with the right persuasion, he knows it could be. All it takes is one bit of radiance, and how depressing is that? That for the right-played cards they'd all fawn to their Father.

Michael's right; Lucifer's given his brother so much shit to ignore the fact that Lucifer has always been the worst of them. The favorite, so desperate to still be considered. So desperate to be on top.

It likely ended as bad for Lucifer as it did Michael.

But he won't let Michael know that. Will go to his grave, again, before letting Michael know. No matter how predictable Lucifer and his actions are--he isn't going to be the one to admit to them.

He landed his strike. That's what he wanted, isn't it?

"I'm supposed to just believe your word? What has that ever gotten me? Some freakshow campaign of yours? The continual propaganda that you've generated making you better than me?"

[familysucks]

Michael scoffs. Lucifer's trying to get off on a temporal technicality, but he doesn't get to pick and choose his sins around him.

"Who was it, then? Who would you scapegoat for your own actions?"

He might not be much for admitting to his failings, but Lucifer isn't one to give others credit for his work, either. Michael can picture him arguing he's not to blame for his future. He can't envision Lucifer trying to pawn the blame off on someone else.

The suggestion that he's lying ought to offend. Michael sees it for what it most likely is: a childish denial of an unpleasant truth, not a genuine belief that he's making it all up. He frowns in disapproval.

"Did you expect me to sing your praise in your absence?" To tell them that Lucifer went to get milk? Come on, now. "Between you and I, my word has always been good."

Michael extends a hand. The offer is obvious. If he won't take him at his word, it's all there in his memories—and if Lucifer can't trust those, then there's no trust at all between them.

[thedevilwhorose]

He always gets to pick and choose his sins, Mikey. It's how he works. How he's always worked.

"I don't know, it hasn't happened to me yet!"

He's said as much before but of course he's not going to take the blame for his future and of course Michael's right that he wouldn't pin it on anything else. Without having all the information at hand, Lucifer's trapped himself.

He twitches, wishing he could have enough strength to just go at Michael here. It's the Horizon, it doesn't matter, it'd be cathartic. But Lucifer has zero standing against Michael. If he got any hit on his brother it'd be out of pity.

Talking so rarely gets them anywhere; Lucifer always comes out on the losing side of it.

"You sure sang scorn in my absence," he bites out. "I didn't do every black mark to my name but oh, I turned my back on you so I should be forever faulted for every other villainous act, right?"

He cuts himself off by some miracle, pressing a hand to his face, fingers against closed eyes.

Lucifer's argument has been the same since he was locked away. The same, constant litany. Dad made him the villain. Everything after what he did was made up lies. Make their Father and his siblings into something great and here Lucifer was, the black spot of the family, the monster locked up for the safety of humanity.

You could've given me the dignity that I was rightfully owed, he doesn't say, because for all the cyclical nature of their arguments, that is the one piece of truth, and the one piece that Lucifer is sure Michael will cast aside as nothing of value. And that... Lucifer can't handle.

He drops his hand and looks at Michael's.

He can't really ever get a hold of that full scope of information, can he? Just whatever Michael has dangling before him, whatever point of time their threads lined up again. That question Lucifer's been too cowardly to ask now held out to him like a wicked offer.

Who's the tempting devil now, Michael?

In a world where Lucifer was stronger than in this moment he'd just slap Michael's hand away and leave.

But he knows the burn of the offer would wear a hole through him and the temptation would be too great, and how much it would kill him to later go back to Michael and risk, what? Being denied?

He'll regret this no matter what choice he makes.

He reaches up and takes Michael's hand.

[familysucks]

He has to choose his sins before he commits them, not after. A tough thing to do when he's disconnected from the version of himself that went through with it, but Lucifer is Lucifer is Lucifer in Michael's eyes.

Michael believes he did give him all the dignity owed an archangel, even a fallen one. At least as far as circumstances allowed. He always painted the Apocalypse as a proper fight, never an execution, didn't he? Even if the winner was a foregone conclusion. He never spared a moment's thought to sabotaging Lucifer's access to his true vessel either—and there were certainly those in the Host's upper echelons who voiced the thought.

But that's not what Lucifer says, so it's not a position Michael bothers to defend.

"Not every rumour about you was spread by me." Though the narrative did work in his favour, so he never did come down on a garrison for whispering about alleged ill deeds of Lucifer that had never taken place. He's not going to justify his running of the Host to Lucifer. "And I don't fault you for every villainous act to your name. I hold you accountable for your betrayals. Both of them."

Michael clasps his hand.

A view from inside the bunker. Does Lucifer recognize it? It doesn't matter. He has Michael's general feelings on the place for context: home of the Winchesters, and therefore no place of shelter for him.

(There is a deeper resentment there too, something from past experience that deems it a prison, but the memory doesn't play out.)

Michael is gathered around a table with Dean, Sam, and Lucifer's son. Before him lies a thick tome bound in black, the alpha and omega embossed upon its cover, beginning and end— their Father's Death Book. Michael can't open it.

