Chapter 18

Fade from View

Mick tried to ignore the bloodstains on Ketch's cuffs, visible just under the jacket sleeve. He was failing rather pitifully. Ketch himself must have been doing a much better job of ignoring Mick's staring. It wasn't like the bloodstains were unusual – it was practically expected given that Ketch did basically all of the field work.

Mick cleared his throat. "You're back early."

"Really? I hadn't noticed," Ketch replied smoothly, only the raised eyebrow and dry tone indicating his sarcasm.

"The typewriter is free if you want to make your report now," Mick said professionally, holding back a retort. "Nothing needing your particular skills came up since your last check in."

Again with the raised eyebrow, which had somehow intensified in its powers of unspoken derision. But Ketch didn't respond, merely picking up the small, black box that he'd brought with him. Mick hadn't seen it before. Though by the softly glowing engravings along its surfaces, he'd say it was some sort of artifact that would need to be carefully placed in storage before being sent back to London.

"What's that?" he asked before he could stop himself.

Ketch blinked, seeming to pause in an internal debate as he stared at Mick. Mick was already getting uncomfortable under the gaze when Ketch turned and started walking out of the room.

"You'll find out one of these days," the man called back before disappearing around a corner.

Mick sighed. While Ketch had answered his question, it only made that spark of curiosity burn hotter. That curiosity would get him killed one of these days if he wasn't careful.

~o-O-o~

Lucifer peered over the top of the book he was reading at his little brother, who was – for lack of a better word – sulking. Gabriel hadn't said a word since he got back from whatever 'case' Sam and Dean had planned. Though, obviously it hadn't been an actual case.

Lucifer wasn't stupid. He knew whatever it was had to do with either Michael or Raphael since they would have just outright told him if it had been anything else. Except for Crowley and/or Rowena. They might have kept quiet about that for a little while, but at the very least, they would have told him when they got back. However…

Sam had gone off to the Bunker's storage floors, inventory book already open in his hands as he headed down into the Bunker's depths. Dean, on the other hand, had outright ignored both Lucifer and Castiel, which a bit unusual since Dean didn't often ignore Castiel these days. Mary hadn't been told much about it, so she wasn't much help. Gabriel was still in a mood.

Lucifer sighed, closing his book and setting it down on the bench in the empty space next to him. "Gabriel."

Silence. Okay, that meant one of two things: Gabriel was either lost in his thoughts, or it was bad. Lucifer supposed it also could have been both, but he was also more willing to bet it was the first of the options.

"Gabriel," he called again.

Still nothing. Fine. Time to change tactics. This may or may not work. Lucifer hadn't had the time to properly test it out, but if he pushed his thoughts just enough…

Gabriel jerked back, falling from the chair he'd been perched in as the movement unbalanced his weight distribution. Both Gabriel and the chair hit the ground. Lucifer held back a wince at the loud clatter as the wood hit the stone tiling and then had to reign in a smirk at the long string of profanity.

"The hell was that for?" Gabriel grumbled, rubbing a nonexistent bump on his head.

Lucifer shrugged, scooting forward to sit up on the edge of the large wooden swing. "You weren't paying attention," he replied, as if it were a completely legitimate answer. Which it was, of course.

Gabriel gave him a look and then rolled his eyes, righting his chair but choosing to stay on the ground, though he did move to sit on the grass closer to Lucifer. "You didn't have to scare the shit out of me. How did you even do that?"

"Any angel can receive a prayer given the correct intentions from the sender," Lucifer said in response. Though, he hadn't prayed to Gabriel as much as—

"You mean you managed to use our bond to project a very focused thought?" Gabriel paused as he thought it over. "I guess even with your grace locked up… Yeah, it could work."

"It did work," Lucifer snipped, giving Gabriel's foot a slight kick.

Gabriel grinned, kicking back in playful retaliation. "You must have been working on that since—"

"Since the boy had his week or two of control, yes," Lucifer cut in before Gabriel could make any assumptions. "I figured that if I could feel him even without accessibility to my grace, then I should be able to make it work for us, too."

"Neat."

And back to other thoughts. Lucifer could tell by the way Gabriel seemed to be looking somewhere distant. He frowned. What was it going to take to keep Gabriel's attention here and now? If he was going to get answers, he needed Gabriel to be present to answer his questions.

"Gabriel," he tried again.

His brother blinked, only slightly coming back to himself. "Hmm?"

Lucifer paused for only a moment's hesitation before forcing the words out. "Was— Was it Michael?" he asked.

Gabriel stared at him, an amber-eyed weight pressing down on him. Then Gabriel looked away, dropping his head into his hands. He stayed like that for a tense minute before he got up suddenly. Holding out his left hand, Gabriel snapped the fingers of his right hand, the sound echoing in the small clearing.

A small vial of grace appeared in Gabriel's outstretched hand.

"The majority of it was gone when we got there," Gabriel started, right hand lowering to his side even as his left hand stayed between them. "It took me over four hours, but I was able to scavenge this."

