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Chapter Text

Michael Demiurgos, Saint Michael the Archangel, Sword of God and all other kinds of impressive shit, sits in a coffee shop in San Francisco, drinking a no-frills drip coffee with a ton of cream and sugar in it and contemplates some of the biggest design flaws in humanity.

For one, Michael does not understand puberty at all.  It is meant to be a growth phase.  But it also seems to be something that turns humans into weird, awkward, smelly, confused beings with emotions even more out of control than baseline…and baseline is already pretty wild.

If all teenage humans are this fucked up, it really is amazing that humans not only survive but even procreate as much as they manage, without even normally having litters like so many other mammals do, which seems far more efficient.

He supposes he and Lucifer are the closest God and Goddess came to having a litter.  Is two enough?  Is a litter any number greater than one, or is there some minimum number to qualify as a litter?

The other thing humans seem to do very badly with respect to procreation is to birth offspring that are utterly useless for an unreasonably long time.  It takes them something like a year or more to even walk upright, and even then, they do a pretty half-assed job of it for a while longer, something they call ‘toddling.’  He has no idea when they can properly fend for themselves, but clearly becoming a ‘teenager’ is not any kind of magical transition to competence.  And this whole puberty thing apparently takes years and seems to make most things worse rather than better. At least growing tall and putting on muscle mass seems like a good thing.  On the other hand, growing too fast hurts.

When he and Lucifer (oh, right, Mikael and Samael with cute little rhyming names, did you give that idea to parents of human twins, Dad?) were first created, it had certainly taken them some time to orient themselves, sort out their new limbs and new powers, figure out how to communicate with their parents.  That awkward archangel phase lasted well into the milliseconds in the compressed time of early Creation, and Mom and Dad were probably crazy with impatience.  But then the newborn angels got their shit together, and well before the first full second of their lives passed, they were being good and useful children and creating all the things Dad told them to.  And some of their own.

And that was it.  They were born into their final forms, none of these strange larval stages to go through first.  No growing bigger or changing shape, no random capabilities denied them until some angelic pubescence occurred.  They just were, and they acted, and time passed.

And OK, a dozen plus billion years later some downsides of that system emerged.  By then, the two parts of the Silver City’s only litter (if two counts as a litter, might have to look that up) completely hated each other. They both changed their cute rhyming names (Michael just changed the pronunciation of his, Samael ditched his name entirely and chose to go by his title instead). Eventually everyone realized that Dad maybe could have been a better parent (throwing first one kid, then His wife, into Hell was probably a hint).  It started to seem like maybe a few seconds—maybe even a minute—of carefree childhood, of playing and growing up time, would have done wonders for family relationships.

Support for that theory came when Dad accidentally did one the best things He ever did.  It was meant to be a punishment.  He turned Michael and Lucifer into the celestial equivalents of eight-year-old human children, just because they were fighting with each other and with Amenadiel, as if that were something new.  It wasn’t even close to their biggest fight ever. That would have been the one where Michael skewered his brother to help Dad throw him down to Hell (as You asked me to do, and You’re welcome, Dad).

But they were arguing, and Dad was pissed, and so he turned them into some kind of angel nestlings, which had never even been a thing before then. Then He booted them out of the metaphysical minivan and drove away.

It was awesome.

Not at first of course.  At first, it was confusing and humiliating and…not scary, Michael didn’t scare easily…but unnerving.  They had ridiculous little downy wings so they couldn’t fly, they couldn’t just go where they wanted to, because humans get all flustered when (apparent) eight-year-olds drive cars (because, as already noted, young humans are inept).  So they had to enlist adult help and try to hide their situation from siblings who were likely to take advantage of their new vulnerability.

But then, against all their expectations, it got fun.  It was fun because they didn’t have to do their jobs (not that Lucifer was actually doing his job before, but whatever. He went from slacking off from his job to having permission to not do it). They got to just hang out, and get to know humans who were genuinely interesting, and play…and then, what do you know, Michael and Lucifer were enjoying each other’s company and discovering they actually kind of liked being celestial littermates.  A little time with no responsibilities and occasional hijinks went a surprisingly long way toward healing millennia’s worth of grudges.

So, way to go, Dad!  Father claimed it was all planned of course, His usual omniscient bullshit, but of course it wouldn’t have happened without Him, so some credit was probably due.

But because it was all going so well, then of course Dad was ready to put Samael and Mikael in some metaphorical matching twin outfits and get back to business as usual.  He asked them if they were ready to be adults again.  And Lucifer said, ‘Hell yes,’ not because he wasn’t having fun (he totally was) but because he had a girlfriend who had watched her adult sex addict of a boyfriend turn into a little kid.  So that put everything on hold, because if a grown woman has sex with an eight-year-old boy she gets arrested and even Lucifer wouldn’t sink that low.  Anyway, the twins' little nestling-version boy parts were about as useless as their wings as far as Michael could tell.  

Chloe was way more okay with it all than anyone would have predicted, partly because they were apparently freaking adorable as little kid angels.  In fact, she had a real mom vibe going with them, which was nice enough from Michael’s perspective, but he wondered how that tweaked their romantic relationship when she got her man-sized Lucifer back.  Michael kind of hoped that she still put Lucifer in timeouts when he needed it.

The other reason Lucifer (and everyone around him) thought it was a good time to grow up was at some point the little angels seemed to be aging faster than humans would, sometimes with rather abrupt jumps that necessitated buying clothing in bigger sizes between Friday and Monday.  Most concerning, both been starting to change in ways that suggested puberty might be looming faster than they thought.  Dan had mentioned that teenage human boys were famous for being extremely horny and showing exceedingly poor judgement.  Since those two features already described adult Lucifer to a T, no one wanted to risk seeing if angel puberty would make him even worse.  That would probably be one of the real signs of the Apocalypse.

That was all fine for Lucifer.  He said yes, grew up in an instant, and then vanished for like a week with his Detective.

Michael’s answer to the same question was ‘fuck no.’  

He hadn’t realized he would say no, and say it so emphatically, until it came right down to it.  But he had been miserable for eons, pulling the heaviest load for the least recognition in the Silver City, which was of course most of the reason he had come down to earth to fuck with his brother in the first place.  They’d worked it out and now he was glad for Lucifer to have his happy thing with his human.  Michael truly wanted to try to maintain this way more positive version of their sibling relationship.

But Michael also wanted to keep being a kid, or at least keep having the non-responsibilities of one.  He didn’t want to go back to the Silver City and be ignored until Dad wanted him to do something.  Which he would do, and then be ignored again.

He wanted to explore.  Now that he finally could see how interesting (at least some) humans could be, he wanted to spend time among them.  He just wanted to do his own thing, like Lucifer did when he first came to LA.

Lucifer agreed and argued on Michael’s behalf (thanks, littermate!).  The humans were in support too. Part of it was that they probably agreed it was only fair to give him more time to enjoy himself a little.  Possibly a bigger part of it was that they remembered when Michael was previously an adult, he had been a total dick to all of them.  Which, fair.  He totally had been a dick.

Dad clearly hadn’t expected Michael to say no (where’s your omniscience now, Pops?) and had been gently pressuring him to reconsider.  The fact that it was gentle pressure was actually a big step for Him; He was definitely trying to be Good Dad right now and force-aging His (still pretty cute) kid would not help that image.  But He wasn’t letting it go either.  ‘What will I do without my Right Hand?’ ‘Your brothers and sisters depend on your leadership.’ ‘What if there’s a crisis in the Silver City?’

Which all just reinforced the point that Michael had already been doing everything.  One day he cracked under all the repeated appeals to his essentiality, and snapped, “Can’t you just actually be omnipotent for a while so I can have a break?”  That pulled the old thunder and lightning out and Michael thought, Yeah, this is where He smites me.  But He didn’t; instead He more or less told Michael to go to his room and think about what he had done.  Lucifer had witnessed the whole exchange, and when Michael stomped past him (yeah, he stomped), Lucifer leaned close and whispered admiringly, “Way to rebel, brother.”

So Michael ran away.

Running away from an omniscient and omnipotent Father was definitely poor judgement and should not have succeeded.  The fact that he didn’t immediately get picked up by Remiel, forcibly re-adulted, or smited outright seemed like evidence that Dad was finally taking his ‘no’ seriously and respecting his choice, at least for the time being.  

Michael had risked telling Lucifer his plan.  He needn’t have worried Lucifer might try to dissuade him.  Lucifer was ready for him with a wad of cash, a pre-paid phone, and a promise to get his forger to make new identities for Michael that fit with his current apparent age and maybe some subsequent ones.  Lucifer told him to go enjoy the world.  There was an awkward moment as it struck them both that for the only time in their long history, they looked like they couldn’t possibly be twins, just relatives: an adult man and his 14-year-old or so…son? nephew? baby brother?  They just took in the strangeness for a minute, then Lucifer squeezed Michael’s shoulder and called him an Uber.

The Uber took him to a bus station and a bus took him to San Francisco.    He slept for much of the bus ride, waking with aching legs, gnawing hunger, and no real clue where to go next.  He left the bus station, backpack slung over one shoulder, to find himself in the morning weekday bustle of a big city. He wove through crowds of busy humans on their way to work until he found the coffee shop a few blocks from the bus station where he now sits. 

Michael sighs, staring at the crumbs of the two bagels he had immediately wolfed down upon arrival.  These annoying bouts of hunger and aches are familiar now; they are linked to the sudden jumps in height and…other developments…that seem to characterize his bouts of progress through angelic puberty.  He’d learned the term “growth spurt” in regard to human development, but that process was glacial compared to his strangely stop-and-go growth.  He is wearing clothes that are slightly too large in the hopes that they will last through a couple of his growth spurts—growth geysers? growth eruptions?—before he has to replace them.

As uncomfortable as they are, he wants the lurches of growth, wants to look older than he does now: a skinny kid in his early teens at best.  The person who sold him the bus ticket hadn’t cared, but the barista in this coffee shop had frowned a little when he ordered coffee and not some caffeine-free sugar concoction.  What else might humans still deem him too young to do?  Driving, for sure.  Is there an age threshold for renting hotel rooms?  Michael’s understanding of the infinite small details of human society is already lacking enough.  Factoring in the dynamics of age is entirely beyond him. 

He also notices human gazes lingering on his face—these humans usually look quickly away if he catches their eyes.  The scar bisecting his face appears well-healed now, but it is still impossible to miss and he’s sure this is what the humans are staring at. 

He wonders what they are thinking when they stare, and when they look away, embarrassed, when he catches them staring.  Is it sympathy for this poor kid with a terrible injury?  Or does it make him look dangerous, unsavory, now that he no longer looks like a small child?  Maybe it’s just dull interest in the disfigured.

Michael finishes his coffee and unplugs his phone charger from the café wall.  The single most useful feature of the phone is the map function.  He loves that he can survey his location, zooming in and out and exploring progressively larger areas, just as he would if he were flying.  But in a great advantage over flying, his phone fills the map with labels and names to guide him to interesting places.  For today, his plan is to use his electronic aerial survey to guide him west to a large park with several interesting museums, including one with an El Greco he would like to see.

He decides he will walk rather than take the local transit; the city is surprisingly compact, limited by the peninsula it fills from edge to edge.  He will spend his day looking at the art humans make, one of the things he has always enjoyed and that, he hopes, will put him in a mood to be well-disposed toward humans in general.  And then he will figure out where an apparent teenager might go to spend the night here in Saint Francis’ city.

Chapter Text

Spending a day wandering through museums and parks is even more satisfying than Michael had expected it to be.  Part of the satisfaction comes from the total freedom of having no expectations, no one to meet up with at a certain time, nothing driving his path around the city beyond his own whim. 

But the art itself, and the architecture and green spaces embracing it, is the other half of the equation.  He is captivated as ever by the things that humans make, including many clever and useful things, but he is most drawn to the infinite variety of art, of all the things created for the most abstract of purposes: expression of thoughts and feelings, imagination, vast spectra of subjective beauty and ugliness.  It brings back the beginning times of Creating with his twin, when they made so many strange and beautiful variations of Dad’s basic designs, because they could.

Michael was an artist in the human way himself, long ago.  During the Renaissance he moved among humans extensively, seeking out the masters and watching them create, learning their methods but also puzzling over the ways their emotional lives influenced, and were influenced by their work.  He learned to draw, and then to paint.  Some of his work lingers in the human world, attributed to the masters he learned from.

But he then became too busy, and too bitter, to continue.  His drawings began to express only anger and fear, his paintings became dark and heavy.  He dismissed his own art as a trivial exercise, beneath him as the Commander of the Host, a self-indulgence from an easier time.

Being a child with Lucifer drew him back into art, if through rather strange paths.  They ridiculously recreated famous paintings of themselves and their siblings, using whatever props they could find in Lucifer’s penthouse, and always incorporating pizza into their works because of one stupid joke that then entertained them for weeks.  Then he found himself doodling a bit, and then he got to paint during a fantasy camp they went to with Trixie and enjoyed it immensely.

In the first museum he visits, he impulsively goes into the gift shop and is happy to find he can purchase a sketch pad and pencils and charcoals.  He stuffs them into his backpack a bit self-consciously, but it isn’t long before he finds himself pulling out the pad, sitting on museum benches before works that catch his eye, and testing his hand.

The other rarely acknowledged reason he had abandoned his art had been the weakness and pain in his right side that had plagued him for much of his life.  Part injury, part self-actualized self-hate, it left his drawing hand stiff and awkward. 

When their Father had abruptly turned them into children, the facial scar Lucifer had given him remained (thanks for that, Dad), but the pain and distortion in his right side had vanished.  His shoulders became level again, strength and mobility returned to his right arm, and even his wings, preposterous little feather dusters as they were, were intact and symmetrical.  When he started growing in strange fits and starts, he worried his unbalancedness would restore itself, but so far it hadn’t.

So…he sketches.  Hesitant at first, then smoothly and eagerly as his hand does what he wills it to do.  He finds the El Greco he had hoped to see, a graceful rendering of John the Baptist, and sketches his own study. Michael’s is a more accurate rendition of Saint John’s actual appearance but is otherwise very similar to El Greco’s take.  He is startled out of his focus when a docent walks by and comments, “Beautiful work!  I hope you are considering art school after you graduate.”  Michael stammers an awkward thanks as they smile at him and move on.

The day passes in a meditative blend of art, and walking, and watching humans around him.  He is calm enough that only rarely does a human shy away, or give him just the extra bit of berth as they pass by.  It happens just enough to confirm that his power to draw out fears is re-establishing itself.  It was strangely but pleasantly absent when he first became a child, but he is reassured to feel it returning.  He can wrap it around himself like a protective cloak if he needs it.

He finds an Indian restaurant for dinner and stuffs himself with curries.  The server is a young man who stares at Michael’s scar more frankly than most, which starts to annoy Michael until he notices the edge of a knotted scar on the side of the man’s neck, pale against smooth brown skin, disappearing under the collar of his shirt.  Neither comments one way or the other, but there is an odd little sensation of connection after that wordless exchange, that mute acknowledgement of some commonality of experience.  The server sets a plate of gulaab jamun at Michael’s elbow at the end of his meal, which does not appear on the bill.

All in all, a very pleasant first day of freedom.  The day goes downhill when Michael looks for a place to spend the night.

He discovers that you must be 18 with proper ID to check into a hotel, answering that pending question in an inconvenient way.  He tries a few places.  He is declined with regret in a couple of the places he tries, in another they offer to help him find his parents, and in the last they nearly call the police, concerned that a boy his age is alone in what is apparently not the safest part of the city.  Michael leaves that place quickly.

Once he is a couple blocks away, he checks his phone map again.  He has been working his way steadily east and is apparently at the edge of a neighborhood called the Tenderloin.  The map tells him there are hotels ahead, marked with symbols that indicate they are inexpensive and have received poor reviews.

Michael tucks his phone in his pocket and heads for those hotels.  The streets are busy, but it will be dark soon. His Fear mojo is still unreliable, but he catches enough scents of fears just below the surface to recognize this is a place where there is a concentration of wounded or desperate humanity.  Even more people stare at him here, maybe at his scar, maybe just as someone they perceive as vulnerable. 

Michael walks into a hotel on Turk Street that is the seediest he has seen so far.  The front desk is protected by a metal grate.  The human at the desk is a sweaty, balding middle-aged man.  He lifts tired eyes to Michael, which widen at the sight of him.  "What do you want, kid?"

When Michael asks for a room and says he will pay in cash, the man gives him a long, appraising look, peering at him from head to toe, lingering on his face.  Then he shrugs, takes Michael’s money and pushes a key to him.  He also indicates Michael should fill in his information in a ledger that sits outside the barrier.  Michael writes “John Baptist” in the space marked “name” and leaves everything else blank.

He goes quickly to his room.  There is shouting in a couple of the rooms he passes on the way. The scent of fear and despair is strong and he does his best to not instinctively tug on any of it.  He locks the door behind him, takes in the spare, threadbare room, and sighs. 

“This is a big step down from your penthouse, Sam,” he says aloud, almost laughing at how little that really captures the vast distance between his brother’s luxurious aerie and this pit.  Comparison to the vast divide between the Silver City and Hell might not be entirely hyperbole.

There is a full mirror with a crack across the bottom on the bathroom door.  Michael tosses his backpack on the bed and pulls off his shirt.  He stands in front of the mirror and frowns at himself.  He is getting taller, a little more wiry rather than just scrawny, but still very far from his adult form.  He stares for a moment, then after a slight hesitation unfurls his wings.

Relief floods him as they emerge, even and glossy and large.  He always braces himself for the discovery that his right wing will twist, the feathers will be dull and crooked.  But in fact, his wings are not only beautiful and healthy-looking, he’d swear they are growing faster than the rest of his skinny self.  He stretches his wings up, so the tips of his primaries brush the ceiling.  Maybe soon he’d actually be able to fly again.

After a moment, he goes and pulls his sketchpad from his backpack and returns to the mirror.  Chewing on his lower lip, he stares at himself, his ribs showing, his wings folded loosely behind him, and starts sketching the first self-portrait he has ever done.

Chapter Text

Michael wakes slowly, immediately disoriented by his surroundings.  It takes him several moments of sitting up and blinking before his memory catches up and the run-down hotel room looks familiar.  Falling asleep had been hard; too much noise, too many tastes of fear until late in the night…or maybe early in the morning.  He recalls tucking his wings up around his ears.  But whenever he finally fell asleep he fell deep and has no memory of any waking or restlessness during the night.

He swings his legs off the wobbly bed and groans at the sudden ache.  How can he keep hurting when he isn’t actually injured?  Unless puberty itself actually causes injury, which would just fit with the rest of the ridiculous process.  He bends and stretches, loosening stiffened muscles, but the ache in his legs feels bone-deep.

He spots his sketchpad on the floor, partially under the bed, and bends to retrieve it.  As he lifts it, his forearm drags along some sharp spur on the metal bedframe.  It hurts, and he hisses as he yanks his arm back. 

He is shocked to see a bloody scratch running along the back of his arm, from the halfway point of his forearm nearly to his wrist, where it is deepest.  Blood is welling faster there, a rivulet winding past his wrist and across the back of his hand.

Michael stands and stares at the trail of red as it spills over the edge of his hand and drips to the floor.

“How in the Hell am I bleeding?” he asks aloud, like his arm is going to know something he doesn’t.  He looks accusingly at the bedframe.  It certainly isn’t made of celestial steel, and while it may be about as uncomfortable as he would expect a bed in Hell to be, it doesn’t look demon-forged either.

He sets the drawing pad on the bed and heads into the tiny bathroom.  The sink is too small so he uses the shower to rinse away the blood.  It continues to seep, so he grabs a threadbare white (not for long) towel and presses it to the wound.  Then he goes to sit on the bed.  His sketchbook has a few small drops of blood drying on its cover. 

Michael appears to have what his brother would call a ‘mortality sitch.’  There just is no other explanation for how a shitty human-made metal bedframe could make him bleed. 

He glares at the towel he is holding in place.  A spot of red is blooming near his wrist, but it is small.  Why would I be vulnerable?  Is this Dad punishing me slowly for disobedience?

Lucifer became vulnerable around his Detective, but that was some self-actualization thing, supposedly, or her miracle status…weird but whatever, it was just a Lucifer-Chloe thing and not contagious.

Amenadiel had become nearly human, losing his power over time and then his wings…

Michael leaps off the bed and stands in front of the mirror.  He feels himself tremble slightly as he wills himself to release his wings.

“Be fine, be fine, be fine,” he repeats to himself, then sets his jaw and unfurls.

Michael nearly sobs with relief as his wings open, shiny and intact and perfect.  Now, worrying about them being less than perfect again seems trivial after the sudden fear that they could just be gone. 

So, whatever is happening, it is different from what caused either of his brothers to become vulnerable to injury, which really isn’t that illuminating.  He figures he’ll stick with the Dad-is-fucking-with-me theory until a better one comes along. 

The blood has finally stopped flowing from his arm.  Michael throws the bloody towel in the trash can.  He furls his wings and takes a shower, resisting the urge to try to scrub off the tear in his skin as if it were a clever illusion, some special effect makeup for a movie or other deception.  The sting of the water flowing over it is additional evidence it is real.

After he is clean and dressed, Michael regards the blood spots on his sketchpad for a moment, then shrugs and puts it in his backpack.  There is nothing he can really do about this vulnerability question now, other than to try to remember it is happening so that he isn’t too casual about physical risks.  For one thing, he had the idea that he could check the progress of his wings (for gliding at least) by jumping from a high place.  Now is probably not the time for such an experiment.

Michael leaves the room and comes face to face with a woman leaving the room across the hall at the same time.  She is thin and tired looking, her deep brown skin stretched taut over prominent bones.  Michael can’t begin to guess her age, it is something indeterminate in the vast distance between young and old.

They both stand still for a moment, looking at each other.  Michael felt a quick spike of fear when they both opened their doors, and he has a distinct feeling that encounters in the hallways here can be dangerous events.  But her fear dissipates when she looks at him.

“Oh no, no,” she says in a rough voice, with an accent Michael can’t place but finds pleasantly musical despite the raspy edge.  To his immense surprise, she steps forward and puts both hands on his cheeks, fingers tapping his scar.  “Too young for this place, honey.  They’ll eat you alive.  Don’t you have a mother waiting for you?”

“No,” Michael answers honestly.  “My Mother is gone.”

She nods as if that was the answer she expected.  “Well, get out of here, child.  God wants to help you but there is only so much He can do if you’re too dumb to meet Him halfway.” 

Part of him wants to scoff automatically at the idea that Dad wants to help him at all, but he doesn’t.  The woman’s gently chiding tone is kind, and her tired, sad eyes hold real concern for what she must see as a stupid lost kid in front of her.  And how far off is that characterization, really?

