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SamLucifer Big Bang - “Amend”

Pairings: Samifer (Sam/Lucifer), Destiel (Dean/Castiel), Michael/Adam Words: 45,094 Rating: T Warnings: Experimentation on humans, human-animal hybrids, oppressive government, internalized homophobia, Distopian!AU, resistance movement, violence, language,

Summary: Sixty years after a new force – named Grace – has been discovered, scientists have found a way to create animal-human hybrids who can act as proxies so that humans can use the seemingly magical force. The Men of Letters, a government contractor, has created a Unit of human-hybrid pairs to track down illegal or escaped hybrids. After a routine mission goes awry, the Unit must decide what’s more important: following the mission or joining the fight for hybrid rights.

AO3.org / The Beautiful Artwork Pt 1 / The Beautiful Artwork Pt 2

Artist: i-bet-you-wish-i Beta: biginterrobangtheory

Sam watched Dean move up the block from the north, arms bare and hands at the ready, from his position in the alley southwest of the church. His brother was quick on his feet, silent, and even though the place was like a ghost town at this time of night, if someone had been looking they wouldn't have seen Dean approach. When he was hidden from Sam's sight again, static filled the Comm in his ear for a second before Castiel's deep voice announced, "Cain has hit the mark."

There was a soft snicker from Dean over the Comm because he always laughed when Castiel said that.

As skillful as Dean was at creeping through the landscape, Adam was even better. Sam didn't see him move until his position was revealed over the Comm. A quiet, "Baby Boy has hit the mark," from Michael was what it took for Sam to finally see the outline of his younger brother squatting down next to a porch to the east. Michael and Castiel were nowhere to be seen, but from the alley, he knew they would be up high, on the roof, ready for the go ahead.

Despite the fact that Lucifer was always the easiest one to see at night, he was the one to give the final survey and give the go ahead. Sam watched as Lucifer's massive white wings came into sight, gliding him down from a thermal. He couldn't see the man's features, but knew he would be looking around, scoping for any sign that the targets had vacated the church. There was an undeniable beauty of watching the hybrids fly; Michael and Castiel were impressive, too, but Sam had always been drawn to Lucifer.

It was natural, Sam knew, for a human to be drawn to his proxy.

But watching Lucifer fly was mesmerizing. The white stood out against the darkness, drawing Sam's eyes to him, to the minute adjustments in his primary feathers to guide him slightly to one side or the other was a sight that Sam could never look away from.

Lucifer angled himself up just as he was approaching the cross at the top of the church's steeple, giving him time to move his hips forward. He stepped down onto the cross, perching on the side of it with no effort, and Sam let out a breath that he hoped the Comm wouldn't pick up.

Despite the fact that Sam couldn't see the grace that connected them, he could feel a pull on it right before Lucifer addressed him. 'Eyes on the prize, King.'

'We don't have to use code names telepathically,' Sam returned, but he lowered his eyes from the top of the church to its entrance, where he was supposed to be watching for movement. If this had been a training exercise, with cameras everywhere so the Men of Letters could dissect their every move for faults, he would have received hell for watching Lucifer instead of covering his mark. Being out in the field hadn't done anything to improve his concentration.

Through their shared grace, Sam felt Lucifer's happiness as he thought, 'You're always the King, Sam.' Any response would have to wait until later, Sam knew, when Lucifer's voice migrated from his head to the Comm in his ear. "Hawk and Crow, you're clear to touch down."

From opposite directions, Sam caught a glimpse of brown and black – far more camouflaged in the darkness than Lucifer's brilliant white – as they descended from their rooftops to join the humans on the ground.

With five of the six members of their Unit on the ground, prepared to fight, Sam felt his fingers flexing. He smoothed his hand over his bare arm, brushing his palm from his wrist all the way up to his sleeve at his shoulder, performing one last test of mobility. They had been on hundreds of missions, and thousands of trainings before that, but he couldn't stop the impulse to do one last check right before they burst in, metaphorical guns blazing.

Lucifer's voice came over the Comm again. "On my count: Three, Two, One."

There was a beat after Lucifer's count where there was silence in the air. Then, there was an explosion on top of the roof. The others were moving in, making their way toward the church, but Sam held back for a moment, watching Lucifer take off from his perch, angling himself to a head drive through the hole the explosive he threw had created in the church's roof.

Then Sam started moving in, too.

Despite the fact that they were well trained and fit, Sam could hear his brothers' breathing over the Comm, and knew that his breath was heightened with adrenalin, too. By the time he made it to the front of the church, the rest of the Unit was already inside. It was dark, but one of his brothers must have used grace to create a glowing orb in the rooms. It made it easier for the humans to see, and one after another, he heard different members of the unit announce what room they were in as they checked, and cleared, the rooms of hostiles.

The sanctuary was near the front of the church. Entering from the gathering area, Sam drew his hands up, ready to touch any part of his arm that he may need. His steps slowed when he saw the converted altar. On the wall behind the altar, there was a crucifix, but Jesus had been vandalized. Sheets had been cut into the shape of wings, and they were outstretched behind him, not unlike Lucifer's hybridization. His fingers held claws, and his arms were covered in fur, a classic sign of werewolf hybrids. His eyes were painted blue and there were marking around his face, mimicking the djinn hybrids. The more he looked, the more he could pick out markers of the different hybrids: vampire, shapeshifter, rugaru...

Anything that had been created as a hybrid was meshed together up there.

It was so disconcerting, Sam didn't notice the cage on the altar until he heard the rattling.

By the time Sam made it to the altar, his brothers had made it to the room. Each of them had a human captive walking in front of them. Dean was barking orders at the bigger man. The hostage's hands were behind his back, rune-proof gloves cuffed to him, and half of his shirt was still smoldering. Adam's hand was raised behind the smaller man, who looked a little younger than Adam. The smaller one was crying.

"I'm sorry," he whined, and the cage jostled on top of the altar.

It was an adult, male, but the wildness of it proved it was a wendigo. Wendigos were hybrids between two humans, and while in theory it seemed as if human-human pairings would be much like having a child, something always ended up wrong. While each of the hybrid varieties developed certain animalistic tics, wendigos always developed the same one: a craving for human flesh.

'Wendigo,' Sam thought to Lucifer.

The reply was nearly instantaneous: 'Really? We've never seen one of those before. Don't let Michael kill it before I see it.'

Michael and Castiel both entered the Sanctuary from the back door, and after acknowledging that the hybrid was caged, they moved past the threat of imminent danger to check on their humans. Adam had a bruise on his face, and Michael took the youngest boy's face in his hands, assessing the damage.

Dean shot a wink at Castiel. They were staring at each other silently, communicating through grace, and Sam looked away, refusing to subject himself to them.

By the time Lucifer burst through the door, Adam had shaken Michael off, and the eldest hybrid was staring into the cage with fascination. For training purposes, the Men of Letters had acquired all sorts of different sub-species of hybrids for the Unit to practice tracking down and euthanizing, but never a wendigo.

Henry Winchester had abhorred the thought of mixing humans, stating there was no advantage to trying to create full-humans who could manipulate grace. He put all his money and energy behind the Milton formula for creating hybrid proxies: a mix breed between a human and an animal who could pull grace, a magical and mostly unexplainable force, from nature. A fortune would have been made if the Winchester and Milton lines had sold the formula to private companies; unfortunately, they had been Men of Letters. The government didn't pay nearly as well, but at least they had some pride.

After a few minutes of silent analyzing from the six of them, Dean asked what Sam figured they were all thinking. "Do we kill it?"

"Yes," Michael said, tilting his head. The thrashing man inside the cage didn't appear to understand them. "Our orders are to kill any and all escaped hybrids."

"Yeah, but a wendigo?" Lucifer asked. "Maker will want to see him."

"No, he won't," Michael responded. "Maker always told us how dangerous other experiments could be. He won't want to risk transport just so the Men of Letters can euthanize him themselves. That's our job."

"Please," the younger hostage howled. Sam looked up at him. "He's our brother. Please, you can't kill him."

"He's your brother?" Dean asked.

"Brothers like us?" Castiel asked, gesturing behind him to Michael and Lucifer, before turning his attention to the Winchesters. "Or brothers like them?"

The boy just sobbed, and that was answer enough.

"Fuck," Dean muttered.

"Three wendigos?" Sam asked, needlessly, and the Unit fell silent again.

Overhead, the orbs that one of the humans had created faltered, and Castiel looked up at it, frowning. Dean must have originally created it. As the dark haired hybrid must have allowed the grace to pass through him and to Dean's spell because the orb of light stabilized, but the odd lighting did nothing to help the moment pass. The hybrid Jesus hung on the wall, his djinn-blue eyes staring down at them. The shadows casted over the pews made everything seem darker than it was, dirtier than Sam knew it would be.

Behind the bigger man, Dean's fingers twitched, but he didn't reach out for the comfort Sam knew he craved. Castiel's wings spread behind him, feathers touching against Dean's tattooed bicep. His elder brother stilled.

"Are there more of you?" Michael asked quietly. "Not more wendigos, I mean. This is a church. Where is your congregation?"

At the silence that met them, Lucifer spoke up to clarify. "The people. Who worships here?"

Finally, the elder hostage talked. "The people don't worship us," he said, pausing when the wendigo in the cage thrashed. He looked at his brother, pained, then looked at Michael, correctly assuming that he was in charge. Michael was their unspoken leader because of his willingness to follow orders. The man's pleas to be spared would fall on deaf ears. "Not really. They worship grace, and any hybrid that can manipulate the grace. When our brother turned, they caught him and kept him in a cage, but we can't… he's too far to gone to use grace anymore and we're not far enough along."

"Please, don't kill him," the younger one sobbed, again.

"It's a mercy," Michael said, looking down at the cage. Sam noticed that his blade had been summoned in his hand, and it didn't really matter how many times they were called to execute a mistake, an unsanctioned hybrid. It never really got easier for Sam. He was rarely the one who had to deliver the final blow – Michael or Dean usually had that honor – but Sam was grateful for it. He felt guilty and disgusting for weeks after kills. "Especially for a wendigo. He's so far gone, now, he can't recognize you. The other hybrids we come after... it's a mercy to kill them, too. With power comes responsibility, and with the power undocumented, illegal hybrid-human pairs have, they can do serious damage to friendly populations."

At that, the younger boy's tears started again, not that Sam could blame him. The blade that had been created to destroy the other experiments was intimidating; it looked like a spear made of metal, and it was grace-resistant. Grace could be used to push bullets aside or alter traditional weapons. There were very few things that didn't react with grace, and Michael's blade was one of them.

Sam looked away when the hybrid stuck the blade around the bars of the cage, sinking it into the wendigo. Sometimes, hybrids fought until the end. Sam remembered a few months ago when a werewolf refused to go down. It took all the grace Michael, Lucifer, and Castiel could muster to hold him still enough. Sam and Adam were physically holding the thing down, and Dean still struggled to stab the thing enough to kill it.

That had been a rough hunt. Michael had sprained one of his wings and had been incapacitated for several weeks; Adam had gotten a bloody nose from pulling too much on their bond to use the grace.

This hunt had been easy in comparison. There was almost no work to be done, and the wendigo slumped over in the cage relatively noiselessly. The other two didn't see it coming when Dean and Adam pushed their blades into their back, but because of it, they went quietly, too.

Still, Sam felt a pull in his chest.

He looked up, and Lucifer was looking over at him, frowning. Although there was no pull at the grace that bonded them, Sam didn't need the words. The look was enough.

The worse part about the kill was the clean up. With the grace, it wasn't difficult work. Experimental hybrids couldn't be buried; if they were dug up, scientists could reverse engineer the specific DNA sequencing, which depending on the type of hybrid, could have massive benefits. Most scientists knew how to splice the genes, but few of them could do it as well as Chuck Shurley could.

It was a flick of the wrist and a gentle touch for Dean, who had the rune for proxy-assisted pyrokinesis tattooed in his forearm. Adam had the rune on him as well, and between the two of them, they could control a blaze hot enough to turn the hybrids to ash.

Sam was never asked to help, even though there were three bodies. When they had first been learning runes and sigils that would heighten and focus certain aspects of grace, there had been an incident. Lucifer and Sam set off the fire alarm, but the chamber door slammed shut before they could escape. They were stuck in a room with a fire neither could put out, and since that day, Lucifer had never been able to give Sam more than a spark, which was fine for both of them.

Instead, they collected samples.

Lucifer took the pictures, uploaded instantly to the Men of Letter's server a thousand miles away. The chatter of Sam's father was likely in Lucifer's ear, if the perpetual grimace on his face was any guess. Luckily, Dr. Shurley was much easier to deal with.

"A wendigo?" Chuck's voice asked through the Comm. "They're exceedingly rare."

"Lucifer tried to get Michael to let us bring it to you," Sam said with a laugh. From a rafter high above, Lucifer was perched, taking pictures of the hybrid Jesus. "It didn't work of course."

"Of course," Chuck agreed, sighing. "Different subspecies have different levels of loyalty and free will, even among birds. Hawks, as you may guess, are superior hunters to doves. But doves are resourceful, and even though they're not very good at building nests, they'll use all the tools at their disposal to do it. Because of their sequencing, Michael is much better at staying focused at the singular task at hand. Lucifer and Castiel are far more likely take risks for what they believe to be the greater good."

"And," Sam grinned, watching as Lucifer tucked his wings behind him, tipping off the rafter backwards, completely at ease with his ability to right himself and open his wings to touch down softly. "Hawks, doves, and crows have been known to mate for life."

Chuck laughed. "Of course. You probably know more about birds than I do at this point."

"Nobody can know more than you do."

Lucifer winced, digging his Comm out of ear. "John wants to know if you collected DNA samples for confirmation of the kill."

Sam sighed, and Lucifer just put his Comm back in. "Of course he did," he snapped. His expression changed instantly, face turning pale and he shook his head. "No, I'm sorry, sir."

Sam moved closer to his partner, reaching a hand out to brush against his forearm. Lucifer held it up, and Sam wrapped his hand around the shorter man's wrist, feeling the light, hollow bones. It was a necessity for flight, but Sam could never accept how easily the hybrids could be hurt.

Lucifer nodded, silently. Sam couldn't hear John, but it was obvious from Lucifer's face that whatever his father was shouting into the Comm was malicious.

"Alright, bitches," Dean announced, walking back in as he stretched his arms. "Cremation is done. They're boxed and in the satchel."

"Mission complete. Dove out," Lucifer muttered beside him, ripping out his Comm as if it had been burning him. Sam dropped his hand, but Dean didn't pay them any mind. After a quick gesture, Lucifer and Sam followed Dean out. Even though the hybrids could fly to the helicopter much faster, they always walked with the humans.

That, Sam knew, was what it meant to be bonded.

Returning to the bunker, two things were obvious instantly. One, John Winchester was furious at Lucifer and two, Chuck Shurley was determined to keep the two of them from crossing paths. Although Chuck had invited the hybrids to his home before, it was a rare and special occasion. As soon as they stepped off the helicopter, Chuck was there with an invitation, and Lucifer's mood suddenly improved tenfold.

Although Chuck treated the hybrids better than some fathers treated their children, they were technically government property. Chuck had been with the Men of Letters his entire life, and they trusted him, but night passes were rare.

As soon as they'd gotten inside the bunker, Lucifer ran to his and Sam's room to get his things. When they were younger, the hybrids and the brothers slept separately, but since the bonding, it was difficult to keep them apart for several hours. With little effort, Lucifer flew up to the loft that had been built in the corner. The hybrids kept few things of personal significance, but Lucifer grabbed his token from under his pillow, put it around his neck, and glided back down.

He knew Sam was coming into the room before he walked in. Hybrids were more sensitive to grace, and although it was an invisible force, it felt like a tangible thing if the bond was strong enough. Lucifer was quick to tuck the token under his shirt where Sam couldn't see it.

Not that it mattered. It was just a bit embarrassing. Castiel didn't need a token when he was away, and Michael wouldn't either.

"Any idea what you'll do?" Sam asked as he rounded the corner. He walked toward his bed and flopped down, his hands behind his head, turning to look at the hybrid.

"Maker usually makes us some food," Lucifer said, shrugging. With the token pressed against his skin, the hybrid would normally feel eased. Being in the same room as Sam, however, eased him further. A token was a quick fix, a bandaid over a much more serious wound; it would help for the night but any longer and it was torture to be away from Sam. "It's better than what they make in the cafeteria."

"Better than Dean's burgers?" Sam laughed.

"Not usually, but sometimes," Lucifer admitted, shoving his hands in his pockets and looking toward the door. "But sometimes he lets us order a pizza and that's the best. And his garden is bigger than mine."

Instead of laughing again, Sam was quiet. Lucifer tried to ignore it, but the grace they shared tugged at him, and he turned to look back over at the human. Sam met his eye for a second, but looked away and thought, 'I'll miss you tonight.'

Lucifer took a breath in, a smile forming on his face as he thought, 'I'll miss you, too.'

Feeling lighter, Lucifer turned and left their room. While all three sets of partners shared a room, their rooms were located at different parts of the bunker. They moved them apart when they stopped their training and became the soldier unit. As adults, Chuck had said gently, they would need more privacy than they had as children, but Lucifer wasn't sure what he'd meant.

