Michael strained to reach the top branches of the pine tree he was trying to climb, but the needles made them hard to grip. He closed his hand around the limb, but snap! it broke off and sent Michael tumbling down to the ground. He hadn't had time to catch himself with his wings, and now his head was spinning with stars. "Michael!" called a voice from the forest. His father walked into the clearing and looked down at the young angel, bemused. "I brought you someone to meet," he said as Michael looked up.
In his father's arms was a bundle of blue with light hair on top. Michael didn't know what to do; he had never met anyone except for his father before. He didn't even know there was other people. "What is it?" he asked, pulling the bundle toward him. The bundle had a face! Its lips were small and red, and so was its nose, and its eyes were closed. As Michael gently bopped its nose, its eyes opened and they were the bluest color Michael had ever seen – more blue than heaven's sky, and that was pretty blue. The baby blinked.
His father smiled down at Michael and the baby. "This is your little brother, Michael. His name is Lucifer." Michael stared at Lucifer. "You're a big brother now." Michael beamed.
"Weeeeeeeee!" Lucifer ran quickly at Michael, then jumped into the air, flapping his tiny wings, only to crash back onto the ground. "Owwww…" he moaned, curling into a ball a few feet from Michael. His older brother rushed toward him and helped him up.
"C'mon, Luci, just flap harder!" said Michael, trying to be stern but ending up laughing instead. "Dad'll be so happy when you show him how you can fly!"
Lucifer groaned. "I don't really want to fly for him, Michael. I want to fly so you can show me the tops of the redwood trees. Michael laughed again and poked Lucifer lightly on the nose. "Hey!" he said, his delicate features struggling to frown. Michael's laughter proved to be contagious, as Lucifer could only manage the frown for a little while and the two ended up rolling around on the meadow grass, breathless. Lucifer was eight, the same age Michael had been when his father brought his little brother home. At least that was how old Michael had decided they were, because he didn't really know how long a year was.
Michael always took care of Lucifer during their father's long absences from heaven. The archangel brothers would go down to earth and play in the forests, or the mountains, or by the oceans. Lucifer thought the earth was the most beautiful thing their father had created, aside from Michael of course, and was often reluctant to leave when night fell and Michael told him stories before bed. Lucifer's favorite story was the one where Michael told him his namesake. He didn't really think his father named Lucifer after anything, but Michael would point up at the brightly shining stars in the night sky just before the sun's rays hid them until the next day. He would find one star, the brightest one, and call it the morning star. "That's your star, Lucifer," he'd say, with a special smile reserved just for his brother.
Two years later, after Michael had taken Lucifer to the tops of the redwood trees too many times to count, their father came to the seaside where his boys were swimming and called them in to shore. In his arms was a bundle of red with dark hair on top. Lucifer looked perplexed, but Michael understood. Another baby, he thought. This time, Lucifer and I can both be big brothers. "This is your new brother, Michael and Lucifer," their father said. He never called Lucifer 'Luci' like Michael did. "His name is Rafael."
Michael held out his hands for the new baby. Rafael's skin was much darker than Michael's and Lucifer's, and his short hair was black and curly. The now twice-big-brother gazed at the baby, enthralled. He didn't notice the smile fade off Lucifer's face.
For the next seven years, Michael tried to divide up his time between Lucifer and Rafael, he really did. But Rafael was just so little, and needed much more attention as their father left heaven for months at a time. He taught Rafael to fly when he was only six, and tried to ignore the look on Lucifer, who had been nine before he could fly. He took Rafael everywhere, to the mountains, forests, and oceans. Everywhere except the tops of the redwood trees, because that was his special place for Lucifer. But they didn't go there often anymore, because Rafael took up too much of his time. Even when Michael offered to lay in the grass and tell Lucifer his morning star story, Lucifer would shake his blond head and return to doing whatever it was he did anymore. Michael didn't know.