So Michael just says, “Yes, ma’am,” and she smiles and pats his cheek.

As he heads down the stairs, Michael turns his head slightly to whisper oecrimi g, blessing her in Enochian.  He doesn’t know if his blessings even have power anymore, but if he lightens her load in the least, he is happy to do so.

Back out in the city, Michael finds his way to another coffeeshop. These seem to be present at a density of two or three per block so it isn’t too hard.  This time the guy behind the counter doesn’t blink when he orders a coffee.  He also gets a breakfast sandwich, still feeling abnormally hungry.  The cut on his arm, concealed by his shirt, tugs uncomfortably with movement and he is annoyed that it isn’t healing faster. 

While he eats, Michael pulls up his map and scrolls around.  A label catches his eye and he zooms in.  Chuckling, he settles on his destination for the day.  Finishing his breakfast, he shoulders his pack and uses his map to navigate the short distance to the waterfront and a large public ferry terminal. 

Once he arrives, it takes Michael a bit of effort to work out how to pay for transportation.   He figures out that he can pay for the ferry and the local bus and train systems all in the same way—he just has to use actual money to buy a little plastic card with notional money on it.  He chuckles to himself as he receives a 50% youth discount.

After that it is easy enough to board the ferry at the proper time, and find a place to sit out on the deck.  It is a pleasant day; this city is a cooler temperature compared to LA and it suits Michael better.  Of course, he never had to spend time in Hell; pretty much any place on earth probably feels temperate to Lucifer.

Once the ferry pulls out into the bay, Michael takes out his sketchbook and doodles as he enjoys the views.  The city’s landmark bridge is bright and cheerful in the sun, and the feel of being on the water is unexpectedly pleasant.  It is not something Michael has really done before. Swimming yes, especially in what passed for youth in the Silver City.  Otherwise, water has just been something pretty to fly over, not something to cross in this inefficient way.  But the light bounce of the boat over the swells, the smell of the breeze, the complexity of the light on the water; these things are all soothing and Michael enjoys the brief half hour on the bay much more than he expected.

He is in a peaceful mood as he steps from the ferry onto Angel Island.

Angel Island is a green bump in the bay, only a bit more than 3 square miles, with a high point a bit under 800 feet.  Michael immediately sets off on a trail that winds up to this minor promontory.  It is hardly an epic peak, but it still provides a striking panorama of the area. 

Michael wanders all over the island, enjoying the views but also the shaded green paths where he feels hidden.  He visits historical sites, amused as always by the short spans of time the humans call the distant past.  He finds a café, wanders beaches facing different views, sits and sketches when the whim takes him.  Somehow he spends the entire day on this tiny dot of land, confident he is the only angel on Angel Island.  He notices that there are people camping on the island, in brightly colored small tents. 

On an impulse, he skips his planned return ferry trip and prowls off the trails until dark.  He wanders for another hour at least, looking out at the city lights across the water, and what stars he can see above.  Finally, he retraces his steps to a sheltered hollow screened by dense cluster of trees that he had noted earlier in the day.  Feeling oddly at home—surely not just because of the name of the place—Michael unfurls his wings and wraps them around himself as he curls into the sheltered nook.  He sleeps almost the instant he closes his eyes.

Chapter Text

The East Bay has a different feel from San Francisco.  It spreads away from the Bay, not in the massive way LA sprawls but closer to that than to the neat constraints of San Francisco on its point of land.  It climbs from the water up into golden-brown hills, filled by cities and towns all continuous with each other, distinguished to Michael by their station names on the transit system. 

Michael finds his way to Berkeley, following a tide of college students.  While he has always tended to prefer the quieter spaces of museums and libraries, there is a creative energy in places of learning that appeals to him.  He is also intentionally practicing moving among crowds, both to test his control of his returning mojo and to test his own ability to not panic amidst so many humans. 

It's early in the day; Michael had made his way over after catching the first ferry from Angel Island, where he had slept remarkably well in the cocoon of his own wings.  He woke feeling like his loose clothing was not quite so oversized as it had been, and suspects he is in the midst of another sudden change.  His bones still ache but maybe a bit less.

He wanders the campus, sipping coffee from a paper cup and sipping fear in the tiniest doses from the people he passes.  It seems like a safe place to practice.  Most of the surface fears he picks up—he is not trying to delve into anything deeper—are worries about exams and grades, or worries about performance in their fields from the professors (who as a whole seem more fearful than their students).  He shies away from the occasional taste of deeper fears, not trusting himself to avoid instinctively digging more deeply.

It is frustrating to not trust his control.  His Fear mojo had been pleasantly dormant in his time as a child, more so than his brother’s Desire.  He is glad to have it back for the feeling of protection it gives him, but he does not like the hunger that goes with it.  So he avoids temptation when it brushes too closely against him.

He feels relatively invisible moving around the campus.  He looks too young to be a student here, but not so young as to seem totally out of place.  Many of the students don’t look that much older.  He feels eyes still linger on his scar, but more often with curiosity than fear or disgust.  It is a large campus, architecturally…diverse…is the best description.  He is entertained when in his wandering he finds an open air theater that is quite clearly meant to resemble the theater at Epidaurus, though it looks more Roman in parts than the original Greek amphitheater.  Michael knows the original theatre well. It was a place he and Amenadiel had found Lucifer several times when he snuck out of Hell during the late 4^th century BC. Lucifer was a great fan of the theater’s acoustics…and of its architect Polykleitos. 

Michael sits on one of the stone seats, hit by a sudden unexpected wave of loneliness.  He almost doesn’t recognize the feeling at first.  He’s been essentially alone since Lucifer fell, when most of his family withdrew from his darkness and Fear.  They were mostly civil, respectful—because he was the Sword of God, because he still could kick most of their asses with one arm and one wing tied behind his back.  But with the possible exceptions of Gabriel, who insisted that she enjoyed his company even at his most irascible, and Raphael, who liked everyone, Michael was never close to any of his siblings after Lucifer was gone. 

It strikes him suddenly that during his time as a child, he not only reconciled with his twin…he made friends.  He’d discovered much to his surprise that he really enjoyed Mazikeen’s wicked sense of humor.  He’d also come to like many of Lucifer’s human friends…but Ella Lopez was the real standout.  She was smart and funny, with an appreciation for darkness and a sense of the ridiculous that all resonated with him.  He missed…just hanging out with her, watching action movies, whatever.

He pulls out his phone and pokes around until he finds what he figured Lucifer might have added for him…a contacts list.  It has Lucifer, Maze, Chloe, Amenadiel…he scrolls down the short list until he finds Ella’s name.  He taps on the little picture of Ella’s face and her information opens up on the screen.  He finds himself smiling at the grinning mini-Ella looking out at him.  His finger hovers for a moment over the phone icon, before he chickens out and taps on the chat.

MD: Hi Ella, this is Michael.  I wanted to say thanks for taking care of Gabby, sorry I left suddenly.

He sends the message and waits to see if there is a reply.  In less than a minute, the phone rings.

Michael stares at it in a moment of panic, then scoffs at his own reaction.  He swipes the place that lets him answer and holds the phone to his ear.

Ella’s voice is already pouring out of the speaker. “Michael! Cabrón! It’s about time you called!” A short stream of Spanish follows; undoubtedly more insults.  Michael waits patiently for a pause.

“Sorry, Ella,” he says quickly when one appears. 

“I’ve been worried about you, Michael!” Ella continues, all anger gone now.  “Why did you take off like that?  Was it your Dad? Do you need me to tell him a thing or two?”

Michael feels a tightness loosen in his chest.  The image of Ella telling God a thing or two, mostly likely with a shoe in hand, makes him laugh out loud.  “Thanks, Ella,” he tells her.  “I’ll let you know if I need you to straighten Him out on anything.”

“Seriously, though, Michael.  Lucifer says you for real ran away.  Like some ‘emo teenangel,’ as he put it.”

“I don’t even know what that means.  But Lucifer helped me leave.  Gave me cash and a phone.  Dad’s been pressuring me to grow up, I just had to get away from him.  I’m not ready to grow up!  …Wow, it sounds really stupid to say that out loud.”

Ella cackles.  She has a thousand different laughs.  This one tells him there is likely a joke coming, probably sarcastic.  “Oh, you’re such a baby for someone as old as time.  You do want to grow up, you just want to keep having fun too, and don’t think you’ll be allowed to.  Unless you’re really enjoying angel puberty.  How’s that going?  I can tell your voice is changing a little, is it cracking a lot yet?”

“What?” His voice has been strange recently.  He doesn’t talk all that much, but he has noticed strange variations in pitch sometimes in his everyday transactions of ordering coffee and the like. 

“Yeah, like that,” Ella says.

He hadn’t even noticed.  Great.  “How do you even know about this kind of thing?” he asks, now very conscious of any waver in his voice.

“A pack of older brothers, what do you think?  I know all the things that are gonna change in way too much detail.  Need to know anything?  I can tell how far along you are by whether there's hair—”

“No thank you!” Michael practically shouts into the phone.  Ella laughs again.  This time it is her ‘I got you good’ laugh, a laugh in her repertoire he knows all too well.

“How’s Gabby?” he asks to cover his embarrassment.

“He’s fine.  But it’s a good thing my landlady thought you were cute, because he’s pretty loud.”

Michael grins.  Gabby is his duck.  He rescued Gabby still in his egg from a snapping turtle that had found their nest. He had named the duckling Gabby because he peeped nonstop, with no idea at the time if the little fuzzball was male or female. As it turns out, Gabby is a male ruddy duck, as they figured out just before Michael left, when Gabby’s adult plumage began to emerge. 

“Sorry about that,” Michael says. 

“Well, I promised my landlady no roosters and haven’t technically broken that promise.  But if he puts on his mating outfit and makes any moves on Margaret you are coming to get him.  She is not down for interspecies mating.  Especially not with a duck with a corkscrew penis.”

Michael’s brain stutters for a moment at that last statement.  He didn’t even think birds had penises.  He’s not sure if Ella is just making a joke, but she doesn’t sound like she is…she sounds like she really wants him to ask about it.  Which means it is probably true and that she has something even weirder in reserve.  He is not going down that road.

“I’m in a Greek amphitheater,” Michael blurts out to change the subject again. 

Ella laughs, of course, an amused chuckle as she allows him to escape the topic.  For now.  “Tell me you aren’t in Greece!”

“No,” he reassures her.  “Just in an unexpected Greek theater in California.”

“You’re really okay, right Michael?” Ella asks.  “Do you need anything?”

“I’m really okay,” he answers, and he means it.  He’s a little worried about the vulnerability thing, but otherwise he is genuinely enjoying his exploration.  “Dad’s letting me do this, I really wasn’t sure that he would.  I’m enjoying just getting to…see what humans do, I guess.”

This time her laugh is affectionate.  “Well, humans do a lot of strange stuff, so have fun.  At least you’re an angel, even if you look like a kid…I guess I don’t have to worry so much about you getting hurt out there.”

“Right,” Michael agrees, feeling distinctly like he is lying as he flexes his injured arm.  The cut is more painful, rather than less, today. 

“I gotta get back to work.  You stay in touch or I will call you every time Gabby quacks.  Got it?”

Michael laughs.  His phone’s battery would be dead in an hour or two in that case.  “Got it.  It’s…good to talk to you, Ella.”

“Well, yeah, that’s why you have to keep doing it.  Smell ya later.”  She disconnects mid-laugh. Michael snorts at that reminder that Ella has been friends with his sister most of her (Ella’s) life. 

He puts his phone away, then tugs up his sleeve to look at the cut on his arm.  It looks worse; red and swollen.  The deepest part is oozing—not blood, but something yellowish.  He can’t possibly be infected, can he?  Earthly bacteria should not be able to take root in celestial flesh.  But then, earthly bedframes should not be able to tear celestial flesh, so he supposes all bets are off.

“Damn it,” he mutters, pulling his sleeve back down.  He’ll have to figure out later what to do about that.  For now, he just does a little sketching, grumbling when his movements strain at his not-healing-so-well arm.

Evening finds him on a lively street called Telegraph that extends from one side of the campus and stretches off in a bright chaos of street vendors, shops and restaurants, and a surprising number of kids that look closer to his own apparent age among the college-age and up crowds. 

As he heads farther from campus, he finds he is making more eye contact with members of this younger crowd—or maybe it’s that he notices they are looking more intently at him.  He begins to realize that many of them are distinctly scruffy, that they have a somewhat wary look about them, and move together in small groups. 

They are what I am pretending to be.  It hits him in a flash.  These are young humans out on their own, at an age they really shouldn’t be, according to the human rules.  Like him, many carry backpacks, many wear clothes that are ill-fitting or clearly not recently washed.  Michael starts to slow when he feels their attention on him, holds eye contact a little longer.  He starts to receive what feel like tiny nods of acknowledgement.  That they are seeing him as like them in some way, even if he is distinctly something else.

Michael also realizes there are not quite as many of them as he first thought, but rather that they are gradually moving in the same direction along the street as he is.  Eventually, he passes near a shopfront on a corner where a group of kids—one boy, two girls—are stopped.  Their looks snag his attention and he stops as well, leaning against a wall nearby. 

They look maybe a couple years older than he does…or at least than he did the last time he checked a mirror.  One of the girls clearly has an Asian heritage, though Michael can’t narrow it down further than that; he hasn’t really paid that much attention to human genetic divergence over the years.  The other girl is Caucasian, pale-skinned at any rate, with short purple-dyed hair that might be brown at its roots.  The boy has warm brown skin and straight black hair, and might fit in with the Hispanic populations Michael has come to know in LA…or might not.  Michael is just starting to scratch the surface of human social dynamics, but he has learned enough to know that the pale girl has advantages her not-pale companions lack. 

At first, they ignore him, talking quietly to each other.  After a pause, one of the girls—the one with purple hair—looks straight at Michael and asks, “New?”

He nods…he’s new to everything so it seems like the right response.

The boy doesn’t look his way, but he asks, “You sleeping out?  Or going to the shelter?”

“Shelter?”

The girl that spoke first gives a short laugh.  “You are new.  There’s a shelter near here that you can go to if you are under eighteen.  You have to talk to the social worker and everything, but then you can stay the night.”

“Just don’t stay more than one night if someone is looking for you,” the boy adds.  “They get you in the system. They try to help.”

“Are you going there?” Michael asks.  He is trying hard to not taste their fear, but he can’t help but tell that it tastes different in each and that it is closest to the surface in the boy.

“Supposed to rain,” says the purple-haired girl, the apparent spokesperson of the three.  “We were thinking of trying to get beds.  If we go early we can leave our stuff there and go back out for a bit.”

As she says that, Michael registers that their packs are larger and stuffed more tightly than his own.  It must be a relief to be able to move without them sometimes.

“Can I..?” Michael begins, and the talkative one interrupts to say, “Yeah, you can come with us.”  She looks at the other boy, and asks him, “You’re okay with it, Ix?” He nods in reply.

“Ix?” Michael repeats in surprise. 

“He goes by Icarus.  We call him Ix.  I’m Violet.  That’s Shell,” Violet says, with a nod to the girl who has not spoken.  The one called Shell looks up at her name and unexpectedly gives Michael a quick but friendly smile.

Michael doesn’t miss the phrase ‘goes by’ and guesses these young humans do not use their given names as a rule.  It has not occurred to him to use anything other than his own name.  “I’m…Mikael,” he says, surprising himself as his old name comes out of his mouth.

“Hi, Mick,” Violet says, renaming him effortlessly.  “Let’s go see if we can get beds.”  Ix immediately settles his pack on his back.  Violet touches Shell’s shoulder and Shell readies herself too.  Michael is struck by the dynamic.  Violet almost seems like a parent in the way she manages the other two, even though they are all of an age.  Maybe she’s just bossy.

As they start moving down the street, Michael notices he is the tallest of the four of them, even though he’s pretty sure he still looks younger. 

“So are you out of foster, or home?” Violet asks.  At his confused look, she clarifies.  “You seem like a first-timer.  Who did you run away from?”

She assumes so matter-of-factly that he ran from someone, rather than any other reason he might be on the street.  “My Father,” he answers honestly, and all three of them nod in what seems like recognition.

“He give you that scar?” Ix asks, and Michael realizes that he has not noticed them staring at his scar like many do.

“No,” he says, another truthful answer.  “My brother.”

Again, none of them react with surprise, but Shell speaks for the first time.

“Like father like son, except when you’re not,” she says in a low voice, looking at Michael with something like recognition.

As the day goes on, Michael is getting a crash course in how human youth survive on the streets, and it is sobering. 

They had successfully gotten beds at the shelter, and as Violet had said, Michael had to talk to a social worker, whatever that was.  It turned out to be a friendly human woman with sad eyes who asked his name.  He told her Mick, and when she asked for a last name he froze for a moment, not having prepared for that, and then blurted out “Lopez.” She asked about his parents, when he had last eaten, and the like.  She offered various kinds of support, most of which was mysterious to Michael and all of which he politely declined.  And that was that.

They check their bags into a locked room.  They are shown beds—just cots, in big barracks-style rooms.  Boys and girls are in separate rooms, and there are a few mothers with children here too. Michael does not see any adult men who are not staff. 

Once they are back outside, Michael assumes they will go get dinner somewhere, but instead the other three fall into what is clearly a practiced exchange.  They agree on locations they will each ‘work.’  Michael doesn’t ask what they mean, but the locations are busy public spaces—intersections on Telegraph, and a nearby transit station.  They agree Shell will go to an internet café to check in with someone.  Ix will follow up with someone he met who had a car.  They agree on the time and place to meet back up.

Violet looks at Michael.  He isn’t sure what he is supposed to do and wonders if she’ll give him an assignment.  But she just says, “We’ll pool when we meet up and go get some food, OK?”

He nods, and the other three head off in different directions.  Michael feels oddly bereft to be suddenly alone, and without a job to do.  He reaches for his phone, thinking he’ll check his map and see what is nearby.  Reaching for his phone in his pocket makes his sore arm twinge.  It has been aching all day, but he has ignored it.  Annoyed, he goes to pull up his sleeve to look at the wound and discovers the fabric is glued to his arm.  He drags it up anyway and winces in pain as it tears free.

Michael is shocked by the appearance of the injury.  He has torn blood-stiffened cloth from many wounds in the past, but they never looked like this.  His arm is swollen and red—swollen enough that the cut is being stretched open. There is a thick yellow substance oozing from the cut, and this is clearly what had dried onto his sleeve.

It is an infection.  Just like humans get.  Humans die of infections all the time.

When he had the appearance of an eight-year-old, he had spent time with Trixie, and with other human children.  They got cuts and scrapes all the time.  When they did, adults were always ready with antibiotic creams.  Michael supposes that is what he needs now.

Ignoring the voice in his mind that is panicking over the idea that he is sick and angels don’t get sick, Michael opens his map to look for a pharmacy, knowing those have human medicines.  He finds one not too distant, instantly committing the fastest route there to memory.  He pockets the phone and heads briskly off.

He is too distracted by his bizarre susceptibility to disease to be fully alert to his surroundings, which he realizes when a voice jolts him out of his absorption and makes him jump in surprise.

“Hey kid, what’s your hurry?”

Mentally cursing his carelessness, Michael halts in front of the man blocking his path.  He is in a long alley, lined with dumpsters outside plain doors, stacks of pallets, and generally grimy.  In his mental map he isn’t that far from his destination.

The man in front of him is bearded and scruffy.  There are four other men as well, all similarly rough-looking.  They all have the eyes of predators and Michael silently swears at himself again for his inattention.

“Just passing through,” Michael says mildly, knowing he will not talk his way out of a conflict here, just buying time to assess his opponents.  Five humans would not normally give him pause, but his current vulnerability is a new factor to deal with.

“Sure,” says the human in front of him.  “Just hand over your wallet, whatever else you have on you, and you can go.”

Using his stronger—an uninjured—left arm, Michael punches the man in the face, breaking his nose and flinging him back several feet where he crumples to the ground with a shout of pain and anger.

Michael’s intention had been to take the moment of surprise to run out of the alley onto a main thoroughfare.  Unfortunately, one of the men is too fast and grabs Michael’s right arm at the wrist before he can run.

Michael howls, unprepared for the intensity of the pain that shoots from his injury and up his arm at the sudden grip. He swings at the man holding him with his left fist.  Another man gets hold of that arm and is dragged along with Michael’s punch, slowing Michael enough that his blow only makes the man’s head snap back but does not make him fall or release Michael’s arm.

Then something hits the back of Michael’s head and he goes to his knees, both arms still trapped.  He is gripped by nausea, from the pain in his arm or the blow to the head, he’s not sure which.  Then he feels another impact to his skull and his vision fades.

Chapter Text

Michael wakes to pain and he wakes fighting, old instincts kicking in.  He wasn’t the Commander of the Host of Heaven because everyone liked him, after all.  He surges to his feet; since he feels no weapons in his hands he lashes out with Fear.  He hears one strangled gasp in response, and he senses the fear of only one person.  All of this happens before his eyes even focus…and they don’t actually seem to be focusing all that well.

Michael takes a breath and takes stock, remembering what happened.  He got his ass beaten by humans, is what.  He is still in the alley.  He looks at the one human who is there; it’s an older man, not one of the ones who jumped him.  Michael reins in his Fear and is grateful that he didn’t unfurl too.  The man in the alley looks relieved…Michael knows it is partly because he isn’t yanking on his fears anymore, but also because the main fear Michael had drawn from him was the worry he had just found a dead kid.  He’d scared the shit out of a good Samaritan who was checking on him.

“I’m okay,” he says, almost adding, “Be not afraid,” but he doesn’t think it will help.  The human accepts him at his word—or at least decides he’s done enough and wants to escape the jolt of fear he just experienced—and hurries away without saying anything.

Michael is actually far less sure that he’s OK.  His head hurts—really, really hurts—and when he touches the back of his head he feels blood matting his hair, and a swollen lump, tender under his fingers.  His movement also awakens sharps pains in his sides, and he suspects he was kicked in the ribs more than once after being knocked out.  He doesn’t even bother to look at his arm, he can tell from the hot ache that the infection is certainly not improved and is probably worse. 

Ironically, he now needs first aid supplies more than ever, but he is unsurprised to learn his phone and cash are gone.  The best he can hope for there is that whichever thief has his phone will be driven insane once Ella starts calling with the frequency of Gabby’s quacks.  Turning away from the pharmacy, he starts heading back toward the place Violet, Ix and Shell had agreed to meet.  He has no idea whether the meeting time has passed, but if it has he’ll just head back to the shelter.  He is ravenously hungry but nothing to be done about that now.