Objectively he knew why adults needed privacy, but he shared a room with Sam. Privacy didn't exist between partners. He remembered how embarrassed Michael had been the day Adam thought he could be quieter than he was. It was a lesson to all of them, one that Chuck had insisted was normal between bonded proxies, but one they hadn't believed until it happened to them.

If the bond was strong enough, feelings could bleed through. Nobody could sleep through that, not in such close proximity, and the human brothers had gotten a gentle talking to from Chuck (and a far sterner one from their father), and the problem hadn't been reported since.

In the hallway to the main room, he saw Michael. His elder brother was rubbing his wrist, frowning down at the bone. There was red smeared across his skin, but no wound. Lucifer couldn't believe he hadn't noticed his brother's injury before. When his brother looked up, a small smile appeared on his face, light and fond.

"I heard you're going to Maker's house tonight," Michael said, dropping his arm. The smeared blood was still on his skin. "I hope you have fun."

"You're not going?" Lucifer asked. "I thought we all were."

"Just you, tonight. He didn't ask us."

"Is it because… are you okay?"

Michael frowned for a moment, confused, before he looked down at his arm. "Oh, yes. I didn't want to heal it but John insisted. Wendigos are so rare that their full extent of power is unknown. When we moved the brothers outside to cremate, some blood transferred to me. John wanted me to use healing grace just in case."

"Castiel's blood?" Lucifer ask. Hybrids could heal others, but only with blood. It was possible because the grace as a life-force, but how it worked remained a mystery. It was something that scientists debated about but never really proved. It was difficult and draining, and wounds created to heal could not be healed by other hybrids. It was only used in serious cases of injury.

"He offered. We knew you were leaving, and didn't want harm your night."

Lucifer frowned, but nothing could be done. His brothers seemed to possess some selfless gene that skipped over Lucifer – they were considered brothers, as part of their DNA was shared – but their hybridizations included different mixtures of DNA. It was why their codenames were accurate to the look of their wings: Michael had more hawk, Lucifer had more dove, and Castiel had more crow.

The most interesting experiments they went through as children had been the ones that tried to determine what parts of their personality had been caused by their related human DNA, their avian mixtures, or their environment.

It embarrassed him that his brothers knew he was selfish, that he would have given his blood if asked, but he would have been quietly displeased because of it.

Lucifer felt a hand on his shoulder, and he looked back up at his brother. Michael hesitated a moment, then patted his shoulder. "Have fun tonight, brother."

"I will," he replied, turning to walk to the main entrance of the bunker.

He walked past Castiel and Dean on his way, but he didn't stop to talk to them. The hybrid looked a little woozy, and he was being checked over by John Winchester, Dean pacing behind him.

As soon as Lucifer saw John inspecting Castiel's arm, the wound he had created to use the blood spell, the blond looked down, hurrying past. None of them saw him, or if they did, none had called out to him.

Chuck was waiting at the front door. With the exception of the perpetual look of exhaustion, Chuck didn't look like many of the other scientists. He never wore a lab coat – or he hadn't since they were very young – and he never treated them like they were anything less than human. He was their maker, but it became a term of endearment, one that Chuck had not asked for, and thus, deserved.

It had happened a long time ago, when Lucifer was barely a year old. Dean and Sam were in the Nest – the room with the giant perch the hybrids had shared before their bondings – and John and Chuck had been observing them as potential partners. It had been obvious very early on that Michael and Dean would never be able to be bonded, and many of the scientists had wanted to terminate Michael in order to create a better partner for Dean.

Chuck had talked them out of it, insisting that the Unit needed to be larger than one partnership. Lucifer and Sam had been born a few years later. When it was obvious that Lucifer and Sam were a match from the first time they had met, there was talk again of terminating Michael. But again, Chuck had the final say. Despite his young age, Lucifer had known that the scientists were planning a third round. There was a lot of tension in the air before Adam and Castiel had been born; the scientists were under a lot of pressure to bond Michael and Dean with the two newest additions of the Unit to avoid termination.

Luckily, Adam's first steps had been toward Michael, and Castiel learned to fly by jumping into Dean's outstretched arms.

When they were children, they were often granted supervised visitation to foster the bonding process. It was after one of these supervised meetings that John tried getting Dean and Sam to leave the Nest. Because the hybrids were near, there was some residual grace that the kids could use to start practicing what they would need as soldiers, but it wasn't very strong. Regardless, all of them were on strict training timetables, but it was getting more difficult for the adults to pull the children away.

"Dad," Sam had begged, trying to tug his tiny arm out of John's grasp. "No."

"Dad, Dad," Lucifer chirped, jumping up and flapping his wings. He would stay airborne momentarily, but he wasn't able to sustain flight at such a young age. He latched on to Chuck's shoulders, wrapping his little legs around the man's hip. Chuck caught him, a stunned look on his face. "Sam stay."

"I'm not your dad," Chuck said. "I made you, and you're made from Milton… my family's DNA, but you're not my son."

"Not dad?" Lucifer frowned. Michael was at Chuck's feet, and when he held up his arms, Lucifer went to him instantly, as if he suddenly distrusted Chuck. "Brother," he announced, pointing at Michael, and his brother nodded. He pointed at Chuck and asked, "But not dad?"

"No," Michael said. "He's your maker. We don't have parents. It's like the baby in the WOMB, remember. It's not like the Winchester baby in the woman's belly."

"Maker," Lucifer tried, a grin spreading onto his face. He turned back to the scientists, batting his wings again. They hit his brother, and Michael let him go. "Maker, maker. Sam stay?"

The name stuck. As Lucifer walked up to Chuck in the front lobby of the bunker, he couldn't help but smile. The man looked exhausted, as always, but he offered the hybrid a smile in return.

"What are we going to do at your house, maker?"

"I have something I want to show you, but I can't bring it here," Chuck said.

Lucifer nodded, following the man out of the bunker. The airspace over the bunker was a no-fly zone; the Men of Letters headquarters was part of the military and had protections. Of course, when they started trying to produce viable avian hybrids, they needed to take every precaution.

While the garage was big enough to practice low flying, they needed more space to practice aerials. At first, they had put up a dome to keep the hybrids safe – or at least, so they said – but Lucifer was sure they were trying to keep the flyers in. Nobody had tried to kidnap the hybrids before, despite their projected worth. In theory, they were the only adult avian hybrids in the world.

Feeling the wind on his face when he wasn't flying with a mission was exhilarating. So much of Lucifer's life had been planned, controlled, and the moments of peace, of freedom, were moments that Lucifer hoarded. He tried to slow them down, tried to remember every detail.

The sun warmed his light hair before he made his way into the front seat of Chuck's car. The black car was warm from sitting in the sun, and despite the discomfort, Lucifer enjoyed the sweat that formed, so often he was cold.

After Chuck started the car, he turned to look at the hybrid and said, "You can roll your window down, if you'd like."

Lucifer did, and it was almost like flying.

Even though Michael was sure that John was just being cautious, he hadn't been worried about the contaminated blood before the man asked Castiel to cut himself open and bleed for his older brother. It was something Castiel did willingly, did with love, but it still made Michael frown.

He didn't mean to shake Castiel; he hadn't meant to leave as quickly as possible, but he needed to get back to his room.

Michael looked at the large bed in the corner, noting that Adam wasn't back from wherever he had snuck off to. With a spread of his massive wings, Michael flew to his bunk in the opposite corner. Despite having been born with the appendages and not ever knowing anything different, they still felt large and cumbersome at times. He knew his brothers felt their weight too, but the younger men felt it in a different way.

They felt less human. The hybrids could never hide in a crowd. Michael didn't care about hiding; he just felt their weight. A pound of feathers, after all, still weighed the same as a pound of metal. And ounce-for-ounce, the weight of his hybridization felt a lot like Atlas'. He had all the pressures of being the first born, the leader, the strategist, but none of the usual perks that first borns get.

The only perk he ever considered worth it had been taken away from him moments after he received it.

He owned very few possessions, and he knew both of his younger brothers kept their things under their pillows. It was subconscious, he knew, to add objects of meaning to the nest, but because that was the first place anyone would look, Michael had taken extra care to hide his prize possession.

He took down a picture hanging up of the Unit as children, full of carefree smiles and missing teeth, and turned it around. Carefully, he removed the back from the frame, taking out the old photograph with a cautious hand. Setting the frame down, he held the picture with one hand, running his finger down the front of the image with the other.

It was a picture of himself, eighteen years and nine months old, holding the newborn baby in his arms. Everything about him screamed that he was still a child himself: the nervous, inexperienced look on his face paired with a look of love he'd never seen on himself before or since. Michael had been able to spend exactly half an hour with his son before the scientist took away. His son was the first attempt at breeding an avian hybrid with a human.

For a creature so small, his tawny wings seemed giant as he slept with them pressed against his body.

The boy had seemed so full of life when he was taken away by the scientists. Such is the nature of experiments, John had told him, when he reported a few weeks that his son hadn't survived a month.

At least he had a picture. At least Chuck had taken it, stealthily on his cell phone, and printed it off for him in secret. It was Michael's one secret, the one thing he had kept from everybody.

Gently, he put the picture back in the frame, hiding it again. He laid in bed, hugging one of his pillows until Adam came looking for him, asking if he'd like to play a game.

It hadn't even been a half hour by the time John found Sam in his bedroom, sprawled out on his stomach, pretending to read a book. He had been reading for a while, but the runes and sigils seemed to blur the more his hands started to shake, the more anxious he felt.

"I need a number on your anxiety rating," John stated. He was more scientist than father, but that was all Sam truly knew from the man.

He didn't hesitate to answer honestly: "At least a seven."

"Then you shouldn't be in here alone. Grab your token and be with your brothers."

"I shouldn't need a token," Sam said, but he dug his hands under his pillow to grip at the chain all the same. When he pulled the vial out, he refused to look at his father. Logically, the blood inside didn't hold residual grace; their bond was not in the blood. But having some of Lucifer's blood near him, a vial of it against his skin, helped the bonded pairs separate.

It was the only true failure the Men of Letters would admit with the Unit, but it was the same for all proxies. After the human and hybrid have been bonded, it was nearly impossible to separate them. In the short history of human-animal hybridization, many tests had been done on bonded pairs. Sam himself had been through enough experiments to know that it was better to be embarrassed with a token than it was to rip himself apart with the anxiety of being separated from his hybrid.

With the token around his neck and tucked into his shirt, he stood up to join his father, even though he knew he wouldn't be allowed freedom just yet.

The hybrids and humans were so rarely separated, there was always a battery of tests to go through before the night was over. John led Sam to the testing room: a cement room with nothing but a table and chair in the center. John didn't enter the room; instead, he locked his son inside and moved to the adjacent observation room. Despite the fact that Sam couldn't see his father because of the one-way mirror, he tried looking for him all the same.

"November 6th, Unit pairing 2," John's voice rang out into the room through the speaker system. "Human partner, Sam Winchester. Distance of approximately fifteen miles. Range test number 1."

Sam pushed up his sleeves. Just like Dean and Michael, Sam had runes and sigils tattooed all over his arms. The byproduct of very selective breeding between a high-ranking official of the Men of Letters and an exceptionally talented huntress, the humans were as much government property as the hybrids, even though they had not been genetically altered prior to conception and hatched from a WOMB Chamber. Although they were considered pure humans because their parents were humans, Sam had always identified more as a member of the Unit than as a human with a proxy.

He knew that was what he had been conditioned, taught, to feel, but it didn't make it any less true.

It was why, Sam figured, that John still ran their testing despite the fact that he was their biological father. They still called him father, even though John was barely more than the sperm donor that led to their conception and the scientist who had been in charge of their development.

Sam would say he was more of a maker than a father, but thinking that was more of an insult to Chuck than to their father.

"Sam?" John asked, voice hard and set, and the human ran his fingers over his tattooed arm, debating which spell he would fail at. None of them had ever been able to use grace at such a distance. They could communicate, sure, but Sam and Lucifer's telepathic bond had always been strong. Using their bond to charge sigils this far away was something else entirely.

They could perform if they were separated by a mile, but weakly, and anything outside of that was too far away.

It wouldn't be so easy, but Sam figured the earlier he got to work, the earlier John would let him leave. He pressed a hand to a small tattoo on the outer side of his arm. It wasn't one of their specialty spells that they had trained with over and over again, but it was one of the first ones they had learned together.

Creating light in darkness.

Sam pressed his hand to it, and tried to reach out with his mind and feel Lucifer, but at this distance, the pull was weak. He felt more grace stirring from the blood in the vial at his neck than he did from the actual hybrid. When Sam opened his eyes, he was unsurprised to see that nothing had happened.

Sam looked at the mirror, and John's voice rang out in the room, "Range test 1, failure."

Knowing what John wanted, Sam half-heartedly tried more difficult spells, ones that would need a stronger bond, stronger trust. In practice, not all proxies were perfect bonds with humans, especially commercially sold hybrids. In theory, Sam should be able to use Michael or Castiel as a proxy for very minor spells, but it was something they never practiced, not since the bonding.

It felt dirty, for some reason, and even John agreed to stop that line of experimentation after Chuck insisted it was doing more harm than good.

John checked off other failed range tests over the PA system, but Sam wasn't listening. Instead, he latched on to their thin grace, stretched over fifteen miles. He could feel how happy Lucifer was at Chuck's house, and Sam couldn't help but ask, 'What are you doing?'

Lucifer responded instantly, and despite how small their connection seemed when they were silent, it burst into Sam when they communicated. When they were teenagers, the Men of Letters drove them across the country and asked them to communicate different phrases to test their telepathy range.

Sam stood on a beach in California, and Lucifer was locked in a car in New York City. It was the same as if they'd been standing side by side.

'I fed the crows,' Lucifer's voice responded. 'Are you doing range testing?'

'Of course.'

There was silence for a long time, but Sam could read Lucifer's emotions. There was anger, annoyance, but most of all fear. The experiments the humans faced were often nothing compared to the experiments the hybrids faced because despite the fact that they belonged to the government, they were still humans. They were considered soldiers, an elite group that was kept nearly under lock and key, but human soldiers nonetheless.

The hybrids, they figured, wouldn't be alive at all without the government. They could never blend in; they could never pass as fully human because of their wings. Hybrids were considered pets, at best, and abuse cases had only ever been won in the commercial sector. The government hybrids were like lab rats. Their genes were spliced by humans, their incubation was handled by a machine, and if they didn't die as a result of their experimentation, they were euthanized when they no longer produced results. If they escaped, they were labeled a threat and exterminated.

Despite the fact that their unit was one of the best groups of human-proxy partners active in the United States, Michael, Lucifer, and Castiel were still hybrids. Although they were treated better than most government-owned hybrids, they had no rights.

If John decided one day to beat one of them within an inch of their life – hell, if John decided to terminate one of them – there would be no investigation, no trial, no punishment for the murderer.

There was a reason why they had the same few scientists doing the brunt of the negative experiments; the hybrids would develop a fear and hate of certain Men of Letters, but not all of them.

Of course, Sam didn't know exactly what happened when Lucifer was being 'trained' alone; it was one of the few things about Lucifer that Sam knew nothing about. Their testing was classified when separated, but Sam knew that Lucifer didn't care about rules. It was the trauma, the fear that Sam could feel so clearly through their bond, that kept him from prying.

It was why when Lucifer's quiet voice finally responded with, 'I hate John' that Sam could only think of the worst thing the scientists had ever put him through, and imagined his father doing worse to the hybrids. Sam loved the blessing that came with the Unit – his brothers, his bond with Lucifer – but he hated what they had to go through to get to that.

Sometimes, Sam dreamed that they would just be able to do what they wanted.

But he also knew that it would never happen. The only time they would have together was while they were in active duty. Unless the hybrids could find a way to be useful after they were too old to fight anymore, they would face the same fate that all hybrids eventually do.

Instead, Sam tried to imagine Lucifer sitting in Chuck's garden, his wings spread in the sunshine. The crows would remember him despite his infrequent visits, and they would accept peanuts from his hand. He knew exactly what Lucifer would look like then, calm and carefree, in awe of nature, and happy, for once.

Sam imagined Lucifer's happiness and sent it back as comfort.

A moment later, Sam felt a push of grace and thought of Lucifer cutting one rose off of Chuck's rosebush, and he couldn't help but smile.

It was after dinner, after Lucifer put the rose he'd picked for Sam in a glass of water, and after night had fallen, Lucifer was looking at old photo albums with the cat who lived outside Chuck's house sitting in his lap before he remembered there was something the scientist wanted him for.

He looked up from the album – which was overrun with photographs of the Unit as children, playing and having fun – to look at the man. He had put music on, and it was playing softly in the background. Despite the complete darkness outside the house, Chuck hadn't drawn his blinds yet. Lucifer could still see in the moonlight, and despite Chuck's own discomfort, he knew the hybrid liked the open windows. He had on an old bathrobe, one that made him look even more like a father than Lucifer already felt he was, and Lucifer looked back down again, afraid to ruin the moment by asking about business.

He flipped to another page in the album.

The Unit's entire lives had been documented. Their records were open to them if they wanted to look, and one day, Lucifer had. There were pregnancy charts and photographs of Mary Campbell's growing belly. The glass cover of the WOMB chamber allowed for more interesting pictures of the hybrid's early development.

