I really shouldn't be starting another story when I've got so many others to attend to…but maybe getting excited over a new idea will get me back into the spirit? Still gonna work on those others though! XD Here's the deal with this story, it's basically a multi-chapter sequel to my story These Brothers We [you don't necessarily have to read it, just know that Michael/Lucifer reconciled], and this is a pickup of Season 7, if Lucifer/Michael had escaped, and some other 'lost' angels were to return, yada, yada. I'll try to keep it following the real season 7, but some things will be AU. Enjoy!

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Present Day

"So you're Lucifer. The prodigal son returns." Dick Roman smiled as he made a gesture of welcome and rose from his seat behind a desk. "I must say, you're looking well for an eternally damned and disgraced ex-angel. You carry it well."

Lucifer smiled in return, all charm as he shrugged lightly, weighted down by the body with a sack-covered head he held effortlessly in his right hand. "You know what they say…what doesn't kill you…"

Dick chuckled. "Makes you stronger…yes, I've heard that phrase. Of course, it really depends on what tried to kill you. Can't get much stronger if say, your wings were cut off and you were tossed into a cage to rot, but it's a nice thought. Naïve, but nice." He moved around his desk to lean against it as he regarded Lucifer. "Well, as pleasant as this all is, I assume this is business and not a personal call? Since, personally, you're little better than those pond-scum demons in my eyes." Dick's tone was even, but his eyes were cold and contained only faintly veiled disdain.

Lucifer didn't miss a beat, he kept his tone light but his eyes were anything but. "You have something of mine, I have something you want. While we're being honest, personally, I think you're a parasitic worm. But like I said: you have something that's mine."

If Lucifer's words struck a chord, Dick gave no indication as he tapped his fingers idly on his desk . "Oh? And what could I possibly have that would interest you?"

Lucifer kept his impatience well-hidden, but the pretense was wearing on him. He was tired, suffering the effects of his partial mortality, anxiety over his brother, and furthermore: Dick Roman the leech was pissing him off. But he'd get his, all in due time. "I hope you're not getting senile in your old age, Leviathan. You only took my brother a few days ago."

"Ah, you mean Michael! Yes, he's been a wonderful guest. Very generous, particularly with his screams. You'd think he'd never felt pain before, the way he goes on." Dick drawled. "But then, I guess he's never been truly mortal before, has he?"

It took every ounce of self-control Lucifer possessed, and perhaps some leftover grace of his father to stay his hand at those words. If Dick had truly harmed Michael…

Dick simply smirked faintly, still maintaining his pleasant façade as he ceased tapping his fingers to stand up and make a gesture for Lucifer to continue. "Let's say I was amenable to trading favors. What is it you have that I would want?"

Lucifer's smile widened as he dropped the body in his right hand and let it clatter to the floor. He bent at the waist to tug off the sack that covered the body's head and jerked it back up by the back collar of it's dark jacket. The unconscious man sagged, but Lucifer kept him upright as he met Dick's surprised gaze and spoke cheerfully.

"How about Dean Winchester?"

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Days Earlier

The sunlight overhead was blinding, and the blowing wind was all but icy against his bare skin. There were odd scents in the air, scents that he didn't recognize and a strange, gnawing feeling in the pit of his stomach. And pain, there was that, a dull throbbing in the back of his head and a general weak feeling. Worst of all, he felt the absence, the emptiness of the Grace he'd always known as well as his own celestial limbs. He was more than Fallen.

Michael, the greatest of the Arch Angels, the greatest warrior of Heaven…was mortal.

"No…" The word bubbled past his lips and felt foreign on his seemingly thick tongue. His throat hurt, it felt raw and he coughed against the feeling. What was it…? Water, he needed water…because he was thirsty…and the pit in his stomach, it was hunger. Pain, hunger, thirst, weak, blinded emptiness of the power of Grace, of the truest light. He knew of the concepts, but they were foreign to him, impossible. They were human, mortal concepts and he was an angel…how could this be…?

Michael stretched a shaky hand upwards as he squinted at the brightly lit sky above him. The grass around him felt scratchy against his bare skin. All of his senses were dulled, and yet, his physical perceptions were turned on and utterly new. He shouldn't be able to experience cold, or such common tactile feelings. "Father…why?" he croaked before something occurred to him and he tilted his head left and right weakly. "Lucifer? Lucifer!" Where had his brother gone? They had been together…finally together…

Lucifer wasn't sure how many days had passed, or was it only hours, or even years, since he and Michael had reached a measure of reconciliation. They had explained things, they had offered forgiveness, they had offered love and for the first time: Lucifer felt it. Even in the dank Hell Cage, Michael's warmth filled him, gave him some insane, ridiculous hope that eternity in the Cage was not completely a punishment. Not as long as he had his brother beside him.