Time skips ahead.

Another table, another gathering.This time, Lucifer joins the assembled. Michael sees hims as the attending humans can't: filled with his old radiance, a far cry from the thin moth-eaten quilt of Lucifer's grace as it is in Abraxas. Suspicion taints Michael's memory. They exchange petty words, the same old argument of what is right versus what is owed from a Father to his sons.

Death makes an appearance in a guise Lucifer wouldn't recognize, but through Michael's eyes there's no mistaking what she is. She opens the Death Book, begins to read—and turns to dust as Lucifer snaps his fingers. The book flies into his hands.

"Yeah, this is what pop wanted to get his hands on. Oh, did I say that out loud? Yeah pop was the one that let me out of the Empty. I'm sort of the new favourite now."

There's no words after that. A rage so hot it can only be Michael's colours the memory. He lunges for Lucifer, misses; sends a flash of grace after him that strikes the wall. Lucifer's counterattack hits its mark, sending him flying backwards.

What comes next is the early fulfillment of a future promise. There is Lucifer's own face turning towards him, and Michael plunges an archangel blade into his stomach. Lucifer's eyes flicker. His grace combusts, burning out through his eyes and mouth like solar flares.

Michael lets go. His expression is stone.

"So tell me again. Was that not you?"

[thedevilwhorose]

Sure feels like every rumor at least started with Michael as its source. The end result may not have been him, but the root? Yeah.

Or maybe Lucifer just has a forever bitter taste at the back of every vessel's throat that won't go away.

He claws into Michael's grip during the memories, head twisted inhumanely to the side as they all but feel like a passive assault.

"I don't know," he answers Michael, despite it seeming like him. "Didn't think you had it in you, Mikey," he says after managing to release Michael's hand, deceptively neutral even though there's no deceiving Michael. It's more for Lucifer's own benefit. A careful control over his own... chaos. "Still right, y'know! The old man had no love to give."

Lucifer has no idea what to do with the memories. He spins them around in his mind like a Rubik's Cube, shifting rows like they'll unlock some hidden meaning, but with everything from Michael's eyes, he's more confused than he was at the start.

'Yeah pop was the one that let me out of the Empty.'

And then, unexpectedly, Lucifer's eyes jump up and his voice rising, "Wait, I died twice?!"

[familysucks]

'I don't know', he says, as if Lucifer can't recognize himself in a mirror. As if Michael can't recognize his own brother when he's standing across from him. It almost earns Lucifer an irritated roll of his eyes. Another feeble attempt to deny the obvious because it's unpleasant.

The reality of what kind of person their Father is is just as hard for Michael to look in the eye, but he's done jumping to their Father's defense. Whether or not He ever loved them, he can't say. It's a moot point, anyway. They've been tools to serve a purpose from the moment of their creation.

"Maybe not, but I maintain it was never about love."

Love wasn't enough to keep Lucifer from cracking their family apart, wasn't enough to keep Raphael from picking sides, wasn't enough to keep Gabriel in Heaven. Emotion has never been worth much of anything between angels.

One guess whom they inherited that trait from.

When Lucifer skips over it all to his own death count, Michael does let out a long-suffering sigh. Younger siblings, always zooming in to focus on the least important part of the bigger picture.

"Don't ask me about the first time. I wasn't there."

He couldn't actually tell him with any certainty it's only been twice, either. As Lucifer well knows, they don't get regular news updates down in the Cage.

feels ancient and hopefully encapsulates things because I didn't reread

[thedevilwhorose]

He doesn't, is the thing. And maybe that's something Michael could never understand--so concrete in his perception of Self.

Wouldn't that be nice. To understand and know yourself from the inside-out, for all of time.

That's what they like to call boring, Michael.

It was always about Love, that's what Michael never understood. For Lucifer it was always, always Love.

And that's why it went so bad, so extremely, irreparably wrong.

He should have reached out. He should have asked for help.

It doesn't matter now. It didn't matter enough, then. He isn't going to focus in on it--what did Michael expect?

He didn't reveal his weakness when he needed to above all all, he's sure as hell not going to do it now where he barely trusts his brother versus when he did, implicitly.

"Good. Cool. Glad you weren't, great talk." Deflection, deflection, deflection--always. He has to process. Has to have time to pick apart every piece, every angle, of the memory Michael showed him until it does damage to himself.

He gives Gabriel all the shit for being a runner, but he's never been any better. He's simply dressed it up differently. All smoke and mirrors, Lucifer.

"Cool," he repeats, and that's too much of a slip. Breathe. Center yourself. Michael's gotten the quota of your Unease, don't let him have anymore. "Well don't let Gabriel get to comfortably," he says, dismissive of everything else except for why Lucifer came here in the first place. Their brother. Their wayward brother that they have a venn diagram about where their Thoughts & Feelings intersect about.

Gabriel is more Complicated for Lucifer than Michael is, isn't that hysterical?

He came here about Gabe. He's going to finish about Gabe.