There were charts of progress, of how Dean self-identified as a grunt, an executioner, but was actually their strongest tactician, scoring higher than Michael. There were pages dedicated to Michael's loyalty and dedication, but how he lacked adaptability and free will. There was a section of Sam's charts that Lucifer wouldn't read – the time they tested Demon's Blood on the pair of them – which almost resulted in termination when the addictive force of the drug outweighed their ability to think clearly. Adam and Castiel had both been pressured to be something new, something different, and as such, they had been the most successful at creating new ways to use the grace. Adam had found a way to use it as a translation device, something he had tried teaching his older brothers with no success. Castiel had created one of the most powerful, but dangerous curses known to man.

They called it the Mark of Cain. After beta testing the Mark with the pairing, it was deemed too uncontrollable for the entire Unit. There was a raised scar on Dean's forearm, and it was only ever used in emergencies.

The cat in Lucifer's lap lifted his head, meowed, and ran to the door. For a second, Lucifer continued looking at the book. It wasn't until he heard the lock free itself from the jamb and the squeak of the old hinges that he looked up, smiling at the man entering.

"Hi, Kevin," Lucifer said.

Kevin shut and locked the door behind him, leaning down to pet the cat. It meowed again – Chuck never let the thing inside, but Kevin always did – and the young man looked up at the hybrid. "Hey, Luce. I brought you something from the bunker."

"Yeah?" He asked, standing up. The Men of Letters always recruited young; Kevin was a few months younger than Adam and Castiel, but he was training to take over after Chuck. He'd been there as long as Lucifer could remember, running errands and converting handwritten notes into the computer.

Some of the other people who wanted Chuck's job joked that the only reason Kevin was chosen was because he could read Chuck's handwriting. The hybrids knew better; Chuck would never have chosen anyone as a successor who didn't treat the proxies as more than experiments or government property.

Or soldiers.

Chuck and Kevin were two of the few scientists who always treated the hybrids the same as humans. They never gave Dean a slice of pie but denied Michael the same treat. They never punished Castiel for his failed attempts at creating a new rune, spell, or sigil with physical beatings while only offering Adam quiet disappointment. And they had never walked into Sam and Lucifer's room, finding them curled together in one bed after a nightmare had ripped one of them from their peaceful sleep to drag the hybrid away, punishing him for seeking comfort.

The only time Lucifer ever woke up with Chuck in his room when they were curled together had been after the man brought one of Lucifer's blankets from his nest to throw over the sleeping partners. He had ruffled the hybrid's blond hair and wished him a good night's rest.

And Kevin was the same. Kevin was practically family, an adopted younger brother who was significantly more badass than he looked.

The teenager grinned, putting a plastic bag in Lucifer's outstretched hands. The second he opened the bag, he knew what it was and felt his face pale. His hand reached to his neck, but his token was still hidden under his shirt.

It was a pair of Sam's pajamas.

"You always forget to pack something to sleep in," the teenager said, trying to make light of the biggest hiccup in the proxy-human bonding.

"Uh… thanks," Lucifer said, taking them out of the bag and barely resisting the urge to bring them to his face. Being mostly dove, his olfactory glands weren't superior in any way. Vultures and seabirds have more of a sense of smell, but their testing showed that all three of the hybrids had an average sense of smell for humans.

Had he been a wolf hybrid, Lucifer knew he wouldn't be able to resist burying his face in Sam's scent. Either way, there was obvious comfort, and both of the humans pointedly looked away, talking lab numbers while Lucifer excused himself to get changed.

In his excitement, Lucifer pushed open the door too quickly, forgetting to turn on the lights before he shut it behind him. He had pulled the pants on before he realized he had walked into the wrong room; he must not have walked all the way to the end of the hall. Despite being able to see decently in the darkness, Lucifer frowned at the web before him, reaching out to flip the lights.

It was Kevin's bedroom.

When they were younger, they used to play with Kevin in his room. It had always been foreign to the Unit for a person to have a room all to themselves. Back then, it had been filled with toys, a cello, and a computer. There was still a computer, but it was obviously a newer model, and there was still a cello, but it was pushed into the corner, and there was dust on it.

Every other inch of Kevin's room seemed to be an interconnected web of pictures and news articles. It was too much for Lucifer to take in everything, but he took a step further into the room, toward a picture of the Unit.

He followed a blue line to a post-it note that stated 'November 1: Werewolf.' The week before, Lucifer remembered, they had taken out an illegal werewolf. Under the werewolf there was a name and a brief list of supposed crimes. They were things that the Unit had been briefed on prior to the mission, but not anything Lucifer ever really cared about or remembered.

He moved to map hanging at the back of the room. There were tacks with different colors sticking out of it; the blue ones were the recent missions that the Unit had been sent on. There were a few red pins, and looking at a hand-scribbled note at the bottom of the map, it revealed they were hostile targets.

There were also several green tacks on the board. Lucifer looked back at the bottom of the map for the key. Green, Kevin had written, were areas that had been investigated due to claims of illegal hybrids but after it had been looked into, it had been determined that there were no hybrids present.

Lucifer frowned, looking closer at the map.

Why would Kevin need to keep track of places were illegal hybrids weren't?

Behind him, the door opened. Kevin was several inches shorter than Lucifer, but the look on his face made him seem threatening. He didn't look angry, but his heart rate spiked and his pupils dilated.

He was afraid.

"You shouldn't be in here," Kevin said, turning to look down the hall. When he started gesturing for Lucifer to come to him, the hybrid went instantly. Kevin wouldn't beat him for disobeying, but others had done it enough that obeying his superiors was a conditioned response. Kevin ushered him out of his room, shutting the door behind him. "Uh… I think I'm supposed to tell you to forget that you saw that stuff."

"You know I can't," Lucifer frowned, crossing his arms. "But I won't tell."

"Not even Sam?"

Lucifer was silent. Lying had been conditioned out as well.

"Seriously, Lucifer," Kevin started, reaching out a hand to touch the hybrid. At the last second, he froze, not willing to touch Lucifer without his permission. Lucifer moved into the touch instantly. He'd rather have his friend grabbing his shoulder when trying to convince him to lie than have John Winchester touch it as a power play of his own. "I know it is difficult as hell to lie to your partner, but we're not exactly ready for any sort of action yet. The more people who know, the harder it is to hide."

"I don't think I saw what you think I saw," Lucifer said, tilting his head to the side. "I just looked at the map."

"Yeah," Kevin said, his eyebrows raised, expectantly.

"All it shows is identified threats, potential threats, and false claims," Lucifer said, shrugging with the shoulder that Kevin wasn't gripping.

After a few awkward moments of silence, Kevin's grip became softer. He patted the hybrid's shoulder a few times, letting out a sigh and a relieved chuckle, before dropping his hand entirely. Lucifer frowned at the loss of contact.

"Alright," Kevin said, smiling up at Lucifer. "Just, if you tell Sam that we have a map, will you ask him to keep a secret? Technically, we're not supposed to bring our work to our private homes in case of security breaches. I just can't sleep at night unless I get the work day out of my head first."

"Of course, Kevin," Lucifer said, forcing a smile back at the younger man. There was obviously something in that room that Lucifer wasn't meant to see, and he felt drawn back to the room, desperate to know what he didn't know.

"Thanks, buddy," the man said, nodding back down toward the hallway. "I'm just going to update today's wendigo location and I'll be right out. We can watch a movie if you want."

Lucifer nodded and started walking down the hall toward the living room. It wasn't until he was sitting back down, trying to coax the cat to come sit near him again that he remembered his other pair of pants were still in Kevin's room. Despite the excuse it would be to get back in, he knew the younger man would move them to the guest room himself.

After a few seconds, he realized that the cat wasn't coming back to him, and he turned back to the TV. The sound was down, but the news headlines were being displayed whenever the anchor changed topics.

When they were younger, their media access was more restricted. He remembered that someone had left a newspaper lying around once, and when Michael had read it without asking, John locked him in a room by himself. Of course, as they got older, everything became more lax. If anything, news had been exotic when they were children. Now, it was just the same boring stuff.

The news anchor was talking about the recent elections. Lucifer could recognize the names and faces of the two people who had been running, but he had never really followed politics.

There was no need. He couldn't vote.

He knew that the vote was yesterday, but he didn't know who won.

Suddenly, the music Chuck had been listening to cut out. Lucifer turned around to look at the man, but he was pointing the remote at the TV, turning the volume up.

"…President-elect Mills shared this exclusive photograph of her celebration with her family and offered the following statement: 'Alex and I are overjoyed. While there are many issues I intend to address when I take office in January, making sure our family is an actual, legal family will be the first on my list.'"

Lucifer studied the picture being shown. He recognized Jody Mills, who apparently had won yesterday at the election, and her running mate. Her running mate was grinning at the screen, her arms in the air, but Jody's arms were wrapped around a twenty-something year old girl. Lucifer assumed it was her daughter, but there was something about her…

When the anchor switched to a new story, Lucifer looked back at the scientist. "The president's daughter isn't her daughter?"

Chuck offered him a small smile, "A sudden interest in politics?"

"You like Senator Mills, don't you?" Lucifer asked.

"I do," Chuck said, putting his paper down and moving to sit toward the end of the recliner, closer to the hybrid. "Do you know who's running with her?"

Lucifer shook his head.

"Her name is Donna Hanscum," Chuck said. "And you're right, Jody's daughter is adopted. Well, sort of. She has lived there for years now, but legally, Jody can't adopt her yet. Do you know why?"

"She's a hybrid," Lucifer said, looking away.

"A vampire," Chuck nodded.

"And they still elected her? Even though she wants to make it so hybrids can be adopted like people?" Lucifer asked, hearing something move behind him. Although logically he knew it was Kevin, he couldn't help but turn around. The younger man offered a smile as he walked in and sat near Lucifer on the floor.

The cat, that traitor, went right to Kevin.

"They did," Chuck said, but didn't elaborate. Instead, he looked down at Kevin briefly, and although the younger man never looked up from the cat, Chuck seemed to get some sort of answer to a silent question. When he turned back to Lucifer, he said, "I'm sure you're wondering what I need to show you. In all honesty, I lied. I don't have to show you something as much as tell you."

"Is it unpleasant?"

Chuck laughed, "I think so, but I hate fundraisers."

Lucifer grimaced. Fundraisers were ranked higher on the list of fun things to do than training exercises, but lower than their rare days off when they were allowed to travel outside of the bunker together. It was out of the bunker, which made it sort of exciting, but since they'd gotten older, fundraisers had taken on different meanings.

Looking away, Lucifer tried to joke, "Is there a nice stud fee for me? It's my turn, right?" but the joke fell flat, even to his own ears. Neither of the men laughed, but the glance they shot each other proved to Lucifer that it must have been discussed.

"I'm not going to whore you out, Lucifer," Chuck said, his voice firm. "Ever. I promised I would never make you do anything you didn't want to do."

"But Michael…"

"Michael was younger," Kevin said. "And curious because of Dean's big mouth, which had nothing to do with actual experience and everything to do with his internet access. He was barely eighteen, but when John made the offer, he accepted it."

"Like John wouldn't have made him do it if he had said no." Despite the fact that neither man commented, he couldn't help but bite out a mostly sincere, "I'm sorry."

"You're allowed to be angry here," Chuck reminded him.

Lucifer was quiet for a long time, pretending to be interested in the news. "Do commercial hybrids get stud fees?"

"The hybrids don't," Chuck admitted. "The humans do."

Lucifer wasn't surprised. "So, are you making the offer to me, same as John made it to Michael?"

"Of course not," Chuck laughed, reaching out his arm to push Lucifer's shoulder. "As beautiful as your wings are, and how high your stud fee would be to get a baby with wings like yours, people aren't supposed to be mated like that. I might have been born into the Men of Letters, but I refuse to play a modern day Himmler with my own perverse lebensborn eugenics project. Does that make sense to you?"

Lucifer nodded. "Except…"

"Except what?"

"I'm not people. We're – my brothers and me – we're not people."

"Yes, you are," Kevin said, moving forward too quickly. The cat, agitated, shot away from him, but Kevin paid him no mind. Instead, without stopping himself this time, his hands found Lucifer's shoulders. He shook them, gently, and Lucifer looked up at the younger boy. "You're a person. You're human, even if you do have a little bit of foreign DNA in you. You think for yourself, you express yourself, you have a personality. Lucifer, you're a human who was genetically modified before birth so that you could fly. That doesn't make you less human. It doesn't make you less than anyone who was born human."

"Kevin," Chuck said. After another few seconds, Kevin let go and sat back again, his face red.

Lucifer's heart was beating in his chest, and when he drew his hands up to his face, his skin felt cold and clammy. He was sweating. And despite the rush he felt – words he'd thought over and over in the privacy of his mind, wondering silently why the small altered part of his DNA was so much more important than the significant chunk that was the same as everyone else's – he knew he had to push down the small swell of hope that was starting to make him warm.

He knew, without a doubt, that Chuck and Kevin viewed them as equals. He knew the Winchesters viewed the Milton hybrids as equals; although, they likely didn't feel that way about the illegals they hunted.

But he also knew that nobody else would ever see him as more than a tool, a means to an end.

It was dangerous to think otherwise.

"If it's not a stud fee," Lucifer finally asked. "Why are you telling me about the fundraiser now? Why not just tell us all at once?"

Chuck was quiet for a moment, and when Lucifer looked up at him, the man looked old. There was a tired expression on his face, but his eyes were still clear, still sharp. There was worry in there, fear, but with a sigh, Chuck pushed the fear away.

"I need you to get me something at this fundraiser."

"You're not going?" Lucifer asked.

"I am," Chuck said. "But it would be dangerous for me to accept this directly. My contact will give it to you. You'll put it in your pocket and give it to me when I get to the bunker the next day."

"Dangerous?"

"What we're asking you to do isn't really…" Kevin started. He looked at Chuck, then added, "legal."

"Maker, you're doing something illegal?" Lucifer pushed himself up to his knees. The word meant something different, obviously, to humans, but the punishment the hybrids would receive for doing something illegal was severe. Death.

"Sometimes it's important for people to break the rules, Lucifer. Especially if the rules aren't fair," Chuck seemed calm, and Lucifer sat back on his heels, looking down. When he didn't argue, Chuck continued. "Someone will approach you at the fundraiser. They may ask you to dance or offer you a drink. Accept. They'll give you a flash drive, and you need to guard this with your life… no, guard it as if Sam's life depended on it. It must stay safe and hidden, Lucifer. If someone finds out about this, Kevin and I won't be the only ones in trouble."

"Who else…?"

"That's all I can tell you. I'm sorry," Chuck said, and when he sat back, Lucifer knew the discussion was over.

It wasn't long after that when he excused himself and went to the guest room. He flew up to the perch Chuck had made them a long time ago, wrapping his hands around the vial of Sam's blood. More than anything, he wanted to call out to him. He wanted to tell him everything.

He wanted him here, so they could decide what was on the flash drive, why it was so important to lie and keep it a secret.

Instead, he just thought 'Good night, Sam.'

But Lucifer didn't fall asleep easily. He lay awake long after he heard Sam echo the sentiment back.

Castiel kept his eyes down on his book. He could hear Dean across the room, but he wouldn't look up.

When Sam eventually left the experimentation room, Dean had cornered him and forced an arm around his shoulders, dragging him away. Usually, when one hybrid was gone, the humans did whatever they could to overcompensate for the loss. The anxiety they felt at being separated was the same as the hybrids felt, and even though Dean was right across the room, Castiel could feel the pull of being away.

Which meant Dean could feel it too.

Every so often, Dean would pick at their bond like little boys in movies would tug on the hair of a girl whose attention he wanted. Castiel didn't know if the other humans did it as well, but Dean could barely go half an hour without tugging on the metaphorical rope, just to make sure it still connected them.

Maybe it was because he'd gone so long unbonded.

For Castiel, there was always Dean. From the minute he opened his eyes, Dean had been there. When he learned to fly, it was always a jump from a platform into Dean's sure arms. When they were kids, one of his hands was always attached to Dean.

Dean was everything to Castiel.

'What's he got, Cas?' Castiel heard in his head. 'I can't tell if he's bluffing.'

Despite everything John had told Castiel about his place in Dean's life, despite the fact they were bonded, despite the fact that there was a difference between human partners and human-proxy partnerships, Castiel could never resist Dean.

From his perch, he looked over the ledge, looking down at the cards in Sam's hand. He wasn't bluffing. He had a flush.

Castiel settled back into his nest of blankets and pillows and thought, 'He doesn't have anything.'

After Sam bet again, Dean decided to raise. Castiel buried his face into his arms listening as Dean's warm voice grew confident, cocky. Dean's bravado was part of his charm, even though Castiel knew it was mostly an act.

Finally, when they laid their cards on the table, Dean's groan was like music to Castiel's ear. He popped his head up and was greeted by a forced frown. Sam was laughing, collecting the chips they were playing with.

"Damn it, Cas," Dean said, the frustration in his voice in stark contrast to the warmth he was sending through the grace.

"That's what you get for trying to cheat," Sam said. His voice was happy; it was the first time that Castiel could really recognize anything but anxiety from him all night.

And the smile Dean gave Castiel reached his eyes.

Sam was happy, which meant Dean was happy. Castiel could take whatever he could get.

The instant Lucifer walked into the bunker, Sam knew something was wrong. Usually when partners reentered the same space, there was a weight that was lifted off the pair; however, Lucifer barely spared Sam a glance before he took off toward their room.

By the door, Chuck sighed.