Lucifer couldn't take his eyes off of the grace. He didn't have to use his own to know that it was Michael's. But— If Gabriel had spent four hours collecting this and he had collected all that was left (of course he had; otherwise he wouldn't have spent four hours scavenging)…

Wait a minute.

"Where's the rest of it then? It can't have just disappeared—"

Gabriel let out a low growl, stunning Lucifer back into silence. "I know, someone got there before we did."

That… That was bad. That was beyond bad. But it also meant something else, something important: "Michael doesn't have his grace."

Lucifer reached a hand out to pick up the vial. It hummed in his hand – almost as if it recognized him. He inwardly scoffed at the thought. As if. He turned his gaze back upwards to see Gabriel giving him a concerned look. The identity of the grace's true owner hadn't escaped him either.

"What should we do, Lucifer?" Gabriel asked, all seriousness and not a trace of anything that. "If— Even if I didn't sense the grace, I would have felt Michael getting it back, but if it wasn't him that took it—"

"He could be human," Lucifer finished in a soft whisper.

Lucifer had to put the vial of grace down as he steadied himself, knuckles white against the auburn color of the bench's wood frame, feet planted firmly on the ground. He forced himself to breathe. In. And out. In. Out.

It was decidedly green in the clearing, leaving the blue of the sky and brown bark of the trees almost as an afterthought. Lucifer remembered the first time he and Gabriel had ventured into the area – back on that Thanksgiving night, back when things were declining from perfect but still okay.

Lucifer hadn't given the place much thought again until the boy had suggested it as a nice area to put in a patio or gazebo with a chair or two and a wooden bench swing. About a day after the archangel was back in charge, Gabriel had disappeared for an hour before suddenly grabbing Lucifer's hand to drag him outside. Since then, Lucifer had decided that his favorite thing about the clearing was the distance.

A good ten minutes' walk from the Bunker, they were surrounded by nature and only nature, Gabriel's minor embellishments doing nothing to subtract from that. Neither the Winchesters nor Castiel knew about the clearing's location, just that he and Gabriel sometimes went there now. It was theirs, a place of their own. Not necessarily home, but still a safe haven.

"Lucifer…"

It hurt. Just the thought of Michael as a human— Lucifer could see himself and Michael in Sam and Dean. But Sam had never been Lucifer, and Dean could never be Michael. Because Michael was Michael.

Two warm hands rested themselves on his shoulders, staying there even when he tensed. His eyes slowly refocused on his brother when Gabriel slid his hands down to pull him into a hug. Lucifer couldn't bring himself to return the embrace, but he did relax somewhat into the touch.

He should be the one who was doing this for Gabriel, not the other way around. Then again, he had failed as a brother a long time ago.

"Don't think that." Gabriel's arms tightened around him. "Besides, if anything, we all failed. It wasn't just you."

Lucifer let a frown form. He supposed Gabriel wasn't wrong, but of the four of them, he had messed up the worst. A series of mistakes that culminated into his screwed up life.

"Lucifer," Gabriel growled, pulling back to look him in the eyes. "Stop it. If Mary finds out you're doing this again, she'll have your backside."

The thing was, Lucifer couldn't help it. The thoughts didn't happen nearly as often as they used to, especially since he'd been getting 'better'. For some reason, if Gabriel wasn't able to snap him out of it right when the thoughts started, only Mary seemed to be capable of bringing him back from the edge of destruction, or whatever other dramatic metaphor described his 'funks'.

"That's seems like a rather cruel and unusual punishment for you to sic her on me," Lucifer mumbled.

"We only have your best interests in mind," Gabriel replied seriously. He was doing that a lot nowadays – being serious. It didn't suit him.

Lucifer sighed a fake sigh, more touched than amused. "Yes, Gabriel."

A silence was cast between them, though neither went to break it. Gabriel eventually sat down next to Lucifer, and they both watched the wildlife flourish around them. The sun was setting when Lucifer finally spoke up, mentioning that they should probably go inside if they didn't want to miss dinner.

"We could just have it out here," Gabriel countered.

Lucifer raised an eyebrow. "And worry the others?"

"Since when do you care?"

This time he rolled his eyes. "Since you all became mother hens," he retorted.

Gabriel paused, head inclining in agreement. "I think Mary is more of a bear than a chicken though."

"Hmm, true," Lucifer said after a pause of his own.

The sun set, and the stars came out. Neither of them moved.

"I missed this."

"I wish we could have shared it with them."

"One day, Gabriel. Perhaps one day, we might."

~o-O-o~

A week later, Gabriel was on Sam's tablet-laptop-thing – whatever, he was using it to do some research (bleh). He needed to find out what Reynard was up to before the trickster did something that made a hunter catch wind of him.

It had shocked Gabriel to see the fox outside of his usual haunts. Typically, Reynard hardly ever went far beyond France's borders and never ventured outside of Europe. Something must have happened to make the fox come to America – to finally visit Coyote? no, that wasn't it – and whatever it was couldn't have been good.

