Come on, I'm the devil himself. Of course I can do this.

With a mighty heave, he jerked his broken wing back through the bars, barely stifling his scream of agony. Panting, he plucked a few feathers off his other bleeding wing, though few were left, and squeezed it through on that side as well. His nerves burned and his teeth clenched as the tender skin scraped and rutted against every nail on the way in. Lucifer choked back the pain, knowing that if he made one sound the guarding angels would come rushing in.

Then his face split into a grin. And he uncurled the tips of his mangled shred of a wing to reveal the angel blade he had just got off the floor. This Michael was smart enough to not leave any of the blades in him, for fear of him using them, but was somehow stupid enough to leave one lying around. Weird, but I'll take what comes. No use looking a gift horse in the mouth.

He stared at the blade for a moment, hoping that now that it was in the cage with him, he'd be able to use telekinesis or stared for a good minute before sighing. No luck. So he used his foot and wingtip to nudge the blade right into the hinge of the cage and slam it in. For a moment, nothing happened. Then cracks appeared, followed by a huge screeching sound, the worst case of fingernails on chalkboard ever. And then there was the pain. He had fallen down on top of the cage door with spikes covering it onto the cement below. The horizon was tinged with red and every twitch sent a throb of pain throughout his entire body. But he pushed himself up onto his knees anyway.

The angels that were too much like robotic pests were probably already informing Insane Michael of the sounds from in here. Lucifer had to get out, now before he came back. Flying was definitely not an option. The adrenaline that had helped him get out of the cage was long gone by now, and he didn't have a death wish.

As he crept through the hallways, he couldn't help but notice that there was not a single angel in his path, no sirens, nothing. The only thing even vaguely hinting toward the fact that anyone was ever here was the faint tingle of an archangel's power. Something was definitely wrong, but there was nothing he could do about it, except be careful.

He was stepping into the first ray of (sort of) sunlight in what felt like forever, when he almost jumped out of his skin.

"Heeey, Luci." A familiar voice echoed from the dead looking bushes to his right.

After all that effort it took to escape, he was going to be caught again, broughtback to that THING that barely deserved to be called a cage. He started to run, cursing his broken body, his wings that were searing with pain on every step. It seemed sort of ironic now that he had taunted Mary about her 'weak little lungs and weak little legs' just yesterday.

The shadowy figure that stood in his path forced him to jolt to a stop.

"I see you broke your wings, brother. Fall too far?"

"Gabriel?" Two archangels in one day. This couldn't be good.

"That's me, though I'm pretty sure I'm not the me you're used to. I assume you've met Michael? He's pretty keen on torture these days." As the foreign archangel finished speaking, a smile lit up his face that never reached his eyes. His once beautiful eyes that had so many scars layered across them that it was hard to tell what they once were. He stared intensely at Lucifer in such a way that he could've quite tell if he could see him. He decided to ignore it for now, act like nothing was wrong.

"What do you want? You gonna try to mess me up too?"

"Me? Never! Heard you were around again, but I can see you're not the same. I was going to give you your weapon back, but you understand, it's not really you I'm talking about."

"What is it? The angel tablet? Michael's lance?"

"You know what, I'm feeling generous today. So prove to me you're as good as the old Lucifer, and I'll give it to you. No strings attached."

"Are you serious? Could your me really have done something impressive with his wings flayed like a frog in biology, and a serious angel blade ritual wound? How about the very fact that I escaped from Michael? Huh?"

A serious, thoughtful expression graced Gabriel's features.

"You're not like how I thought you were. You're not too terrible, though, so I won't stop you if you try to get back to your world. In fact, I wish you luck. You just wouldn't know what to do with this even if I gave it to you."

Lucifer simultaneously seethed with rage and pain on the inside while trying to appear cool and confident. It may or may not have been working.

"Sure I would." On hearing this, Gabriel smirked, and glowed with this knowing look that said, very plainly, 'oh, you think so, do you?'.

" I know for a fact that you wouldn't. You haven't even noticed the most important thing about our meeting."

He thought back to his escape, and the empty corridors, the vague sense of archangel power when none were to be seen.

"I mean, I knew you were weak, but I never thought you would be so low as ro not even notice what's happening, or rather what's not happening, around you. If you had just thought about it, you could have broken out of this at any time, assuming you're anything like the Lucifer I knew."

Lucifer's mind raced ahead, becoming more and more dejected the more he thought.

"How much of it was a dream?"

"It's been an illusion ever since the angel blade was left alone in the room with you."

" Why didn't you just start it with me out here, if all you wanted to do was talk?"

" I guess I wanted to see what you would do, what you were made of, if you could overcome this or if you would sense the illusion. Obviously not. I still hope you make it home, though."

Gabriel began to walk away, jacket rippling even though there was no wind.

"Wait. Was the weapon real?"

A word floated in the imaginary breeze that he had to strain to hear, and it seemed to be 'yes'.

The last remnants of familiarity, of of love, of hope, of Gabe, all faded away in a quick blast of sharp reality that brought him back to the cage, back to the pain and loneliness, and back to the shame.

Until a light spills in, and he knows it really is a new day, because there are Michael and his soldiers, standing in the

Open doorway.