Lucifer was understandably a bit upset about the whole key to the cage thing. He was upset not so much that Gabriel had told the Winchesters about it at all as that Gabriel hadn't used it to free him millennia ago.

"You knew this whole time!" he raged, his eyes glowing a fiery red-orange that had once matched the color of his wings when he'd been at his full glory. "And you just left me down there to rot because, what, it was too much fun slumming it as a demi-god?"

"Nooo…" replied Gabriel, half trying to keep the sass out of his voice out of respect for the fact that he still wasn't sure whether his brother would kill him. "I didn't open the cage because, one, you were being a giant dickbag, and two, I needed Death's help, and only you and Michael know how to open his cage. You have to admit that it was a good plan to require Death's help to free you, since you were in no position to tell anyone how and Michael… Well, we both know how Michael is."

That made his brother pause in his anger, even enough to ignore the insult. The Grace leaking out of his vessel subsided enough that he'd probably only caused a catastrophic ice storm in the tri-state area and not the entire Midwest.

Gabriel gestured vaguely towards his brother's body. "And you've got to stop doing that! Look at yourself, you're falling apart as it is!"

But Lucifer had apparently stopped paying attention somewhere back around the first mention of Death. That was probably a blessing in disguise, since it kept him from pondering too deeply the question of whether Gabriel had actually considered trying to free him in the first place. Never mind that he couldn't have done it even if he'd wanted to, he was sure that his brother would be furious that Gabriel had never even seriously considered it.

"Death?" spat Lucifer.

"All of the horsemen. Their rings—" began Gabriel, but Lucifer understood immediately (he had been Dad's favorite son and most trusted lieutenant, after all, and therefore was probably more knowledgeable than anybody about how Dad's mind worked) and cut his brother off with a dark chuckle.

"Their rings. Of course. And the Winchesters already have two of them." He clenched his jaw and cracked his neck, a little too hard and too far to one side for the human inside to survive if Lucifer didn't heal his body when he was through with it. "I will have to take Death's and Pestilence's rings from them—they are valuable weapons, but this cannot be allowed to stand—and when I find the Winchesters, I will take the other rings and wipe all memory of them from their minds so that Sam does not hold onto false hope."

Gabriel rolled his eyes heavenward for a moment, as if praying to their Father for patience. He didn't pray, of course; he never had since dear old Dad had abandoned them.

"The last thing you want to do is stop the Winchesters' plan or wipe it from their minds."

Lucifer frowned at him and scrunched his brow in a way that uncomfortably reminded Gabriel of Sam. "Brother," he said with a hint of a question and undeniable menace, "I really think I do."

"No, you don't," Gabriel insisted firmly. He was fairly certain now that his brother wasn't going to kill him for speaking out or for anything, really, other than betrayal. "We both know that Dean is never going to say yes to Michael. And he may be your true vessel, but I think I know Sam Winchester a little better than you do, brother. As long as Dean is alive and there to say no, he will never willingly say yes."

The only sign that Lucifer was annoyed was a twitch at the very tip of his uppermost set of wings, but Gabriel saw it out of the corner of his eye and paused long enough to reach for Lucifer's hand, the one that had been wrapped in Gabriel's feathers a short time ago. Lucifer startled a bit at the touch, which was unsurprising given his complete isolation for so long in the cage. And Gabriel bet that he hadn't been big on physical contact for this thousands of years on Earth before that. Gabriel tenderly squeezed the cold skin beneath his own and offered his brother a rueful smile.

"Sam may do all kinds of monumentally stupid things if the combined forces of Heaven and Hell pull enough of his strings that he thinks he's doing the right thing, but he has never willingly done anything that he knew would hurt Dean. I turned the kid into a car and gave him herpes—herpes!—and he still wouldn't consider saying yes. And trust me when I tell you that if you kill Dean, Sam just turns into an even bigger pain in your ass than he already is. The only chance you have is to manipulate him into saying yes because he thinks that it's the only way to shove your ass back in the cage."