Despite the urge to follow after him, Sam knew that Lucifer had always come to him in the past. Michael was the worst at deception, but Lucifer wasn't far behind him. There was a correlation between deception and free will; each hybrid's genes were modified to increase the likelihood of certain aspects of their personalities.

But as the minutes dragged on, Sam grew more worried. There were no scientists in the bunker that Sam trusted more with Lucifer, but whenever Lucifer shut down in the past, it had been due to things he wanted to hide. Experiments that seemed more torturous than actual tortures kept Lucifer locked inside himself, and Sam couldn't help but watch Chuck, determined to see if he was capable of harming Lucifer.

In the end, Lucifer emerged from their room, but only when John called them all to a meeting.

They met in the main part of the bunker, surrounded by shelves of books. They partnered off, as they always did, and despite the fact that John was trying to explain the fundraiser that they would need to attend that night, Sam was still focused on Chuck.

Chuck and Kevin, Sam determined, weren't acting any stranger than they ever acted, but Lucifer could barely look at either of them.

Eventually, when the meeting was over and they all disbanded to be groomed for the fundraiser, Lucifer took off again. But before Sam could follow, Chuck stopped him in the hall. When Sam – who was much larger than the scientist – tried to move around him, the man moved to block his path again. In frustration, Sam couldn't help but bite out, "What?" but he felt bad nearly instantly.

Chuck wouldn't – no, Chuck physically couldn't – do anything to hurt Lucifer. There was nobody in the world Lucifer loved more than Chuck.

"He picked you a rose from the garden last night," Chuck said, holding up his hands as if to surrender. "But we all forgot it this morning."

"He wouldn't be that upset about a rose," Sam countered, trying to step around Chuck again. The scientist didn't try to touch Sam. The soldier knew Chuck couldn't physically stop him if he wanted to get through, but there would be repercussions for hurting one of the Men of Letters, especially a high-ranking one like Chuck. "Tell me the truth. He has to stud tonight, doesn't he?"

"No, Sam, I swear…"

"Please, Chuck, don't do that to him," Sam begged. "There's a reason why most bonded partners don't end up married with kids."

"I know," Chuck said. "I know you think the six of you are a family and we're the enemy, but I see Castiel, too. I saw Adam. I was here that night, remember?"

Finally, Sam paused, looking down at the scientist. John considered Dean his perfect little soldier, his son and heir, and he had been vetting several women since Dean had turned eighteen. John Winchester's grandchildren would be created the same way his sons had been – a byproduct of selective breeding with no account for love.

Dean didn't hate the attention, but Castiel could barely stand it.

When Michael left the bunker for his experimental encounter, Adam had cried the entire time. Michael had been eighteen, but Adam was just fourteen at the time. Their bond had almost crumbled that night. It was only the loss of Michael's son that drew Adam back to the man after he had felt betrayed by Michael's mating in the first place.

Sam had no idea how either him or Lucifer would react to one of them studding, but he did know it wouldn't be pretty. They knew they were never supposed to feel that strongly about the other, but it felt like the ultimate betrayal, nonetheless.

"Then why is he upset?" Sam asked, and Chuck sighed.

"I wanted to test his free will again. I told him something, and I asked him not to tell you just to see if he could do it. He has free will, Sam, and much more of it than we originally rated him for. However, like Castiel, his loyalty rests first and foremost with his partner – with you." The man reached out a hand, patting Sam's arm as he smiled. Finally, Chuck moved out of the way, allowing Sam to pass. "We just wanted to see how long until he breaks."

"That's cruel," Sam said, but he offered a small smile back. Of all the experiments, this would be among the least cruel.

"Indeed it is. So go easy on him, okay?"

Sam nodded, walked past Chuck, and into their room. Instead of getting his things around for the fundraiser – the Men of Letters would take them to professionals to help them with every aspect of preparing for the event – Lucifer was up on his perch, half buried beneath blankets. He didn't move when Sam came in.

"Hey," Sam said, shutting the door behind him. "You're off the hook. Chuck told me you have a secret you can't tell me, and now that I know and I don't want you to tell me, you can stop pretending you're lying to me by omission."

Suddenly, a blond head poked out from within the blankets. They were a Unit of trained, supernatural assassins, but Lucifer managed to look like a surprised child more often than anyone in their line of work had the right to. "He told you?"

"Yes, and you can stop being weird, okay? You don't have to tell me everything. I've told you that like, a hundred times. I have secrets from you, too."

"And I have other secrets," Lucifer said, narrowing his eyes. "I don't have to tell you everything."

"Exactly."

"But I want to tell you this."

Sam frowned for a second, but then he shrugged. "Well, luckily, this decision has been made for us. You can't. Chuck said you can't. I'm sure you'll be able to tell me soon, but until then, I'm not going to let you hide from me. Seriously, man, I missed you last night."

"I forgot your rose," Lucifer admitted.

"Yeah, I see that," Sam said, smiling. "Oh well, you can get me two next time. Now come on. I know these things are pretty lame, but it beats running drills all day."

"Hell yeah, it does," Lucifer said as he tossed the blankets off, hopping down off the perch. His wings spread out to slow his descent, and Sam couldn't help but grin.

Fundraisers were always kind of awkward for the hybrids. It was one of the few times in their lives where they were dolled up and treated as if they were somehow better than humans, while still lacking all the basic human rights. It was one of the rare occasions where it wasn't considered strange for humans and hybrids to shake hands or mingle, usually because the humans were the backers and wanted to connect with the product they would be supporting.

It was one of the rare times where the human partners in their Unit were overlooked, and when they were younger, it was exciting for the hybrids to be treated like they were people.

Now Castiel realized they weren't treated like people, not ever, but especially not now.

The venue was different, but it was in some swanky, upscale hotel with a large ballroom. Castiel hadn't actually seen the inside of the ballroom yet, but they all looked alike. Instead, he and his brothers were in a corridor that led back stage. John and Chuck had made the same speech at practically every fundraiser they had attended since they were children, the only difference being their ages. Instead of being the oldest surviving avian hybrids in their early teen years, they were now the oldest surviving avian hybrids in their early twenties. They pretty much patented the recipe for their kind, and this was less of a cry for funding for experimentation as it was a cry for funding for a fourth branch.

They were all Miltons, but Castiel and his brothers were the first garrison.

Next to them was the second garrison. They were attempted replicas with one difference – this was an all female garrison. They were still in training; the eldest, Naomi, was sixteen and the youngest, Hannah, was twelve. Seeing teenage girls in movies was nothing like seeing his sisters standing at parade rest on at the wall. Only Anna with her mostly white wings (that were beautifully tinted with hints of red – too much cardinal, must be) seemed actually at ease as she teased Lucifer.

However, seeing the third garrison wasn't much different from the children Castiel saw in movies. Inias, the oldest at six, was trying to keep Balthazar from picking at Samandriel's feathers, the younger boys just four and two.

His brothers' and sisters' humans (or prospective humans, in the third garrison's case) would be waiting with the Winchesters on stage for a demonstration. It would be a cutesy display of their true power – fireworks and ice, nothing like the things they had to actually use when hunting to survive – but ones that would loosen the wallets of their benefactors.

"Hey," Hannah whispered, dragging Castiel away from his thoughts. He was anxious, being separated from Dean, and despite the fact it had been over an hour, the human wasn't tugging on their bond. Silently, in his head, Castiel was cursing Jo, knowing she was what was distracting his partner. "You going to unleash Cain?"

Castiel couldn't help but smile, though it was somewhat bitter. "John threatened to de-wing me."

"Yeah, but it's like he's the Hulk and you're the lullaby, right?" Hannah asked, ignoring the look Naomi shot her. "You can control him when he's dark like that. That's what the rumors say."

"Hannah," Naomi warned.

Castiel looked over at his siblings. Michael's face was blank, but Lucifer looked curious. Just like they never talked about the time John infected Sam and Lucifer with Demon Blood, Lucifer never asked about the Mark. Anna could be Lucifer's twin; her expression was as open and curious as his. Even the younger boys stopped fighting. Samandriel was looking up at Castiel with his fingers buried in his mouth.

"You made that spell," Anna said. "Well, the curse, they call it. You're the only one who studied with Olivette."

"Only because he's the only one she said had natural talent," Lucifer joked, and Castiel let out a thankful breath of air. His elder brother wrapped an arm around his shoulder, dragging him into a side-armed hug. "Which is totally unfair because I was the first to fly."

"Lucifer," Michael whined.

"You didn't learn to fly until you were three?" Naomi gaped.

"Okay, first of all, I was the first one who had survived past infancy. So you're all welcome for that. They didn't know if I could fly. I was just a cautious fledgling. It wasn't my fault that Lucifer wanted the apples in the tree behind our bunker more than he valued his life."

"That's why you're Lucifer?" Inias asked, then blushed when he older hybrids looked at him. "Because of the fruit?"

Lucifer was quiet for a long moment before he nodded. Castiel could feel his unease where his arm still rested across his shoulders, and he spread is wings a little, touching his brother's. "Yeah," Lucifer said. "I was Luke before that."

Anna opened her mouth to say something, but they were saved by Chuck. The man looked pale behind his ill-fitting tux, and he adjusted his tie when he stepped into the hallway. It was even more lopsided after he tried to fix it.

"Alright, kids," Chuck said, "Let's get the boring presentations over with so we can eat cake."

"I like cake," Samandriel said, and Chuck grinned, holding his hands down to the boy. Samandriel went to him with no worry, no fear, and rested his head on the man's shoulder after he was picked up.

"You heard the boy," Chuck said. "Let's go eat cake."

The cake was dry, not at all like the cake Dean made, but it was still worth a trip out of the bunker, especially now that the horse and pony show was over. Now that they were left to their own devices – which for the older hybrids it meant eating cake at the bar while the younger boys danced and played with their humans – Lucifer couldn't help but feel nervous again. Every time someone came close to him, he froze, expecting it to be Chuck's contact.

Though, to be fair, Lucifer was surprised he could even spare a single brain cell to worry about Chuck's contact with Castiel next to him.

His younger brother was furious and barely containing his rage. There was a tremor to his hands, even though he was trying to hide it by tapping his fingers in time with the music on the bar. He had a bag out on the table next to him like a deadly temptation. When Castiel got bored or angry, he tended to create. His combination of spells usually turned explosive. Occasionally, Lucifer noticed that he would hit too hard. His bones never snapped, but Lucifer knew the pain he was causing himself was meant to be a distraction.

"I wish I could have a drink," Castiel grumbled for the thousandth time, at least. Lucifer just sighed, wiping his sweaty palms on his thigh before lifting up his Ginger Ale to take a sip. When he put it back down, his palms felt drenched again.

"I think this is the prime example of why we aren't allowed to drink."

"What? We're not human so we don't deserve to let loose at a party and actually try to enjoy it?"

"No. We're not human and right now, the only thing keeping you from releasing Cain is the fact that you're in control of yourself. If you were impaired, you'd do something you'd regret," Lucifer's eyes found the mirror behind the rows of alcohol at the bar. Castiel had insisted on sitting there, and the blond adjusted his wings so he could get a clear look behind him. He had no idea who was going to talk to him, but nobody in the crowd screamed like an informant.

"It's stupid."

"To be honest, I'm surprise your rage isn't enough of an impairment by itself," Hannah grinned, leaning forward with her elbows on the bar, looking around Castiel at Lucifer.

Lucifer turned to look at her and caught Castiel looking into the mirror as well. It wasn't hard to see what he was looking at. Dean and Jo had been glued to each other all night. Jo's mother was one of the higher ups in the Women of Letters, just like John, and her daughters had been the humans paired off with the second garrison. Jo, the eldest, wasn't eighteen yet, but it was obvious to pretty much everyone that as soon as she turned eighteen, wave four would be starting.

Castiel hated Jo, and while he had somehow hidden his distain of the girl from Dean, his partner was the only one who didn't seem to know.

"That's what I was thinking, but I wasn't going to say anything," Lucifer added. Castiel just frowned at him.

It was quiet for a few minutes, and Castiel went back to looking at his hands, drumming on the bar, occasionally moving around ingredients from his spell bag on the bar without actually mixing anything. Hannah sighed and pushed her shoulder against his, trying to comfort her elder brother with a touch. It didn't seem to work.

It wasn't long into their silence that it was disturbed again, this time by Sam and Charlie joining them at the bar. The man rested his hand naturally against Lucifer's shoulder, leaning against his wings and back. The humans were allowed to drink – the thought was that the hybrids controlled the grace and could deny the human access to it if they tried using when drinking – but Sam wasn't overdoing it. If anything, Lucifer wanted the human to drink more often.

He was relaxed and he looked happy.

"Hey Miltons," Charlie said, sitting at the bar beside Lucifer. She raised a hand at the girl at the bar, offering a wink when the girl started making her drink. "Why aren't you dancing with everyone else?"

"Cas is going to kill Jo," Lucifer said, and was rewarded when Sam laughed, sending a deep, warm rumble through his wings.

"Oh yeah," Charlie said, suddenly serious. "I always forget. I don't know how you do it, honestly. Sure, Gilda is a commercial hybrid, but since we bonded, I can't imagine a platonic partnership."

"Platonic?" Hannah asked. Then she exclaimed, "You're not platonic with Gilda?"

"Fuck no," Charlie said, elbowing Lucifer in the side. "You know the bonding is like a marriage, right? Gilda and I are partners, like, partners in marriage."

"Well, we're like partners on the force," Castiel said, running his finger over the rim of his glass. "Cop buddies who fight crime and neutralize threats."

The sadness in Castiel's voice was unmistakable; it was something they all went through. It was something they all fought. They all loved their humans. Lucifer loved Sam more than anything in the world, but he knew his place. He knew why bonded pairs were almost always the same sex. The bond was strong, just like Charlie said. When the government first started their experiments, half-hybrid, half-human children had been popping up everywhere.

These were usually unstable, especially in the early days of hybridization and grace. Few lived past infancy. It was then that the government regulators, the Men and Women of Letters, decided all parings needed to be same-sex.

The love they formed was still just as intense, but there was no accidental conception involved.

Though children weren't possible, the Milton hybrids knew their place. They would never have anything more than a platonic relationship with the Winchesters. Michael and Lucifer were much better at hiding it than Castiel ever was.

But Lucifer wasn't as good at hiding as Michael, and when Sam hummed a small, sad noise of agreement and started running his fingers down Lucifer's wings, the blond nearly shattered the glass that was in his hands.

Charlie must have noticed, because she laughed and patted his side.

"Have faith, Miltons," Charlie said. "As the Letters' best hacker slash resident computer genius, I am well versed in all things involving the outside world. And let me tell you: the times, they are a-changing."

The girl stood up then, and Lucifer felt a rough punch into his side. It was the third time she had touched him in that same exact spot, and when he drew his hand to it as she walked away, he felt something in his pocket that was absolutely not there before.

He removed his hand, watching as Charlie walked back across the dance floor to give a bottle of water to Gilda.

For a while, the four of them sat in silence again. Although none of them were talking, all of them were watching the same display on the dance floor. Dean would toss his head back, laughing with apparent delight at whatever Jo told him. For her part, the girl kept touching the man. Her hand would find his forearm, his bicep, and Lucifer knew exactly which tattoos rested on the man's body. When her hand absently touched the spot where the Mark was, he felt Castiel flinch at his side.

"You're my brothers, right?" Hannah said, suddenly. They nodded, even Sam, even though he wasn't. "So does that mean I can trust you with a really huge secret?"

"Have we ever done anything to be untrustworthy?" Lucifer asked.

"Besides the time we accidentally caused Anna to nearly face-plant into a bunch of hay when we were trying to master Leaps of Faith?" Castiel amended. Sam laughed, but Hannah sighed.

"You need to not tell anyone," She said, and this time, they remained quiet. "Jo doesn't even like Dean."

"What?" Castiel asked, turning so fast to face his sister that Lucifer was sure he broke something. The tone was accusatory, as if it never crossed his mind that anyone could not like Dean.

"She thinks he's kind of arrogant," Hannah said, shrugging. Castiel looked like he was ready to jump in to defend his partner, but the girl continued. "And a couple of weeks ago, when the Jo and Naomi were a couple of minutes late to training, I went to go make sure they were awake, and they… they…"

For a second, Lucifer wasn't sure what she meant. Her face was beat red, and her eyes were wide, like she was imploring them to connect the dots and save her from saying it. It was when Sam's hand tightened and he took a deep breath in that he fully understood. Sam's fingers wrapped around his feathers, and Lucifer's toes and fingers curled without his consent, a soft whimper escaping his lips as his empty glass of Ginger Ale shattered in his hand.

After that, they all cleared away from the bar pretty quickly. Sam, flushed, stayed to clean up the glass, apologizing to the bartender. Hannah went to see the younger hybrids of Garrison 3, who were far too young to worry about the complications of bonding because they weren't bonded yet. Castiel went to Naomi, who looked about as angry as he did to be honest, and together they walked to the dance floor to reclaim their humans. John wouldn't dare approach Castiel in a crowd this big to tell him to remain platonic.

Tonight was worth whatever punishment he would receive tomorrow.

Lucifer left to hide in the bathroom. He had a good excuse, his hands were bloody from the broken glass. Once he cleaned the wound, he got it to stop bleeding pretty easily. Luckily, the cuts weren't deep.

