"Brother, don't make me do this."
"No one makes us do anything."
"I know you think you're doing the right thing Gabriel. But I know where your heart truly lies. Here. Amateur hocus pocus. Don't forget, you learned all your tricks from me, little brother."
Lucifer closed his eyes at the light exploding from his brother's vessel. He cradled Gabriel's lifeless body and gently lowered it to the floor. Standing up he looked down at the impression of massive wings scorched into the floor and across tables standing out clearly against bleached linen tablecloths.
Lucifer felt a stinging wetness slide over an open sore on the face of his vessel and reached up a finger to brush it away, a tear. He dropped to his knees as more tears began to fall.
"Gabriel, why? You know that you were the last one I wanted to hurt. Why did you force my hand? Little brother, why?"
Lucifer reached out a hand almost touching the ash that was once Gabriel's wing. He himself had groomed those magnificent wings more times than he could count. He remembered when Father had come to them bringing Gabriel to the nest. The tiny fledgling squirming in Father's arms and looking around at them with big curious golden eyes. He remembered Michael teasingly calling Gabriel a runt for his small size.
More tears fell as he remembered how Gabriel would wrap his limbs around their legs and cling to them when he didn't want them to leave the nest. Gabriel was their peacekeeper, the brother who loved them all without condition who would forgive the teasing with a smile and then pull a harmless prank in retaliation. Gabriel was the brother who came closest to understanding the love Lucifer had for this world because Gabriel shared it.
Lucifer thought about the times they spent exploring the Earth and how Gabriel would tweek the evolutionary lines creating little jokes that still existed today. One of the first creatures Lucifer had seen when he rose from the cage was a chameleon. Practically the only creature Gabriel had created that wasn't a prank. And now he was dead.
"Lucifer threw back his head and screamed his grief, his pain and his rage toward the heavens. "Why Father? Why did you let this happen?"