"Easy." He curled his arm around the others waist carefully, guiding him forward, after a long day at the Infirmary for his extensively wounded wings he was exhausted and desired to lay back down in his soft bed "Just a few more steps. We can take a break if you need." He breathed deeply, even the smallest of paces still a bit too much for him but he shook his head stubbornly. He could rest when he made it back to his bed. "Okay, 'Reel, we can do it, just a few more steps."

Those steps, four in total, from the door to his bed next to the window, were perhaps the longest steps he had ever take in his lifetime. Each one sent rolls of burning achiness up his legs, through his lower back, covering throughout his entire person.

The bed was so close now, he could almost feel the cloud-like bed, the silky blankets, the softness of the pillow under his head. Where he could lay until the ache faded away again.

Michael bent with him as he slowly lowered the retired Sentry down, setting him on the bed, and helped him lift his legs and twist around to lay. The Archangel lifted his feet as he sat down on the lower end of the bed, lowering them into his lap.

"You're making great progress." He pressed his thumb into the sole and rubbed a soothing circle over and over again, smiling when the younger sighed in relief, "You walked nearly all the way there and back again."

"It is not good enough." The sentry covered his face with his hands, missing the frown from his elder brother, groaning in frustration. "I should be able to walk there and back, and more, there is no progress."

"There is though, 'Reel, more then you can even see, it'll just take time."

"I am weak. I should have gotten passed this by now."

"You are not weak. The farthest thing from."

Finally, he let his hands fall, revealing the sadness in his darkened eyes, and it saddened the elders heart to see it. He knew that he was the cause, and it hurt him every time he saw it, the proof of his own mistakes living before him in person.

"But I am, Micha." Though the pet name brought a smile to his face, he hadn't heard it from one of his charges in such a long time, sure, little Akeelah called him as such, but to hear it from this angel whom he had done such wrong to, warmed his heart. "I am. "

"You are not." He stopped his rubbing circles in his foot, "And I want you to say it."

"But I cannot say what is not true."

"It is if I say it is." The Prince looked down at the feet in his lap and smiled slightly, he hadn't done so since he had been a small youngling, barely coming up to he knee, and he wondered if it still held true even after all he had endured "And I will get you to say it."

"How?" that curiousness in his tone had been there since he had been a small fledgling, first given to him to raise, and he smiled at its return. Michael smiled up at him, turning his attention down to his feet instead, "If I remember correctly, and my recollection is pretty clear most days, it was always the feet with you." It took a moment for the comment to be absorbed and for understanding to dawn on him, and then the young sentry's eyes widened, "You wouldn't?...After all this time…?"

"It is not something I would ever forget. Oh, the days I would have you rolling in the soft grasses of the Garden, do you remember 'Reel? One flick of fingers over these little feet were enough to turn you to goo. Now," he took careful hold of his ankles, "Will you say it, or will I have to encourage it?"

"I—I can't."

"I'm not ashamed to say that part of me was hoping you would say that."

Michael dug a single finger into the arch of the foot, and the affect was instantaneous, he watched as those darkened eyes lit up bright, a relaxed smile coming over him, as he tried to hold in the laughter that had once rang like music for him all that time ago.

He tutted softly, "None of that, if I remember correctly, it was the toes that were the worst."

If the others returned and heard the bright bubbly laughter coming from within their oldest brothers room, they paid it no mind and left that business to itself. There was only one other person who would be in that room with him and they all thought under the same ideal that he could use a bit more laughter.