Michael's hand brushed against his face from where his older brother lay in his lap and gazed up at him thoughtfully, and Lucifer smiled down at him as he lifted a free hand to catch Michael's and squeeze it tightly. "You were lost in thought again, Luc."

Lucifer brought Michael's hand to his lips and kissed it lightly as he reveled in the simple pleasure of being close to someone: to his brother. "Just glad you're here."

Michael smiled wryly. "I don't know if I should thank you for that or not."

Lucifer grimaced. "You know what I mean."

" Indeed, you're as easy to read now as when you were a child." Michael drawled.

Lucifer scrunched his nose faintly before he let their hands fall and tweaked Michael's ear lightly, a gesture Michael had often used on him long, long before all of this. Before they'd been torn apart. Michael smirked in reply. "Poor Luc-" Michael cut off as his gaze shot to the side of them and he jumped up suddenly, his body tensed defensively. "Who's there?" he demanded coldly, gone from doting older brother to Heaven's fiercest warrior in an instant. Lucifer rose behind him quickly, and he seemed confused at first until he sensed whatever Michael had noticed and tensed as well.

Outside of the cage, despite the illogicality of it since the cage did not exist where beings could simply tread the borders of it, something moved.

"Reveal yourself." Michael called out, and then he grasped his hands over his ears with a gasp of pain as a hideous, shrill sound filled the air. The noise was ear-splitting and Michael had the strangest sensation of his skull being split in twain before he heard Lucifer called his name, and then everything simply went black.

Michael stared skyward, stunned by his memory. What, in the name of his Father, could have done such a thing? And moreover, why? As for Michael's grace, how could something have robbed him of it? Where had it gone?

Splash.

Michael's gaze darted to his side, and he finally became aware of a small stream beside him where a creature, a frog perhaps, had jumped in. Water. He moved on instincts he didn't know that he had possessed as he shakily drew himself up and crawled the several feet towards it. His body felt numb and weak, and he leaned over the edge of the water as he began to grab handfuls of it and drink it down thirstily. And by his father, nothing had ever seemed as sweet as the water did in that moment. The cool rush of it down his parched throat was practically blissful…

Until he noted his reflection.

Michael hadn't been sure what he expected, he hadn't thought that far ahead, but at the very least-he would have thought he'd still be wearing Adam's form. But instead, the face in the rippling water seemed younger. With bright blue-green eyes and messy brown hair, youthful and clean, no more than seventeen and unfamiliar to him. "Who are you?" he whispered to his reflection, confused and troubled, and ultimately angered as well. What trickery was this?

And how, by the light, was he going to get out of this mess?

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"You're a jerk."

"You're breaking my heart, bitch."

"I'm not kidding, Dean. If I find another one of those stupid dolls somewhere…"

"What's wrong, Glitterbelle? One little doll too much for you to handle?"

Sam clenched his teeth a bit before he very deliberately shook off some of the remaining glitter onto Dean. They hadn't reached a motel yet, so he was still covered in the craptastic glitter explosion courtesy of his clown-nightmare fight. A situation his brother had yet to let him live down, and had taken advantage of by picking up-so far-four of those stupid clown dolls. He suspected the fourth was the last, but he was on guard just in case he had to chuck another one out the window. Possibly to be accompanied by Dean's prized new slinky the next time.

Dean huffed. "Keep your fairy dust to yourself, clown boy."

"Cute, Dean. Real cute." So much for apologizing for all the trauma he'd given Sam.

Dean smirked in reply and Sam rolled his eyes before he regarded his brother with a mixture of teasing and curiosity. "What about you? If he'd worked his mojo on you, would I be walking you through landing a plane?"

"Like you know how to land a plane." Dean shifted uncomfortably though at the mention of an airplane, and Sam gained a smirk of his own.

"Seriously though, that would have been it, right?" His brother's big fear, or childhood fear, at any rate. One that, as with Sam's, had extended into his future. "Planes are your big bad fear?" he taunted, and Dean's gaze zeroed in on the road ahead of him half-mindedly.