He reaches the place they agreed to meet…it’s close to a Mexican restaurant and the smell of the food is torture.  There are people eating inside, but the foot traffic outside is quiet and he suspects he missed the meetup.  He is trying to decide if it’s worth waiting a bit, or if he should just break down and ask a passing human the time, when Ix suddenly appears at his side.

“I thought you’d show,” Ix says.  He looks Michael up and down and even though Michael’s injuries are mostly hidden, he can’t help but feel Ix can tell he’s hurt.  He’s hit with a little spike of fear from Ix; he tries to not let it in but still gets a taste of some memory of pain.  Ix has been hurt before too, maybe a lot.

“You eat?” Ix asks, and Michael shakes his head, immediately regretting the movement as his headache worsens and he feels nauseous.  Ix is carrying a plastic bag, and he reaches in and hands Michael a take-out container and plastic spoon. 

“Thank you.”  Michael accepts them gratefully, and with some surprise.  “Why are you…”

Ix doesn’t let him continue.  “We all been new to this at some point.  Shell hasn’t been on the street that long either.  Come on, eat while we go.”

Michael opens the container.  It’s plain beans and rice.  He starts spooning it into his mouth as he and Ix start walking, and it’s one of the best things he’s ever tasted. 

“So what happened?” Ix asks once Michael has inhaled more than half of the food.

“I got attacked in an alley,” Michael admits, embarrassed.    

“You got rolled?” Ix sounds surprised.  “You okay?”

Michael really isn’t sure how to answer that.  Is he?  He’s walking around, he’s had worse injuries in his long life, but never from such ordinary earthly objects.  And the idea that something is growing in his arm and his celestial healing is just ignoring it…

“I guess.  My arm is infected…”

Ix stops walking.  “Show me.” 

Michael stops and turns at the unexpected request and the odd spike of fear that accompanies it. “Okay…”  He sets his container of beans and rice on a window ledge so he can pull up his sleeve.  It looks awful; the wound itself looks bigger, maybe from when he was grabbed in the alley, or just from the swelling? 

Ix inhales sharply when he sees it, then he gently takes Michael’s wrist and rotates his arm to see the underside, which is also red but looks mild in comparison.  Ix looks oddly relieved, but he says, “That looks pretty bad.  You might need to go to the clinic.  But they always have some first aid stuff at the shelter, you should ask for that at least.”

Michael pulls his sleeve back down with a hiss of pain, then retrieves his food and they keep walking.  “That’s actually what I was looking for when I got…rolled.  They took my phone and money.”

Ix shrugs like that’s obvious, and Michael supposes that it is.

“You have to stay sharp when you’re alone,” Ix says.  “Stay out of the back alleys, right? We always stay together after dark, but spangin’s better solo.”

Michael is about to ask what ‘spangin’ is, but Ix goes on to say, “When you said your arm was infected, I thought we got you wrong and you’re loused, but you’re cool.  How’d you get the cut?”

“On a metal bedframe,” Michael answers, bewildered by the unfamiliar words Ix is using.  His own reply brings a different strong wave of fear from Ix, incongruously coupled with a sympathetic look. 

“Sorry, man,” Ix says. “Well look, you can hang with us if you want but we’re gonna try to head north, see if we can make it to Stumptown.  You’re tall, you look strong, and it’s safer if you have a big family.”

“I don’t understand half of what you say,” Michael finally admits, “But yeah…I’d like to hang with you.”

Two days later Michael wakes up in a campground 300 miles away from the place he met his new travel companions.  It had turned out that Ix knew a guy who was driving to some town called Yreka—trying to get off the streets and live with his aunt and cousin there apparently—and he was willing to drive them in exchange for gas money. Fortunately, Michael still had cash in his backpack, so he pitched in, and they all got crammed into a beat up sedan.

The guy—who went by Dave, maybe his actual name—had a big atlas of California in his car, a collection of physical maps that covered the entire sizable place.  Michael spent much of the ride memorizing maps of the top third of the state.  He was the one who noticed a campground called Tree of Heaven near Yreka and suggested they could stay there.  He’d learned that Violet had a tent, and she and Shell both had sleeping bags in their packs.  Ix had a blanket he used as a bedroll.  Michael didn’t need anything, it was plenty warm, but he did wish he could bring out his wings.  He was entertained to discover that the campground's namesake Tree didn't refer to the Heaven he knew, but for a species planted by Chinese immigrants to remind them of the home they had left.

Now, Michael wonders what woke him up.  He turns his head at the sound of faint rustling close by and meets the gaze of an animal crouched next to his backpack.  It takes him a moment to process the black-masked face and recognize that it is a raccoon.  It takes him another moment to realize it is a raccoon that has somehow unzipped his carefully zipped backpack and is helping itself to a loaf of bread inside. 

He expects the animal to flee, but it simply holds his gaze while its small, clever hands tear open the bag and extract a slice of bread.  Michael sits up, and the raccoon freezes, then rears up on its hind legs and waddles off, gnawing on the bread as it goes.  Michael chuckles at the brazenness of the creature as it makes its unhurried exit.

Michael gets up to rewrap the remaining bread and close the pack.  As he does so, he becomes half-aware of a sensation tugging at his attention.  It nags without being uncomfortable, until he finally figures out that it is the lack of discomfort that feels different.

He stills, assessing.  The dull aches in his limbs, the headache he’s had since the attack in the alley, even the fiery pain of his swollen arm…they’re all gone.  Hardly daring to believe it, Michael pulls up his sleeve and peels off the gauze that he had wrapped around his suppurating wound.  Smooth, undamaged skin lies beneath, no hint of injury or swelling.  His arm looks exactly as it did before he cut it…except that isn’t exactly true.  Michael feels like his arm is larger, more muscular, than before.

In fact, his clothes feel distinctly tighter overall.

I have healed, and I have grown, Michael thinks.  On an impulse, he snatches up a rock and drags it hard along his skin.  It leaves no mark.  And…I’m invulnerable again.

“What the Hell?” he says aloud, quietly.  None of his human companions make a sound, but a chittering from the darkness makes him think the raccoon has commented on the subject.

“I have never heard of a growth spurt like that.”  Violet makes this remark for the third or fourth time.  They are walking along the road, headed to town.  When cars go by, Violet and Ix hold out their hands in fists with thumbs up.  They’ve told Michael this is hitchhiking, a way of asking for a ride.  They laughed when he told them he thought they were like Roman Emperors in the Coliseum, allowing each passing car to live, rather than giving the thumbs-down of death.

“It’s pretty wild,” Ix agrees, rolling his eyes when Michael looks at him.  “But it must be what it is, how else do you explain waking up to a bigger Mick this morning?”

Which is exactly what had happened.  When Michael had gotten up this morning, Ix’s sound of surprise was the first indication that the changes Michael had detected during the night were even more dramatic than he had realized.  In addition to the healing he had noticed, Michael is at least an inch taller—maybe more—and significantly bulkier.  If the fit of his clothing is any indication, his shoulders are wider and he is more muscular overall.  He longs to unfurl and see if his wings have also grown but has had no opportunity so far.

“Trust me, I don’t understand it either,” Michael says, which is true.  He’s happy though.  Happy that his body is feeling more and more like his own again.  Happy to be done with the headache and double vision.  Happy that is not rotting. He has kept his arm bandaged; it would be far too much to share that he has healed overnight. 

“You’re not like doing the Hulk in slow motion, right?” Violet asks with a laugh.  “I’m really gonna freak out if you start turning green.”

More or less than if I pop out my wings, I wonder? Michael muses to himself, entertained by the comparison.  “Definitely not!” he answers.  “But most of my family are really tall, so I just have a lot of growing to do.”

Violet sticks out her thumb as a smallish car with a canoe on the roof zips past.  Ix laughs.

“Like they’re gonna pick up four of us?” he needles her.  “Were you thinking they might flip the canoe and let us ride up there?”

“Shut it, Ix,” Violet replies, but she’s smiling.  “You never know!”

“It’s good to be in a group, but definitely harder for scoring rides,” Ix says.  “Especially if Mick Hulks out any more on us.”  He looks at Michael.  “I wouldn’t mind getting bigger fast,” he says with a tinge of envy.

“One of my brothers had an…idea…that if you want something enough deep down, you can make your body do it, without even knowing.”  Michael tries to make celestial self-actualization sound just like a fun idea a kid might have.  He knows mortals can’t do it…at least not the way angels do…but he also knows that their minds affect their own health and abilities much more than most of them realize.  ‘Mind over matter,’ as Dr. Linda had put it.

“That would be incredible,” Shell says, with a depth of longing that is almost painful to hear.  Michael wonders what it is that she wants so badly to change.

He still doesn’t know why any of these three are living on the road.  He can sense a familiar brokenness in Ix and Shell that resonates with him.  Whatever hurt them, it’s something each one has lived with for a long time—at least by the standards of young mortals.  It feels wrong to ask directly, but he wishes he could.

Violet is harder to get a read on.  She seems totally…normal, for lack of a better word.  She almost plays the role of mother in this odd little unit.  But she also talks freely about having been in foster care for much of her life and has dropped casual mentions of being too much to handle. 

“You have a lot of brothers?” Ix asks.

“Unfortunately,” Michael agrees, and Ix laughs at that. 

“So what do you do if you don’t get a ride?” Michael asks after they have walked quietly for a time.

“We always do eventually,” Violet says with a shrug.  “If no one picks us up, we go into town and hang there for awhile, see if we can find someone with a car like Dave.”

Michael nods. He is finding he still quite likes the slow pace of walking, the novelty of the landscape crawling by so there is time to notice tiny details, rather than the earth whipping past as a series of vague textures below his wings.  But he knows his companions are not here for leisurely exploration.  They are mostly fleeing threats, maybe seeking other things, and more driven to cover distance.  They also have survival skills more honed to urban environments, though Michael suspects Ix may have broader expertise.

It seems impossible that anyone would stop to pick them all up—most vehicles they see would not even have the physical space for them and their packs—but even more it’s hard to imagine anyone would want to invite four grungy teenagers into their car.  But even as they start talking about whether they should turn off toward a small town, a van lumbers past them and pulls over a short distance ahead.  The van has rounded lines, is painted a shocking green color, and has colorful curtains inside the windows. 

Violet is grinning happily as the passenger door opens and a woman with nearly waist-length frizzy brown hair steps out.  She is wearing a loose flowing dress with a floral pattern and is barefoot.

“You kids need a ride?” she asks.  “We can get you as far as Eugene.”

“Yes, please!” Violet says, and without hesitation goes up and slides open the door on the side of the van.  There is a man in the driver’s seat, a younger man in the back, and the van is a miasma of odors, some pleasant, some less so, but overwhelming as a whole.  But the other three are tossing in their packs and climbing in, so Michael follows their lead.  In no time at all, they are settled and the van is rattling along the road again.

The woman has traded seats with the young man.  She smiles at the four of them and says, “I’m Astrid.  Glad we came along.” 

When she asks, “What are you poor angels doing on the road?” Michael nearly chokes.

“Just prayin’ someone like you would come along!” Violet answers brightly.

Ix leans over and whispers to Michael, “We’re no angels, though, right?”

Michael winks at Ix.  “Speak for yourself, pal,” he replies, and Ix cracks up.

Chapter Text

Before long, Violet and Astrid are chatting like lifelong friends.  They learn that the other two humans are Astrid’s partner and son.  They are as quiet up front as Michael, Ix and Shell are in the back. 

As Michael listens, he gets the strong impression that Astrid and her family make a point of picking up hitchhiking kids.  She opens a cooler of drinks and offers them around and tells Violet about good campsites north of Eugene for when they head on.  She asks a lot of questions—where they are going, where they are from, whether they are in touch with any family…Violet mostly answers for everyone, though sometimes she glances at Michael so he can offer information she doesn’t know how to answer.  He’s not sure whether Violet is answering all the questions truthfully or not.

Michael feels Ix becoming uncomfortable with all the questions.  Ix’s fear is spiking, and it pulls at Michael, scratching at him like a nervous cat.  Michael has been keeping his Fear mojo tightly tamped down, worried that his control is still uncertain as the power comes back to him.  If he opens up, he could draw out more fears accidentally, or project his own.  So Michael just grits his teeth against the scratching feeling and listens to Violet and Astrid talk.

Astrid glances back at the three of them a lot as she talks to Violet, sometimes addressing the whole group.  It is when she says, “I’d be happy to call your families, let them know you’re okay,” that Ix’s suppressed terror erupts.  From the outside, it takes the form of a quick shake of his head as Ix drops his eyes to the floor, one leg bouncing nervously.

Inside, it is a geyser of pain and fear, and Michael tastes the fear automatically before he even realizes it is happening.  In an instant, he knows Ix is fleeing his father, and he knows his father has hurt him terribly.  He tries to not focus on the images that flow to him with the fear but he can’t block them all out and he is sickened and enraged.  He coughs and swallows at the sensation of a terrible taste in his mouth, but it’s not really a taste.

And then, since he has already opened himself to this anyway, Michael takes in more of the fear, drawing off the panic, drinking what he can to give Ix some relief.  He can’t do anything about the deep core of fear, but he can take away what is swirling at the surface and restore some calm.  He sees Ix take a deep breath, relaxing against the seat, his jittering leg settling. 

Michael has not taken someone's fear into himself like this for some time.  The usual conflicting feelings jostle for dominance: anger at the human cruelty that caused this particular trauma, pride at his ability to at least temporarily ease the hold this fear has on the boy. And shame at the way the fear feels good, makes him feel stronger, when he draws it into himself. 

This all happens quickly, quietly.  Michael glances at Astrid, who is still looking their way after her offer to call their parents triggered Ix’s internal panic.  Michael means to say no thank you, politely, but when he meets her eyes he is jolted by another outpouring of fear, this one tinged with sadness.  Caught off guard, he pulls instinctively at her fear too.  It is partially directed at him in some odd way, which makes it even harder to resist.

Again, he is assaulted by images he really hadn’t meant to access.  He feels raw after having just taken Ix’s fear, and the dose of Astrid’s makes him gasp. 

“You lost him,” he says and then realizes in horror that he said it aloud.

Everyone turns to stare at him as Astrid’s mouth drops open.  “How do you know?” she whispers.  Because he does know, now.  Knows that the young man in the front seat is her older son, and that her younger son ran away and they never found him.  And that not knowing if he is alive or dead means she is torn forever between hope and fear, trapped by a Schrödinger's box of family tragedy.  So she tries to help other lost children, but she also fears that she has not done enough for the son she still has…

Michael curls in on himself, trying not to fall deeper into the woman’s well of fear, afraid he will start touching the other minds in the van.  He is not ready for his dark gift to be back in full force, it feels too big for his still-young body. 

“Oh you poor angel,” Astrid says, her shock pushed aside by her need to care for wayward boys.  She is probably already convincing herself that she misheard him, or that he wasn’t really speaking to her, efficiently diverting her concerns toward him.  He almost smiles at being called an angel again…he wants to ask her ‘How do you know?’ but resists.  He feels Ix put a hand lightly on his shoulder, and he is surprised—Ix does not usually want to touch or be touched—but also unexpectedly soothed. 

“I’m sorry…I’m okay,” Michael mutters, not really sure which is the appropriate one to say so he says both.  He doesn’t want to look up and meet any gazes, but he finally glances quickly toward Ix and Shell, and sees only concerned looks back.  He nods reassuringly.  Violet has a puzzled expression, frowning thoughtfully when he looks over at her.  He can’t meet Astrid’s eyes, but after a few moments she and Violet resume talking, more subdued than before, and Michael slumps on the seat in a posture that mimics Ix’s and pulls out his sketchbook.

That night they get to enjoy the luxury of a cheap motel.  Astrid and her family bought them dinner and Astrid went in and paid for the motel room, returning to hand two keys to Violet.  She hugs Violet, and turns toward the others, but clearly is not surprised when Michael, Ix and Shell all put out don’t-touch-me signals of one kind or another.  She looks at Michael and Ix with a clear longing, but then smiles and wishes them well and leaves them with exhortations to be careful.  Her quiet partner gives them sad looks and soft farewells.  Their son stares at them all—but especially Michael—with an intensity very different from his parents, but says goodbye as politely as his father, wishing them all luck.

They head into the motel room.  It’s threadbare but clean. Violet immediately turns on the TV to some show with canned laughter but pays it no attention.  There is some shuffling around as Violet assigns one of the two double beds to herself and Shell, the other to Michael and Ix.  They take turns using the shower.  Michael goes last.  When he is done showering, he considers the confines of the small bathroom and is forced to conclude there is no way to check his wings in here.  They are itching for release, though, so he will have to find some opportunity soon.

When he emerges from the bathroom, the TV is still going in the background, and the three humans are looking at him with that sudden silence that happens when a person being discussed walks into the room.  It is a familiar silence.  Michael has lifetimes of experience walking in on abruptly terminated conversations.  With his siblings, he could usually assume that the remarks he interrupted were not flattering.  With these three humans…he doesn’t know what to expect.  He stops in his tracks and stares back.

“We like you, Mick,” Violet says.  It is not at all the opening he expects, and Michael feels himself smile in relief.

“Our rule is we don’t push on the past,” Violet continues, and the other two nod.  “We tell each other what we want to, when we want to.  Me and Ix know a lot about each other, and Shell has been talking about herself some too.”  Shell looks up at Michael with a quick, shy smile.  “So you can tell us stuff about yourself if you want, but if it’s scary or makes you too sad or mad you don’t have to.”

“Thanks,” Michael answers. 

“But…” Violet adds after exchanging a look with Ix, “sometimes there are things we have to ask.  Like, are you human?”

Michael’s mouth drops open.  “Wh-what?  Why do you…?”

“You grew.  Like, suddenly,” Violet says.  “I don’t care how tall your family is, you got taller and more muscley overnight.”

“And your arm was hurting at lot before,” Ix adds.  “And you have been acting like it’s totally fine and haven’t put any more cream on it.”

So much for leaving his bandage on to hide the healing.

Violet continues the list of admittedly non-human traits.  “Today you did something psychic or something with Astrid.  So what, are you like a werewolf?”

Michael laughs despite himself.  “I’m pretty sure those aren’t real.”

“Vampire?”

That almost gives him pause.  He has called himself that before…or maybe it was a sibling? …for the way he is energized by taking in others’ fear.  But he scoffs.  “No.  I don’t drink blood.”

“What are you then?” Ix asks.  It’s strange.  None of them look afraid of him, just genuinely curious. 

Michael opens and closes his mouth.  How do I answer that? He can lie outright of course...but they are right that he is certainly not like them. 

“I’m…not entirely sure,” he finally answers, and it’s true.  He is not exactly an archangel at the moment, not as he was designed, and he’s never heard of any angel going through the bizarre changes he has been dealing with.

“Okay,” Violet says.  “But you grow and heal super fast and you can read minds?”

“Uh…the growing thing is new.  I have always healed well in the past.  I can’t read minds.”

“So what was that thing with Astrid?”

“I’m very…intuitive…about people’s…” he trails off and then shakes his head.  Why not? “I am sensitive to people’s fears.  I’m good at figuring out what scares them.”  It’s a downgrade of what he can really do, but hopefully enough to satisfy their curiosity.

Ix narrows his eyes.  “You knew that I didn’t want that lady trying to find our parents.”

I knew you were scared shitless at the idea of your father finding you, yeah, Michael thinks.  He nods.  “Yes.  I could tell that spooked you.  I guessed you must have a good reason for not wanting that.”

Ix and Violet share another look and both nod.

“My father…hurt me a lot,” Ix says quietly.  His voice is flat and emotionless.  Michael knows where the fear is coiling below the surface but he does not let himself reach for it.  “I’ve run away lots of times.  He always catches me.  I’m trying to get much farther away this time.”

“I’m sorry…” Michael begins but then Violet speaks. 

“No one can handle me.  I’ve been in foster homes and residential programs as long as I can remember, and with each new placement it’s less time before they give up on me.  Each time I get a new diagnosis and different medications and it’s all supposed to be great.  I think I’m bipolar but the last doctor said borderline personality disorder.  I want to be old enough to just deal with it myself and not keep getting picked up and thrown away all the time.”

Michael doesn’t know what all that means, but there is no doubt Violet is angry and hurt.  She still shows surprisingly little fear, but she may just bury it deep and Michael is not going to go digging.

Violet looks at Shell.  Shell is hunched in a ball, her arms around her knees.  She looks at each of them briefly but looks down at the floor when she speaks.  “My brother came to hate me,” she says softly.  “He beat me, and threatened me, and chased me out of our home.”

They all look at Michael and he understands it is his turn to speak if he wants to.  What can he tell these hurt, rejected children that would explain how he came to be traveling with them? My Father threw me into a body that is not my own? I was afraid I was becoming mortal and would die of some human disease?  I tried to destroy my brother’s life and he gave me my scar in return?

Finally, he speaks. “I always did what my Father told me to do, even if it…hurt others.  I tried to be a good son.  But He just sees me as a tool to be used.  I finally got a taste of freedom, a chance to be something other than a tool.  When He tried to make me go back, I ran.”  Truth, if only a tiny sliver of the whole story.

They accept it like their own stories…as a fragment of insight out of whatever complicated, jumbled path brought each of them to this point.  Michael feels oddly relieved.  He has shared his drop of truth and been accepted. 

Ironically, he feels less like he fits in with them now that he is invulnerable again, even as they seem yet more welcoming.  They are so physically fragile…now that he has had a taste of that he can’t understand how they live day to day knowing they can be so easily broken, infected, killed.  He finds that his respect for humans has magnified with this knowledge.  That so many of them actually do persevere, stay hopeful, even triumph…speaks to some strength of will hidden inside their flimsy bodies.

There are no more questions about what he is, even though he knows he didn’t give them a real answer.  The rest of the evening is spent hopping around different shows on TV, conversation mostly about the things they are watching.  Michael eyes the phone in the room, wishing he could reach out to Ella at least…but he has no idea what her number is, since all he had to do to call her before was tap on the little circle with her face in it. 

Eventually, the door is bolted, curtains pulled tight, and they all settle down to sleep.  Michael curls on his side, back toward Ix, and hopes the itchy urge to unfurl settles before he keeps Ix up all night with his twitching.  Or worse…if he accidentally unfurls. He would be very hard-pressed to evade the ‘what are you’ questions that would follow.  Fortunately, he falls asleep without the sudden intrusion of his feathery divinity.

Chapter Text

The Prince of Heaven is picking cherries.