But his hand wasn't the only thing he needed to clean. Even after he cleaned himself, he sat in the bathroom stall, red-faced and annoyed, the feeling of Sam's large hands gripping his feathers still haunting him. Embarrassed, he stood up and faced the toilet, one had on the wall behind him, another desperately trying to work his pants button and zipper. His hand wrapped around himself, and he fought the shame.

It was long after he calmed himself down, hoping that Sam was too drunk to feel his pleasure through their grace, that he felt something different, something new, for the first time in years.

Naomi and Jo. They… and yeah they were hiding it, they had to stay hidden, but lying and deceit had never come easily to Lucifer. But if the girls could hide it, maybe someday, he and Sam could do it too.

With the revelation of the fundraiser, Lucifer almost forgot about the flash drive Charlie had given him. When he handed it over to Chuck the next morning, Lucifer thought it was strange that Charlie couldn't just slip it to Chuck herself. They worked together, after all. Whatever it was must be important and probably dangerous, but as much as that should concern him, Lucifer couldn't stop thinking about the girls.

Jo and Naomi were disobeying. They were lying and keeping secrets from the Men of Letters. And furthermore, it seemed like it was working.

Despite the fact that he had renewed hope, he was also feeling a different type of nervousness. His entire life, he had loved Sam, but his entire life, Sam's father had told him – all of the hybrids – that despite what they felt, it would never amount to anything. Lucifer lived his life knowing Sam would never love him the same way because John had told them that, over and over, from a very young age that it wasn't possible.

But yet…

It was several weeks later, and Lucifer was still pondering it, wondering if Castiel was in the same boat as he was. From observations, Dean and Castiel seemed the same as they always were when they were together, but they had always been the worst at acting normal. Castiel always stood too close to Dean, and Dean was always too free with his touches.

It was impossible to determine if anything had changed, and Lucifer was too consumed with years and years of conditioning to talk to Sam about it.

That was puberty's rule number 1. Don't ever talk about how you feel about your human to anyone. It was a natural part of grace, but it wasn't something that would ever have a place here.

Lucifer was still obsessing about it when an emergency mission was called to order. There had been emergency meetings before – Dean had joked that weren't all missions emergencies – so Lucifer hadn't really paid attention to where they were going or what they were fighting until they were on the plane.

None of them seemed particularly concerned at the emergency, but Lucifer tried to think back to the meeting they'd had just before they left. John and Chuck had been nervous, panicky, he was suddenly sure of that, and despite the fact that he wasn't paying attention, he had been trained to take in his surroundings.

Each set of partners in the Unit had been sitting next to each other. John's voice had been hard and stern, but there was something off about it, as if it were just a tad too high or too shaky. As he talked, his fingers were trembling around a pencil, which he was using to point at the board.

The board, Lucifer recognized, was nearly identical to the one Kevin had in his room. However, the location that he was pointing to hadn't been one that Kevin had on his map. In fact, as Lucifer sat on the plane and compared mental images of Kevin's map and John's, there was nothing remotely close on the map.

Was this information that had been brought to Chuck on Charlie's flash drive? If so, why had it taken weeks to verify? What was on that flash drive?

Instead of dwelling on what he couldn't hope to learn presently, Lucifer focused in on John's map. The emergency was happening in Washington state. Although they could fly, mountain ranges had never been their best friend. Usually, the locals knew the terrain much better, which left them scrambling to make up plans on the fly.

That must have been why Chuck and John had seemed so nervous.

As Michael called back from the front of the plane that they were starting their decent, Lucifer couldn't shake the look on the men's faces when they had still been at the bunker. John, for once, looked fearful, scared, as if for the first time, he truly wasn't sure if his favorite toys would be returned to him broken, damaged beyond repair.

But Chuck… he looked more apprehensive. His fear didn't seem like it came from an unknown, and that was far more interesting to Lucifer.

Beside him, Miguel was leaning back against the plane's hard interior, trying to get some rest. His friend was older than he was by nearly ten years, but their partnership worked out well. Miguel slept, arms crossed and still looking intimidating even while trying to catch a little puppy nap, while the other boy worked. Typical, he thought.

He turned his attention back to the folder sitting in his lap.

It was a manila folder and had the words Top Secret written across the front. Sure, he wrote it there himself, but that didn't make it feel less secret. To be honest, he was nervous, but he was confident that nobody knew but Miguel. He was practically vibrating out of his skin, and Miguel was resting against his side. The rest of them were locked and loaded, ready to go, ready to follow him into battle to capture some hybrids.

And maybe some humans, too, but they were secondary targets.

He flipped the page from the typed up itinerary they were calling a plan, which had been annotated by two elders and himself, to look at the pictures. They were recent photos, taken at the fundraiser. He hadn't been there, but Miguel had, looking dapper in his suit and tie and hating every minute of it.

He paused over each member of the Unit, taking in each of their facial features one last time, although he was sure he could already pick each of them out of a crowd.

There was Castiel and Dean, who in the picture were dancing and laughing, but in a picture on the next page were in full tactical gear, Castiel perched just behind Dean on a branch, pointing out over the distance. This had been from training several years ago, hacked from the Men of Letters servers. He knew enough about each of them to know that of the three partnerships, this would be the overly confident ones. To take them out, he would just need to take one out and the other would willingly surrender to keep from being separated.

The first one to get near him would go down easily. He would target them first.

Then there was Lucifer and Sam, who in the picture were sitting at the bar. Sam was flushed, drunk and embarrassed, but Lucifer was pale. His file said he ran cold, especially in moments of heightened stress. Unlike Castiel and Dean, he wouldn't get the opportunity to strike either of them independently. They were rarely far enough away from one another to single one of them out. Lucifer's beautiful white wings would be his downfall; it would be no problem at all to create a bit more light to brighten them up.

Once Dean and Castiel were secure, he would locate Lucifer, which would give him Sam's approximate location as well. He would get the hybrid on the ground, then he would drop a net over both of them.

That left Michael and Adam. In the picture, they were playing with the third Garrison, the young boys so cute and little, but not quite big enough. The photo of Adam was charming, but the way Michael held Inias' hand was downright paternal. A spark rose in his chest, looking at the picture and he closed the file without fully thinking about how he would take Michael and Adam down. But that was okay, a time would present itself.

More than anything, he wanted Michael, even though he knew that he wasn't supposed to be the priority. Michael's file was marked red with his apparent lack of free will, and he would be the most difficult to turn. But still.

He wanted Michael.

"You'll get him soon enough," Miguel said with his eyes still closed. The elder boy reached out a hand to ruffle the younger's hair. "Once we have ourselves the Unit, things will be different for us. We won't be hunted anymore."

"We'll probably always be hunted," he said, but sighed and leaned back against his friend, "but at least not by our own kind."

From the second they hit the rendezvous point, everything went wrong.

Sam could feel a power in the air that he couldn't quite explain. It was kind of like the electric feel of grace when he pulled from Lucifer to cast spells, but instead of it being met with the usual strain, it felt like the air was saturated in it. Something powerful, something much stronger than anything they'd ever faced before, was present.

He could tell that the others felt it too, but nobody mentioned it. The hybrids, used to feeling the grace like a force of gravity that simply flowed around and through them, were suddenly drenched with sweat. Lucifer's white wings twitched as his hand found his forehead to wipe it from his face. Dean was checking his arm, fingers brushing over the raised scar of the mark, as if he was making sure he wasn't berserking. Maybe this grace high was what he felt every time he activated Cain. If so, Sam wasn't sure how he ever resisted.

The feeling reminded him of the time he was using Demon Blood. He would have never quit that if it hadn't been for the ultimatum: get clean or he (and Lucifer) had to be euthanized. He fought to get clean.

But this, this was somehow better.

Adam, ever the reckless one, was the first to test it out. They were still all together, they hadn't fanned out into their positions yet, and the youngest Winchester nodded at Michael. Then, aloud he said, "Cut me off for a second."

Michael frowned, but nodded, his fingers squeezing into fists as if he could physically stop Adam from drawing grace from him. It wasn't really a physical thing, but the concentration on a physical task seemed to help.

Adam held out his hand, touching a sigil on his arm. It was a simple one, but useful, and a small, glowing orb appeared before them. With a wave of his hand, the orb was gone, and Michael relaxed his hands.

"This may just be me," Lucifer started, "But I don't think we're in Kansas anymore."

And just like that, everything fell.

It was like the grace in the air had been a distraction, a trap, and when it was removed, thrown down over them like a blanket, it took their breath away. After a second of disorientation, Sam righted himself and instantly knew what was wrong.

All the grace was gone. Even Lucifer's. He tugged and tugged on their bound connection, but couldn't feel him there, even when he could see him, on his knees before Sam, coughing and sputtering like the wind had been knocked out of him. They trained for this, or at least, they had trained for the sudden death of a proxy in which using grace was no longer an option, and Sam brought out his blade instantly. Beside him, he could hear his brothers rushing to their hybrids, screaming aloud instead of communicating the way they were used to.

The second he reached Lucifer, he dragged the man to his feet, wrapped an arm around him, and started pulling him under the cover of the trees. A second before they reached the shelter, the darkness suddenly lit up with bright lights and loud noises. It was such a rare enemy that it took Sam a moment to place it.

Gunfire.

Somehow, over the deafening booms of the weaponry that usually was so useless against them, Sam heard Michael's command. It should have been broadcast, loud and clear, over the Comm, but something must have blocked their electronics, too. "Defensive plan two-fourteen, followed by individualized attack plans. Go."

Usually so quick to follow Michael's orders, Lucifer looked back at Sam for a second before his wings spread, a thought away from disobeying so they could stay close – Sam knew because it was his loudest thought as well – before he was running, catching lift, and taking off into the canopy. Sam ran in the opposite direction.

Defensive plan two-fourteen was one of the few plans they memorized that would be even slightly useful in this situation, and as Sam was ducking behind trees, trying to gage where the gunfire was coming from with the seemingly random firing from all directions, he couldn't believe how quickly Michael had been able to pull it from their repertoire.

He quickly became disoriented without Lucifer's overhead view and his voice in his ear, guiding him. He had no idea where his brothers or hybrids were, and while he didn't think the guns were tracking him, firing at him, he couldn't be sure. Everything seemed to move incredibly fast and ungodly slow all at once.

After a minute or two of running, he caught sight of Lucifer's wings near the two-fourteen protocol point. They were meant to always meet west of the action if separated, and Sam breathed a sigh of relief when Lucifer came into sight.

His wings were tight against his back, and he was perched on a branch of a tree with a huge trunk. He was using that to shelter himself. When Sam approached the base of the tree, Lucifer eased himself down, careful to keep his wings out if sight.

"What's the plan?" The hybrid asked, but Sam didn't have an answer.

There was a quiet moment when the gunfire stopped. The lock down on the grace seemed to waver for a moment, as if there had been a lapse in concentration or a moment's hesitation. The middle Winchester, adrenaline keeping him running on high, needed a look. He picked up a stick and stuck it out of his hiding spot, sure that the guns were trained on him and would react to any movement. When the pause lasted, he took in a breath and stuck his head out.

It was pitch dark in the clearing where the gunman must have been firing from, but there was nothing. At least, nothing until movement caught his eye from the tree at his three o'clock. Castiel's wings were so dark they couldn't really be seen, but because there was movement where there had been none, Sam could track him.

And so could whoever they were fighting because one second, he was flying, low and fast like he could see their target just beyond the tree-line and the glint from his blade was obvious in his hand, but a second later there was movement from above, then Castiel crashed to the ground as if he were a fly and some giant, invisible hand had swatted him away.

Half a second later, before Castiel could even get his hands underneath him, there were four gunmen moving into the clearing. They were in full tactical gear – almost SWAT like, although the usual declaration of FBI or CIA was missing from their jackets – and when Castiel did get his hands under him to push up, Sam felt his heart sink.

There was a look of dangerous resolution on his face. Castiel was planning on going down fighting.

A second later, something materialized around him. It was gold in color, but not in metal, although Sam couldn't recognize the exact make from here, and it took him a second to understand what he was seeing.

Castiel stood up in the bird cage, hands on the bars, screaming with rage.

Until Dean came running into the clearing, and his rage became words.

"Dean!" Castiel screamed, his voice hoarse and deep, his knuckles tightening on his bars. Sam had never heard terror like that before, especially not from Castiel. "Dean, run!"

A voice, loud and electronic, boomed from the sky, from everywhere. "Dean Winchester, surrender now or Castiel dies."

"Dean," Castiel yelled, more panicked than he had been a moment ago. "Run, go!"

After a split second, no thought at all, Dean dropped the blade in his hand, raised his arms up in surrender, and then placed them on his head. More guards moved in to surround Dean.

"We have to go move in now," Sam whispered, the sound of Castiel thrashing and screaming in his cage loud enough to hide their voices. "While they're distracted."

"I wish we could communicate with Adam and Michael," Lucifer whispered back. "I mean, if the four of us attacked at once…"

"But there's no way to know where they are," Sam said. "We need to just…"

Sam stopped talking, frowning at Lucifer. His wings were always white, always the brightest thing that Sam had ever seen, but looking at them then, at the way the moon seemed to shine on them that moment, it made them look like they were glowing.

No, Sam thought as Lucifer extended a wing out so he could see it as well. No, his wings were glowing.

"Run," Lucifer said, pushing the boy toward the clearing. They had no other option, Sam knew, but attack. If they ran… they couldn't run. Lucifer's wings were like white glow sticks, making his location obvious to his attackers, and Sam wouldn't leave him. They had been told to retreat if their lives depended on it, but Sam wouldn't go without Lucifer.

And Lucifer took off, rushing toward the same place Castiel had been moving too, but he was lower, slower, he kept his feet near the ground, bracing for impact.

Impact came, but it wasn't like Castiel's swat. Instead, bullets fired, and Lucifer went down.

Sam, like Dean, abandoned his weapon at his side. But his hands didn't go to up, his he didn't get on his knees in surrender.

He yelled, and he ran to Lucifer.

As he ran, he saw something move to the left, something big going up and away, but he dropped, sliding to Lucifer. There was blood, but not as much as there would be if he had been killed, and against Sam's better judgment and years of first aid screaming at him to secure the body, he rolled Lucifer over from his stomach. He didn't push him on his back, not onto his bleeding wings, but enough to see his face, to see how white it was, to see the blue in his eyes as they opened and slowly, the hybrid recognized the man.

"Sam," Lucifer whispered.

His eyes closed.

Behind him, Castiel wasn't screaming anymore, but Sam was. He turned, looking for his brother, for Castiel, for someone to share his fear, but they were both lying down, too: Dean in the grass, Castiel in his cage.

One-by-one, the gunmen blinked out of existence and Sam swayed, no longer making a noise, but his mouth was still open. He was still trying to scream. His hands met the dirt and even though he tried to keep himself up, he was just so tired. His arms lowered him to the ground. He couldn't move his head. His entire line of vision was Lucifer's face, but at least he could see the deep rise and fall of his chest, as if he, too, were sleeping.

"Damn it, Miguel," a voice said, followed by the sound of someone walking not-too-stealthily through the grass. "Michael got away."

"You got the others," another voice, which sounded young, but still older than the first, replied. "Sam's not asleep, yet."

Large hands, large claws found his neck, but the push of them were gentle. Miguel, the werewolf, was checking his pulse.

Others were approaching, Sam heard, as more feet moved through the grass. Michael, it seemed, was long gone. These people didn't fear him returning.

"Also," Miguel said. "The bird cage was tacky and you were just showing off."

"Aw, come on," the other boy said, and Sam could hear the grin on his face, even as he closed his eyes, and everything started to fade out. "I just wanted to hear the cage bird sing."

And Miguel's affectionate chuckle was the last thing Sam heard before he lost consciousness completely.

Lucifer tried to roll over and go back to sleep, thinking more time unconscious would alleviate the pounding in his head, but turning over was hard in such a small space. Reaching out a hand, he felt the edge of a mattress, but behind him, his wings were pressed up against something warm. Slowly, he opened his eyes.

The room was not his room.

He sat up, turning around to look at the figure behind him. It was Castiel, curled in a ball, his eyebrows furrowed even in his sleep. Instead of waking his younger brother, he ran a hand through his hair, recalling the events that led him to this strange room.

An ambush. Castiel in a cage. His wings glowing. Shots fired.

Of everything that hurt, his wings didn't register any pain. Careful of his sleeping brother, Lucifer extended the appendages behind him, looking over the parts of his wings he could see for bullet holes, but there were none.

His fingers ran over his chest – he was in the same t-shirt he had been wearing under his protective clothes – but there were no holes, no tender spots, no dried blood. The only difference in his own clothes other than the lack of his tactical gear appeared to be the addition of a small, leather bracelet. There were symbols etched into the leather, Enochian if he had to guess, and when he tried to take it off, it was obvious that the thing wouldn't loosen.

It was bound to him. A quick glance behind him proved what he theorized: Castiel had one too. They must be something to keep them bound to this place, this room.

The only things that seemed to be wrong with him were his headache, his apparent capture by hostiles, and the fact that he still couldn't feel the grace that was usually so present in his life. He tried to reach out, to talk to Sam, but with the grace inaccessible, Sam remained out of reach.

Where was Sam?