That speech was met with silence, which, all things considered, was a good sign. If Lucifer had been completely against the idea, he would have said so immediately. Probably in some really painful way. Silence had to mean that he was at least considering it.

Gabriel took the opportunity to catalogue the feel of his brother's ice-cold fingers entwined with his and the still-jolting sight of his black feathers and the shadows that were permanently cast over his once-bright grace. He got so lost in the task that he couldn't tell how much time had passed when Lucifer finally noticed him looking, but he was immediately captured by the wide smile that his brother offered.

He barely saw the expression across the vessel's mottled face, but he was absolutely captivated by his brother's true form underneath. He would probably always miss the old Lucifer, the one who had been the brightest light in heaven. But even if his grace had changed from light to dark, the exquisite form of his face and his smooth body remained unchanged, and he was still the most beautiful creature their Father had ever created.

Certainly he was the most beautiful that Gabriel had ever seen, and it didn't take much effort at all for Gabriel to transfer his affections from the Morning Star to the Dark Prince.

Finally, Lucifer asked, "You gave my vessel herpes?"

Gabriel stared at his brother for several long seconds, completely forgetting to breathe or blink. Then he allowed himself to laugh and his grace to light up with a joy he hadn't felt since their Father had introduced the first human to his angels.


That was more or less how Gabriel found himself sitting cross-legged on a ratty couch in an abandoned house, listening to Sam Winchester argue with the old hunter who clearly had more sense than Sam and Dean put together. He had proven that back at the college, when the Winchester brothers had let Gabriel get between them with almost no effort at all before Singer had arrived. And then again when he'd tried his best to set Sam straight after Gabriel had killed Dean.

"You can't do it!" Singer exclaimed, which did nothing except produce a stubborn expression on Sam's face. "What I did was a million-to-one, and that was some piss-ant demon I was brain wrestling. You're talking about taking back control from Satan himself!"

"Yeah," agreed Sam, in a tone that said he was willfully ignoring the distinction. "Yeah, I am."

Gabriel was really glad that Sam had thought of the idea all on his own. Really, he was—it meant that he didn't have to be the one to bring it up, which would have had a really good chance of backfiring since Sam would understandably be suspicious of his intentions. He was also really glad that Bobby's reaction was to challenge Sam's ability to have his way with Satan, given that telling a Winchester they couldn't do something was the single best way to make them try.

"I'm strong enough," insisted Sam, and Gabriel could tell that he was trying to convince himself more than anything.

"You ain't," Singer responded immediately. "He's gonna find every chink in your armor, Sam, and use it against you—your fear, your grief, your anger. And let's face it—You're not exactly Mr. Anger Management. How are you gonna control the devil when you can't control yourself?"

Granted, the way Bobby handled Sam's determination made Gabriel's prior assessment of the man's good sense take a fatal blow. He should have known better than to tell Sam he wasn't capable of doing it, if what he wanted to do was talk the kid out of trying. But it was the best thing he could have done for Gabriel's purpose.

He waited until Sam had stopped scowling in irritation, watching as the hunter tossed his phone carelessly onto a dusty table and paced around the room with barely contained frustration, before he made himself visible with an audible snap of his fingers.

"Ya know… you do have to try," he said as Sam spun around at the sound of his snap.

Sam stopped his movement with his knife already unsheathed, and he let it fall limply to his side and his mouth fall open in speechless shock when he saw who it was.

Gabriel conjured a hot-chocolate flavored lollipop and plopped it into his mouth. Sam still hadn't spoken by the time Gabriel had made a show of taking two salacious licks, so he tucked it into the side of cheek and snapped his fingers again as he made another appear in Sam's still-open mouth.

That seemed to jerk the hunter out of his stupor. He brought his free hand up to remove the sucker from his mouth, which Gabriel thought was rather a waste, and blurted, "Gabriel?"

"Sammy!" responded Gabriel, opening his arms enthusiastically as if he expected a hug.

Sam ignored the gesture, of course, in favor of stating the obvious. "I thought you were dead!"

Gabriel pulled his lollipop out of his mouth with a loud smack. "I know. Even I thought I was a goner for sure when I decided to help you knuckleheads escape from my brother."