This is third day he has been doing this and he finds it remarkably peaceful.  He knows it is hard work for the humans, but he since he can work tirelessly at this gentle activity, he fills their flat bins when they need to rest.  The days are sunny and warm, the vistas lovely—a sharp snow-tipped mountain looms against bright blue sky as a backdrop for the orchard where they are picking sweet cherries.  Michael settles into the calm physical rhythm of the work, plucking the ripe cherries, stems attached, from as high as he can reach while his friends work the lower branches.  They are not supposed to eat the cherries but those that are overripe are fair game. Michael realizes he has begun to feel a little burst of pleasure when his fingers touch a too-soft cherry and he gets to pop the sweet fruit into his mouth.  His fingers are stained with cherry juice and judging by the faces of his companions, his lips are probably stained reddish pink as well.

It was Ix who led them on this detour from their northward journey.  His much-feared father had apparently worked as a migrant farmworker on occasion and had taken Ix with him when he happened to have possession of him.  Ix acknowledged that as much as he hated his father, the experience itself had been useful. He had learned how to take advantage of joining harvest crews that got added during peak season for certain crops—short term work crews, usually paid by the weight or volume they harvested as an incentive for hard work. 

They wouldn’t stay even as long as the extra crews were needed; Ix’s father had found him harvesting asparagus the last time he had run away so now Ix didn’t dare settle in for long.  But Ix had suggested the cherry-picking detour, after spotting a flyer written in Spanish, in the hope they might earn enough to take a bus even farther north.

There is a rutted field below the orchard that serves as a camp for the cherry pickers.  There are a few trailers that house longer-term workers. Around these are a scatter of tents, trucks with campers in their beds or hauled behind them, and a couple large RVs.  There is also a large somewhat derelict barn at the edge of the field.  There are rotted gaps in roof and walls, but it is still shelter and seems to have a little time left to it before it collapses completely.  This is where the four of them have elected to sleep, their tent set up as part of their little camp tucked among old hay bales.

They return to the barn camp after dusk ends the long harvest day.  A food truck parks by the orchard for a short time each day around this time, and they purchased burritos for tonight’s dinner.  Michael’s hunger has been ramping up again so he has gotten two burritos himself. 

They eat while sitting in a circle around a flashlight wedged into a crack in the floorboards as an impromptu campfire.  Others have been sleeping the barn but at the moment they are the only ones here.

“We should leave tomorrow, I think,” Ix says.  He’s leaning against a hay bale, drinking a root beer.  He looks relaxed, but his leg is bouncing sightly.

They all look at Violet.  She looks thoughtful.  “I was just about to suggest the three of us go camp somewhere nice while Mick the Machine picks for a week.” 

“Good idea,” Ix says.  “Guy never takes a break, he just makes us look bad.”

Michael smiles. He’s gotten much better at recognizing when Violet is delivering a deadpan joke, quashing his own tendency to take her words at face value.  He’s always been very literal.  But after he fell for a couple of outrageous statements, Violet started targeting him relentlessly in what he can only describe as Human Facetiousness 101. 

Seeing that he’s caught on rather than getting flustered and opposing the plan, Violet grins.  “Yeah, I’m okay to go tomorrow.”  She looks at Shell, who just nods.

When Violet looks at Michael, he shrugs and nods.  “I like picking cherries,” he says, “but I’m happy to keep moving.”

“You’re a weird guy, Mick,” Violet laughs.  “But okay, leaving tomorrow.  We should probably grab groceries tonight in case we can catch an early ride out to the highway in the morning.  I’ll ask the people with cars if anyone is going all the way to Portland just in case.  But otherwise we’ll need food for a couple nights of camping.”

“I’ll go,” Michael offers.  There is a small store a 30-minute walk away from the orchard. 

“Cool.  Ix, you should go too and make sure Mick doesn’t buy anything too weird.”

“It was just that once,” Michael protests.  “And olives aren’t that weird.”

“Yeah, I’ll go,” Ix agrees as Violet pretends to gag at the mention of olives.

On the way back from the store, backpacks loaded with assorted groceries—things like bread, peanut butter, jerky, no olives but Michael insisted on bananas—Ix mentions his mother.

It comes up in a conversation about the food, and Michael’s requirement that they get some fruit even after three days of all the bruised but delicious cherries they could want. 

“My beah loved fruit,” Ix says, almost to himself.  “She liked a piece of fruit with every meal.  She kept dried fruit around always so when she couldn’t afford fresh fruit she could still have that little bite of something.”

Michael notes the past tense but doesn’t comment on it; Ix will tell him more if he wants to. “Your beah?” he repeats, unsure if that is someone’s name or a general name for a family member.  Ix speaks fluent Spanish but it isn’t a familiar word to Michael from the rudimentary Spanish he is gradually picking up. 

“My mother,” Ix explains.  “It’s Nuwuvi for mother.”  At Michael’s quizzical look, Ix continues.  “Paiute. Not him though.”

Michael nods in understanding.  He recognizes the name Paiute but knows little about the Indigenous peoples on this part of the earth, other than knowing their history is deeply traumatic.  Again, he doesn’t probe, but looks at Ix, inviting him to share anything he wishes.

“I used to go back to her when I ran away from him,” Ix says ruefully.  “Like it was safe and he would never think to look for me there.  I was a stupid kid.”

There is silence for a time.  When Ix doesn’t say anything else, Michael surprises himself by speaking.  “My Father threw my Mother out.  They fought all the time but Their final battle was huge.  She was…in a very bad place for a long time after that.  She’s gone now.”

“Did you get to say goodbye?” Ix asks.

“No,” Michael answers, and grief twists in his gut.  Mother isn’t dead, presumably, but she may as well be from his viewpoint.  He will never see her again in her new universe.

“Me neither,” Ix says, and they are quiet after that.

When they get back to the barn not much is going on.  Most people are tucked into their tents or campers.  The barn is dark, though the moving beam of a flashlight shows someone is up in a far corner.  Michael and Ix drop their backpacks and pull out their own lights.  Surprisingly, the tent is dark even though it’s not that late.

“Wow, they must have been tired,” Ix says quietly.

Michael nods absently but then his senses catch up and he shakes his head instead.  “No.”

“What do you mean?”  Ix is whispering, obviously trying to not disturb anyone.

“They’re not in there,” Michael states flatly, at a normal volume.

Ix gapes at him.  “What…? How do you…?”

I can’t hear them breathing and I can’t feel their souls, Michael does not say.  He walks quickly to the tent and unzips the doorflap.  Ix aims his flashlight and confirms the tent is empty.

They look at each other. Michael isn’t sure how much Ix can see in the dark barn, with their flashlights pointed down, but Michael can see everything clearly.  He can see from Ix’s expression that the boy is not bothering to think of harmless explanations for the girls’ absences.  He is assuming the worst.  The fear boiling off him just confirms it.

“Come on.”  Michael leads Ix back outside.  Michael lifts his face to the sky, closes his eyes, and reaches out, opening himself to fears.  He gasps at the initial onslaught.  Fear is dense around them.  Ix’s worry for their friends is sparking next to Michael, sharpened as always by the perpetual fear that his father will appear. People in the trailers and tents are steeped in some of the most basic human fears: afraid of being hungry, of not being able to take care of family, of getting hurt; afraid of being pregnant, of being caught for some mistake…

Michael steadies himself with deep breaths, allowing himself to slide past these deep but quiet fears, the chronic fears of strangers, remembering how to just let them fade into background sensation.  He is seeking more acute fears and feeling for the familiar signature of friends to add to the intensity of the signal.   Of course, he doesn’t want to find them by this method, but like Ix he is starting with the worst assumption—that Violet and Shell are terrified somewhere and they need to act quickly. 

If they are wrong, it will be a funny story along the lines of how Mick and Ix freaked out that time the girls went for ice cream.  If they are right, every moment may count.

They are right.  Michael brushes against a burning spike of dread…two spikes.  They are distant but unmistakable.  Violet, far more frightened than he has even felt her to be, and Shell…Michael whimpers aloud when he tastes the deep horror pouring from her.  He has to fight the instinct to retreat…as well as the instinct to pull harder on that powerful font of terror.

Ix…terrified Ix who doesn’t like to touch or be touched…lays a soothing hand on Michael’s forearm.  Michael nods his thanks and focuses on tracking.  He turns his head from side to side, like a predator scenting the air, trying to feel the direction of the whiffs of fear.  His gift is not meant for this, and it is clumsy, but distance does make a difference.  After several false starts he and Ix are moving in a direction that he is sure bringing them closer to their destination.  He has no way of knowing how far it is.  All he can do is keep them pointed the right way, like a bloodhound on a trail that may go cold.  He has the awful hope that their fear stays strong enough for him to follow and does not think about the reasons their fear might fade, because one of the reasons is too tragic to bear thinking of.

Ix walks with him, guiding Michael around obstacles since he is paying little attention to his feet.  He can’t go in a straight line, they have to detour around trees and houses, but he is getting better at this—and they are presumably getting closer—so the detours do not put them off course.  Ix asks no questions.  He clearly trusts what Michael is doing, mysterious as it may be.

As they walk on, Michael starts to worry about how far they really might be from Violet and Shell.  What if they are in a car driving away?  Will he have to leave Ix and fly after them?  Can he even fly yet?  His wings stir at the thought, and he stiffens his back and shoulders to hold them in.

But then they are there.  They pass through another orchard—apples this time, not yet ripe—and find another trailer, parked behind the orchard, probably as another temporary residence during this orchard’s harvest season.  The moment Michael sees the trailer the fear he has been following rises to a suffocating level.  And now he senses fears from the other humans in there with his friends…and one fear feels like claws of ice because it is a distinct panic over the threat of getting caught for doing a terrible thing.

“Stay here,” Michael growls at Ix and he covers the remaining distance to the trailer in a handful of steps.  He’s paying attention to the sounds now.  Male laughter, some words, ‘come on baby…you’ll like it…I want that one…’ and under it all muffled whimpers and sounds of struggling movement.

Michael has just laid his hand on the door lever when a voice says, loudly, “Fuck! It’s a fucking boy!” and there is the sound of a blow.

Michael tears the door from the trailer and tosses it aside.  It takes him under a second to absorb the scene inside the cramped trailer.  Shell and Violet are lying side by side on a stained, bare mattress.  Both are gagged and their wrists bound with rope.  Both also have their pants pulled down to their knees.

Three human males are turning in surprise.  One had clearly begun taking his own pants down.  One is leaning over Shell and Michael can see the vivid red handprint rising on her belly where he had hit her…just above the penis that she obviously does not consider to be something that makes her a boy.

Michael’s wings unfurl and spread with a furious snap, cutting stripes into the ceiling and wall of the trailer.  They have been furled for so long that a cloud of feather dust bursts out with them, the tiny motes seeming to expand in slow motion as Michael reaches for the human who struck Shell.  He picks the man up by the neck and throws him through the wall of the trailer.  He grabs the other two by their shirtfronts and turns to drag them back out the doorway.  He slices more rents in the trailer as he turns and moves, his bladed primaries slicing through the thin walls like soft cheese.

He throws the two men on the ground.  One tries to stand and he clubs him back down with the unbladed top of his wing.  “Do not move,” he commands them and they freeze, one releasing his bladder.  Michael looks up and sees Ix standing at the orchard’s edge, staring at him.  He is not panicking or running.  Michael nods and turns back toward the trailer.

“Mick! Mick!” Violet is crying as he steps back inside.  She and Shell have both pulled their gags free and rolled on their sides facing each other, knees pulled up to try to hide themselves; they are each trying to pull at the ropes binding the other.  Michael kneels and holds up his hands in a gesture to try to calm their struggles.  He will not take hold of them in any way, but he needs them to hold still to safely slice the ropes with his pinions. 

“Be not afraid,” he murmurs.  He doesn’t know if his words have actual power anymore or if they just recognize him as a friend, but they both go still and let him carefully cut the ropes free.  He unblades and mantles his wings over them, his head raised, so that they can re-dress themselves.  He eyes the legs of the man he threw through the wall, who has not moved, and wonders if Father will do anything if he has killed that one.

When he feels Violet’s hand pressing at his feathers, Michael lifts his wings away and offers his hands to help them up.  They both take a hand and he pulls them to their feet.  Violet grabs him, wraps her arms around his neck, buries her face against his shoulder, and sobs.  He sets his hand lightly on her upper back.

Shell doesn’t embrace Michael, but she nods at him, keeps nodding, as she touches his face, hair, shoulder with her fingertips.  Then she reaches her shaking hand to touch the arch of his wing.  He holds very still as she rests her fingers on the coverts.  She looks at him and he nods.  She steps closer and he curves his wing forward.  She presses her cheek to his wing and just stands there, fingers tucked into the downy bases of his coverts. 

Michael is still for several minutes before he shifts slightly to get their attention before gently disengaging.  He doesn’t want any of them to get overwhelmed by the presence of his wings as humans often do.  He helps Shell, then Violet, out of the wrecked trailer.  Ix is standing there, awkward but surprisingly calm, and the three share a non-verbal exchange that seems reassuring.

Michael looks down at the two cowering humans.  It’s easy to see these two have already have plenty of guilt to send them to Hell, but Michael digs deeply into their fears all the same, leaving them exposed and terrified.

He then goes to check on the human on the far side of the trailer.  He is alive, just unconscious.  This one has less guilt, less fear than the other two, and that fact enrages Michael.  All three of these worthless humans deserve Hell, but this one most of all.  They were clearly all prepared to rape teenage children, but this one had added the extra violation of denying Shell’s own identity to her face, had hit her for not conforming to his expectations for his victim, yet dares to not feel guilt about it.

His wings blade again in anger, but killing the human would not be useful.  After a moment of thought, he takes all the fear he had carefully tracked to find this place, all of Violet and Shell’s fears of hurt, humiliation, and death that had been their horrific lifeline to Michael, and he forces it into the vile human below him.  Pushing fear, creating fear, had always been nearly impossible…nearly.  Sometimes his fury, his repugnance, is great enough to reverse the poles of his strange gift.

Sometimes.  Like today.

They walk back to the barn together.  Michael still doesn’t know if he can fly, though it felt like he probably could when he unfurled.  Maybe he could fly them one by one, or just fly back for their gear, but he doesn’t want any of them to be left alone for any time.  Violet and Shell both insist they don’t need medical care.  So they walk.  They go most of the way in silence, everyone processing the immediate aftermath of the day’s traumas and revelations, all too much to talk about yet. 

Before they walk through the populated field to reach the barn, they pause on the side of the road.

“So,” Ix asks quietly, “What are you, then?”

“I’m an archangel,” Michael replies, just as softly. 

“San Miguel,” Ix says, and Michael nods.

No more is said as they make their way to their camp in the barn to sleep if they can.

Chapter Text

Michael is not sure what wakes him, maybe a noise or the dim dawn light showing through the many cracks in the barn.  Whatever it is, he comes awake quickly, lifting his head, senses alert.  When no danger presents itself, he relaxes, only then becoming aware of his immediate surroundings.

Michael is lying face down on a pile of all of their blankets and sleeping bags, spread over a pile of soft old hay.  His wings are out and open to the sides, draped like dark blankets across his companions, Ix to his right, Violet and Shell to his left.  They are all asleep. He can feel that Shell has a feather gripped tightly in one hand.

So much for not exposing them to too much divinity.  Michael is glad his brother is not here to see him like this, looking far too much like a bird protecting its fledglings.  But even as he mocks his own image, Michael is also gripped by a fierce protectiveness.  They are friends, not fledglings (at least no more than he is at the moment) but his first impulse was correct.  He is protecting them…has already done so, aggressively…and would do it again without hesitation. 

Lucifer has done this for his human friends.  Michael knows this all too well. The scar on his face came from his twin’s ensuring Michael could not endanger them by pretending to be Lucifer ever again.   At the time, he had attributed Lucifer’s rage more to possessiveness, fed by the hatred he had so long felt for Michael.  Even after reconciling with Lucifer, Michael hadn’t really given his brother’s motivations any additional thought.

Now, though, Michael understands for the first time a need to keep fragile, precious humans safe.  He is somewhat shocked by the intensity of the feeling, but it is undeniable.

He looks at the sleeping group.  So do we call this a flock?   He almost laughs out loud at the thought.  For all the times he or Lucifer have protested being compared to birds, avian imagery certainly comes easily.  Not to mention how easily he bonded with Ella’s chicken or his own rescued duckling. 

The thought of Ella comes with a pang.  He misses her, even just talking to her on the phone.  She would definitely be a part of this flock, he thinks idly, then frowns and considers that thought with more care.  Yes…she would be…and he realizes that he would protect her just as ferociously as he had Violet and Shell the night before.

He is not sure how to prepare for the inevitable moment the others start waking up.  They had all been in shock last night…which would have been the case after their ordeal even without the added surprise of learning their travel companion was in fact an archangel. 

Would they awaken terrified?  Michael’s only recent experiences of revealing his angelic nature had happened when he and Lucifer had appeared as non-threatening 8-year-olds.

Non-threatening? Try harmless and adorable to the point of ridiculousness.  Little boys with downy wings like goslings hardly evoked the fear of God’s warriors as their adult forms could.  But where would awkward teenaged archangel land on that continuum?

The far end of the horror scale would be his twin’s burned Devil face.  Even those who already cared about him panicked when they saw that.  But his angelic side was much closer to the non-terrifying end.  Most humans got stupidly drunk on the divinity of his glorious white wings; between that and his Desire Lucifer could mostly decide whether or not to be scary.

For all that they prayed to and otherwise went on about “Saint” Michael, in practice most humans over the millennia were pretty terrified when they came face to face with the Angel of Fear and the darkness around him, even when he pulled out his best “Be not afraid.”  It was telling that his wings were usually depicted in human art to be just as shiny white as Lucifer’s, to the point that he felt ashamed of the glossy black of his actual wings.  And his friends (hopefully still his friends) had seen his wings fully bladed, used as weapons against other humans.  Was it enough that he did so in their defense?

So busy organizing his mental scale of angelic scariness, Michael fails to pay enough attention to the actual friends he is worrying about.  So he is completely surprised by Ix’s voice murmuring “Shit, that’s so cool,” followed by a hand touching the elbow joint of his wing.  Michael jumps in surprise, automatically lifting his wings high out of reach…or trying to.  He had forgotten Shell’s solid grip on a pinion, which she does not release when he moves, so he gives an ignominious yelp when he nearly leaves a flight feather behind in her hand.  Both wings drop back down in response, getting an “oof” from Ix, who had begun to sit up until Michael knocked him back flat.

Looking at the three now thoroughly awake faces staring at him over his wings, it occurs to Michael that “Be not amused,” might be the more apropos line right now.  It has the exact opposite effect on him and Michael laughs out loud.

Violet laughs right back.  Ix kind of snorts, and Shell gives a small smile.  Apparently a slapstick awakening put him in a good spot on the angel scariness scale.

Michael pushes himself up on his knees, tugging very gently at the feather in Shell’s hand, which she now releases.  Michael folds his wings tightly against his back but does not furl them yet.  He does look around to make sure there is no else visible in the barn.  The other three sit up as well.  There are a lot of looks being exchanged, everyone clearly waiting for someone else to speak first.

Ix takes the plunge.  “So.  You are Saint Michael.”

Michael doesn’t roll his eyes but it’s a near thing.  “Just Michael.  Or Mick is good too.”

Violet is staring at his folded wings where they rise above his shoulders.  “If you start to feel faint or anything…” Michael begins, still worried about possibly melting any of their brains, but Violet cuts him off.

“I asked a goddamn fucking angel if he was a vampire,” she bursts out.  Ix snorts again, more of a laugh this time.  Shell looks surprised.  Michael is momentarily startled by her vehemence—not so much by the profanity—and then he laughs too. 

“It was as good a guess as any,” Michael admits.  “I mean, you certainly had figured out I am not…well, human.”

“I have seen pictures of Saint Michael,” Ix says.  “In church and in people’s houses.  In the pictures you are usually blond with white wings like other angels.”

Michael hides a grimace, and he will not point out that in fact the only angel with white wings is actually the Devil.  Before he can explain that no, he has neither white wings nor a golden halo, Ix smiles and says, “You look much better this way than in the pictures.”

When Michael just looks at him in surprise, Ix lifts a hand toward Michael’s wing…not even close to touching it but clearly indicating it.  “My beah was very pretty.  People said her hair was like a crow’s wing because it was so smooth and shiny.”

Michael blinks and stretches his right wing out.  It’s not exactly at its most sleek, badly in need of a grooming, but the faint glow of divinity helps offset that.  He looks at Ix and extends the wing toward him in invitation.  Ix gives him a shy look before reaching out to run his palm lightly over the top of Michael’s wing.

“No fair, give me some wing too!”  Violet is actually pulling at his still-folded left wing. Startled at being manhandled by the brash young human, Michael opens his wing to Violet’s triumphant grin.  She buries her fingers in his coverts and he forces himself to stay still even though the sensation tickles. 

Michael looks at Shell.  She is gazing at the wing in front of her.  Then she looks at him and tears spill over, and the next moment she is pushing past Violet and throwing her arms around Michael’s neck and sobbing.  Violet and Ix both move slightly and Michael wraps both wings around Shell, ready to hold her in that safe, black cocoon as long as she needs him to.

Sitting at a picnic table in a park, eating sandwiches, Michael waits for the next question.  Violet and Ix have been more or less taking turns, asking questions in no particular order.  Ix’s father turns out to be Catholic, and Ix has clearly been dragged to church enough in his life to have that particular view of God and His angels.  At one point in the conversation, Violet says she has been subjected to assorted religions in different foster homes and had pretty much concluded they were all “total bullshit,” but maybe had to rethink that in light of befriending an archangel.

Michael scoffs at that.  “Just because we exist doesn’t mean any given religion isn’t bullshit,” he tells them, which gets a bit of a shocked look from Ix and a laugh from Violet.  Shell is quiet, leaning against Michael’s side while she nibbles her sandwich.  She has barely spoken, and has maintained near-constant contact with Michael, since they woke that morning in the barn.  However, she makes eye contact, smiles, nods or shakes her head in response to questions, so none of them pressure her and Michael lets her hold his hand or press into his side as she wishes.

“Humans invented religions based on limited and frequently inaccurate information,” Michael continues in response to Violet’s comment.  “Some parts are right, some are just a bit off, and some are absolutely hilarious inventions or bizarrely literal interpretations of metaphorical stories.  Don’t get hung up on those details.”

“So your wings,” Ix begins, and Michael smiles.  Questions about his wings have dominated, and he thinks there is only one question they haven’t asked.  They’ve covered where his wings go when he furls them (somewhere else), whether he can feel them when they are there (yes), whether he can actually fly (yes, they’re almost definitely big enough now but he hasn’t tested it), whether he plans to test it soon (definitely), and why they look a little dusty (he hasn’t had them out enough and really needs to clean them, and yes angels can and do get dirty).