Instead of actually taking in the room, Lucifer stood and made his way over to the window opposite of the bed. He was startled when he first looked out and saw branches and leaves; he would have never guessed that his prison would be a tree house. Suddenly the size of the room made more sense. It was a decent sized room, large for the average tree house, but the atheistic of the room didn't scream of a child's fort, at least not at first. If anything, it looked like a smaller build that Treehouse Masters would make. It was almost painful to watch that show at the bunker. More than anything, he wanted to retire from service, build a treehouse, and live the rest of his life off the ground with Sam by his side.

None of those things would be possible, so Lucifer tried not to watch it often.

The room had a single bed, a twin (which explained why he and Castiel were so cramped on it). It was decorated strangely. There were fancy curtains, a big, expensive looking desk, and a nice chair, which made Lucifer think the room belonged to an adult. However, there were hints of a child in here too: candy bar wrappers left out on the desk, a television with a gaming system hooked up, and some dirty laundry shoved under the bed, like a child had been asked to clean his room and lost motivation halfway through.

The clothes were small, Lucifer noted, as he held them up. It would be too small to fit his teenage sisters, but too big to fit his youngest brothers. The kid who wore it was younger than twelve, older than five, but Lucifer wasn't around children enough to narrow it down more than that.

Finally, after looking around the room for any clues, he went back to the window.

The window was open and there wasn't a screen there to protect the inside from becoming bug-infested. Most of the bunker was underground and the few rooms that had windows were reinforced with steel. This window, he could tell, originally came with a screen. Looking at the side, there were scuff marks on the frame where the screen had been inserted and removed. Eventually, it had been removed and left out.

The owner of this room used the window as an escape.

Lucifer was almost too big to fit out of the window – he had to ease his wings out one at a time in fear of catching them on something – but when he was perched in the branch overlooking the village, he knew he was following in the footsteps of the room's owner.

"Lucifer?" Castiel called from inside. The elder hybrid stood up and stuck his head back inside, but Castiel was already halfway to the window. The white-winged hybrid moved further up the tree so his brother could get out as well. The second Castiel was perched on the branch, he spread his wings, shaking the sleep from them. "Where are we?"

"Fuck if I know," Lucifer replied, then reached up to another branch, testing the strength of it before climbing higher.

As he climbed, Lucifer kept glancing at the village below him. Although there were people moving among the houses and buildings, none seemed to care that he was climbing around, free, in a tree. When Castiel jumped from his branch, flying slowly around the tree, people looked up in an amazed sort of way, but quickly left them to their own devices again.

The people must know they were powerless, or at least, graceless. Lucifer was sure he and Castiel could kill a dozen people before they were caught again, but he also knew that they were not being treated the way prisoners usually were. They weren't locked up. They were free to explore. They almost seemed free to…

"Ow," Castiel called, lifting his right wing at an awkward angle before swooping back toward the tree. His feet landed easily on the roof and when he held out his wing, Lucifer shook his head, not seeing any blood. "There's a shock if you go too far out. It's an invisible fence, like a dome."

"Great," Lucifer frowned from the top of the tree. "We're stuck in a Steven King novel."

"At least it's not The Shining," Castiel said with a shrug. "Or Children of the Corn."

Lucifer shrugged back, but he still wasn't pleased. With a spread of his wings, he glided down, lading next to his brother on the roof of the treehouse.

For a long moment, both hybrids were silent. Then Lucifer asked the question they were both thinking: "Where do you think they have the Winchesters?"

Castiel shrugged again, but as the hybrids perched on the roof of the tree house, their demeanor changed. Their self-preservation instincts changed, and they used their advanced eyesight to scan the buildings and people below. They wouldn't go in with guns blazing, metaphorically of course, but they would watch, observe, cautiously. They were avians after all. From above, they would determine the safest place to move to, to land, to find the Winchesters and plan their escape.

"Cas!" Dean yelled for the hundredth, no, thousandth time. His knuckles were white, wrapped around the open bars of the window on the door. He alternated shaking the bars and throwing his shoulder against the solid door. His voice was hoarse from yelling, and when he grew silent for breaths, Sam heard him trying to swallow around the sore vocal chords.

Sam had tried to talk sense into him hours ago. From his spot on the bed, which wasn't all that uncomfortable for this being the hostage quarters, the younger Winchester watched as his older brother displayed all the anxiety that he felt, but refused to act on.

Dean had accused him of not caring several hours ago, but Sam was doing everything he could to keep the bile in his stomach. The last he had seen of Lucifer, the hybrid had been bloody, shot, his breath shallow. He had no idea where Lucifer was, whether or not he was alive, and it was killing him.

But he also had faith that wherever Lucifer was, he would come for him. As long as he was alive, Lucifer would come back for him.

So, frazzled and worried, Sam laid on the bed, watching his brother exhaust himself. When the hybrids came, they would need to fight. Of that, Sam was certain. And he was going to be well rested for when that time came.

"Sam?" Dean whispered, cleared his throat, and then repeated, slightly louder. "Sammy, there's a kid coming with some food."

For the first time in hours, the younger Winchester stood up and crossed the small room to look out the window. There were actually two kids walking toward them, but one was much older than the other. He was a teenager, somewhere between sixteen and eighteen, and he was handsome in a way that many hybrids were. Sam could tell by the way he held himself that he was a werewolf, and when the boy looked at their one-room jailhouse, he flashed his eyes at them.

Sam almost thought it was subconscious. The kid was quick to look away, like he hadn't meant to. Beside him, Sam felt Dean take in a deep breath. The boy's eyes had flashed blue.

The other boy was actually carrying the food. Sandwiches were something both of them would actually eat. The kid was young, seven maybe, and he was grinning up at the older boy. His two front teeth were missing, and the kid's tongue kept poking through the gap in his teeth, rubbing against the newly exposed gum there.

Most hybrids have an obvious tell. Most werewolves can't control the shift well, especially this close to the full moon. Usually, they're half covered in fur or their claws or teeth are a constant thing. Their hybrids, obviously, had giant freaking wings jutting from their backs.

The kid, Sam noticed, looked human.

"They bonded, you think?" Dean asked, frowning. "Or, well, the kid isn't old enough yet."

Before Sam could answer, not that he had one anyway, the kids were at the door. Despite the fact Sam knew it had been locked, had watched Dean jiggle the handle for hours, the younger kid just had to reach out and twist the handle. The werewolf – Sam almost thought he knew his name, could remember him from the attack – stood outside the door, letting the kid go into the room with two trained, angry soldiers by himself.

Dean stood back, hands clasped behind him, letting the kid in.

He shut the door behind him before turning, holding out the two plates to the two men, a giant smile on his face. He looked younger than Sam had initially thought now that he was closer, but that was likely because of how short he was. That, and the missing teeth.

Dean and Sam both took the plates, but it was with hesitation that they sat down on their separate beds and started eating.

It was quiet, awkwardly so at first. The kid didn't leave, but he was pacing around the room, taking in the sights as if Sam and Dean had just moved in and were starting to decorate. He frowned at a dent Dean had left in the wall that had nearly broken the human's hand. He had tried to use grace, even though he was cut off from Castiel, to become Cain, but the failure only sparked his own rage.

By the time the kid had examined the room, the Winchesters were done with their sandwiches. They held the plates on their laps like they weren't sure what to do. Admittedly, it was the first time they'd ever been captured by enemies, but this would have also been the weirdest time, if it had ever happened before.

Sam wanted to ask Lucifer if normal kidnappings were this awkward. He asked, but he could feel the block between them and knew Lucifer heard nothing.

"So, this has been incredibly awkward," the kid said, shrugging. "But we should probably get down to business."

"Business?" Dean asked.

"Yeah," the kid said. "I need to tell you about your hybrids."

Suddenly, Dean was physically agitated. He was barely controlling himself, and his fingers were twitching at his thighs like he was a second away from beating some information out of the kid. The kid raised his eyebrows, a small grin on his face, as if something had amused him for the first time since he walked in.

"They're okay," he said. "They'll continue to be okay, and you'll see them soonish."

"When's soonish?" Sam asked.

"That's really up to them," the kid said, shrugging again. "But there's a timeline to be followed. Probably by the end of the week, if all goes well. Sooner, hopefully."

"What timeline?" Dean asked.

The kid waved his hand, as if to brush the question aside. Dean fell silent, and Sam looked over at him. He took a deep breath in, but suddenly he looked scared. "Don't you worry, Dean-o. Just remember, the people here aren't the bad guys."

He walked forward, and Dean recoiled when the kid reached out to grab the plate from him. When he took Sam's a few seconds later, the younger Winchester couldn't see whatever Dean saw.

"And I'm telling the truth. You'll see them soon. If you weren't needed, if you weren't important to them, you wouldn't be here. We'd have used real guns and left you on the other side of the country where we took you."

"Other side…?" Sam started, but couldn't finish.

"Yep," the kid said with a grin. "So Michael and Adam have no idea where you are. They won't be around to save you."

On that note, the kid opened the door and left. When the door finally shut behind him, Dean seemed to relax, seemed to breathe more naturally, but he couldn't, for the life of him, remember why he had been so scared of the kid in the first place.

But after that, Dean stayed on the bed. He didn't stand at the door, screaming out to Castiel.

Inside their treehouse prison, Lucifer was sitting on the chair at the desk. There was a lamp, a metallic modern style that must have cost a fortune sitting out of place there, and Lucifer turned it on. He ignored the files left out on the desk – everything about this room screamed like it didn't fit together into one cohesive person – but that would have to wait. His heart was racing, his breathing labored, his hands shaking as he studied the band around his arm.

Castiel was more of a sigil master. He was the one who knew every rune, every Enochian letter, and was able to manipulate those into sigils. The sigil on this bracelet was one Lucifer had never seen before, but it was obvious what it did. He was sweating, almost as desperate as he had been when they were on Demon's Blood, for a fix. But this time, his fix was Sam.

At first, Lucifer was scared to mess with the bracelet, afraid of what the grace could do to rebel against tampering. When he started tugging with no consequence, he became more aggressive. Scissors couldn't cut the leather. A knife couldn't cut the leather (although it did slide from the leather, cutting into his skin: a warning Lucifer ignored). And when he tried to tamper with the sigil, it was also to no avail.

It was over an hour later when he finally grew annoyed with the cooing noise and looked up, wondering what bird was making the racket, that he realized the sound of frightened desperation was himself.

Castiel, bless his heart, ignored the sound.

Dragged from his attempts at breaking the sigil, Lucifer looked at his younger brother, lounging on the twin bed. His brother was nearly six feet tall, and it was far too small for him, but somehow he looked relaxed and cosy; his big black wings at complete ease on the bed.

It was then Lucifer really thought about Castiel. The younger hybrid was far more skilled at sigils, and the fact that he hadn't been trying to break his bracelet was proof enough that it couldn't be broken. Castiel was saving his energy for something else. It made Lucifer think of Sam; the humans and hybrids were usually perfect matches, and while Lucifer spent his time working himself into a near frenzy, he knew wherever Sam was, he would be calm and observant, waiting for an opportunity to present itself.

Dean, like Lucifer, would likely be trying to fix the problem by force.

Accepting defeat, Lucifer sighed, shutting off the light at the desk.

"Finally," Castiel said, quietly but clearly. Before Lucifer could get angry with his brother, the younger hybrid pointed out a window to their left. "There are blue jays eating from a dish over there."

Lucifer turned to look. Blue jays were bastards, but because of that, they were kind of cool. Now that he was paying attention, the blond could identify their obvious call. Every thirty seconds or so, a blue jay would land on a dish outside the window, digging through the sunflower seeds to find a better treat. Peanuts had been buried among the food. After fitting two or three in it's mouth – down it's throat – the jay would take off to go bury them. Blue jays were year-round birds, and they hid food, like squirrels, for winter.

None of their siblings were more blue jay than any of the rest of them, really. Although, if push came to shove, Lucifer imagined they had put a little extra blue jay in Balthazar just to see what would happen. His wings weren't tinted that same brilliant, almost cartoonish pattern of blue, white, and black, but the muted tawny and brown did seem to be accented with black further on his wings. People were always looking at Lucifer's dove white wings with awe, calling him little angel, but he always viewed his own wings as boring, bland.

If his wings were like a blue jays…

"He feeds the blue jays peanuts at that window," Castiel said, pointing to the left again. His finger turned, pointing to window at the right. "So they don't bother the cardinals eating the sunflower seeds at the other window."

True enough, among the many distinguishing bird calls Lucifer could hear in the tree, the peep of the cardinal was loud and close. He stood up from his chair, moving closer to the center of the room so he could see out the right window. There was a male cardinal, brilliant red, on one side of the feeder, and a female cardinal, brownish red, on the other side.

"That's kind of amazing," Lucifer said.

"What's really amazing," Castiel continued. "Is that he has an ear of corn attached to the tree on the roof, higher up. I saw it before we came back inside. The squirrels like the corn the best. He found a way to feed all the wildlife he likes without sacrificing one for the other. Without the peanuts, the blue jays would scare away the cardinals. Without the corn cob, the squirrels would eat everything. This kid is a genius."

"Kid?" Lucifer asked. "He?"

"Bed is small. Clothes are traditionally billed as masculine; although, I don't think he gives a fuck about stereotypical gender roles." Turning to face him, Castiel gestured at nothing in particular, or the room in general. Lucifer couldn't be sure. When Lucifer shrugged, Castiel sighed. "If I'm supposed to be the sigil guy, aren't you supposed to be the observant one?"

"Nah," Lucifer said, smiling a little bit. "I'm the demon expert."

"Lord help us if Michael is supposed to be the judge of character then," Castiel said, pointing at the back wall. "He's into flowers. Those in the vase are freshly picked from the garden just below the tree. They're arranged too, not thrown in haphazardly. There are toy trucks and dolls under the bed, but they're back there a ways, like he's long forgotten about toys…"

"And there are government-issue files," Lucifer said, turning the light back on. He opened one of the folders labeled Top Secret in messy, almost childish handwriting. "They're files on us. Men of Letters official files, which are actually supposed to be classified, so if they're in this kid's room, it means one of three things: First, the kid is a crazy genius who not only hacked the servers and found this information but was actually intelligent enough to read the military garble to understand what it meant."

"Two," Castiel continued, sitting up for the first time. "Someone else gave the kid the files, which still meant he was smart enough to be able to read and understand them."

Suddenly, there was a bang. Lucifer and Castiel both jumped as the trap door leading down the tree was flung open. A kid, maybe eight, poked his head through the hole. He had sandwiches on a plate, and he sat that down before climbing the rest of the way into the tree house. The hybrids remained silent as the kid came into the space, slowly shutting the door behind him. He grabbed the plate of sandwiches and stood up, smiling.

He was missing his two front teeth.

"Well," he said, "don't let me stop you. I'm just bringing you lunch. Continue on talking about how brilliant you think I am."

Lucifer's heart was beating quickly in his chest, and despite the fact he had gone on hundreds of missions, helped euthanize dangerous illegal hybrids, he had never felt his heart race quite like this before. The three of them were completely motionless for a handful of awkward seconds, before the kid took two hesitant steps toward him, extending the plate.

"Age before beauty," he said with a wink.

"Who are you?" Lucifer demanded, but he took a sandwich without thinking about it. He was hungry enough to start fighting the birds for the seeds, and he took a bite before Castiel could be offered one himself. It gave the younger hybrid a few seconds notice. If the food was drugged, Castiel could easily take on the kid.

"You're so suspicious," the kid said, narrowing his eyes. He turned to Castiel. The dark-haired hybrid took his sandwich, but didn't take a bite. He wouldn't. Not until he knew how Lucifer handled it first. "And I think I accidentally-on-purpose barged in on a really great conversation. I think you were about to say point three."

"I…" Lucifer started.

"The third option is, of course, that knowing you would be staying in this room, whoever is keeping you here planted them in this room just to fuck with you," the kid grinned. His smile was wide and full of missing teeth. "Is it working?"

"Third option is wrong," Castiel said, staring at the kid while he took a bite of his sandwich. "They're his files."

"Very good, Cassie."

"So are you the hacker or the planner?" Lucifer asked. "Or both."

"Just the planner," the kid said, sitting down on a chair next to the blue jay window. "But if you gave me a day, I could figure out how to hack. No, less than a day. Give me a computer and I bet I can break into the servers and find out whether or not Michael and Adam have made it back to the bunker yet."

"How do you…"

"Are you impressed?" the kid asked, still grinning, like he was winning at his favorite game. "Chuck said I would need to impress you if you were ever going to be able to trust me so we would be able to work together."

Seconds after arriving back at the bunker, Michael was clasped on the shoulder by John and lead away from Adam. The younger boy protested, reaching out and trying to grasp at his proxy to stay connected, but John was insistent. In one of the experimentation rooms, Michael sat in full tactical gear, going over the details of the ambush in his head again for the thousandth time.

It was a trap. They had them surrounded. They put Castiel in a cage. Dean surrendered. They shot Lucifer. He was bleeding. Sam ran toward him. Michael grabbed Adam by the biceps and lifted.

Michael was the only hybrid who could lift his human in flight. Dean and Sam were both too heavy, too big for their hybrids to lift, and Michael's muscle mass was more than Lucifer and Castiel. He couldn't carry Adam for long, but he could fly him low, through the trees, to safety.

Adam had been screaming, crying, begging Michael to take him back. It was better to be captured and killed than to leave their brothers behind, but Michael had blinders on. He had to keep Adam safe. He needed to get them back to base. They needed to come back with reinforcements.