And then their father returned, in his arms another bundle, this time orange. Michael wondered what color bundle he had been in as a baby. The new boy already had his hazel eyes open, a smile on his face. Gabriel was his name, their father told him. Rafael didn't seem to notice the baby, and tugged on Michael's shirt. Michael glanced over at Lucifer to see if it would be alright to go with Rafael, but Lucifer didn't even look at his older brother. Whatever Michael had expected to see, it wasn't this. Lucifer had Gabriel in his arms and light smile crossed his features. Even his blue eyes, which Michael had decided looked more like the depths of the sea than the tops of heaven, sparkled at his baby brother. It was the same smile Michael would give Lucifer all those years ago.
Michael could feel a little burning in his chest. He hardly noticed Rafael's tugging as he stared at Lucifer. He didn't know what the burning was, and that scared him a little. He wouldn't figure it out for several more years.
That burning was jealousy.
As the years passed by, Michael taught Rafael everything as he learned it. He didn't teach Gabriel to fly; that was Lucifer. He didn't show Gabriel the stars or the mountains or the forests or the oceans; that was Lucifer, too. The only place Lucifer didn't show Gabriel was the tops of the redwood trees. Their father brought home other babies, so many that Michael lost count. He only remembered some of their names: Balthazar, Uriel, Zachariah, Anna, Castiel. Lucifer didn't hold any of them except Gabriel. Gabriel held each of them, and taught them a little, but didn't spend enough time to make Lucifer think some other angel had become his favorite. Lucifer was always Gabriel's favorite. They played pranks on the other angels, most of the time Rafael, because he was easy to make cry, even as he got older. Sometimes Gabriel pranked Michael, but he knew Lucifer wouldn't have allowed that. The one time that Gabriel had given Michael a piece of his much-loved candy, Lucifer had dropped the temperature by a hundred degrees. The other angels had long since stopped doing anything to piss off Lucifer.
Today Michael sat on the floor of his room, thinking about everything but not really anything at all. He glanced up at the sound of a splash accompanied by some crying. "I got Castiel, Luci!" came Gabriel's voice. "I hit him with three water balloons at once, and he didn't even notice until they broke open!"
Michael felt another burning in his chest at the nickname. 'Luci' was his nickname, and no one else should call him that. He stormed through his doorway into the hall and glared at his youngest brother. "Dammit, Gabriel, stop it! This is ridiculous." He scooped Castiel into his arms quieted his crying. "You too, Lucifer. I thought you were better than this." Michael didn't bother looking at Lucifer, but he could feel the pain of his favorite brother. He never called him 'Lucifer', always 'Luci'.
If Michael had looked back, he would have seen tears in Lucifer's blue eyes.
Then his father brought home another baby. Except he didn't bring him home to heaven, but instead kept him on earth. This confused the angels. Michael had to explain that the new baby was a human, and they were different from angels. That was what his father had told him, and Michael didn't question his father. The idea never occurred to him. It always occurred to Lucifer. Doing exactly the opposite of what his father had told him seemed to be Lucifer's base instinct, and it always had, but Michael had never cared before.
Years after the first two humans had been made, Lucifer snapped. Michael didn't know when it happened, but he just knew that it had. He heard his father yelling. The only time that had ever happened before was when he thought Michael had accidentally drowned baby Lucifer in the Nile River. Michael caught only a few words: "Lilith", "demon", "disobedient", and "how dare you". His father dropped his voice and Michael couldn't understand anything he was saying, but then he heard Lucifer scream "NO!" Lucifer threw open the doors to their father's study and raced out. The temperature around him made even Michael shiver.
Their father followed out the doors, but stopped when he saw Michael. "Help me find your brother, Michael." His voice was dangerously low. Michael could only stare. The two he loved most of all were fighting. More than that, his father wanted to kill Lucifer. "Where did your brother go?" he demanded. Mutely, Michael shook his head. "I don't know," he whispered.
It was the first lie he ever told his father.
Their father sent out the other angels to find Lucifer, except for Gabriel, who stood at Michael's side in his older brother's room. When the others returned, they were without Lucifer.
"Where is he?" he asked, his voice hoarse.
"He was atop the redwood trees in the forest. Now he is locked below with the demons he so badly desired."