“Do they molt at a certain time of the year?”

Okay, there was more than one question left.  “No…” Michael answers.  “I just replace injured or lost feathers as necessary.”  It was kind of amusing to think of angels having a seasonal all-at-once molt.  It would certainly create a best time of the year for attacking the Silver City, when all the Host was grounded awaiting new pinfeathers. 

“How did they…” Violet starts, and her hesitancy makes Michael sure this is the actual question he is expecting.  “…um…turn into knives?”

That’s the one.  “Our wings were made to be weapons,” Michael replies quietly.  “I’m not entirely sure how to explain the how. It’s like forming your hand into a fist.  We can do it deliberately, but it’s also sort of automatic when we are threatened.”

“Why would angel wings be weapons?” Violet asks.

“Angels are God’s warriors,” Ix answers before Michael can.  “And Sai—and Michael is the Commander of Heaven’s Armies.  Right?”

Michael wonders if he should insert a Be not afraid now.  His goal is to be not terrifying.

“Yes, that was true,” he answers slowly.  “But since I have become…um…too young, that’s really not my job at the moment.”

Ix frowns.  “How do you become too young?”

This is another question he has been waiting for.  “It was a lesson from my Father.” That sounds less intimidating than punishment from God. “I was never a child…angels are made fully grown.  But my Father changed me into a young child…like an eight year old.” He leaves out that his twin shared the ‘lesson’ with him.  He is definitely not ready to introduce the Devil into this whole conversation.

“Whoa,” Violet says.  “So you’ve been growing up like people do?”

“Sort of.” Michael shrugs.  “It’s not as…linear.  You saw the way I got a lot older overnight.  That’s happened a few times now.”

Shell stirs and surprises them all by speaking at last.  “He made you little even though you were never little before?  Did you want that?”

“No, I didn’t,” Michael says softly, as if he might scare her voice away again if his own is too loud.

“Well, that was wrong.”  Her assertion is firm, Michael’s heart warms.  This shy little human just stated in no uncertain terms that God fucked up.

“I have a ton more questions,” Violet says, and that is surely true.  “For one, why is an angel living rough when you could go anywhere?  But on that subject, we need to decide where we are all headed next.  Assuming…you’re staying with us?”

Violet delivers the question accompanied by the first real sign of fear she has shown.  Ix also looks at Michael nervously, and he feels Shell tense against his side.  He feels the same fear from all of them—fear that he will leave now that they know.  And it is not that they want him to stay because he is an angel.  They are worried that he could only be their friend if they didn’t know his secret.

Michael has to tamp down the impulse to unfurl in this public park so that he can pull them all into his wings.  “Of course I’m staying with you,” he says emphatically.  “You’re the ones who took me in, I should be asking you if you want me to stay.”  He feels a twinge even saying it—after all, he has been deceiving them all this time, it would not be out of the question for them to be angry about that—but he knows they want him to remain with them.

Ix quirks a smile.  “You have a point there, Mick.  I suppose we should vote on it.”

It takes a couple of days to make their way to Portland.  They’re in no hurry.  They still have money they earned picking cherries, and the three humans seem both surprised and delighted to learn that the archangel in their midst has a very laissez-faire approach to the concept of sin.  When Michael notices Violet casually pocket a few items from a display in front of a shop, he shrugs at the nervous look she gives him once she realizes he saw it. 

She seemingly tests her discovery a short while later, nabbing a light jacket from the back of a chair at a café.  When Michael again just rolls his eyes and doesn’t otherwise react, she gives the jacket to Shell and grins. 

Michael really doesn’t care.  Given what these kids have been through, he’s hardly going to get worked up over a bit of petty theft, especially given that his habit throughout the millennia has been to help himself to anything he wished when on earth.  He won’t condone murder and draws a line somewhere in physical harm—some harm is reasonable but one shouldn’t overdo it.  Otherwise, if they aren’t taking from anyone harder up than they are themselves, whatever.  The fact that most of the other humans he knows well work for the LAPD isn’t enough for him to worry about such minor crimes.

But thinking of the LAPD…At some point, he needs to make the effort to figure out how to contact Ella, who’s probably worried.  Michael briefly considers praying to Lucifer but dismisses the idea immediately.  It feels too much like calling for help, which he doesn’t need.

Michael is nervous about going back into a city.  He isn’t sure why at first, finding himself tugging at fears of people who come close, but eventually concludes it’s because he is feeling hyper-protective of his friends.  Crowds of people mean more potential threats, so he is instinctively reading the fearscape for anomalies that could signal danger.

Paranoid, he scoffs at himself, and concentrates on being calm.  He does fairly well, relaxing fractionally as they follow Violet’s lead.  Violet is adept at finding the communities of houseless youth, connecting and learning about the resources and safe places, and the dangerous ones.  As they move further into the city, following a big river spanned by multiple bridges, Michael feels his worries ease a bit more.  At least that is what he thinks.

It becomes clear that he is still far more keyed up than he realizes when he nearly decapitates Mazikeen as she jumps out at him as they pass under a bridge.

Chapter Text

“Holy shit, Michael, take it easy!”

The tableau only lasts for a moment, but it is quite striking for that moment.  Mazikeen crouches in the brush next to the pathway, one hand on an undrawn karambit at her belt, the other raised in a gesture of surrender, while she looks at Michael past the bladed pinion poised a few inches from her neck.  Michael in turn is frozen in an aggressive stance, his left wing extended to threaten Maze, the other spread in front of his friends, between them and the demon.

The moment is all it takes for Michael to realize he just unfurled in public and while it is shadowy and quiet under the bridge it is still daytime in a sizable city.  He folds his wings away with a snap that sends leaves fluttering around them.  A few seconds later, two people on bicycles zip past, cheerfully ringing bells to give warning.

Before Michael or Mazikeen can say anything, Violet bursts out, “Leave him alone, lady!”

Michael almost laughs aloud at the expression on Maze’s face.  A small human defending an archangel against a Lilim is quite the unusual occurrence.  Fortunately, Mazikeen’s dumbfounded expression morphs into amusement, not anger. 

“It’s okay, I know her,” Michael assures Violet.  “Her name is Mazikeen.”

Maze steps closer and laughs.  “You’re a bit jumpy, Michael.  Want to tell me what you’re doing with three kids who don’t seem at all surprised by the fact that you have wings?”  She gives him an appraising look.  “Grown up quite a bit too, haven’t you?”

Michael ignores the suggestive edge to her voice.  “These are my friends,” he says simply.  “And I’m not jumpy.  You’re the one who jumped out at me.  What are you doing here anyway?  Did Lu—did my brother send you to find me?”

Maze notices the way he avoids Lucifer’s name and glances at the human kids with a knowing look.  “Of course he did.  He promised not to bother you, but he did give you a phone so you could stay in contact, which I gather you’ve done a shitty job at.  Ellen has been freaking out, she says you talked once and you promised to keep in touch, then immediately stopped answering your phone.”

“My phone was stolen,” Michael says, then wishes he hadn’t admitted that.  He should have just said it was broken.  He doesn’t want to reveal his intermittent vulnerability to Maze, even though he trusts her.  It’s instinctive to hide weakness, especially from a demon, trusted or not.

Fortunately, rather than jumping to the conclusion that Michael was overpowered in a mugging, Mazikeen makes the other (admittedly more likely) assumption: that he’s an idiot.

“Figures,” she snorts.  “You gotta keep it close.  I just hope you weren’t dumb enough to let someone swipe it right out of your pocket.”

Michael tries to look offended rather than relieved, but it doesn’t matter because Maze is turning to retrieve a small duffel from the brush where she had first appeared.  She fishes out a phone from an outside pocket and hands it to him.  “I figured you’d have broken yours or something.”

Michael accepts the phone. The others have moved close to him, Ix at his left side, Shell and Violet to his right.  They are all looking at Mazikeen with expressions of mixed curiosity and suspicion.  A pretty good combination, in fact. 

Ix is frowning at Maze.  He leans closer to Michael and asks, “She’s not an angel too, is she?”

Maze and Michael both bark similar laughs.  “Do I look like an angel, kid?” Maze responds, greatly amused.

“Not really,” Ix answers, and Violet adds, “But neither does he,” jerking a thumb at Michael.

“Hey,” Michael protests weakly, though scruffy and scarred as he is it’s a fair assessment.

“Except when you have your wings out,” Shell says softly, and Michael gives her a grateful smile.

Maze looks at Michael and he wonders if she is going to announce she is a demon, and whether he should stop her.  Dealing with an angel is one thing, learning that demons are real so soon after seems like too much, even given the remarkable resilience these young humans have shown in the face of everything.  But Maze just ignores the unasked question and tosses the duffel to Michael.  He catches it and lifts an eyebrow.

“Care package.  From your brother, so it may just be full of hair gel and sex toys, but there you go.  At least there’s the phone.  Call Ellen.  Text me if you need anything.”  With that, Maze turns and stalks off (do demons ever just walk away?) without another word.  Michael watches her go, then turns to face the three sets of questioning eyes trained on him.

“Who in the hell was that?” Violet demands, unintentionally asking exactly the right question.

Ix, on the other hand, has a different concern.  “That isn’t really a bag full of sex toys, is it?”

The duffel bag is not filled with sex toys, or hair gel, as it turns out.

They discover the actual contents of the duffel from the comfort of a comfortably mid-range hotel on the east side of the river they were following.  This luxury was made possible by the discovery of a driver’s license and credit card in Michael’s name in the same outside pocket of the duffel that had held the phone.  The ID presents Michael as a barely plausible 21.  They decided that testing the credit card was the immediate priority, which they did first by buying dinner at a Thai restaurant, and then by getting a room at this hotel.

Now they are all sitting on one of the two queen-size beds in the room, watching as Michael unpacks his ‘care package.’

The first thing Michael pulls out is a raincoat, followed by a pullover that seems to be made of a light wool that is incredibly soft.  Knowing Lucifer, it’s probably made from the fleece of some exotic rare sheep, sheared and spun by blind monks in a remote mountain monastery or some similarly preposterous provenance. 

Next Michael pulls out a startlingly large roll of money.  He blinks at it then hands it wordlessly to Violet. 

The rest of the contents are mostly unremarkable—some more clothes, a few toiletries, and the like.  At the very bottom of the bag, Michael lifts out a pad with different weights of high-quality drawing paper, followed by a collection of pencils, charcoals, and a little stackable set of watercolors along with a handful of brushes.

Michael stares at the pile of art supplies, a bit stunned.  What inspired Lucifer to add these items?  There is no way for Lucifer to know that Michael has been sketching on this trip.  Maybe it is just intended as encouragement since child-Michael had begun to rediscover his artistic side.  It is a thoughtful gift, and it brings an unexpectedly fond smile to Michael’s face.

When he looks up, it is to see Ix and Shell smiling at him, and Violet counting the wad of cash, her eyes wide.

“Nice of your brother to send you this,” Shell says softly.  There is a quiet yearning in her eyes, and Michael knows she is thinking of her own brother who drove her out.  It seems most likely that their rift was over Shell’s gender identity.  He has a sudden surge of guilt thinking about all the times he has called Lucifer Samael just to make him angry.  In their child forms, Lucifer let him call him Sam, and Lucifer in turn called him Mi.  Both nicknames have echoes of what passed for their actual childhoods, when they were newly made and inseparable.  But Samael doesn’t exist anymore.  Michael resolves to use only Lucifer’s chosen name from now on.

Michael knows his friends want to ask about this brother, but questions about family still seem to follow the rules of don’t push, but anyone can share if they want to.  Given they know he is an angel, Michael doesn’t quite know how to tell them that his apparently benevolent gift-giving brother is in fact the Devil.  And that today they met his right-hand demon.

After a few quiet moments in which Michael doesn’t volunteer anything, Violet announces, “Dibs on first shower!” and runs to the bathroom.

“Second!” Shell calls immediately.

Michael and Ix look at each other, and Michael just grins.  “Third,” Ix says, grinning back.

When Michael emerges from the fourth shower some time later, he finds the other three talking quietly on one of the beds, with the TV on and ignored in the background.  They stop talking and all look at him at once, which makes Michael pause.

“What?” he asks.

The other three look at each other and he guesses they have been puzzling over him or Maze or whatever else while he showered.  He waits to see what they’ll settle on to ask.

Ix is the first to speak.  “Do you wash your wings in the shower?”

Okay, not what I was expecting.  “Uh, usually not.  They can take a long time to dry, and I don’t like to, um, put them away wet.”

“But you said they were dirty,” Violet points out.  “How do you usually deal with them?”

This one time Ella’s chicken groomed them, Michael thinks but definitely does not say.  I don’t, really, is another currently accurate answer.

He sits in chair and speaks hesitantly.  “Ah, sometimes I do use water but it’s not what’s best.  Ideally, they need frequent preening…” Which requires help.  More help than a chicken can give. 

He’s trying to think how to describe preening when Violet nods.  “Right.  So do you have oil glands?”

Michael gapes as the three look at him expectantly.  Violet is holding her phone. He realizes they must be looking up feather care and he laughs out loud.  “I do, in fact,” he answers with amusement.  “I also have feather dust that serves a similar purpose.”

“Oh, like the powder down,” Shell says, pointing at something on Violet’s phone.

“Right.”  Violet is frowning.  “But I thought it sounded like birds that have powder down don’t have preen glands…”

Michael clears his throat and all three look up at him again.

“I’m not a bird,” he says simply, smiling to show he’s not offended.

Ix and Violet give startled laughs, and Shell covers a smile with her hand. 

“S-sorry…” Ix stammers, but Michael waves a hand.

“It’s okay, really.  I’m not a bird, but you could say birds do have a little in common with angels.  So yes, some of the aspects of, er, feather care are similar.”  Michael pauses.  “Why do you ask, exactly?”

The others exchange looks, and it is Shell who answers.

“We want to help you with your wings,” she says with unusual confidence.  “They are enormous, so it seems like it must be really hard for you to do it yourself.  And you’ve done so much for us that we thought this would be a way to thank you.”

“We’ve looked it all up,” Violet adds.  “Uh, at least for birds,” she amends.  “So we know how you need the feathers aligned right, and the…barbules zipped, and that oil is important…”

Michael is nearly overwhelmed by an early memory, one of many pleasant times when groups of siblings would relax together and take turns grooming each other’s wings.  It was family bonding time, a way for highly tactile angels to give and receive touch…and a grooming partner really was the only way to do it properly.

“Okay,” he agrees, surprising himself.  “Let’s give this a try.”

It is definitely a one-wing-at-a-time room. 

Michael unfurls carefully by the door, opening his wings enough to fluff the feathers and shake them out a few times in preparation.  Then he makes his way to stand between the two beds.  There are then several comedic minutes in which Michael tries to find a comfortable position that will also allow him to extend his wings more or less fully. 

After dislodging a picture from one wall, sweeping a lamp off the bedside table, and nearly knocking Violet off her feet, Michael finally finds himself sitting crosslegged on the bottom corner of one bed, facing the headboard, with a wing extended along the base the bed, the space between the two beds, and part of the second bed.  His other wing droops unceremoniously off the edge of the bed to the floor. 

His three friends stand arrayed along his wing—Shell by his shoulder, Violet at his elbow, and Ix out at his wing wrist.  He has reassured them that they will not encounter anything sharp right now, not that they asked.  They dive in under his…well mostly Violet’s…direction, starting by digging under his coverts to the skin underneath, collecting the powder that will smooth into a light oil as it is worked into his feathers.  He gives an involuntary sigh at the sensation.

All the fingers buried in his feathers go still.  “It’s okay?” Shell asks.

“It feels—really nice,” Michael says, managing to not say ‘heavenly.’  “Sorry, it’s been a long time, I’d kind of forgotten how good it feels.  I wish you guys had wings so I could reciprocate.”

They laugh at that and resume grooming him, settling into a rhythm, smoothing and straightening every feather, the powder breaking down under the pressure of their fingers.  They are quiet for some time, until Shell says, “They’re getting so shiny!” and Ix responds, “I can’t believe we’re really preening an archangel,” and after that they settle into desultory conversation.  Michael barely follows it, he just relaxes into a blissed-out daze, his one job holding his wing up so they can work.

Michael wakes up face-down, wings out and hanging over both sides of the bed.  The room is dim, but the light edging the drawn curtains tell him it is day.  He lifts his head to look around and hears Ix say, “Oh, he’s up.”

Michael folds his wings close to his back so he can get up.  They feel sleek and light as they move.  Ix and Violet are sitting on the other bed.  Judging by the closed door and sound of water running, Shell is in the bathroom.  “When did I fall asleep?”

Violet laughs.  “Maybe halfway through your second wing.  You went from purring to out cold, still sitting up.”

“Purring?”  Michael blinks, not feeling fully awake.  “I’m not a cat.  I don’t purr.”

Violet shrugs.  “Well, we can call it something else but there was a rumbly hum coming out of you that sounded a lot like a happy cat.  When it stopped we realized you were asleep.”

Ix laughs, maybe in part at Michael’s affronted expression.  “Then we just eased you down and finished that wing.  You’ve been out.  Guess you needed some rest.”

Michael laughs.  He should be a little worried…he’s not much of a guardian angel if he's sleeping that hard…but he’s feeling too content to care at the moment.  He opens his wings a little, curving them forward, delighted to see how smooth and glossy they are now.  They don’t have the intense iridescent sheen they would get from using his oil, but they look healthy and shiny again.

Shell comes out of the bathroom just as Violet opens the curtains to let daylight in.  His wings are even glossier-looking in the light.

“Oh my God, they look so pretty!” Shell exclaims, and Michael is feeling mellow enough to just laugh rather than protesting that God’s weapons are rarely called pretty.

“Actually, Dad doesn’t have wings,” he jokes, “But thanks.”  He stretches his right wing, admiring its perfection…no hint of the old injuries or self-actualized rattiness it once showed.  After a few moments of flexing and turning it, Michael is startled by a strange voice saying…almost squawking… “Pretty bird!”

He turns to find Ix and Violet in gales of laughter, Violet holding up her phone which seems to be repeating, “Pretty bird!” over and over in that awful voice.  Then Michael realizes there is a video playing.  It shows some kind of parrot, looking at itself in a mirror, wings spread wide, shrieking “Pretty bird!” at its own reflection.  Shell has come around to see and is laughing too.

Michael laughs despite himself.  And to think he was worried they would be overwhelmed by the divinity of his wings.  More like divine comedy, though not the way Dante meant it.

He gives his wings as much of a flap as he can in the constrained space, which is enough to create a small tornado of paper and clothing and comparably lightweight objects, and then furls them away.

“If you are done comparing me to species that I predate by billions of years, how about we go check out the complimentary breakfast?  I’m really hungry.”  Even as he says it, Michael realizes he is ravenous, and his stomach makes an actual rumbling sound the way the stomachs of hungry humans sometimes do.  Which is very odd.  He looks down at his own belly as if it has said something rude.

“Well, that’s no purr,” Violet laughs.  “I’m in, let’s go eat!”

Chapter Text

The devastation four teenagers can wreak on a complimentary breakfast is impressive enough.  When one of the ‘teenagers’ is an unexpectedly ravenous archangel, the results are epic.  The hotel staff who are responsible for monitoring the morning buffet look completely stumped when they come to refill the big warming tray with scrambled eggs for the third time.  They look around the not-very-crowded dining room, accurately settling their gaze on the teens, and then watch in amazement as Michael inhales another plate heaped with eggs.  Michael ignores the audience as he finally sits back and tries to decide if he has eaten enough.  He is fairly sure he has eaten a volume of food that would not actually fit within a human stomach, but wherever it is actually going, it seems there is room for a bit more. 

His friends, who are gorging themselves impressively enough, watch Michael eat with something like awe. 

“Jesus,” Violet says.  “Do all angels eat like this when they can?”

Michael laughs. “Why are you calling me by my half-brother’s name?” he asks, and Violet and Ix both give surprised snorts.  “And no, angels usually don’t need to eat at all, except if we are on the earthly plane for a while.  But still, nothing like this.”

“Maybe a growth spurt,” Ix muses.  “You’re already so tall, but maybe you are going to get taller.”

Michael downs a glass of orange juice and then nods.  “I should get taller,” he agrees.  “I started out at 6’3”.”  It is Shell who laughs at the incongruity of his statement this time.

Violet is looking at Michael with a thoughtful expression.  “So, Mick, we should decide where we are going next.  Things are a little different now that your brother gave you cash and a credit card.  If we still want to go to Seattle, we can get there a lot easier if you want to spend the money that way.”

Michael realizes Violet is asking the question, a little obliquely, of whether he will treat the cash from his brother as his alone, even though he had already handed it to her to manage for them all.  “We have to decide that together, don’t we?” he asks.  “It belongs to all of us.”

The other three all smile.  They clearly had still been a little worried that Michael might choose to leave their group now that he had means, and had contact with his friends and family.  At some point, of course, he will have to consider going back to LA, and facing his Father.  But he is not about to leave these friends on their own anytime soon.

Ix looks at Shell.  “Instead of spending money on getting to Seattle,” he says slowly, “maybe we stay here a bit longer and see if we can get the…medicine for Shell.”

A hopeful expression crosses Shell’s face, but then she lowers her eyes.  “It’s not fair to spend that much just on me,” she tells them quietly.

“Wait, what medicine?” Michael asks, worried.  He hadn’t known Shell was sick.

Shell blushes faintly, eyes still lowered.  Violet leans close and whispers to him.  “Hormones, Mick, you doofus.  You may do it faster, but you’re not the only one growing up around here.”

It takes Michael a moment of Violet and Ix watching him with amusement and Shell keeping her eyes on her plate before he says, “Oh!”  in sudden understanding.  Of course, Shell doesn’t want her body to become even more mismatched with who she really is, but human biology doesn’t respond to such disconnects.  A pity humans can’t self-actualize like celestials.  Michael’s sister Gabby hadn’t always been his sister, but fortunately for her, she eventually self-actualized her body to match who she was inside. 

“I think that’s a good idea,” Michael says, and Ix nods in agreement.

“Sounds like we’ve voted,” Violet announces.  Shell still has her eyes down, but she lifts her head a little with a smile, and Michael has the impression that her eyes are a little extra bright with unshed tears.

“Try a clinic first?” Violet asks Shell, who nods.  “She found a clinic in LA that actually gave counseling and prescriptions for trans kids on the streets.  Had to navigate the protesters to get in but worth it, right, Shell?”

Shell nods again.  “With you telling off the protesters it was,” she says with a smile.  “I would have chickened out otherwise.”

