A/N: I don't like it but hey, I don't like most of my stuff. It didn't turn out quite how I expected but, you know, going with the flow and all that jazz. Yes, this is the third in my 'Belonging' series. Anyway, enjoy and please review.
Pairings: Mentions of Michael/Lucifer
Warnings: Hints of slash and angelcest, mental disorder, also hints at mental/emotional abuse and grace bonding
Disclaimer: If I owned it Gabriel would not be dead and we'd have Sabriel, Destiel and Michael/Lucifer galore.

My first reaction after taking Sam's visions of Lucifer away was fear, and I cannot say that my terror was unfounded. After all, Lucifer is the devil and the main adversary of our Father whereas I am a loyal servant of the Lord, despite my mistakes and past hubris. Yet now I feel as though my trepidation has subsided somewhat. Ignoring Lucifer is surprisingly easy. At least it used to be.

When I had first been left in this institution I was sure that Lucifer would torment me continuously as he had done to Sam and, at first, he did. I thwarted his attempts with indifference, quickly learning that showing fear or reacting to the image only made the visions persist and Lucifer become crueller. His 'visits' as the nurses called them soon became less frequent but no less violent when he did appear. My indifference, however, infuriated him and made him try harder but it also seemed to be his undoing. The vision never stayed for the duration of more than ten minutes if I made no reaction.

It is during one of Lucifer's most violent appearances that my indifference fractures. His actions, although threatening and sickening, are not what captured my attention but rather a golden sheen that glowed around him I had not noticed before. It was a glow that resembles the purity of a powerful grace, something that Lucifer himself cannot possess after his many centuries in the cage in the deepest pits of hell. Yet it was there and there was no mistaking it. Without thinking, I spoke to the image and all the progress I had made shattered; he began to appear daily and he did not provide me with an answer. I went back to ignoring him. Despite this, the knowledge that something was not right about my visions had sparked an intense need to discover why I would be seeing something that would disprove the reality of them completely. So I stubbornly persisted. I do not know what spurred such a desire to know, perhaps it was a trait I learnt from Dean – he has always been stubborn from the moment we first met.

I started to talk to Lucifer more, much to the nurses' displeasure. They began to send in the demon, Meg, more and she would stay with me in order to stop me from talking to the images. She was not very effective in doing so and Lucifer seemed delighted in my attempts at conversation. He refused to actually answer my questions, of course, but that mattered little. The more he appeared the more I could study him. The more I studied him the easier it would become for me to identify how the glow of grace was present around him.

It was a Thursday when I overstepped the mark, quite fitting really but that is not significant. I had become frustrated with the little progress I had made over the time I had paid attention to Lucifer and decided that talking was not really enough to find out what I wanted to know. He had been playing one of his crueller visual pranks at the time, trying to gain some sort of reaction. I gave him one and reached out to grab him, shocked when an onslaught of new visions overcame me. I briefly heard Meg shout out as I crumpled to the floor, the image of Lucifer swimming to make way for the new pictures.

I am in the cage, cold for a moment, and darkness and the unmistakable, burnt smell of perdition.
Then, suddenly, light and two blurred figures ahead of me; one bright as a burning star and the other dimmer and streaked with the colour grey. The brighter one has the dimmer pinned to the floor but I cannot see them clearly.
Behind me cries of pain echoed and I whipped around to find the source of the noise. The youngest Winchester, the boy that did not truly know what being a vessel meant but agreed nevertheless; Adam. I frowned at the sight of him. He was floating in the rotten air of the cage but nothing was harming him and the figures I had first seen, whom I could now guess were Michael and Lucifer, paid him no attention. Yet still he screamed as if he was upon the rack and being tortured by hell's finest. I studied him for a moment longer, reaching out one hand in an attempt to use my grace to see what was wrong. I withdrew it quickly when the golden glow I was so familiar with seeing on my visions of Lucifer burnt around him causing his screams to reach an even higher volume. The sight of his agony unsettled me but I knew I could not ease his pain. Instead, with a heavy heart, I turned away to look at the blurred figures of my eldest brothers.
I slowly inched closer towards them, trying to figure out why my stomach churned with uneasiness the closer I got. Their forms became clearer as I moved forward and I froze why I was near enough to realise the truth of what was happening.
Michael had Lucifer pinned to the floor of the cage but their position was not one of violence like I had first suspected. The familiar gold grace I had been wondering over was clearly recognisable now and I could hardly believe I had not recognised it before. I watched as Michael overpowered the Devil with the beautiful gold; merging it with the fallen one's own grace and drawing a gasp from his victim.
"I will never let you go brother." The promise is a whisper, probably one meant for comfort, but as Lucifer whimpered in Michael's grip a shiver passed through me. A brief glance back to Adam and everything seems to fall into place.
Along with the revelation comes darkness then bright light as I wake up once more in the confines of the mental institution.

Once I had awoken Meg had started fussing over me immediately but I paid her no heed, too wrapped up in my thoughts to care. Michael and Lucifer were both still in the cage but not fighting as most believed they were. It seemed the battle was over and Michael had won, claiming the Devil himself as his prize. In the case of Adam and Sam, it seemed their torture was an illusion created by Michael so he could enjoy his spoils which explained why all the visions of Lucifer had been tinged with golden grace. The torture had been simulated and the illness I had taken upon myself from Sam was merely fluctuations of the grace used to create the false memories and sensations. In the background I heard Meg calling Dean as my mind worked out the final pieces of information, the knowledge breaking my heart even as I consolidated it. Sam and Dean had averted the apocalypse and had sent Lucifer back to hell with Michael alongside and I had helped them. I had doomed one of my brothers to be possessed by another for eternity.

Lucifer belonged to Michael now.