Crossing paths with Reynard in San Francisco had been legitimately coincidental. Those vulpine eyes had look at him with matching surprise right before narrowing into a challenging stare. Reynard hadn't wanted anyone else to know he was there. In fact, Reynard had seemed scared. But why?

After coming across yet another dead end, Gabriel was sorely tempted to make the tablet-laptop explode and disintegrate into itty bitty little bits. As far as he could tell without physically going over there, nothing big on the supernatural radar was going on in Europe. And Gabriel would much rather have a sit-down and talk with Reynard before having to go scour Europe to figure out what was going on.

This, of course, had problems of its own – the first one being that Gabriel didn't know where Reynard was now. Gabriel supposed the trickster fox could have stayed in San Francisco, but there was also the high possibility that Reynard had moved on after seeing Gabriel. And if that was the case, it became a matter of where Reynard went.

However, Reynard was good at covering his tracks. He had learned from the best after all (okay, maybe not the best, but definitely one of the best). This was going to suck if this was a case of the student proving himself better than the teacher.

Gabriel drummed his fingers on the table, forefinger barely brushing the edge of the laptop. He was running out of ideas. There wasn't exactly a whole lot that he could do while stuck in the Bunker. Well… not stuck, but relatively grounded. He could technically leave, but he really shouldn't until Sam, Dean and Castiel got back from the minor ghost case they'd picked up the other day.

Mary was out, too. She'd gotten a call from a hunter friend, who had asked if she could help with some rugarus. Mary, finally succumbing to the itching need to get out of the Bunker for a while, had easily responded with a resounding yes.

This left Gabriel and Lucifer in the Bunker. They could have both gone out themselves, but Lucifer didn't like leaving the Bunker nowadays, which was understandable. That didn't keep Mary from insisting that Lucifer needed to get out more, and it didn't help that Lucifer also hated staying inside for more than a couple days at a time (which was still far more than most humans could last before they felt the need to get some fresh air).

Some typing and staring at the laptop's screen later only resulted in another dead end... Gabriel was sure that if he were in an anime, there would have been multiple blood vessels pumping all over his head and possibly even all over the rest of the screen. He wasn't getting anywhere like this!

That was it— "Lucifer! We're going out!"

There was a long pause before the rather predictable response: "Right now?"

"Yes! Now." Gabriel let himself grin. This was one of the rare occasions that Lucifer was amenable to leaving. Perfect.

"Where are we even going at this time of night?" Lucifer asked, rubbing his face as he wandered into the library. "What would even be open? It's… two in the morning."

Gabriel blinked and looked down at the time shown on the laptop. Huh. It was pretty early. Speaking of— "Hey! We talked about this. What are you doing up at two in the morning?" he demanded, getting completely off topic. Whatever, I'll get back to it in a minute.

"We talked about me making a habit of sleeping every day, not maintaining a healthy sleep habit," Lucifer huffed, setting himself down in the chair across from Gabriel.

"You might not be human, but you're close enough," Gabriel reminded him, point a chastising finger (wait – could fingers be chastising?). "You need to sleep and eat and stay hydrated just like a human does, even if it's not as often."

"I do sleep," Lucifer protested, though it was somewhat undermined by the dark circles under his eyes.

Gabriel closed the laptop so there was nothing in between them. "You're exhausted."

"It's not like I'm going to get anymore sleep tonight," he grumbled. "Besides, you're the one who wanted to go out."

Gabriel narrowed his eyes. Lucifer was technically right on both points. But still… No, no buts. Going out would actually be better for Lucifer than staying cooped up in here for the rest of the night.

"We're going to LA."

Lucifer raised an eyebrow at that. "Are you ready to go back there?"

"I'm trying to find someone, Luci." Gabriel rolled his eyes. "It'll take like an hour tops, and then we're moving on."

"Is there a particular reason you think this person is in LA?" he asked with a frown.

It took Gabriel a second to figure out how to word his answer in a way that was understandable. "It's where I would go next if I wanted to dish some trickster justice on the ignoble, rich population."

Lucifer let out a sigh. "All right," he said after a moment. "As long as we get back before the others do."

"Of course," Gabriel replied cheekily. "I'm not stupid."

"I never said you were," Lucifer murmured rather fondly.

Gabriel waved a finger at him. "It has been implied on occasion."

It had its intended effect: Lucifer laughed – not a full on, body rolling laugh, but still something that was more than a chuckle.

And later that morning, as the two brothers walked the streets of Downtown Los Angeles in a comfortable silence, their prey stalked them. Always a good hundred feet behind but always close enough for sharp eyes to easily follow. A low growl sounded in the back of the fox's throat. He was supposed to stay away.

A blink was all it took to lose track of the shorter one – Loki, Gabriel, whatever he called himself these days. His ears picked up the rustle of feathers behind him. Turning sharply, he felt a hand clamp down on his shoulder. He winced and lost his footing as the ground shifted beneath his feet, and suddenly he was in a warehouse (of all places) with his hunters towering above him.

"Long time, no see, Reynard."

A/N: Hey, look~ I updated. (I'm struggling, guys.)