"But… how—how did you…?"

"Barely, that's how!" Gabriel unfolded himself and leaned back more comfortably against the back of the decrepit sofa as he glared at the hunter. "And you can only use your invincible army once, Longshanks, so the next time you face my brother you'd better be ready for him to ride your tight ass."

Sam barely even scowled at that last comment. Gabriel could see the questions and comments rapidly flit across his mind before he discarded them one by one. Hell, the kid's thoughts were so open on his face that Gabriel probably wouldn't have even needed to be able to read minds to figure them out. In the end, though, Sam seemed to realize that he wasn't going to get anything out of the archangel that Gabrie didn't volunteer.

He crossed the room in one stride of those long legs and sank down next to Gabriel. The couch creaked alarmingly at their combined weight, and for a moment Gabriel was afraid that he'd have to teleport himself to safety before it collapsed. But it seemed to hold, at least for the moment, and then he was distracted by the way Winchester's leg fell against his own. This would be his brother's body soon, and oh the things Gabriel could do with it then….

Sam bent forward to rest his elbows on his knees, letting his head rest in his hands and his hair flop forward into his face.

"Do you think I can do it?"

Gabriel eyed the long, graceful line of his back up to his neck.

"Nope," he replied, taking another lick of his sucker for lack of anything else to do. "But you don't exactly have a choice, do you? So I guess I'll have to help you get up to speed."

The kid raised his head and looked at him with a dubious expression mixed with just a bit of desperate hope. "You can teach me how to take back control?"

Gabriel made a show of biting his lip in indecision. He wouldn't have to answer now, he knew, because he could sense the demon who was with Dean rapidly approaching their location. Sam would be able to hear them in a matter of seconds. For now, Gabriel was just laying the groundwork of his relationship with the younger Winchester.

"I can help you," he told Sam, leaving it at that and letting his eyes flash golden just as the roar of the Impala became discernable to human ears. "Keep working on finding the rings. Try to ease your brother into the idea that I'm alive. I'll be back when you're alone."

"You're leaving?" Sam asked, the incredulity making his voice raise half an octave higher than usual. "You could help us!"

"I told you: your get out of jail free card was only good for one turn. If you want your plan to work, you won't spill the beans to your demon friends or anyone else who might tell Lucifer that he didn't manage to kill me quite as dead as he'd thought. Kapisch?"

Sam stared at him beseechingly with his puppy eyes and his floppy hair and his endearing features—Gabriel could only imagine how well his brother would be able to use those—but finally he sighed and said, "Yeah… Yeah, okay."

Gabriel gave him a nod of acknowledgment and disappeared from the room just before Crowley teleported in.


"It went well, then?"

Lucifer's grace had announced his presence to his brother long before he'd spoken, of course, but even though he was prepared for it Gabriel still shivered at the sound of Lucifer's voice. In a good way, of course. The best way.

"It went better than expected, even," he replied with a smile. "Sam already had the idea all on his own that the only way to get you back into the cage is from the inside, so all I have to do is keep him on the right track and run interference with his brother."

"His brother would truly try to stop him from saving the world?" Lucifer asked, raising a skeptical eyebrow.

Gabriel's lips twitched, but he managed not to laugh. He had learned in the few days they had managed to spend together since their reunion that Lucifer disliked being laughed at even more than he had when he'd still been called Samael. He tolerated Gabriel's laughter when it was not aimed at him, but he rarely joined in even for that.

"You bet your ass he would," he managed to say with a straight face. "Dean sold his soul and spent decades in the pit because he couldn't live without his brother. Dean can sacrifice himself and expect in that hypocritical big-brother head of his for Sam to move on with his life, but he would never allow Sam to sacrifice his life or allow himself to move on if his brother died."

