Title: With Those Angel's Eyes
Summary: Hell is a creation of the mind; Heaven is a creation of the heart. Cage fic. Angelcest.
Disclaimer: Don't know, don't own, don't sue.
A/N: I'm not sure how this happened, really. I was ill and I had my writing pad on my phone open and then BAM! fic happened :) Full title is "The Devil as He's Talking With Those Angel's Eyes", taken from the Coldplay song "Us Against the World". "Hell is a creation of the mind; Heaven is a creation of the heart" is also a quote but I can't find the source.
Hell is a creation of the mind; Heaven is a creation of the heart.
They fight, once they've fallen, circling the cage which blurs and twists at the edges, a chaos created by the conjoined image of four different Hells. Adam and Sam retreat as soon as they can, bruised and bloodied as they are, for as much as Michael tried to protect them from the fall, there was little he could do whilst his brother tore at his back, screaming as they descended into the cage.
Every now and then Michael sees them, curled around each other but he lets them be because Lucifer's always at the turn of his head, angry and quick. He makes sure, however, that the spread of his wings and barricade of his being prevents Lucifer from getting to them and hurting them too. If his brother notices this protection he doesn't say, just throws himself at Michael and tears at his grace.
Eventually though Lucifer tires of their incessant battles and Michael, who ached for an end long ago, settles on the floor and watches the movements of the Devil on the other side of the cage.
Sometimes he gathers his darkened, majestic wings around himself and envelops himself within them, rocking and shivering, and from what Michael can feel of his Grace from this distance, he is immersing himself in happy memories, memories Michael hopes he has access to. Other times he talks to himself, occasionally he collapses into brewed bitterness and resentment and sends flames of ice across the cage. Never does he speak to any of them, never does he utter a word but Michael's throat is dry anyway, so he closes himself off to the silence.
Until, when his eyes have fluttered closed and he chooses to dip out of constant consciousness, that voice, one he's missed more than the open sky, sounds across the chasm between them and opens up wounds in his Grace he almost forgot he had.
"Brother," Lucifer whispers like he means it, "brother."
Michael's eyes raise to meet Lucifer's and even across Hell, across his brother's domain, his kingdom, his prison, he sees the angel he used to scale the heights of the universe with. He takes in a deep breath and nods, acknowledges their tie and waits.
"Brother," Lucifer repeats, as if the word is a taste he wants to savour on his tongue, "what was Heaven like without me?"
"Empty," Michael replies instantly, no hint of a lie, and keeps his gaze level. Lucifer looks surprised at the honesty and shifts, his wings quivering slightly.
"Did you miss me, Michael?" he asks. "Did you care?"
There's a faint light glowing around him he speaks, an extension of his Grace that is not keeping within the lines. It is the colour of Eden at first light, of the hundredth galaxy they visited, the breath of a new born star and the embers of the fires of hell. It's all Michael can do not to go over, reach out and touch it, touch the essence of his fallen brother and renew their love, but he isn't so sure it's a love desired to be received after everything that's happened.
Finally he responds, his words slow and his tone low.
"How could I not have? If ever there was one I loved more than you-"
"You loved God more than me," Lucifer interrupts, "when I cherished you above all others."
"Yes," Michael assents, moving restlessly, "because that is what we were designed to do."
"I wasn't," Lucifer's voice cuts out sharply and before Michael has time to prepare he has lunged across the space in between them and hurled himself upon Michael, a whirl of ice and hate and spiked feathers. Retaliation is instinctive but Michael fights it down, let's Lucifer rake fingers like knives through his wings and plunge frost into his Grace, angrily striking human resemblance against human resemblance and his angelic entity against Michael's own. Somewhere in the back of Michael's mind he worries about Adam - and in addition, Sam - but that line of thought is quickly overpowered when Lucifer bites at his neck and whispers in his ear with breath so cold it burns,
"Aren't you going to fight me?"
"I won't. Not anymore," Michael returns and Lucifer looks up at him, flecks of silver glinting like steel in his eyes.
"Why not? You were determined to up there. What's changed?"
"There's no salvation down here," Michael says softly, because he accepted that a while ago. His Father wouldn't listen in Heaven, nor would he talk on Earth. Hell stands an even slimmer chance, no chance at all. "There's no point."
"There never was," come Lucifer's bitter words, and for a second he flares up heat, and for a second Michael thinks he understands every word his brother ever said, but then it's gone in a rush of fate and destiny and Father's word and betrayal. It's gone, until -
"You hurt me, brother. You tore me apart, and not by your sword. You left me when you said we'd always be together and you looked at me as if there was nothing where I stood but someone to be hated. I despise you," and as the words wash over him he feels that lost sense of cleansing, "you called me a monster but the things you've done to me I would never do to you. Because I love you, my kin, my idol, my ceaseless sin, and you say there's no salvation but you're wrong, so wrong, because I've still got you here and you can't leave, you can't leave me again-"
Before his tone gets desperate and tears through any more of Michael's guilt, he kisses him, takes the words from his mouth and wraps his arms around him to stop him, or assure him he's not leaving, he isn't really sure which one.
Lucifer, still fighting even in the light of his words, jolts and bites Michael's lip and for a terrible moment Michael thinks he's made a mistake, but then Lucifer drops his mouth to his throat to brand his skin and touches the wounds he inflicted to wrench them apart, to wrench him apart, and then to soothe them again with cool brushes of contact.
When Lucifer drags them down it would be a lie to say it feels like Heaven but it would be a lie to say it feels like hell. When his kisses turn hungry and his wings tremble as they brush against Michael's, meshing them together like they once were, every thought of fate and destiny and Father's word and betrayal is clouded over by the overwhelming sense of home. When he submits to Michael it feels like being welcomed back; the heat of a fire from the frost outside. And when he sinks his hands into their wings, skims gentle fingers over rough, worn feathers until they glisten like gold and shimmer with Grace, until every bearing of their hips brings a submergence in their enduring love, it feels like everything lost has been returned. Insistent kisses and electric touches; this is something Michael can make sense of. The differences that split them apart will always bring them together.
He mouths beloved into Lucifer's skin and when it's over and they lie next to each other, like they used to millennia ago, he hears Lucifer whisper it back through the thick air. Suddenly he doesn't feel so cold against him anymore.
Later, when he has unrelenting wings carefully wrapped around his brother, as Lucifer shuts his angel's eyes and casts his mind to a time before chaos like he always does, Michael thinks to himself that his brother was right about one thing, if nothing else.
There's always salvation. Even in Hell.