"Sam!" A flash of a knife and Sam was down, and Dean was holding his dying brother in his arms. He couldn't die, not Sammy, not now. Not after everything.

"You walk out that door," a bloodied Dean regarded the demon-blood pumped Sam, "Don't you come back!" Sam turned and left.

John Winchester shouted as Sam headed for that door. "You walk out that door, you don't come back, y'hear me?"

"Sam, he doesn't mean that. Sammy! Damnit!" Dean watched as Sam walked out despite his best efforts. He was going to Stanford, he was leaving them.

Sam shouldered his backpack and left the car, and Dean drove off without him, even though everything in him was screaming to go back: to get his brother back .

"Sam! Sam!" Dean couldn't let him kill Lilith…

"Stop him or we will.." He couldn't let the angels take him.

"This is the stupidest thing you've ever done." Sam hissed as Dean chose to stay despite the Croatoan virus.

"I'm here, Sammy." Dean smiled weakly, bloodied as the Lucifer-possessed Sam pulverized him. And he remained knelt on the ground as he stared at the space where a hole had opened up, where Sam had jumped through and gone. Where he'd let his baby brother sacrifice himself.

Dean sat beside Sam's lifeless body and recounted memories with him, the brother he'd promised to watch out for, to take care of…

His biggest fear was losing his little brother.

Dean smiled thinly as he glanced at his smirking little brother in the passenger seat. "Dude. Planes kill. It's a no-brainer."

Sam scoffed. "Yeah, and how many times have we established that clowns do too?"

"Just don't die…" Sam pleaded in the driver's seat and Dean felt his heart bleed despite himself.

"More people die from planes than clowns. You just got some crap-luck, pal." Dean grinned at Sam belligerently and Sam rolled his eyes again in response.

"Yeah, well, since you're stuck with me: it's your crap-luck too."

"Sam! Sammy!" He couldn't lose him, he couldn't lose his little brother, he couldn't lose Sammy…there was nothing more important to him, no one more important than Sam…no matter how big he got: he was Dean's little brother…his Sammy..

"If you're gonna do it, do it right, with a smile." Frank said firmly.

Dean kept up his grin as he ruffled Sam's hair playfully, it had been awhile since he'd used the gesture, but what the Hell. "I can live with that."

Sam's playful expression flickered something like relief and surprise a moment as he shoved his brother lightly with one hand and smoothed out his hair. "Damn straight." he quoted his brother.

Dean chuckled and kept up his smile until he turned his head slightly and let his gaze fall momentarily out the window. Sam didn't want him to die, and he refused to lose Sam. But really, how else was any of this going to end? How else could it end?

"Why are you doing this? If it was me, I'd let you rot down here. Hell, I have let you rot here." Dean was dubious as he regarded his little brother in Bobby's panic room.

"You're still my big brother." Sam explained as Dean questioned his faith in him, with absolute conviction.

Dean was smiling by the time he turned to look back at Sam, and there was no hint of his thoughts in his expression. It wasn't Sam's job to carry them: it was Dean's. Always had been, always would be. Because more than anything, losing his brother…that scared the Hell out of him. Dean would take care of the kid the way he always had, and if that meant sucking it up, then so be it. If that meant giving the whole damned world a big screw you, Fate, Heaven, Hell, the Apocalypse, Destiny itself: it didn't matter. Sammy was his to watch out for, and now he really was all Dean had left: his hope, his family, his partner, his best friend, his brother. So for him, he'd do anything, even the little things.

"Fake it till you break it."

Damn straight.

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Mmm. So I took some fluff-liberties with both pairs of brothers. I'm a sucker for that sort of thing. XD And if any quote was slightly inaccurate…well, I was doing it by memory since my internet is down and my phone can't handle that much data-loading to check out quotes/transcripts. I had to post this scene about Dean's biggest fear because the episode caption summary was something about Sam fighting his big clown fear and Dean's biggest childhood fear was losing his little brother-but they never really elaborated anything on that like they could have…so I wanted to. XD Still gotta figure out how to post this without internet…_…I digress! Leave me verbal hugs! Or something! Thank you all! Oh, and check out Dean's in-character face book page at face book dot com/xbadmoonrisingx Because…it's fun…and he's adorable? XD~ Witchy~ -later- FIXED MY INTERNET! Now Toshiba just needs to fix my computer so I can get off this one. XD