“Anytime!” Violet grins.  “Anyway, Portland is pretty progressive so we can find the free clinics and see if there are any programs like that here.”

“And if there aren’t?” Michael asks.

“Then we buy them on the street,” Ix answers.  “Just trickier since you don’t know what else someone might sell.  Some of the people dealing prescription meds are pretty scary.  But Violet is good at finding the safest ways to get what we need.”

Michael frowns.  If they were in LA, he knows his brother could get Shell whatever she needs in the blink of an eye.  It occurs to him that it is time to test whether he can really fly again.  Maybe he could zip down to LA if Shell can’t find a clinic that will help her, before they resort to trying to find a ‘safe’ drug dealer. 

“I have to call my friend Ella,” he says.  “Then we can head out?”

“You and Ix chill,” Violet replies.  “We’ll figure out the clinic scene and meet you back here at noon?”

Ix grins.  “Sounds good.  I can definitely eat some more.”

“Michael!  You let someone steal your phone?  Seriously?  I wish they’da answered one of the eight hundred times I called, I’ve have given them a piece of my mind.  I mean stealing from an angel, they should totally go to Hell for that, right?  Before you say it, I know, only if they feel guilty.  I’d make sure they felt plenty guilty.”

Michael smiles as Ella rants on his behalf. If she knew his phone had been stolen only after he was jumped and knocked unconscious, who knows how much more dramatic her anger would be.  It would certainly be peppered with many curses in Spanish.

“How’d they even get it?  You’re not really dumb enough to just leave it somewhere, right?  But don’t tell me someone can pickpocket an angel!  Don’t you guys have like super senses and reflexes and everything?”

She pauses long enough that Michael realizes he is supposed to answer.  “They got the drop on me is all,” he answers without thinking and immediately regrets it. 

“DID YOU GET MUGGED?”

“Um...yes?”

“HOW?  You’re an angel, you can’t get hurt, some muggers can't get the drop on you!”

Oops, I did not want to go down this road.  “I could get hurt then, but...”

“WHAT?!?”  Now the stream of Spanish begins.  Michael can only catch a word here and there, but it is clear the main message is, ‘You’re a fucking idiot’ or something to that effect.  Michael also realizes Ella must be at home, because he can hear his duck start quacking madly in the background.

When Ella winds down enough, Michael tentatively says, “It got better...”

There is a heartbeat of silence (from Ella; there is one quack from Gabby), then: “What got better?”

“I could get hurt for a while but then it went away.  So I’m back to being invulnerable like normal.”

“Why could you get hurt at all?”

“I don’t know, Ella.  That’s never happened to me before.”

He hears Ella sigh.  “Well then you don’t know if it will happen again, dumbass.  Maze said she found you hanging with some houseless kids, is that right?”

“Yes.  We’ve been traveling together,” Michael answers.  “We’re friends.”

“I’m glad you’re making friends, Michael.  I’m worried about that getting hurt thing.  But now that you are going to at least text me every day to tell me you’re still alive, you can tell me if anything else weird happens.  Right?”

“Right,” he acknowledges meekly. 

“Your voice is deeper, you know.”

Michael is startled by the sudden topic change.  “It is?”

“Yep.  Any other changes?”

“I got taller...kind of suddenly.”  Which is the only detail he intends to tell her.

“Uh huh.  Maze said you were filling out nicely.”

Michael isn’t quite sure how to take that, but he’s glad they’re just on the phone because his face feels a bit warm.  Taking a page from Lucifer’s book, he changes the subject too.  “Ella, do you know what kinds of hormones a kid would take to...um...not go through puberty?”

“That’s a strange question, Michael.  I know you’re not asking for yourself.  And it depends.  Are you talking about stopping puberty entirely?  You can do that when kids start way too early, sorta like hitting a pause button until they are ready.”

“Um, no...” Michael says slowly, not quite sure how to express what he means.  “It’s more that puberty would make a person’s body not fit them even more...”

“Oh, are you talking about someone who is trans?  Yeah, obviously which hormones you take depend on whether you’re MTF or FTM.  You can take puberty blockers to just hold off changes, or take gender-affirming hormone therapy to actually redirect puberty toward the secondary sex characteristic that fit you gender identity.”

Two of the things Michael loves about Ella: she seems to know something about everything, and she takes just about any question he asks in stride.  “Thanks, Ella,” he says.  “That’s helpful.”  Sort of, at least.  He doesn't understand everything she said, but he can look up some things now.

“Anytime.  I have to run but call again soon and remember, I expect proof of life every day from now on.”

Michael laughs.  “You got it.”

Violet and Shell head off to find a clinic—Violet suggesting they might start at a place called Planned Parenthood, which does not sound like a logical choice at all to Michael.  But Shell and Ix both nod at the apparent wisdom of the decision, so Michael presumes the place must offer services other than just planning to be parents..?

Michael and Ix take the opportunity to prowl around the city, exploring.  It is luxurious to leave their packs secured in their hotel room and walk around unburdened.  The city has a remarkable number of bridges crisscrossing the river that cuts through it, and they walk across some of them as they wander, enjoying the views.  It is a clear day, and there are several large snow-capped mountains in view, each one standing out as a lone peak in different directions.  They can see the sharp-looking one—Mount Hood—that they were closer to when they were picking cherries…until other things happened...  One mountain has a distinctively flattened outline, which to Michael has the obvious look of a volcano that has blown its top.  It reminds him of earlier epochs on earth, when volcanos were active everywhere, and he describes the thrill of watching a supervolcano explode, obliterating a quarter of a landmass and creating a massive hole that became an inland sea.  He wonders if it was the landmass they are wandering now.  He can’t remember anymore…

Michael’s favorite find of the day is a bookstore that occupies a full city block, with multiple floors.  It is so big he and Ix agree to meet in an hour by the door where they entered, since keeping track of each other inside would be difficult.

Michael prowls eagerly around, skipping from section to section, before settling for a bit in an area devoted to beautiful books of art.

It's not long before Ix's voice startles Michael. “Hey, Mick, hate to interrupt, but I’m kinda hungry.  Want to break for lunch?”

Michael looks up from a book depicting remarkable environmental art by some human named Andy Goldsworthy - he is getting some fun ideas from it -  and smiles at Ix.  “Sorry, has it been an hour already?”

Ix laughs.  “Dude.  It’s been more than three hours.  You like books, huh?”

Michael blinks.  “Three hours?”  His stomach growls a noisy reply to Ix’s first question and Michael laughs.  “Damn, sorry.  Yeah, I really like books…and apparently I’m hungry too.  Let’s go find some lunch.”  His eyes drop to a book in Ix’s hand.  “Did you buy a book?”

Ix nods, a bit shyly.  “It’s a graphic novel I was telling Shell about, I thought I’d get it for her.”  He holds up the book, the cover has a drawing of a girl and a cat, the only color the red of the girl’s shirt.

“Nice style,” Michael says.  He wonders if he would enjoy adding a narrative to his own drawings.  It’s never occurred to him to tell a story with anything other than pure visuals.

“So let’s eat.”  Ix seems a little embarrassed, so Michael doesn’t comment further, just heads out the door.

“Let’s go back to the place with all the food trucks,” Michael suggests as they go.  “I’m hungry enough for three lunches, so I might as well get to have three different ones.”

It’s on his second lunch—a deep-fried sushi burrito (humans are certainly inventive)—that it happens.

“DAD DAMN IT!”

Ix jumps in surprise at Michael’s exclamation, looking concerned…and maybe a bit amused at the phrase.  “Mick, are you okay?”

“I burned my damn tongue,” Michael growls.  Maybe some pieces are finally coming together.  First he gets ravenous, and then this…Maybe Ix was right.  Does he have another growth spurt coming? 

“Sorry, man,” Ix says, and he is definitely amused now.  “I hate it when that happens.”  His expression suggests he thinks this is a bit of an overly dramatic reaction to a burnt tongue, especially coming from an archangel.

“You don’t understand,” Michael explains, tamping down the frustration in his voice—he doesn’t want Ix to think he is annoyed with him. “I shouldn’t be able to burn my tongue…not on a bit of warm food.”  He takes a deep breath.  Is this you, Dad?  Why is this happening?

“I think I’m becoming vulnerable again.”

Chapter Text

When they reconvene at the hotel, Violet and Shell have good news. The clinic they visited would indeed able to prescribe the hormone treatments Shell needs, but said she had to have two appointments first.

“It’s normal,” Shell tells them when Ix asks why two. “Even though I carry copies of the records from other places, since I’m not in the system and a minor, there are always extra steps.”

“What do they do in the appointments?” Michael asks, curious.  He doesn’t know much about what human doctors actually do.  He’s seen a lot of the desperate and creative things battlefield medics have done over the centuries, but obviously there is a lot more to human medicine than trying to patch broken humans together.

Shell looks shy and Michael worries that maybe it wasn’t an appropriate question, but she goes on to answer.  “One is just a checkup.  Like making sure I’m healthy.  And not taking any illegal drugs.  The other is a counseling appointment.”

Ix nods, and Violet rolls her eyes at that.  Michael knows about his brother’s therapy, which he initially assumed was just a venue for Lucifer to talk about himself, but later learned it actually involves Dr. Linda pointing out what an idiot Lucifer is. Presumably this isn’t the same kind of counseling.

Shell must know Michael is confused… it’s not really a leap, he’s confused by humanity as a rule… so she explains. “They basically have to ask me every time if I’m sure. No matter how long I’ve been me, they have to check.” She shrugs. “I get it.  It’s a big deal. But I hope at some point they’ll just take my word for it.”

Violet rolls her eyes again. “Doubt it, not while you’re a kid.  But we do have a couple days here now for Shell’s appointments.  So maybe we can do something fun.  What did you guys do today?”

Ix tells the girls about Michael getting totally lost in time in the bookstore, eating multiple lunches, and the news that Michael burned his tongue.

Violet reacts the way Ix had earlier, entertained that an angel would complain about such a minor thing. Shell’s eyes widen, though, clearly seeing the significance right away.

“You aren’t supposed to get hurt now, right?” she asks with a frown.

Michael nods. “I just hope it’s temporary again. I will have to pay attention and not injure myself in stupid ways.”

Violet laughs. “At least a burned tongue isn’t life-threatening.”

The next day, Shell has her first appointment mid morning.  A lucky cancellation or they might have had to stick around much longer. After another massive pillaging of the free hotel breakfast (this time extra hotel staff show up, apparently just to watch the spectacle), they all head out to drop Shell at her appointment. The other three kick around the neighborhood while they wait.

There is an urgent care clinic just across from where they dropped Shell.  Violet points it out.

“You could go in there, Mick. I’m sure they could look at your tongue!”

“Ha ha.” Violet has been teasing him kindly but relentlessly over his ‘boo boo.’ Michael pretends to be annoyed, but it actually has been helping him not worry too much about the current wave of vulnerability.

Just eat all you can, don’t walk into traffic, and wait for it to be over, he reminds himself.

Violet’s affectionate irreverence reminds Michael of his Gabby (his sister, not the duck), the one sibling who always teased him in the same way—never malicious, just gentle digs and a complete refusal to be awestruck by the Sword of God. Unlike his other siblings, whose jibes bore sharper barbs hidden under false good humor. Not that he didn’t give as good as he got.

Michael’s phone vibrates and he pulls it out, smiling as he sees the sender.

“Must be Ella,” Violet says, and Ix grunts in agreement.

“Clever deduction,” Michael snarks. “She’s the only one I ever use the phone for…” He unlocks the phone to read Ella’s text. As expected, it’s a reminder that he is supposed to contact her every day.

            EL: Alive or dead, Michael?

Michael snorts and sends his reply.

            MD: Alive.

            EL: That’s not proof of life.

            MD: The dead don’t text.

            EL: Ha ha. 🙄 Not proof of you. Could be anyone.

Michael laughs. “Guys, how do I prove it’s me in a text?”

“Take a selfie,” Violet says. Then after a moment or two to figure out what a selfie is and instructions how to take one, Michael sends a picture to Ella.

            MD:

            EL: Looking good! 😊

            EL: Call later if you want to quack at Gabby. 🦆

            EL: More proof of life tomorrow. 😘

            MD: 👍 bye

When Shell comes out of her appointment a little while later with a bandage around her elbow, she is smiling. “The doctor was really nice,” she says. “She talked about the second appointment and said she doesn’t think I’ll have any trouble getting to continue treatment.”

“Awesome!” Violet cheers. “We should do something fun later. First lunch, gotta fill up the bottomless angel.”

The next couple of days feel like a vacation. They have a place to stay, money to spend, no goals other than enjoying themselves until Shell’s second appointment. They had begun to worry that the hotel might stop letting them in for the breakfast buffet, but it quickly became clear that not only were the staff highly entertained by Michael’s ability to pack away food, there was actually some sort of betting pool around how much he would eat of which items. They figured that one out when there was a shout of “Yes, I called it!” just as Michael finished a stack of pancakes. (Apparently that person was the only one who put money down that Michael would eat at least ten pancakes. He ate twelve.)

Michael lets the others take the lead on their activities, wondering what these tough, street-worn kids will choose to do with leisure and cash.

Movies in movie theatres. Ix suggests the idea, the other endorse it enthusiastically, and they end up seeing three movies over two days. Shell picks a mind-bending ‘sci-fi’ movie, Violet chooses something she calls ‘a stupid romcom’ but she wants to see it because she likes the actor in it, and Ix picks a movie with so-called superheroes who seem to range from plain old humans in special costumes through beings easily as powerful as angels. Each movie is accompanied with big buckets of popcorn and shockingly overpriced candy. Michael likes the sci-fi movie best. He really doesn’t know what’s going on in the other two movies but enjoys the experience all the same.

Shopping. They go to a place called a ‘thrift store’ which they explain is a place where they sell used clothing that other people have given away, and that it is usually nicer than the free clothes in the bins at shelters. Michael finds that stop very useful, as all of his clothes are really too small at this point. Ix points out that if Michael has another big growth spurt, he’ll burst out of his clothes like ‘the Hulk,’ a reference he actually understands courtesy of the movie Ix chose.

A ride in a thing called a tram, like a bus hanging on a wire, that takes them to a big complex on the top of a hill—apparently a hospital—and then takes them down again. As the other three ooh and ahh at the view (admittedly nice), Michael promises himself to test how well he can fly as soon as possible. Once he knows his full flight capability is back, he can show his friends some real views.

Different food every day. They take turns choosing.

Finding fun locations for his daily proof of life selfies.

Back to the giant bookstore. Violet suggests it before Michael does (he was totally planning to go back one way or another) and they give themselves plenty of time. Maybe too much. Violet and Shell run out of steam first and decide to head back across the river to the hotel.

“I’ll drag him out of here before too long,” Ix promises. Michael snorts as though offended, but his eyes have already been drawn to a section on history he hasn’t been in yet.

Michael has no idea how much time has passed when sudden hunger pulls him out his literary reverie. He turns, ready to head for the meeting place (where he will surely need to apologize for keeping Ix waiting again), only to find Ix sitting on the floor, leaning against the end of the row of shelves, dozing.

“Hey, Ix,” Michael says softly, and Ix comes instantly awake, jumping to his feet.

“Hey, Mick. Finally done, ya think?”

“Yeah, sorry about that.” They start finding their way out, eventually stepping out onto the street to discover it’s getting dark.

“I hope the girls aren’t worried,” Michael says, feeling bad about keeping them so late.

Ix laughs. “You didn’t hear Violet say, ‘see you after the place closes and they kick him out’?

Michael flushes. “Um, no. Missed that. Must have already been back into it…”

They grab dinner from a food truck (lamb shawarma wraps they can eat while they walk) and head toward the closest bridge to get back across the river.  It’s a Friday night, and there is a lot of traffic…cars, bikes, pedestrians. It gets quieter as they reach the east side of the bridge, where they pass through an industrial area on their way to the hotel.

It is neither so late nor so deserted that they are particularly wary as they walk through the area. But Michael and Ix are both high-strung enough by nature that they each jump when a man on a cell phone ahead of them suddenly shouts, “Gabriel!”

He’s probably yelling at someone on the phone, but the fact that it happens to be his sister’s name snags Michael’s attention. But beside him, Ix hisses, “no no no,” and his fear spikes so high Michael feels like the fear is a small animal burrowing into his chest. Impossible to ignore. Impossible to resist drawing it toward himself.

That is when they are attacked from behind. Michael hears Ix give a muffled shout at the same moment hands fall on him. Two sets of hands. There is an arm around his throat, something hard pressed into his back. Another hand holds a cloth to his face, with a strange smell, and keeps it in place with the additional pressure of a hand on the back of his head.

Without hesitation, Michael drives an elbow into the ribs of the one with an arm around his neck. He hears a satisfying crack and quickly moves both hands on the arm holding his throat more loosely now, already shifting his weight so he can haul the man forward over his head and slam him to the ground.

Two simultaneous events keep him from completing the move. One is a sudden wave of dizziness. The other is a loud bang that is accompanied by an explosion of pain in his lower back. Michael tries to unfurl, but he’s not sure if he succeeds or not before his awareness clicks off like a switch has been thrown.

Chapter Text

“…things are real? They’re seriously attached to him?”

“That’s what I said. And watch out, they were fucking sharp!”

The sounds of words come, but not their meaning. Everything is blurry, hard to reach. The voices are muffled, the world is dark. Michael’s brain is cottony and sluggish. Nothing fully registers. Nothing makes sense.

Until one thing does. Pain.

Pain is the only thing that registers. Deep, throbbing, insidious, wrong. There is a screaming nexus of pain somewhere in his gut or back or side… it’s too big to be just in one place but the damage that caused it is in there somewhere.  It’s terrible. It’s the worst pain he can remember. Worse than when Sam nearly tore off Michael’s wing when he Fell. Worse than any spear thrust or sword cut.

Michael wants to be stoic. He wants to hide that he is waking up, wait for words to make sense before reacting. But the pain immediately wins, overwhelming any strategic arguments for caution, for subterfuge, before he can even make them. HURTS, says the pain, deafeningly.

Michael groans.

“He’s coming to.”

“No shit. Is he gonna live?”

“Dunno. Bullet went right through. Gutshot from the back. Not good odds.”

“What is he? Some kind of alien?”

“Damned if I know. Your kid is the one who’s been traveling with him. Think he knows?”

“That dumb little shit? Doubt it.”

The words are beginning to make sense, and they are making Michael angry. Are they talking about Ix? Is one of these despicable humans Ix’s father?

The anger is strong, but when Michael tries to move slightly, hoping to get a handle on where his own limbs even are, the pain wins again and he cries out.

“Hey, you! You awake?” A hand grips Michael’s knee, shakes it. Michael can only moan in reply, even though his mind is finally starting to suggest words he could use. Fuck you and Go to Hell are his first thoughts, and it is probably just as well that he can’t quite get his mouth to form proper words yet.

He pries his eyes open though and looks into an angry stare from eyes as dark as his own. The man glaring at him is solid and burly, his big hand still squeezing Michael’s knee. If it hurts it doesn’t register through the other pain, but he can feel hard callouses where skin touches skin through the rips in Michael’s jeans.

Michael sees the family resemblance to Ix and his heart sinks. This must be Ix’s father. This man’s skin is a lighter brown, his features coarser, but his relatedness to Michael’s friend is clear. The greatest difference between them is the rottenness of this one’s soul. Even without knowing that Ix fears this man, that this bastard has hurt his own son in some way, Michael would have smelled the putrefaction at his heart.  This is the kind of soul Michael would Judge and send to Hell if the asshole didn’t have to guilt to do it to himself.

But right now, Michael is not the Great Judge. Not the Sword of God. He’s vulnerable, damaged… can I die like this? He can barely think.

“He’s probably delirious,” comes the other voice, and Michael looks past the beast clutching his knee to another human, that one tall, fair-skinned, his cold blue eyes looking appraisingly at Michael. “I stopped the bleeding. Hope he lives. Worth a lot if he lives.”

Michael is trying to understand what that statement means when he hears a whimper. Ix! Michael surges upright, trying to bring his wings to bear. Something drags on his wrist. Shackled? He is just able to spot Ix, lying on a blanket beyond the adults, half conscious maybe but no blood… before the agony in his gut blossoms like a fireball, and he drops back to the floor with a howl and everything disappears again.

Michael wakes to a feeling of movement, mostly a vibrating hum but occasionally a bump or sway that makes him gasp. The agony in his abdomen wakes up with him and he moans when a big bump makes him lurch to the side.

“Mick? Mick! Oh thank God you’re alive.”

At Ix’s voice, Michael blinks his eyes into focus, rolling his head to look down the narrow metal room they’re in. It’s dim, light (daylight?) coming through a few openings near the ceiling. “Not…sure…Dad’s the one…to thank…” Michael mumbles automatically, but neither of them laugh.

Ix is sitting up on a pad or blanket, with another blanket wrapped tightly around him. Michael can see clearly in the low light that Ix’s eyes are red from crying, his hair is tangled, but there are no injuries visible, from what little he can see.

“Ix,” Michael says, “Where…?”

“It’s a truck, Mick. Are you okay? Can you move?” Ix’s voice is strained.

Michael cautiously moves his limbs, testing. One arm doesn’t move far, and he realizes he is handcuffed to the metal wall. His other arm is free, legs too. Just the slight movements of arms and legs are enough to make his wound burn, but he keeps going, struggling to sit up. He doesn’t quite manage, but props himself against the wall, slightly more upright. His wings twitch and spread behind him.

“I can move,” Michael says, “but barely. I…” He focuses on Ix again, with difficulty. He is lightheaded. “That… that,” his voice drips with revulsion, “is your father?” At Ix’s nod, Michael shakes his head in disgust, immediately regretting the movement as dizziness overtakes him. Finding Ix’s face again, he promises, “He will go to Hell.” Then, “Your name is Gabriel?”

“Yes,” Ix answers, voice sad. “Gabriel must be real too. The angel. Is he your brother?”

“Sister,” Michael corrects him. “Favorite sister.”

Thinking about Gabby makes Michael think about…something else? An idea floats just out of reach… something he should do? Remember?

Ix shifts and a telltale metallic sound catches Michael’s attention. “You are chained too?”

“Cuffed,” Ix confirms, gesturing to his ankle. As the blanket the boy is wrapped in moves, Michael is startled to see naked skin.

“Your clothes…?” he begins, and stops when Ix starts to cry, muffling the sounds in the blanket.

“H-harder to run,” Ix whimpers. “No sh-shoes or clothes.”