Lucifer made a barely audible hum of understanding, and Gabriel wanted to ask if that kind of mentality was why his older brother had never asked him to take his side. But he was afraid of the answer he would receive, so he kept his trap shut. They had both been doing that about all the personal topics they clearly were not ready to talk about. For all their billions upon billions of years of shared history, they had very few safe subjects to talk about. Gabriel supposed that was just the way things had to be when you had both lived blissfully in Heaven for eons (and not so blissfully too, sometimes, like that whole thing with Dad's sister), until one of you had ruined it, and now for the past few thousand years one of you had been locked in a cage in the center of Hell and the other had been pretending he was a pagan god.

Lucifer joined Gabriel on the comfortable couch he had brought into existence, and they both lapsed into a silence that was at once comfortable and uncomfortable. It was comfortable in the same way that they had always been in each other's presence—they used to just sit together in quiet contemplation for years at a time, back before the lesser angels or the planets or the humans had been created, and time had meant even less to them than it did now.

It was uncomfortable because now, unlike back then, they were only silent because they didn't know what to say to each other.

Eventually, when he couldn't take it anymore, Gabriel ventured, "Castiel may be a problem, unless there are enough shreds of his faith left for him to trust in another archangel."

Lucifer did not quite jerk—archangels did not jerk, not in surprise or otherwise—but he certainly sat up rather more quickly than usual.

"Castiel? The fledgling?"

His voice had taken on a peculiar quality that made Gabriel anxious in a way he couldn't pin down. He turned to fully face his brother, his head tilted in inquiry.

"Well, he isn't quite a fledgling anymore, but yes…." he trailed off, the question clear in his tone.

Lucifer nearly blurted, as much as he could blurt, "I was told he's dead. Raphael smote him for interfering with Chuck Shurley."

"That's impossible," came Gabriel's immediate reaction. "He's alive—I've seen him—and nobody could have resurrected him from being smited by an archangel. Maybe he died some other way."

It lingered in the air unspoken between them that their father could have resurrected him even if his particles had been dissolved to the point of non-existence and then spread to the far corners of the universe by Raphael.

"Michael…" began Lucifer, but he trailed off before he went any further.

They both knew that they could have done it, once, when all of them were working together and had the power of Heaven behind them. They had never done it, of course, because they had never had a reason to bring an angel back to life after one of them had struck him down, but they inherently knew without having to try it that they could, in the same way that they knew Chuck Shurley was the Prophet without having to be told.

What they didn't know was whether Michael alone, or Michael and Raphael together, could have reconstituted the particles from nothingness and used them to reassemble Castiel's grace without help from Lucifer and Gabriel.

"Let's not jump to conclusions," Gabriel said, quite unnecessarily since they had both already done just that. "I'll ask Castiel. I have to talk to him anyway; if he tells Sam that he doesn't trust me, then there's little chance I can convince Sam to say yes."

He wanted to ask what Lucifer would do if their father really had been the one to resurrect Castiel—if He proved that He was still involved, even if only a little. But he was too afraid to do it.

"So," he said instead, opting for shock value, "I was thinking that your vessel is really a hot piece of tail. How about you let me ride your ass while you're riding him?"

Lucifer looked as genuinely startled as Gabriel had ever seen him look in the entire length of his unfathomable existence. He opened his mouth to speak, then closed it without saying anything, then opened it again.

Gabriel grinned. "What's wrong, Satan?"

"Nothing," he replied a bit too serenely.

"Is it the incest? I bet it's the incest."

"It's not the incest!"

"So you're fine with the incest?" pressed Gabriel, his face and his grace both straight as an arrow.

"Gabriel…" said his brother in his true voice, the long-suffering tone coming through loud and clear even though a beautiful symphony of harps and drums and deathly stillness and bergs cracking from ice sheets was still ringing in Gabriel's ears.

"Samael," he replied in his own voice, and for the first time in fifty thousand years the sound of trumpets and bells and soothing rainstorms and tsunamis crashing into shorelines filled his being, and he felt almost whole again.


Citations: I took the dialogue between Sam and Bobby from Episode 5.20, "The Devil You Know."


Author's Notes: Longshanks is a derogatory nickname some people called Aragorn in LotR, referring to his long legs/height. Of course, he only used his invincible ghost army in one battle.