Suddenly, Michael felt a hand on his arm, squeezing his wrist almost enough to snap his hollow bones.

"Michael," John was saying, in quite possibly the most gentle voice the hybrid had ever heard him use. "Come back, kid. You're having a panic attack. You need to breathe for me, okay?"

The hybrid nodded, focusing on the pain in his arm, until he was able to open his mouth and say it all aloud. It took no time to tell the story in the short, staccato sentences he was able to give. His breath was labored, and it felt like his uniform was squeezing his chest, putting more and more pressure on his lungs, making it difficult for him to breathe.

"Michael," John was saying. "Can you tell us anything more? Did you see the people who ambushed you?"

But Michael couldn't breathe. He tried pulling his arm back from John, but he couldn't work the force. He tried turning his wrist over, breaking the hold like he'd done a thousand times during hand-to-hand combat training, but when he yanked his arm back, he heard a snap and after a millisecond of deafening silence, John let go of his wrist.

The pain flared all at once, as Michael drew his arm back, sharply, to his body, and screamed. It wasn't the pain, he didn't think, he had broken bones before. He would break them again.

It was the loss.

His brothers.

Dean and Sam.

They were gone, and it was all his fault.

"Michael," John said, his eyes wide. "I… I'm sorry."

But Michael just stood. He cradled his broken arm to his chest, moving quickly to the door. He could get it casted in a second. Kevin would be checking over Adam now, but any moment he would come looking for him. Instead, he took off toward his room.

Flying came natural to him, but the throb in his arm was distracting. It took him a second to fly to his loft bed in his and Adam's room, and with his good hand, he reached out for the picture of the Unit hanging on the wall. He held the frame down with his knee, trying to work the back off with his right hand, but he was shaking and he couldn't seem to will himself to stop.

"He's in here!" Adam was yelling, but Michael still fought with the picture frame. He just needed a minute to compose himself. He needed a minute to see what he had lost, what was truly gone, so he could refocus. Lucifer and Castiel were taken; Castiel, at least, was probably still alive. He'd known loss, but this wasn't it. This wasn't permanent. He could save his brothers like he couldn't save his son.

But there were hands on him, dragging him back and off the loft, but Michael flailed his wings, trying to knock the hands off of him.

"No," he screamed, but he was light. The only damage he seemed to do was to the picture frame, which fell from his bed and shattered on the ground. The fight went out of him, like the glass on the floor. And between John, Chuck, and Kevin, they were able to get him down from the loft.

Silent, sedated, Michael sat on Adam's bed as Kevin assessed his arm, but his eyes never left the broken frame on the floor, even when Adam grabbed his right hand and threaded their fingers together, sobbing quietly against his shoulder.

He sat on an ottoman overlooking the blue jay feeder, swinging his feet, and mostly ignoring the two hybrids in front of him. If they were able to communicate telepathically – which they couldn't, and not just because of the graceless bands on their wrist – he would have been sure they were talking to each other silently. They were that quiet.

But no, knowing they couldn't, it just made it kind of awkward. Castiel was looking out the window, watching the mourning doves land in the tree and scope out the feeder. Lucifer was watching the desk, or maybe his graceless bracelet, but the silence had stretched on so long, it was beginning to get awkward.

And somewhere, deep inside himself, he had a bitter thought that he was doing what humans do when they feed the birds; he was waiting, silently, trying to move as little as possible, to let the birds acclimate to the space with him in it. Eventually, they wouldn't deem him as a threat and they could all move on with their lives.

Perhaps it was that very enraging thought – treating the hybrids more like birds than men – that got the kid to speak up. "They call me Gabriel."

For half a second, Gabriel wasn't sure if either of the hybrids would look at him, as if they were ignoring him for the point of it. But slowly, curiosity won out, and both turned their heads to face him.

"Well, they call me Gabe, mostly. I'm fine with either. However you want to address me, I pretty much answer to. I kind of think it's funny though, cause my werewolf buddy goes by Miguel, and I think the whole thing is funny because Miguel is the Spanish way to say…"

"Michael. Gabriel and Michael," Lucifer finished for him. "The archangels."

"You too," Gabriel said with a small smile. "And you weren't named for it. You started as Luke but called yourself Lucifer. And they listened to you." Lucifer shrugged, but Gabriel stood up, throwing caution to the wind, and stepping toward the hybrid. "You're so much more powerful than you can even imagine. Both of you."

For another long moment, the hybrids were quiet. Gabriel held his position for a moment before deflating, taking a step back. He was almost going to return to his seat and try to think of another way to get their trust when Castiel spoke up.

"How could we be more powerful? We give grace. We can pull a force through the air and channel it and give it to humans so they can use it, manipulate it," Castiel tilted his head to the side. "What could be more powerful than that?"

"Well," Gabriel said. "You could channel that grace and use it for yourself."

Lucifer started laughing, and Gabriel couldn't help but the small shock of pleasure that ran through him at causing it, bitter though it may be. His head was thrown back, but the long stretch of his throat was bared with it, and it was a sign of trust, however small. Lucifer, at least, didn't think Gabriel was going to rip him apart at that moment. Gabriel counted it as a small victory.

"Everyone knows that hybrids can't actually use grace," he said. "Sure, werewolves are stronger and faster healers than humans. Our bones are light and we can fly. Those are our gracious perks. If we could use grace like humans could, we would be…"

"… unstoppable," Castiel finished for him, breathless. Gabriel observed the brothers, knowing that telepathic communication was not possible, but that they could still communicate without speaking, much like any set of animals or humans. Castiel's eyebrows were up, his eyes wide, but Lucifer was the stark contrast: eyebrows down, eyes narrowed, frowning.

After a second of looking at each other, Castiel asked, "Chuck wants us to work together…. So does that mean maker wants you to teach us how to use grace?"

"Bingo," Gabriel grinned.

"Then why attack us? Why lock Cas in the cage and fill me full of…" Lucifer started, then frowned. "That didn't happen, did it? I haven't been healed of my gunshot wounds… the wounds were never there, were they?"

"Bingo again, Luci," Gabriel said. "Your files said you were quick learners, but being the smartest guy I know, I sort of had my doubts, to be fair."

"Smartest?"

"Oh yes," Gabriel said, raising his hand. He turned his wrist up, his thumb meeting his middle finger. "And the most talented."

With that, Gabriel snapped his fingers, and the treehouse suddenly wasn't a treehouse any longer. Instead, they seemed to be in some sort of bunker, not dissimilar to their own, but also not a replica. Instead, it looked like the basic infrastructure of the bunker, the walls were in the right spot, but instead of the main open room with the library, it looked like a training room from one of those post-apocalyptic fight-the-corrupt-government dystopian teen novel movies. There were weapons, spell-making supplies, and chalk on the tables. There was a big open mat on the floor that looked like it was going to hurt only slightly less than the floor.

Gabriel really enjoyed the look on the hybrids' faces when they noticed they were in a different room. People always reacted one of two ways: they were scared or they were in awe.

It was like rock climbing, he figured, for fragile little humans. Lucifer and Castiel looked about 80% scared, but 20% excited, and Gabriel could totally work with those odds.

"What are you?" Castiel said. "A witch? I trained under Olivette, and I've never seen any magic like that."

"Me dad's a muggle," Gabriel said in a fake Irish accent. "Mam's a witch. Bit of a nasty shock for him when he found out."

Seeing the blank stares, Gabriel sighed, thinking he was going to have to explain the joke when Lucifer asked, "So you're half witch? Your dad's a human?"

"Well, that part is a lie. Dad wasn't human. My mom was a witch though." After a second's pause Gabriel added, "I don't think he ever knew about my mom, though. And anyway, we're not here to talk about me. We're here so you can learn to be like me."

"But if you're half witch, we can't possibly learn to do the stuff you do," Castiel said. "I can make spells. I'm fantastic at mixing herbs and mixing runes to make sigils. But to tattoo one of those sigils on me and use my own grace to activate it?"

"You don't need a tattoo!" Gabriel said. "Watch."

With a snap of his fingers, an orb of light appeared overhead. It was one of the simplest runes for humans to master, but it would be a good starting point for his pupils. When they just stood there, looking up at the orb like it was somehow responsible and not Gabriel, the kid yelled out, "you're supposed to try now."

"I can't," Castiel said. "Not without… I would need to mix the spell. I need to use the ingredients to channel the grace."

"No," Gabriel said. "You are the grace. The grace is in you." With a sigh he added, "Fine if Cas won't try, give it a go, Lucifer."

But the blond shook his head. "He can actually mix the spells and make them work. If he can't do it, I can't."

"Seriously, you can do this. Just think that you're the Elrics, okay. You don't need a transmutation circle. You can just do it."

Lucifer and Castiel looked at each other, then the blond said. "Well, which one of us is Edward?"

"Me, obviously," Castiel said, but Lucifer opened his mouth, ready to argue.

"Omigod," Gabriel said. "You're worse than teaching Miguel how to shift on command, I swear to God. Seriously, it's not that hard. I just think, 'wow, it would be really cool to have a light up there,' and then I snap my fingers and there's a light up there. It's super not hard."

"That's like putting a kid on a bike and pushing him and when he loses his balance you yell at him," Lucifer said. "Something that's not hard for you isn't easy for everyone. I'm sure there are things we can do that you can't."

"I seriously doubt that," Gabriel muttered, but none too quietly.

"Really?" Castiel said, his wings spreading out behind him. "We can fly."

Without snapping, Gabriel willed it and it was so. He stretched his arms out, and felt the electricity around him. The very air seemed charged and his back felt heavy as allowed his wings to manifest physically. Hiding his wings had always been important, and he could fly without showing them now, so he rarely got to feel the weight of them like this. He spread them out behind him, knowing the brothers would be far more competent fliers. They were liked trained pilots who did arial shows and he was like a guy who happened to own a pilot's license and a plane. But he could fly just fine.

If he enjoyed the looks on their faces when he manipulated space to make them think they were in the bunker, it was nothing compared to the look they had when they saw his brownish, tawny wings.

"So can I."

If anything, Dean had seemed to calm down and why that made Sam more anxious, he didn't know. Realistically, he knew it had nothing to do with Dean and everything to do with the fact that the kid and Miguel took Castiel away in a cage but Lucifer had been lying there, shot full of holes. Sam remembered the blood and every time he tried to sleep, every time he shut his eyes he couldn't help but see the blood everywhere.

Sitting up, breathing too hard to even fake sleep, the human put his hand over the token he wore under his shirt. At first he was sure if Lucifer were dead, he would be able to feel it. Sure, he could feel residual grace from some powerful thing, but it wasn't Lucifer's. This was an unbonded grace. It was very similar to the one they felt just before the attack.

Sam was sure he could use it to do something small, create a light, freeze some water, but even if he could get a spark, he knew there would be protection on this place to keep the humans from freeing themselves.

If someone wasn't scared of allowing them some grace to use, they weren't scared of it being any actual use to the hostage.

Suddenly, from outside their door, he heard a small huffing sound. Sam shot a look at Dean, but his brother could sleep like the dead if he wanted to. The sound didn't raise his internal alarm, and asleep he stayed.

When Sam heard it again, he almost thought he recognized the sound. It was animalistic, like a dog or something, and when the human stood up and moved toward the door, he knew where he had heard the soft whines and low grumbles before.

It was an animal documentary that they had watched when they were younger about pets. There had been a mix of adults dogs and puppies, and sometimes when the babies were restless in their sleep – some strange, fear-filled puppy dream – the mother would soothe her young.

Sam reached the window in the door and looked down. Sure enough, there was an animal twitching in his sleep, his paws moving and the huffs and whimpers seemed to be accompanied by humanesque marks of pain. But it wasn't a dog. It was a medium sized, black wolf.

Knowing that he knew one medium-sized black-haired werewolf, Sam took a shot in the dark, even though he'd never actually seen a werewolf fully shifted into a wolf before.

"Miguel?" Sam whispered, but then said a little louder, "Miguel!"

The wolf stopped twitching and raised his head, looking back at Sam with a flash of blue eyes, and there was no mistaking it at that point. "You can do a full shift?"

The wolf kept looking at him, and Sam had no idea if the hybrid could understand him in this form, but he continued anyway.

"In our werewolf books it says that it's exceedingly rare for a beta to be able to accomplish a full shift. Hell, most alphas can't really do it because it's so easy to lose control to the inner wolf when in that form." When Miguel kept looking at him, Sam sighed, shaking his head. "We saw a rugaru the other month for the first time."

Somehow, Sam knew that Miguel was probably thinking 'And you killed it, didn't you?' but that might still just be his own guilt.

After a few seconds of silence, Miguel finally looked away, back toward the center of the town. There was a giant tree in the center, Sam had seen when it was still light out, although everything was lost to him in the dark now. The wolf could probably still see the little tree house inside it.

Sam looked to the sky. He was going on lore, here, but according to the mythology, without rigorous training, werewolves couldn't control their shifts on the full moon. But tonight they were at a crescent moon, and with the exception of very powerful alphas, Sam didn't know that betas could control their shifts (outside of a lab or the commercial sector) at all.

There were little animalistic ticks that all hybrids had. The werewolves were among the most dangerous with the monthly shifts, but vampires could, at times, lose their reflection and they were susceptible to blood issues. Many needed transfusions by the time they were teenagers and if they escaped, their own poisoned blood made them crave human blood.

The avian hybrids tended to make nests in places they were comfortable, they were incredibly easy to startle and would always seek higher ground (which made watching scary movies annoying and borderline painful if he got a face full of feathered bone) and at times of happiness or extreme stress, Lucifer had sometimes cooed, although he was quick to try and hide it.

"Is he dead?" Sam asked, suddenly, the somber tone of his voice surprising even himself. "Please, don't lie to me… I just need to know."

For a second, the wolf cocked his head to the side, nearly frowning like he was confused.

"Lucifer… my bonded hybrid. The night that you took us, he had been shot."

Still, the wolf looked confused until he opened his mouth and shook his head back and forth, his tail wagging slightly behind him.

"No?" Sam asked, excitement bubbling up in his chest. He gripped the bars on the windows and pushed his face closer. "He's not dead?"

The wolf shook his head again and made an energetic barking sound.

"But how…" Sam started, before remembering the wolf didn't appear to be able to talk. For whatever reason, orders or pain, Miguel didn't seem like he was changing back anytime soon so the how would have to wait. Instead, Sam just smiled and said, "Thank you."

The human moved away from the door, and as he laid himself back into bed, he heard the wolf plop down outside. Finally relaxed enough to fall asleep, Sam wondered what the teenage werewolf could have been dreaming about.

But knowing how Sam ended up in this village, he could only imagine.

"Teach me that," Cas said, his voice low and gravelly. "I need to know how to hide my wings."

"Dude," Gabriel said. "You can't even make light, yet. Shrouding something as big and constantly moving as wings is a lot harder and it takes a lot more practice."

"Are you really an avian hybrid?" Lucifer asked, frowning. "Or is this another of your tricks?"

"Well if I told you that, it wouldn't be nearly as fun," Gabriel said, easily hiding his wings again. Castiel was on him in a second, feeling around his back, searching for the wings. Shrouding wasn't exactly the right word, but hiding wings from vision was an extremely difficult internal grace power. That alone would be impossible when the bastards couldn't even make a light. Making them so hidden that other people couldn't feel them was something else entirely.

"I need to know how to do that," Castiel said, gripping Gabriel by the shoulders. "Now."

Lucifer sighed, looking away. It was obvious to him why Castiel would want to hide his wings; they were the only obvious things that marked him as a hybrid. They were never allowed out of the bunker unless they were in uniform, and they all had been told over and over again that their very lives were government property.

Take away the wings, and it would be easier to hide in a crowd. They could act human, and nobody would ever know.

And if they could act human, they could pretend they had the same rights as humans. They could get jobs that they liked, they could wear normal clothes… they could get married to someone they loved.

"That wouldn't change anything," Lucifer said, shrugging as if he could physically make himself care less by removing the metaphorical weight that seemed to have settled there. "Wings or no wings, we would still be their hybrids, and John…"

"Fuck John," Castiel hissed, squeezing Gabriel's shoulders tighter. "If we could be human…"

"You'll never be human," Gabriel said, frowning. "Why would you ever want to be human when you could be you?"

"I…" Castiel started, letting his hands drop. "I just…"

"Oh," Gabriel said, wrinkling his nose. "This is about your humans. It's weird for me, I guess. I've never been bonded. Well, I'm not really old enough but even if I was, I would never do it. But I just don't get the bond."

"Are they okay?" Lucifer asked. "Is Sam…?"

"Well, I think he thinks you're bleeding to death somewhere, but other than their own imagination and the trauma they're creating themselves, they're okay," Gabriel said. "Well physically. Some emotional scars never truly heal."

"Are we allowed to see them?"

"I'll make you a deal," Gabriel said, glancing at a spot on the wall. As he looked, a clock appeared there. "If you can make light by yourself without using spells or whatever, but you using your own grace to create light, within the next hour… I'll take you to them. But, and this is a huge but, when it's time to train again, you have to come back and train with me. We're on a really tight schedule here, and if I can't train you to do some actually decent stuff with your grace, you're of no use to us."

Lucifer nodded. "What's the plan?"

Gabriel grinned, putting his hands on his hips. "We're going to save the world."