Michael growls and the shadows in the truck trailer deepen. Vulnerable or not, mortal or not, he is an Archangel and he will find a way to protect this human. His friend. Weak as he feels, the sudden rush of rage is strong enough that his wings flex and the leading edges of several primaries sharpen. He flares his wings instinctively, even though there is no one to attack here, now—and feels one bladed wing slice through the cuff attached to the wall, and his hand falls free, the rest of the cuff still locked around his wrist.

If he can do the same for Ix…then the mechanism holding the door shut… Michael rolls to the side, hoping to crawl to Ix, but the pain topples him, his arms don’t hold him, and he crashes back down to the floor. He feels his own sticky blood under his hands, his vision going dark.

Damn it don’t pass out, stay awake! he orders himself, but his body is not obeying. He tries again, pushing himself up with his arms, pressing his wing wrists against the floor to help. That is the instant the trailer jolts sideways and Michael is thrown against the wall and he is definitely going to pass out and be unable to help…

…help…

…Michael you fucking idiot… he thinks even as he prays, as desperate a prayer as he has ever sent.

~Sam! Help! I need you! Please!~

He doesn’t even know if Sam will hear, if his prayer even works in his current state, but it all he has left to try right now.

~Sam! PLEASE!~

In his last flicker of awareness, Michael hears what he hopes is really Sam and not a forlorn imagining.

~Mi? Yes? Wh—~

This is new…

Michael wakes to the same surroundings, but they don’t seem to be moving now. The agony in his gut is endless but familiar now, but he has a new sensation of heat, like his whole body is burning from the inside. He is lightheaded, not dizzy but more floaty. He is lying face-down, limbs sprawled.

“…expect us to believe that?”

Michael’s head snaps up as Ix’s voice responds to the angry query.

“I swear, he’s an angel!”

There is the sound of a slap. Michael snarls and moves to get his hands underneath him. One moves, dragging the handcuff that he sliced in half. The other jolts to a stop. Damn it. They must have handcuffed the other arm while he was unconscious again.

“Don’t move.”

Michael turns toward that voice, fully intending to ignore that order, registering several people in the truck trailer now. Ix’s bastard father, the blue-eyed shit with him…oh, and now this thug, square and muscular, pointing a gun at Michael’s head.

Okay…maybe I won’t move just yet… Michael feels almost dreamy, he wants to laugh but knows that probably isn’t wise. He almost does anyway when he sees the man with the gun is wearing a crucifix necklace. Oh, our half-brother would NOT approve of you aiming a gun at Saint Michael. A giggle tries to bubble up at the thought.

~Mi? Michael, are you there? Please answer.~

~Sam!~

He almost says his twin’s name out loud in his excitement.

~Mi! Where are you? Are you all right? Maze is tracking you but if you have any idea where you are…~

Michael feels a different kind of warmth at the worry in his brother’s mental voice.

~In a truck…like big 18-wheeler kind of truck…need help, for Ix…~

Ix is muffling sobs. Michael can’t really see him, because the other humans are now gathered around, looking at Michael, the one with the gun a little closer than the others.

~Mi? Do you know where the truck is? Where it’s going? Keep praying, please.~

~Dunno. No windows. Lemme ask.~

“Hey, humans!” The humans all jump a little at that, and Michael sees Ix’s head come up to stare. “Where are we? My brother and his demon want to know.” Oh, maybe too much information there.  The gun in the crucifix-wearing thug’s hand twitches.

“Shit, he’s delirious,” the blue-eyed one says. Am I? It doesn’t feel so bad.

“Yeah, he was burning up when I re-cuffed him,” crucifix-gun agrees.

Michael wishes he could pray to Ix, tell him both a demon and the Devil himself are trying to find them. He settles for what he hopes is a reassuring grin. Ix looks a bit surprised, but not actually reassured.

“Gabriel says you’re an angel,” Ix’s father says, the disbelief clear in his voice.

Are these assholes just oblivious to divinity? Michael thinks disgustedly, fluffing up his wings. The movement makes the humans jump and stare, so maybe not totally oblivious.

~Mi?~

~Here, Sam. Human pointing a gun at me. Distracting. Sorry.~

~Are you HURT?~

“Archangel,” Michael says huffily, while answering his brother.

~Yes. Shot. Damn vulnerability again.~

It’s a little hard to speak and pray at the same time and he hopes he’s keeping straight what to say aloud versus sending silently to Sam. Sam is praying a stream of curses in a tirade about vulnerability and Michael’s idiocy at not just coming back the first time he discovered he was vulnerable.

“Oh shut up, nothing I can do about it now!” Ooops.  That was out loud.

Ix’s father comes closer. “What did you say?” He is close enough that Michael could nick him with a wingtip, but cross-gun-guy is too attentive.

“Wasn’t talking to you,” Michael answers irritably. “But Ix not lying. I’m an archangel.  Seriously.  Wings?” He shakes his wings, feathers still raised aggressively, but not bladed. “So help me Dad if you say they should be white…”

Ix’s eyes are wide and frightened. Michael knows he is being flippant, that he should not antagonize these men, but he’s confused, and Sam’s reassuring but distracting prayers aren’t helping. Ix’s father stalks closer, lips twisted in a cruel smile.

“I don’t care what color they are, kid. But we’re gonna start plucking them if you don’t behave.”

Michael shuts up and tries to rally, to think and observe. The crucifix guy is starting to get the slightly glazed look that indicates he at least is feeling the effects of divinity, but unfortunately his gun remains steady for now. There is a nondescript guy farther away from the others, muttering on a phone.  Gun holstered on his hip too.

The blue-eyed bastard is staring at him in an assessing way that worries Michael more than the others. That one is the planner. Even if Ix’s dad is the boss here, and it feels like he is, then the other is the lieutenant that is keeping whatever this is running. Four men, at least, and a truck. It suddenly occurs to Michael that it all seems excessive for an asshole going after his runaway kid.

As if in confirmation, Blue Eyes speaks while still looking at Michael in cold appraisal. “We might have to clip him anyway, those wings are dangerous. But he’ll be worth just as much, no one will know any different. But if he’s going septic, we’d better pick up a doc soon before we lose him.”

Worth as much? Are they going to sell my feathers? Michael doesn’t like the sound of the word “septic” in reference to him. It must be like when his arm was infected. If the hole through his middle is infected, that might explain the severity of the pain. And the burning up?

Blue Eyes is still talking. “If he does die, we’ll hopefully have those girls to make up for it some.”

The fear that erupts from Ix makes Michael gasp and without even trying the source of the fear becomes utterly clear to him. These men are also going after Violet and Shell. And Ix is terrified that what happened to him will happen to them. Michael starts trying to block out some of the fear; he wants to push away the images, the feelings, the memories pouring out of Ix of these men and others, and their crimes. Michael also realizes it's not his feathers they are talking about selling. Ix has his face pressed into the blanket, trying to be silent while he sobs, and Michael instead reaches out to draw the fears into himself. It’s a different pain, one that he relishes, using his Gift like this. He takes Ix’s fear until his friend stops sobbing, stares at him with wide eyes, his rapid breathing starting to slow. The terror courses through Michael, turning into rage hotter than the fever from whatever microorganism is feeding on him.

He could kill Ix’s father now. The rage has given him enough strength, he knows he can sharpen his pinions and cut this evil man down where he stands.

But the one with the gun is out of reach, his aim still looks true. And Blue Eyes is the one that he has to destroy. So he waits, wings trembling, and watches. Sam is yelling in the back of his head, maybe Michael has been praying or let some of that fear flow into his connection with his twin, but he just spares Sam the briefest acknowledgment.

All of this happens in a couple weighted minutes. None of the men know anything of what is transpiring around them. The one on the phone has ended his call, and Blue Eyes has asked him something.

“Neither of them are answering,” Cell Phone Guy replies. “I left messages again. I don’t know what the Hell happened to them. I hope they didn’t get made trying to pick up the girls.”

Maze is tracking you. That’s what Sam had said. Michael hopes with all his heart that Hell is exactly what happened to their missing accomplices.  Hell in the form of a ferocious demoness with none of compunctions about killing humans that angels must wrestle with.

Blue Eyes scowls. “We keep going. Let’s get some more cuffs for that one, and something to clip his wings. Get a doc to treat him.”

Ix’s father grunts an agreement. He stares down at Michael with a strange anger, then pulls back a foot and kicks him in the ribs on his wounded side.  Michael cries out with the pain, curling defensively around his wound, and also barely stops himself from lashing out with a wing and slicing the fucker off at the knees. He pulls his wings close, huddling away from the men, the picture of a cowed and injured kid.  All the while, visions of demons and devils and his own hands around Blue Eyes’ throat sustain him.

Chapter Text

Michael dreams of Hell.

He’s never been to Hell, of course. At least, no further than its gates. But Sam has told him stories. Whispered to Michael about it when Father turned them into children, back when they learned to be brothers again, as they tried to learn some of what they had missed in each other’s lives during the long years apart. When Sam took Dad’s deal to grow up but Michael didn’t, Sam told him more stories. The worse ones. So Michael has some idea of Hell.

But these are dreams, so whether they are accurate is irrelevant. This is Hell proclaims the dream, so it is.

Michael is burning up, which fits. He knows Sam fell in a Lake of Fire, so at least some of Hell is hot as…as Hell. His wrists are chained, painfully tight. Surely common in Hell as well. Especially for anyone who knows a way out. Angels can fly out of Hell, Michael could do it if he wasn’t chained.

Demons are torturing him too. Not good demons like Mazikeen, or…well, like Mazikeen. Are there any others like Maze? She would spit him for thinking of her as good, but she’s…loyal? She cares? All words she would reject but they seem true. So Maze, good.

It’s just dreams (right?), but sometimes it feels so real. The torture varies. One time muttering demons turn him over and rough hands rub and scratch and pound on his back. “Where are his fucking wings?” a demon hisses. Michael remembers furling them so they wouldn’t catch on fire, and it’s just as well, who knows what the demons would do if they could get at them.

Another time hands poke and prod him all over, loosening his clothes, touching him everywhere: his mouth, chest, between his legs. He tries to pull away from the groping demon hands. It seems like at least four hands but he is so light-headed it’s hard to be sure. Details are continuously lost in the overarching pain.

The pain is constant. Should dreams hurt this much? Sometimes he’s convinced he must really be in Hell, not just dreaming of it. It was Prometheus chained to the rock, the eagle eating his liver every day, right? That’s what it feels like. Michael’s personal eagle seems to have a taste for kidney, but otherwise it seems much the same as poor old Prometheus must have felt…a gnawing pain that never really stops. That seems like something that could happen in Hell.

The worst part of the dream (dream?) is sometimes hearing a friend’s voice, distant, calling his name, crying. That is the most like Hell of all, because it carries the weight of guilt. A friend he failed somehow. Calling, but he can’t do anything with the eagle eating his kidney. That must surely be a Hell loop.

Michael doesn’t know if it’s actual Hell or a dream. All he longs for are the times that he fades out, undreaming, even the pain subsiding under a blur. If only that would last.

The sounds of Hell wake Michael again. The perpetual feeling of motion, of bouncing and lurching, has ceased. There is a sound of breaking glass, a guttural scream. There is a huge thump from the roof that shakes the walls around him.

Michael lifts his head, blinking away a sensation of confusion, of having slept an impossibly long time.

“Mick?” The whisper is low but urgent. Michael looks over to see Ix, wide-eyed, smiling of all things, staring in the dim light.

Michael feels like he lost time. He’s awake, and the sounds are definitely not from a dream. He’s still in the truck, Ix is looking at him like he just rose from the dead, and there are two humans in here too.

One human is on a phone, shouting, “What the fuck is going on up there?”

The other human is the blue eyed one, he is looking up at the roof. There are sounds of movement up there.

“Mick!” Ix whispers again. Michael looks at him, and Ix nods, flicking his eyes across Michael’s body in a clear invitation to look at himself. Michael lifts his head a bit more, gazing down his own form. Something is different…he vaguely remembers heat, pain, fear…bindings on his wrists that bit so tightly into his flesh that his hands were numb…

Michael shifts one arm and sees that the handcuff on that wrist is bent and split. The skin beneath is smooth and unmarked. And…nothing hurts.

Nothing hurts.

Michael sits up. He runs a hand over his stomach, under the bloodstained shirt, to feel smooth, unblemished skin, firm and cool. He meets Ix’s eyes in understanding. He almost laughs out loud. Growth spurt. He grew fast enough that his wrist broke the tight cuff. He is bigger. He is healed.

He is invulnerable.

The other cuff wasn’t as tight, so it didn’t crack from his abrupt angelic bulking up. So he just yanks it free, snapping the chain effortlessly.

The sound draws the attention of the two men in the trailer with them. Both turn to look, their eyes widening at the sight of Michael sitting up, glaring at them. There is a moment when no one moves, before several things happen in quick succession.

Michael unfurls, rolling to his feet in a crouch, spreading his wings to shield Ix.

The man with the phone drops his phone and reaches for a gun.

A huge bang startles everyone, and they all look up to see that a fist has punched through the trailer roof. Michael grins, already moving as the fist opens, grips the edge of the hole it just made, and tears an enormous rent in the roof in one violent motion.

Hello brother, Michael thinks as there is a flash of white and the human going for his gun disappears through the hole in the roof like he’s been sucked into a vacuum, so fast he doesn’t even start to scream until he’s out of sight.

By that time, Michael has already slammed Blue Eyes into the wall of the trailer, hand on the human’s throat, dragging out every dad-damned fear the bastard ever felt, all the way back to the first shock of cold air at his birth. Only the habit of millennia of being forbidden to kill humans saves this one now. But he is Judged, his destination guaranteed… and the small part of Michael not completely lost in rage thinks, there are others. Other victims. Other hurt children. And this one needs to live long enough to tell every single thing he knows. For now, it is enough that this failure of humanity is sobbing in terror, bladder and bowels releasing as his entire world becomes fear.

The back doors of the trailer are flung open, light pouring in. Michael knows Maze’s svelte silhouette immediately, and he immediately flings Blue Eyes toward her. The human shrieks, but Michael doesn’t even notice whether Maze catches him or if he just flies out the open doors to hit the ground. He’s already turning to Ix, who is wisely keeping his head down, sheltering behind Michael. Michael wraps his wings protectively around Ix.

Lucifer appears in the open back doors next, Maze out of the way or shoved aside.  “Mi! Are you hurt?” Michael looks up and Lucifer does a double take. “Bloody Hell, Michael, you look like you’ve been on the road 5 years at least, how are you growing up so fast? You sounded like you were dying!”

Lucifer sounds annoyed. Michael knows it’s just a sign his brother was worried about him, but he can’t help but snort.

“Sorry, Lu, should I be closer to death? This rescue is fucking amazing even if you don’t get to carry me out of here.”

Lucifer stares for a moment, then laughs. “Not that I’m not glad you’re all right,” he says. “But I did have a great image of carrying you out of here, wailing and cursing Dad. Maybe even falling to my knees at great risk to my suit.”

Ix makes a sort of strangled laugh. “You really are crazy, Mick,” he mutters from inside Michael’s wings.

“Runs in the family,” Michael replies. He smiles at his twin, letting his true gratitude show through the snark.  “Thank you, brother.”

Ix insists he is unhurt. Traumatized…retraumatized, of course, but not physically injured. Maze gives him enough of a field inspection to verify it, the best she can while reaching through and under Michael’s wings.

The awkward inspection is necessary. Michael tried to open his wings at first, and it wasn’t clear which happened faster: Ix grabbing his feathers to pull them closed again, or Michael reversing his own motion instinctively as Maze reached for Ix. Michael and Ix exchanged sheepish looks but neither volunteered to try again.

“If you sharpen those while I’m reaching in here,” Maze threatens, even as she palpates Ix’s arms for injuries with a gentleness she would never admit to, “I’m plucking you like a chicken when I’m done.”

Lucifer snorts even as Michael fluffs up his feathers in mild threat. Mazikeen just laughs, and finally proclaims Ix undamaged, to Michael’s relief.

“Michael too?” Lucifer asks, trying to sound casual, not fooling Michael or Maze one bit.

“He’s fine,” Maze says. “Look.” She goes behind Michael and yanks up his shirt.

“Hey!” Michael snaps, shuffling sideways with Ix. Maze just follows, holding up his shirt and poking him sharply in the kidney. “Ouch!”

“See?” Maze says, ignoring Michael’s complaints. “Bullet hole in the shirt, blood everywhere, not a mark on him.”

“So, vulnerable until you weren’t.” Lucifer frowns. “Like me with the Detective… but it doesn’t seem like it is distance from a person that matters here?”

“Hey, why don’t you two puzzle over celestial mysteries after we call the local cops to come pick up all those assholes?” Maze jerks a thumb in the direction of the front of the truck, where earlier she had tied Ix’s father and his gang to the grill of the tractor. Maze looks at Ix. “You know it will be best if you are here when the cops get here. These guys will be in way deeper shit if they get caught with a victim.”

Ix shivers.

“You don’t have to…” Michael begins but stops when Ix pats his wing.

“She’s right,” Ix says. “I just…don’t have to go near them, yeah?”

“Hell no, kid,” Maze says. “And I’m sticking with you. Don’t worry, these two birdbrains will be nearby. Just, bloodbath Mike there with no injuries, they can’t see him, he looks way more like a murderer than a victim right now.” She smirks at Michael. “You couldn’t stay vulnerable long enough to guarantee two counts of kidnapping and some good assault charges? I suppose I could beat you up a bit instead…”

“Fuck you, Maze,” Michael says mildly, as Lucifer says, “EMS might notice something is up after they break an IV needle or two on him.”

Michael looks at Ix, and they both reach agreement. Michael slowly opens his wings, and Ix pulls the blanket tightly around himself again. “The girls?” he whispers to Michael.

Michael nods. “Our friends, Violet and Shell…” he begins.

Maze grins. “That Violet, she’s something. She’s the reason we got here when we did.  She had all your contacts. She called me, she called him,” she tilts her head at Lucifer, “she called Ellen. Said you guys were missing and might need help. I headed right up. Turns out your friends were in some trouble too, couple of shitheads tried to toss them in a van.”

“Same shitheads!” Michael exclaims. “I mean, same group. I heard them talking about someone who was supposed to ‘pick up the girls.’ How did they even know…?”

Maze gives him a pitying look. “I’m sure whoever was on his trail,” she indicates Ix, “eventually was tracking the four of you as a set. Hunting’s easier if you’re after a distinctive group. Way more breadcrumbs.”

“But they’re all right?” Ix asks.

“Oh Hell yeah,” Maze answers with a laugh. “They helped me show those two assholes it’s not nice to kidnap kids. They may have delivered a couple well-placed kicks. Shell’s like a ninja, lotta strength for such a little thing.”

Ix smiles, clearly picturing Shell letting out her quiet fury, and Michael feels his own smile match it.

“Okay, angels, get outta sight,” Maze growls. “The sooner we do this the sooner you all get back together.”

“Yes, Maze,” Lucifer says, surprisingly agreeably. Then his phone rings. He reaches inside his jacket while Maze rolls her eyes. “Oh!” Lucifer grins as he looks at the display. “Yes, let’s go.  It’s Miss Lopez…and I know she’s calling to talk to Michael.” He unfurls and takes off, Ix staring at his white wings as he goes.

Well, shit, guess I find out if I can fly now, Michael thinks, as he spreads his wings wide. He gives Ix an encouraging smile and takes off, and with a few strong beats he has caught up to Lucifer, who is holding out his phone teasingly.

Michael can just hear Ella’s voice from the speaker. “Michael? Michael? Talk into the phone already!”

Chapter Text

The reunion happens in a ridiculously fancy hotel in San Francisco. Apparently the truck carrying Michael and Ix had been taking them gradually south again, and was somewhere outside Sacramento when Maze and Lucifer descended on it. Since Maze and Ix both have to stay nearby for a little while, to give statements and otherwise help with the investigation, Lucifer took it upon himself to book them at a place he found acceptable nearby. Which turned out to be the Ritz-Carlton, an hour and a half away by car (far less as the angel flies).

Lucifer drops them off in a sleek car he must have rented (or purchased on the spot), since Michael knows Lucifer flew directly from LA to find them. They are wearing the new clothes Lucifer brought to replace Michael’s bloodstained ones and the oversized scrubs Ix was given when he was checked out at a hospital. Lucifer had waved off their thanks with a laugh.

“I don’t think they’d let you get five steps into the hotel lobby looking like you did,” he had pointed out.

Now Lucifer hands them the key cards for their room, saying he has a few more things to do before racing off. Michael and Ix look at each other and shrug, then head in to make their way to the room. Even dressed in clean clothes, they slink through the lobby half expecting to be tossed out anyway, but reach the elevators unmolested.

The “room” turns out to be a 3-bedroom suite. Michael is a little accustomed to opulence after all the time he’s spent in his twin’s penthouse, but Ix is staring around, awestruck. The place is completely over the top. Even the bathroom is done in all marble.

There is food laid out on a sideboard in the…living room? They descend on that, though Michael eats less than Ix does. Done with his current growth spurt, after all, so he’s not ravenous. Judging by his appearance in one of the full-length mirrors, he probably has couple more of those to go before he’s back to his original size. He still looks impossibly young to himself, but objectively he probably looks like he’s in his late teens now. Maybe even approaching the appearance of human drinking age.

There is a knock at the door and Michael goes to open it. Violet and Shell throw themselves at him, hugging him tightly, both crying and yelling at him in a nearly incomprehensible mixture of sentiments, including “you’re okay,” “we missed you,” and “you fucking idiots.”  Ix comes running and joins in, his hug more tentative but crying just as much.

A motion in the doorway catches Michael’s attention, and he is surprised to see his brother’s girlfriend standing there. He registers who it is just in time to resist unfurling his wings defensively.

Chloe is smiling, watching the reunion unfold.

“I didn’t expect you to come up here,” Michael says, hoping that it doesn’t sound like he doesn’t want her there. She doesn’t look offended.

“Actually, I went up to Portland to pick up your friends while Maze was tracking you,” she answers. “I’m also talking to Sacramento PD since obviously elements of this case are going to run all the way from LA at least to Portland, and probably spread from there. This will become a federal case right away, since it’s not just across several states, but also involves Tribal authorities.”

Michael nods. Lucifer had mentioned that it became very quickly clear this was a long-running, extensive human trafficking organization that Ix’s father was a part of. Ix’s father is not Indigenous, as Ix is always quick to point out, but he had kidnapped his son, a registered member of a federally recognized Tribe, from reservation land, so the bastard will face multiple charges there as well.

At the mention of Tribal authorities, Ix looks up and smiles unexpectedly. “I could…go see my family,” he says, almost disbelievingly. “I couldn’t for so long…he knew to look for me there.”