Gabriel choked back tears. Their father moved to comfort him, but Michael moved faster. He wrapped his arms around his brother and sang him a lullaby they were both too old for but stopped his crying anyway. "I'm sorry, Gabriel," he kept whispering. "I'm so sorry."
Michael spent the next month sleeping in Lucifer's room with Gabriel. Rafael didn't care, and instead worked to please their father. Michael went through all of his brother's things, and found trinkets he never knew Lucifer had kept. There was the first seashell Lucifer ever found, preserved wildflowers from the meadow, and rare stones from the mountains. There were also hundreds of crowns and necklaces and bracelets made from twisting grass together, and Michael finally knew what Lucifer had been doing when he refused to hear the morning star story.
Then Michael found a locked box. He tried everything to open it, had Gabriel try everything to open it, and even asked the other angels for help. Everyone except his father. Then one day he held the box to his forehead and whispered, so the sleeping Gabriel wouldn't hear, "I miss you so much, Luci." With a click the box opened. Inside were a handful of pine needles – Michael recognized them from the tops of the redwoods – and a note:
I love you, Michael, and I always will.
Michael couldn't help the tears that streamed down his face, clouding Lucifer's looping handwriting. He cried like he did when he was ten, except that when he was ten Lucifer would have placed his hand on his shoulder and reassured him that everything would be alright. Nothing would ever be alright.
He left heaven for three weeks, three weeks where he stood on the top of the redwoods and stared up at the sky, looking for Lucifer's morning star. His morning star. But no matter how hard he looked, he couldn't find it. His eyes were filled with tears more often than not, and when he stumbled home after those three weeks, no one knew what was wrong, not Gabriel, not Rafael, and certainly not his father. Only Lucifer ever would have known.
On every night after that, he would climb – not fly, but climb, like Lucifer would have – to the tops of the redwoods on the anniversary of Lucifer's fall. He would cry until he had no more tears, and then he would search the black sky for his morning star.
Some time later, Michael walked into his father's study to find Gabriel speaking quickly and angrily. "I'm sick of it here! I'm sick of the way you treat us, I'm sick of the way you talk about Lucifer, and I'm sick of you! Hell, I'd rather live with the friggin' pagan gods than here!"
Their father sighed. "Go if you must, Gabriel," he said. "You I will welcome back."
Gabriel stormed through the doors, like Lucifer had done so many years ago. Except Gabriel stopped and turned to Michael. "I'm sorry, Mike," he said, using his nickname for Michael. "I'm sorry I'm going to leave you here. But you can come anytime you want. We can start a miniature family, if you want. Live like humans, or pagans, or whatever the hell else you want. I don't care what any of us are. I just care that we used to be family, and something happened and now we aren't. I just wish we were, Michael. I just wish we were. If you don't come, at least take care of everyone, Michael. Be strong for them." And with that he disappeared, to spend the next thousands of years on earth, playing pranks on humans because his family had dissolved like sugar in the sea.
Michael looked down. Tears threatened to spill over again, but he held them in. His father was watching. But when he turned away, tiny droplets cascaded down his face.
Michael was strong for the other angels. He took care of heaven, and his family, and everyone else while his father disappeared. Michael didn't know where he went, and he didn't care. The angels were his children, now, and he would raise them so none would ever leave like Lucifer. It was not because he wanted them to be "right" in his father's eyes, but rather because he couldn't bear to have anyone else leave him.
Sometimes he was jealous of Lucifer. Jealous because he could stand up for what he wanted, and not feel the burden of being the oldest. Of being in charge of a family. Jealous because Lucifer would always be himself, and never worry about being someone else. Michael had to be everyone – a father and a brother and a caretaker and a warrior.
On the day when Lucifer left his cage, Michael went to the tops of the redwood trees and waited. He knew that if Lucifer came to him there, Michael would abandon his posts in heaven to stand at his brother's side. They would create a world together, where they would be just brothers, and they could be kids again, collecting seashells and wildflowers and rare stones. But when Lucifer didn't show for days, Michael knew he would never come. He cried for hours, for longer than he ever had before.
And Michael never cried again.