Chloe is still smiling at them, but her eyes are grim. “We can take you there soon,” she says to Ix. “There are several other missing person cases that may be connected.” She looks at Michael. “Lucifer will be back before long, call if you need anything.”

“I don’t have a phone anymore,” Michael says.

“I know,” Chloe tells him. “Yours was smashed and dumped, Maze found it. Violet and Shell have my number and Lucifer said he was getting you a new phone. You should check the closets and drawers, I know he had some things delivered here for you.” She grins as they share an eyeroll at Lucifer’s usual over-the-top approach to everything.

Going through the rooms is like a treasure hunt. Perfectly sized clothing for all four of them hangs in closets and is folded neatly into drawers. Michael does find his new phone, and more art supplies. He and Ix also find their backpacks from the hotel in Portland, the packs and their contents obviously cleaned.

“Oh my god!” they hear Shell exclaim from the huge marble bathroom. They all go to peer in the open door. The bathroom is filled with toiletries, of course, which Michael and Ix had noticed on their first tour. Shell is holding an zippered bag covered with pictures of seashells, and a tag with her name.

Wide-eyed, Shell tilts the unzipped bag toward the others to reveal it is filled with prescription pill bottles.

“Oh wow,” Violet says in an awed voice. “All your hormones?”

Shell nods. “Like, at least a six-month supply.”

Violet looks at Michael, and he knows immediately that she is going to start the line of questioning he’s been waiting for.

“So, your brother is super rich,” she begins. “And his name is Lucifer.”

“And he has wings too,” Ix adds. “White wings.”

“Really?” Shell asks in surprise. “Not…?” she trails off and looks at Michael, a bit nervously.

Michael sighs. “Not… bat wings? Is that what you’re thinking?” Shell nods. All three are looking at Michael expectantly. So he answers the question they really want to ask.

“So, yeah, my twin brother is the actual Devil. And yes, he has white wings because he is an angel too. He does have a different form with bat wings that looks more like what you all probably think the devil is supposed to look like. And no, he’s not evil, he doesn’t steal souls or eat children or any of that crap. He’s really a pretty nice guy, sort of an idiot, and he works for the LAPD.”

“The devil is a cop?” Violet asks in a shocked voice.

Ix laughs. “So all those paintings and things that are supposed to be you with big white wings…”

Michael chuckles. “Right. To anyone in the know, it looks like people have pictures of the devil on their walls.”

“They’re probably the people most likely to be horrified to know that,” Violet points out with a smirk.

“And he’s not a cop, he’s a consultant,” Michael feels the need to clarify.

Shell has just been listening, seeming a bit stunned. Finally she asks, “Did you really just call the Devil an idiot?”

“Of course he did, we’re brothers,” comes Lucifer’s voice from behind them. Michael sensed Lucifer just before he spoke, so he manages to not startle visibly, but the humans all jump in surprise, Shell giving a small squeak.

Michael turns to see his twin grinning at them. He wants to say something snarky about learning to knock, but given Lucifer is paying for this whole excessively luxurious place he bites his tongue.

“I’d argue he’s the idiot,” Lucifer continues. “Why do you all look so surprised? Haven’t you ever heard the phrase ‘speak of the devil?’ So, why have you summoned me to your bathroom?”

Michael can’t help a laugh. They are still standing in the bathroom, where they had all been drawn by Shell’s excited discovery of her medications.

“Don’t worry guys,” Michael tells his friends. “You can’t really summon him like that, he’s joking.” He ignores the question about the bathroom and heads back out to the living room space. “Thanks for all the stuff, Lu,” he says as his twin follows. “For all of us. And not just the stuff. For everything. You know.”

Lucifer doesn’t laugh at the awkwardness of his thanks. “Anytime, brother,” he says softly. Then he turns to the three humans. “So clearly you all have had the celestial primer and know who Michael and I really are. I’ll hope that in addition to calling me an idiot, he told you I’m really not as bad as my reputation would have it.”

The three humans have clustered close to Michael, but they all nod.

“Lovely.” Lucifer smiles and pulls several thick envelopes from an inner pocket. “Now, I know you are all nervous about what happens now that you are all back on the radar as it were, so I took the liberty—well, my lawyer did—of addressing the legal status of each of you.”

He hands one envelope to Violet. “You, my dear, are a legally emancipated minor, so you need not worry about returning to the purgatory of foster care. There is a trust in your name as well, and we can worry about going over those details later.”

Violet takes the envelope, mouth hanging open, in the rare state of being struck speechless.

Lucifer looks at Shell. “You have some choices, young lady. Your parents have been searching for you. We can try to ensure they don’t find you and have an alternative identity—also legally emancipated—ready for you. But we can also arrange for you to meet with them. You might be interested to know your brother has been sent to live with relatives.” He presses an envelope into her hands too. “You don’t have to decide right now.”

He turns to Ix, but before Lucifer can say anything, Ix jumps in. “I want to go home.”

Lucifer smiles. “Glad to hear it. I know your mooah and bedduh miss you terribly.”

Ix blinks. “You talked to them? How do you know those words?”

“Yes, and I speak all human languages. Including those that are endangered, like that of the Nuwuvi.” Lucifer tucks a third envelope back inside his jacket. “I’ll leave you all to relax and I will get back to the detective.” He gives a little wave and heads for the door.

“He seems nice,” Shell says after Lucifer is gone, then gives a small laugh as the slight ludicrousness of the comment strikes her.

“Right,” Violet agrees with a cackle. “Super sweet for Satan!”

Ix just shakes his head with a slight smile. “This all so crazy.”

“You have no idea…” Michael begins when there is a knock on the door.

“I swear I only thought about room service,” Violet says with a laugh. “This place is fancy enough to read my mind, though, right?”

Michael goes to open the door and is greeted by a squeal and an unusual one-armed version of a Lopez Hug™.

“Ella!” Michael returns the hug with both arms, and sees that Ella is holding some sort of duffle bag out from her body, explaining the half-hug. He backs into the room, giving her space to come inside.

“Hey, everybody!” Ella says cheerfully as she comes into the living room. She looks like she is going to say something else when Michael swears the duffle bag twitches, and Ella twitches and quacks in response.

Violet bursts out laughing, and Ella laughs with her.

“Oh, man, I can stop doing that now," Ella chortles.

“You’re quacking on purpose…why?” Michael asks, when the duffle bag twitches again, and then it quacks. “Is that…?”

Ella laughs again. “Yeah. I wanted to smuggle him in, but you know, he never shuts up for long. So I figure if I just acted like I had a vocal quacking tic no one would challenge it. It worked!”

Michael stares in grinning disbelief. “You faked, uh, duck Tourette’s to smuggle Gabby in?”

“Well of course,” Ella beams as the others start to snicker. “You two have been apart for too long.” She sets the duffle on a chair and unzips it to lift out the duck, handing him to Michael. It’s probably the excitement of freedom more than actual recognition in his tiny dinosaur brain, but the moment Gabby lands in Michael’s arm he bursts into enthusiastic quacking and nibbles at Michael’s shirt with his bill.

His friends burst into full laughter as Michael stands holding his duck with a slightly sheepish expression.

“Awww, see, he missed you!” Ella proclaims. Now that she has both hands free, she comes to give Michael a full Lopez Hug™, reaching under his arms for a good squeeze without disturbing the duck. “I missed you too, bud,” she adds with a contended sigh.

Chapter Text

“Don’t look so nervous, Michael! This is going to be amazing!”

Violet digs an elbow into Michael’s ribs, making him huff. That in turn makes Shell laugh.

“I’m not nervous!” Michael lies outright. “Just ready for this part to be over so we can just get on with it.”

“Too bad Ix can’t be here today,” Shell says.

“I wish he could be too,” Michael agrees. “But he had to be in court this week for his father’s sentencing. After that he’s done. The trials for the two other victims Maze tracked down so far are getting underway.”

Violet shakes her head. “I still can’t believe he plead guilty to all those charges, Ix was so sure he was going to deny it all and pretend to just be a nice dad trying to find his kid. I bet they did one of those plea bargain things so he’d turn on the other guys or something. He just better not get off easy.” She scowls.

Michael shrugs casually. “Maybe he just feels really guilty.” No need to mention that he knows that for a fact. It’s not uncommon for people to willingly—even desperately, eagerly—confess all their sins when they happen to be confronted with a certain scary devil face and sneak preview of Hell. The human justice system will come down hard on him for sure, but that’s probably the least of his worries now. There are repercussions when one of your kidnapping victims happens to be the Great Judge.  Michael has weighed the souls of many guilt-free abusers of children over the years and sent them all to his twin’s domain. Ix’s bastard father is likely to go to Hell on his own guilt, but if he somehow manages not to, Michael will take extra pleasure in rendering his Judgement.

Violet snorts. “Right. Well as long as he can never get anywhere near Ix again, that’s the important thing.”

“He won’t,” Michael says darkly, and Violet and Shell both smile knowingly. Michael knows it’s more Lucifer’s money and influence that will protect these friends, but he also knows he’ll never convince them of that. After all, all three have seen him defend them with bladed wings, a bit more impressively with each growth spurt. As Violet eloquently put it once, ‘Once you see Saint Mick ripping your enemies a new asshole you sleep better at night from then on.’ 

It's really no surprise Violet and Mazikeen have hit it off. Maze has even picked up calling Michael “Mick” despite his protests, and he just knows this ‘Saint Mick’ thing is going to bite him on the ass come his half-brother’s birthday.

“Ix said that when his dad gets sentenced, he’s going to take his name back.” Shell is looking at Michael as she says it.

“Really?” Michael asks. “He’ll go by Gabriel?” He hadn’t known that, but the thought makes him smile. His favorite sister, and one of his three best friends, sharing a name.

“Gabe,” Violet corrects. “He wants to go by Gabe.” She grins at Shell, looking pointedly at her nametag that reads ‘Shelley.’ “I’m still gonna call you Shell because Shelley has got to be the most all-American girl name ever.”

Shell laughs. Michael knows the two of them have been having this back and forth ever since Shell picked the name, and that she is not offended. Shell had long since shared with them that her more poetic street name came from the feelings she struggled with for so long of inside and outside not matching. ‘Shell’ represented both something protective and something false. While she now enjoys presenting herself as Shelley precisely because of its all-American girliness, she is actually happy being Shell to her friends.

“I know, it’s not as pretty as Iris,” Shell says with a sly smile, the name on Violet’s birth certificate that she claims to loathe. Michael had asked why one flower name was better than another when he first learned that, and Violet had spluttered and informed him she named herself for the color not the flower.

Violet looks out the window, not rising to the bait. “Lots of people out there… hey, your brother is waiting in line. I figured he’d just breeze on in.”

Michael peers out and smirks. “He’s too busy showboating for the crowd. This part of town is really slumming it for him.”

“It is a grand opening,” Shell points out. “He probably wants it to be grand. And it is time…”

Michael grins, rolling his eyes just a little, and flips over the open/shut sign hanging on the door. Then he opens the door and says, “Okay, we’re open.” Then he says “Oof!” when Violet elbows him in the ribs.

“Welcome to Ruddy Duck Coffee!” Violet proclaims, and the crowd applauds. Michael is pretty sure Lucifer started the clapping.

Then everything is too busy for a while to do anything more than make coffee and serve pastries, Michael and Shell behind the counter, Violet everywhere else, helping out on their first day.

Lucifer gets to the front of the line. Michael hadn’t seen her before, but Chloe is with him now. They both laugh when they see the coffee listed on the ‘specials’ board at the counter.

“Well, well,” Lucifer says. “Since I’m assuming you don’t do a single malt cappuccino…” Michael rolls his eyes and his brother continues. “Then let’s have two Latte Deckers, if you please.”

“That’s two tall non-fat almond milk lattes with sugar-free caramel drizzle, coming right up!” Shell confirms cheerfully.

Linda and Amenadiel drop by with Charlie at one point, and Violet surprisingly pounces on Charlie, taking him on a tour of the coffeeshop. On second thought, Michael thinks, he shouldn’t be surprised. Violet was definitely the mom for their little team of misfits, so maybe she’s just a natural.

It’s a big moment when Shell’s parents stop by, briefly. They don’t come inside, but Shell’s mother comes to the doorway and Michael takes over the counter so Shell can go talk to them. She has seen them a few times since they got back to LA and has said only that it is better than before. Today she only spends a couple minutes with them, and Michael notes Shell doesn’t touch her father, and her mother’s hug is awkward, but she is smiling when she comes back inside.

Things settle down eventually, enough that Michael and Shell can take turns at the counter.  Michael is sitting at a table, taking a breather and sipping an espresso, when Violet passes by him and remarks “You know she’ll come.”

Michael blinks and turns in his seat to look at Violet, who is smirking. Behind her at the counter, Shell is smiling.

“What?” he asks, confused.

“Ella,” Violet says. “You’ve been staring at that door waiting for her. She’ll be here.”

Michael flushes. “I know she’ll…I wasn’t waiting,” he mutters as they both laugh at his discomfiture. Because of course he’s waiting for Ella, he’s excited to show her the place, just catch up on things.

Later in the day, when Michael takes another break (and sits with his back toward the entrance, because he’s waiting sure but not staring at the door), his phone pings with a text. Shell and Violet both look at him expectantly as he reads it.

Michael looks up and grins. “It’s from Maze,” he says, and their eyes widen. Michael feels his grin grow fiercer as he relays Maze’s text verbatim. “Fucker got life.”

“Watch your mouth, mijo. There are kids around here.”

Michael stands up and turns at Ella’s voice. She’s already moving in for the Lopez Hug™, and he’s ready for it.

“Michael, this place is so awesome!” she bubbles, still mid-hug.

“He got life?” Violet’s grin is just as toothy and satisfied as Michael’s. Shell looks relieved.

Ella obviously knows what they’re talking about, because as she pats Michael’s back and finally releases the hug, she says, “Ix will feel so much safer now.”

“Gabe,” Violet laughs. “It’ll be official now, he’ll be Gabe.”

“Ella,” Michael says at last. “What can I get you?” He gestures at the counter all-inclusively.

Ella grins up at him. “Tall mocha, with whip, and whatever pastry looks best to you cause we’re gonna share it. I’ll be over there.” She heads off to take a table against the wall, leaving Michael blinking.

He turns to see Shell already making the mocha.

“Sharing a pastry.” Violet lifts her voice to a higher register. “Isn’t that romantic?”

“Oh stop it,” Michael grumbles, blushing slightly. “We’re friends. When I left LA I was way too young…looking for that to even be a thing.”

Violet laughs and even Shell’s smile is almost a smirk. It’s Shell who says, “Well, you’ve grown up an awful lot on the road, Mick.” She hands him Ella’s mocha.

“Yeah, and I think she’s noticed,” Violet chuckles. “So choose your pastry well. Something a little messy and sticky I think.”

Shell giggles—a sweet, happy sound that warms Michael’s heart to hear—but he doesn’t get what’s funny. “You want me to make a mess?”

“No idiot,” Violet snorts. “I just want you to both have to lick your fingers a lot.” She wiggles her eyebrows and it’s such a perfect echo of Lucifer’s ‘I’m being suggestive now’ look that Michael laughs out loud.

Michael uses tongs to lift a decidedly sticky pecan-cinnamon bun onto a plate. When Violet says, “Yesss..!” in surprised approval, he primly slices it in half with a knife, grabs two forks and a pile of napkins, collects the mocha, and heads toward Ella without a word.

He doesn’t miss the not-too-quiet, “Chicken!” Violet calls after him.

“It’s just such a creative idea,” Ella is saying, gesturing with a bite of cinnamon bun speared on her fork. “So how do the codes work?”

Michael smiles proudly. “It’s all worked into coffee or food orders. We have one that kids can use to just kind of check us out, and they get something free to eat when they do. But then we have the ones that mean ‘I need help’ and ‘I need help right this minute.’

Ella finally eats her bite, nodding, then cuts another piece off the giant pastry. “So how do you respond to those?”

“The first case we deliver the contact info… for us, but also for things like the trafficking hotline if they just want to try official resources. We have special sets of coffee sleeves and napkins with that info inside. We’ll ask if they want to talk right away if we can. Those that want to talk…and the ‘need help urgently’ requests…get the key to the third bathroom.”

That gets a snort of laughter. “Right,” Ella says. “Because the urgent needs are usually someone who really really has to pee?”  She’s just teasing him, she already knows that the “third bathroom,” around the corner in the back of the shop, has a second door leading to a suite that is not a part of the coffeeshop at all. It’s their triage space, where they can figure out exactly what kind of assistance the young person asking for help might need. Occasionally they might need the police… and sometimes Mazikeen might have to pay a visit somewhere.

And sometimes, a young victim in imminent danger might need direct intervention by an archangel.

“And Violet is the one out there telling kids how to get help in a coffeeshop? By herself?”

“Nah,” Violet says, sitting down with them. “I’ll have a street partner. And if I have to go anyplace extra risky, Maze’ll be shadowing. I’m not stupid.”

Ella smiles at her. “Hey there. No, I hear it’s just the opposite and you’re a dang smart girl. Right to college, I hear.”

Violet shrugs, face coloring slightly. Michael knows she’s often uncomfortable with praise.

“Well, it’s this program that lets me finish my high school requirements and get community college credit at the same time.”

“She’s really smart,” Michael says. When he says it, in contrast to Ella, he gets both a pleased smile and a kick under the table from Violet. “She’s thinking of going into social work.”

“Yeah, we’ll see, whatevs,” Violet mutters, still smiling a little. She gets up and goes to talk to Shell.

“This really is something, Michael,” Ella says earnestly. “I’m kind of amazed Chloe is cool with it, given the, uh, outside the normal channels thing.” She gives an exaggerated wink.

Michael laughs. “I don’t know that she’s exactly cool with it, but she knows how broken the systems are too. And I think she’s not entirely sure what to do about Saint Michael bending some laws to help some kids.”

Ella nods. She shamelessly snags the last bite of pastry and gazes around the coffeeshop. “So, I kind of thought you’d have Gabby here as your, mm, shop duck?”

“Uh, no.” Michael grins. “I may not know much about ambience, but even I know a loud, non-stop quacking duck is not the vibe I’m going for in here. Gabby gets to exercise his lungs—and wings—at my other location.”

“Wait, what? You have two coffeeshops?” Ella asks in surprise.

“Lucifer didn’t tell you? No, it’s not another coffee place. I’d love to show it to you…but it’s kind of a commute.”

The commute is more than 15 hours by car, but considerably less as the angel flies. Michael isn’t sure how frequently he’ll go back and forth. It will probably depend on how many residents end up in the northern refuge. Michael has to admit he prefers the quiet up here to the bustle of LA, but he knows it will take a lot of time to get the coffeeshop really up and running.

He has been flying up every few days just to check on things, and to reassure Gabby that he’s really going to like his new life as a country duck.  But this weekend he’s come up for a special reason. Lucifer, bless his heart and his overstuffed wallet, arranged for Gabe-not-Ix and his family to fly up here to Oregon (via human aircraft, not angelic means) to visit Michael’s cherry and apple orchard.

It's really more a small hobby farm than a serious commercial orchard. Michael bought it—with Lucifer’s money—from an irascible old fart who had no use for grown-ups but a soft spot for kids. He was moving to live near his grandkids (or was it great grandkids? Michael really couldn’t guess his age beyond very old) and selling his small but well-maintained “pick your own” orchard. When Michael showed up with an offer of a cash purchase and a duck under his arm, the old fart sold it to him on the spot.

Michael also hired the orchard manager, a possibly less ancient and definitely sweeter old coot named Felipe, to stay on. Michael had told Felipe that he expected to have adolescents come and go, working the orchard, and that many of them were likely to be kids who had had rough lives. He didn’t say explicitly that these were likely to be kids in hiding, staying safe while a demon tracked down their abusers. However, what he did describe got an emotional “God bless you,” from Felipe, so heartfelt that Michael overlooked the mention of Dad.

A shout from Felipe followed by a dozen quacks from Gabby get Michael’s attention. A white van is rumbling up the long drive. Lucifer had laughingly warned Michael that when he went to the reservation to meet Gabe’s family to propose the trip for Gabe and his aunt and grandmother, he had found the teenager in his grandmother’s house with about 20 other family members visiting. By the time Lucifer left, a great-uncle and three cousins of varying age and degrees of relatedness had joined the planned trip, so Michael is prepared for at least seven people to pour out of the van.

Michael heads through the trees toward the van, carrying a basket of cherries. He sees Gabe get out and wave. He half expects Gabe to come running toward him, but Gabe goes to the front passenger door of the van to help an old woman step down. That must be his grandmother. She takes Gabe’s arm and he leads her to Michael. Michael can see immediately the old lady is perfectly spry and is just letting her grandson be helpful. She pats Michael’s cheek when Gabe introduces them, and tells Michael he's a saint for all he has done. Michael looks at Gabe's innocent expression and wonders what exactly he has told his mooah.

Felipe is leading everyone up the walkway to the house when Michael realizes the van hasn’t moved, even though he was sure they were supposed to be dropped and picked up at the end of the weekend. He can see the driver still in the vehicle.

Is he waiting for a tip? Michael wonders, heading down to the van. The driver is looking out the far window, but just as Michael gets close, the driver turns, opening the door and getting out. Michael freezes in his tracks.

“Dad?”

God smiles at Michael. Michael stands where he is, barely breathing. Is he going to make me go home? Michael thinks in a panic. I can’t…I just got everything underway…I can’t leave my friends now…

“It’s good to see you, son,” his Father says. “I had a nice drive out here. Your human friend Gabe… He is a good-hearted young man. A bright soul despite all his hardships.”

Michael gives a jerky nod, waiting for the hammer to fall. To be sent back to the Silver City, punished for running, scolded for revealing divinity to humans. But God’s eyes soften.

“I’m not here to bring you home, Michael,” God says. “You are welcome to remain on earth, doing this work. I just wanted to tell you how proud I am of you.”

Michael’s breath stops completely. “I… I, uh…” he stammers after a moment, before pulling himself together to say, “Thank you, Father.”

God smiles again, clasps Michael's shoulder, then gets back in the van. “I would like to see you in the Silver City sometimes,” God says. “Maybe once things are running smoothly here, you can add an occasional third leg to your commute and come up?”

Michael makes a semi-coherent affirmative noise.

“Very good. By the way, I’m happy you and Lucifer are getting on so well these days.” He starts the van and puts it in gear. “Enjoy your friend's visit, son.”

With that, God turns the van and bounces back down the drive. Michael smiles, a slow, big smile, and turns to go join Gabe and his family, Gabby leading the way like an enthusiastic quacking herald.