Sam opened his eyes when he heard a commotion outside. His eyes quickly found his brother's in the light of early morning, flowing in through the barred windows in their aboveground cell. Dean nodded, and together, the Winchesters rose silently from their beds and started walking toward the door.

"Are you serious?" Miguel was asking. "It's been like one day. I think they're still dangerous, Gabe. The second the four of them together, they're going to run."

"We're not going to run."

Sam sprinted to the door, recognizing the voice instantly. He reached the bars seconds before Dean, and felt his brother pushing him aside, trying to see out the small window. Lucifer was standing between the kid who gave them sandwiches and Castiel, and when the hybrids heard the commotion inside the building, they ran past Miguel, fighting each other for access to the same small window.

Lucifer won, but whether that was because he was a few inches taller or because it was Sam in the window was unknown.

"Hey, Sam," he said aloud, reaching out his hands. He covered the human's hands with his own, wrapped around the bar, grinning wide and bright. "Did you miss me?"

"I thought you were dead!" Sam said, adjusting his grip on the bars so he was no longer wrapping his fingers around them, but around Lucifer's hands instead.

"Sam," Dean whined, shoving him out of the way of the full window. The younger brother adjusted his stance so he was off to the side. As Dean approached the window, he asked, "Is Cas out there too?"

Lucifer moved to the side and Castiel approached, keeping his hands at his sides. Sam could see the happiness on the younger hybrid's face, and he could see the way he was twitching to reach out to Dean as Lucifer had to Sam. "I'm here, Dean."

"Did they hurt you?"

Behind the hybrids, there was an exaggerated puking sound, and both hybrids moved away, throwing twin looks of annoyance at the kid behind them. The kid coughed into his hand, acting innocent. Beside him, Miguel looked worried, like he was about to shift at any minute and rip them all apart if he had to.

"Can we go in?" Lucifer asked.

The kid shrugged, but he was grinning. "Sure, if you can unlock the door."

Sam's chest felt tight and he couldn't stop the grin from spreading over his face. All the hybrids could pick locks. But Lucifer frowned at the kid, then frowned at Castiel, and finally, he frowned at the door.

"What kind of lock is it?" Dean asked. "Cas, can you…"

But Castiel was frowning too.

"What?" Dean asked. "Is it some type of fucking impossible lock?"

"Well," Castiel said, but he never finished.

"No," Lucifer said, finally letting go of Sam's hand. He held his arm out to the door, placing his palm against the wood. "I've got it."

The taller human was confused. His eyes shifted from where Lucifer's hands were to his hybrid's face. The blond was frowning, his eyes were shut, and his lip was between his teeth. It was a look Sam had seen before, but not often. On the rare occasions he saw the other garrisons, especially the younger set of boys, the humans often had pained expressions on their faces as they struggled to manipulate the grace.

"Lucifer, what…" Sam started, but Castiel shushed him.

Fifteen long, silent seconds later, there was a very audible click as the bolt in the door slid back into place. Sam stood there, dumbfounded, as Castiel let out a loud caw and threw his arms around his brother. Lucifer was grinning ear to ear when he touched the door handle and pulled it open.

Dean reacted first.

Within seconds, the human had bolted from his cage, past the hybrids, and was headed for the kid. Miguel, just as quick, had shifted into the beta form, hands thrown back, growling, ready to jump between them. But the kid, it seemed, had anticipated the attack because with a snap of his fingers, Dean dropped to the ground like he had hit an invisible barrier.

"Gabriel!" Castiel yelled, moving to the human, checking him over. The human was rubbing his face, and the hybrid reached a hand out, feeling the invisible box the kid – Gabriel – had created. "That wasn't nice."

"It wasn't nice of him to run at me," the kid said, practically whining. "And dude," he said to Miguel. "Calm down."

"You know he couldn't hurt you," Castiel said, grabbing hold of Dean's hand and helping him up.

"What do you mean I couldn't hurt him?" Dean said, sounding far more like the whining kid than he would ever later admit. Terrified as he was, it made Sam laugh.

"Keep a leash on your dog," Gabriel said, frowning at Dean. "Or I will hurt him next time. Now come on. Let's get some food."

Castiel sighed, but Miguel, already shifted back into his human form, frowned down at the kid as they walked away. "Can the dog jokes."

"Aw," Gabriel grinned, reaching out and rubbing the werewolf's side. The werewolf swiped at him, and Sam was certain that he was going to draw blood, but Miguel seemed able to control himself, which only added more confusion on top of everything else he was feeling. "You know you're my favorite puppy."

Miguel growled, but Sam ignored the two smaller kids when he felt Lucifer elbowing him in the side. He nodded to the kids, then started walking after them. Castiel followed too, (Dean was none too subtly reaching a hand out to make sure a glass window didn't appear in front of him and knock him down again), and Sam couldn't help but wonder why the hybrids were listening to the kid. Who even was Gabriel? Where were they?

"Don't worry, Sammy," Gabriel said in singsong without turning around. "We'll take you to the rest of the members of the resistance and all your questions will be answered."

They spent most of the day sitting around a campfire, listening to the different members of the community, which they were apparently now a part of, speak. It started with introductions – some vague and timid, but others loud and brutal – and how the different members of the community came to be there. Despite the fact that Gabriel was eight, he was undoubtedly the leader. Every other person and hybrid deferred to him.

Even the ones who were vague about where they came from had a similar story. Most of them were illegal hybrids, the very things that the Unit had been trained to track down and euthanize, and it was obvious to Lucifer that they were afraid of the four newcomers. Most of the stories involved a similar upbringing to their own; they were government property, tortured and trained, and if they weren't strong enough or smart enough, they were sent to be euthanized. When they entered the euthanasia chamber, a man was standing there with the fire already burning. He gave them new clothes and ushered them outside and into a van.

Several hours later, they were at a safe houses. They spent a few weeks or a few years learning and training. Many of the hybrids who were able to appear human became the operators of safe houses themselves. Those who were angry and wanted a more active fight came here.

When everyone had shared but the four of them, Gabriel, and Miguel, Dean spoke up. "Okay, So other than the fact that you're all basically fugitives from the government and we're in some sort of hippie compound, I don't really get why we're having this touchy-feely moment. What do you want from us? To not kill all of you?"

"Dean," Castiel hissed, but when the human turned to look at the hybrid, he looked genuinely confused.

Lucifer remembered when he was in Chuck and Kevin's house. He remembered walking into Kevin's room, seeing the map where he had a list of places that had been explored but had come back with no illegal hybrids found. He remembered how weird that had been, but now that he thought about it…

"It was maker, wasn't it, Gabe?" Lucifer asked, and the blond knew he was right by the giant grin that exploded on the kid's face. "It was Chuck who saved everyone and brought them together. It's Chuck who wants us to fight."

"Fight what?" Dean asked. "The government? The Men of Letters? Do you really expect us to abandon everything we've known for the past twenty-some years just because a few of you were tortured? Guess what: That's fucking life."

"Dean," Castiel said again, his voice smaller this time.

"We were trained, too," Dean said, pointing at Gabriel. "We've been experimented on, pushed, tortured, but you know what? I'd rather be in my fucking Unit, with my fucking brothers and my hybrid than to be free without any of them."

"But what if you could be free with us?" Castiel said.

"That's not going to happen," Dean said, his voice turning from angry to sad. "We've talked about this, Cas. There's no running away. There's no fighting. It sucks. I know it sucks. I know my dad sucks, but that's the only life we got."

Lucifer looked up, noticing that as soon as Dean had mentioned his dad, all of the people sitting around the circle, even Gabriel, looked away.

Dean, it seemed, noticed it too. "You know my dad?"

"John Winchester was stuff of our nightmares," Miguel said, still looking down. "I grew up with my family. My mom and dad were mated – you say bonded – and they had all us kids. And our Men of Letters were run by a different family. They studied us, tested us, tortured us. But as bad as it got, we had each other. We didn't misbehave, but if we couldn't perform to their standards, they would say, 'you're lucky you have us. You're lucky John Winchester isn't in charge of your testing,' and they would threaten to call him.

"I saw him once," Miguel went on. "He and Chuck came to my house – we had a preserve because they wanted to study werewolf dynamics as naturally as possible – they came with a girl, one of the daughters of our lead Man of Letters. She was going to take over his branch when he retired. John helped her..."

But he didn't go on. Instead Gabriel reached out to Miguel, running a hand over his back. For a long second they were quiet, until Gabriel finished the story for his friend.

"Chuck helped him escape, but he was the only one who made it out. They just thought they had all the information they needed, so they terminated the experiment," Gabriel looked up at Dean and frowned. "They killed his whole family. And you may be John's son, which will save you from termination. But it won't save your hybrids. You'll get your nice little stud fee, and then you'll be the new John Winchester. You'll be the one who experiments."

"I will not," Dean whispered, looking at Castiel like he'd already betrayed him. "I told you I won't let him terminate you. Or Lucifer. Or Michael. And I'd never… I'd never do…"

Gabriel, who was gentle just a second before, frowned. "I remember everything. Every moment of my entire life, anything I've ever read or heard. I can't forget anything. I remember after I was born, they took me away from my father after just half an hour and I never saw him again. I was with my mother for two weeks before Chuck realized how powerful I was going to be, and he… I couldn't stay with my mom because I wouldn't be safe. Everyone I knew thinks I'm dead. I want to live long enough to see them again, but I can't… that won't happen unless something changes. We have to be free. We have to be allowed to exist. We're just like people."

Lucifer looked over at Sam when he felt something warm touching his hand. He watched as the human interlaced their fingers, and he knew that Sam had been convinced, just like he and Castiel had when they first used their own grace to create light.

Dean bit his lip. He looked down and nodded, too.

"So what's the plan?"

"Well…" Gabriel said. "I don't imagine you follow politics." When the four of them shook their head, Gabriel continued. "So it seems the way politics works anymore is you have two sides and one side is for something and one side is against that same thing. This year, though, has been the first year since grace has been discovered that hybrid rights have really been an issue at all. Before, everyone assumed that hybrids were basically human-shaped pets and they didn't deserve to be citizens.

"But some time like eight years ago, people started fighting for the right to marry hybrids because, the bonding, I guess, is like a spiritual marriage and practically nobody gets bonded without being in love so… the hybrids and their humans wanted rights. So if one of them got sick, the other could go see them in the hospital because even in the commercial sector, hybrid rules suck. So like, if I were a human and I got sick, my hybrid isn't allowed to leave the house without me or they can get arrested and euthanized, so they couldn't come see me.

"Not only that," Gabriel continued, "but in the commercial sector, hybrids are basically raised in puppy mills. They're created and raised until they're about ten and the first person who pays to bond with them gets them unless a bond can't be formed. If a bond can't be formed, they're euthanized. Also, it's super illegal for two hybrids to be together."

"Okay," Dean said. "So it sucks. This doesn't tell us the plan."

"I'm getting to it, Dean-o," Gabriel sighed. "The plan is, president-elect Jody Mills was a senator from South Dakota and before she was a sheriff. The story goes that a bunch of humans kidnapped a little vampire girl named Alex like eight years before that. The girl had been used, tortured, but had severe Stockholm syndrome, as many hybrids develop who are in terrible conditions. Anyway, Jody saved her and tried to adopt her, but when the state said she couldn't adopt because she wasn't human, Jody got into politics to change the law. Officially, Alex is her unbonded pet – some people choose to have hybrids and not bond with them – but she's been fighting to let Alex be adopted as her daughter ever since."

"I'm surprised," Castiel said quietly, "We were never called to take care of Alex."

"You were only teenagers then," Gabriel said. "Not on missions yet. Actually, you'd have been a pre-teen, Cas. Which is something I would have loved to been alive to see."

Dean laughed, but the mood quickly turned serious and somber again.

"She won, right? So now what do we have to do, keep her alive long enough for her to pass a bill or something?" Lucifer asked, frowning.

Gabriel laughed, "Essentially. The American people are scared of government hybrids or illegals, but they're also saturated with them, now. Everybody knows someone who has a hybrid, and actually, everyone knows someone who is either in love with they hybrid and wants to get married or tortures their hybrid and they want to be able to call a protective service agency. America's ready for this change, they're ready for us, and Jody's safety is the only way to ensure that."

"But…" Dean started.

"Exactly, but like the plantation owners in the south didn't want to give up slavery, people like John Winchester or people who own the hybrid breeding mills or people who use hybrid labor for free obviously don't want Jody to give hybrids rights."

"So we need to protect her," Lucifer said. Gabriel nodded.

"She asked Chuck if she could pay some hybrids to keep her safe until the election. This was months ago, and Chuck wanted to send your Unit, but John would never agree. He's been trying to get you to me ever since," Gabriel grinned. "Because I'm obviously the best hybrid that was ever born and he needed someone to fast track you to the righteous path."

"And he's modest," Miguel said, knocking his shoulder against the younger boy.

"She's going to pay us?" Castiel frowned. "Why pay us? If she's our president, she could demand it of us."

"Haven't you been listening?" Gabriel said. "Equal rights means paying jobs, too. If you were to stay with the Men of Letters, they'd be required to pay you, but I think Jody wants a Unit of humans and hybrids in her secret service when she's allowed to hire them. You'd be paid there, too. She's walked the walk for years, man. Trust me, Chuck vetted her way before she asked if he knew anyone he trusted to protect her."

"Aren't we a little late now?" Lucifer asked. "She was elected about a month ago. It'll still take two days to get to South Dakota from here."

"I didn't say you were going to be making buckets of money because this was a long-term contract. Besides, in case you didn't notice, you're like the most elite human-hybrid team in the world. John Winchester won't let you be missing for long. We had to pick the perfect time, and Jody has been getting more threats targeted next week because if she is assassinated any time between now and when the electoral college meets, all bets are off. They'd have to have a new election, and someone else who isn't going to be fighting for us may win. Not everyone in her party feels the same way about hybrids as she does, you know. But, if she's assassinated after they meet, then Donna would become president. Ideally, though, we don't want her to be assassinated at all, obviously."

"So after this week of training is up, we'll only need to protect her for the next week?" Dean asked.

"Yes," Gabriel said, "And while it sounds easy for you guys to protect a human, but it's going to be nasty on two fronts. One: the people who want to assassinate her want to keep hybrids as slaves, basically. So they're going to send their hybrids, who have no choice but to kill her or die, so that they can sway the next politician from taking that stance again. And two: John wants you back and the second he finds you…"

"He's going to send Michael and Adam for us," Lucifer finished.

"It is kind of Biblical," Gabriel offered with a smile. "But you can't let him win."

"I never let him win," Lucifer frowned. They were quiet for a second, then Lucifer sighed. "So it looks like we're headed out to South Dakota."

"Well," Sam said, and Lucifer turned and looked at him. He had been silent throughout the entire conversation. "You always said you wanted to get out and meet more people."

Lucifer laughed, and Gabriel offered them a smile. "And just remember, even though you think you're alone, you've got other people helping you. Kevin will be reporting everything to Chuck who is helping one of your data techs, Charlie Bradbury, keep John off your trail. There are a lot of people, even in your Men of Letters camp, who want to see a change."

Lucifer remembered Charlie Bradbury, walking away after she had slipped him the flash drive he needed to give Chuck. Whatever was on that flash drive, Lucifer would bet, had something to do with this plan. And he remembered exactly what she had said to them as she walked away: "Have faith, Miltons… the times, they are a-changing"

The week of training was nearly torturous for Sam.

For the most part, Lucifer was busy with Gabriel and Castiel, and while they were free to move about the camp, the bracelets that kept them from communicating telepathically remained in place. It was driving Sam crazy – and as the days went on, Dean was getting further agitated – but the worse part was that the hybrids didn't seem nearly as affected.

Suddenly, Lucifer and Castiel were developing a skill, something that they were likely intended to use all along, but had never been given access to. Gabriel, ever the conspiracy theorist, said it was because the Men of Letters and the government as a whole were afraid to let any sub-species have all that power. The humans and the bonding was only there to keep the hybrids chained and in check.

Dean swore up and down that it wasn't true, but the more Sam thought about it, the more plausible it seemed. But now, cut off from Lucifer's grace while seeing the way that the hybrid started flourishing now that he had some freedom… Sam had to disagree with Dean.

In their separate sessions, when the humans were trained but not the hybrids, John had taught them that the hybrids were important tools. They were like beloved pets, but lacked the ability to be fully human. Watching the way Castiel and Lucifer flew hundreds of feet overhead – once Gabriel trusted them enough to take down the dome – as they taught the younger boy ariels that had been part of their training, Sam knew that although the hybrids had wings, they were as human as the Winchesters.

And then one day, their wings were gone. Sam, for a moment, was completely terrified that they somehow were human now.

Two mornings before they had to leave to start phase two of the plan, Lucifer and Castiel had brushed their wings against their humans as a way to say goodbye. Sam had flushed. Being here with a lot of other hybrids and humans – and many hybrid/human couples – had seemed to embolden all four of them. Suddenly, the threats Sam had learned as a child, as a teenager, about how having a relationship with a hybrid was like taking advantage of a child seemed more and more like a boldfaced lie to control their natural bond. Even those who weren't bonded were overly affectionate in this community, but seeing the cautious optimism on Lucifer's face with each passing day was a thousand times more rewarding than any casual touch from any other member of the resistance.

But the hybrids had walked away that morning with wings, and they walked back to the campfire where they all ate their meals wingless.

Castiel's face was split in a grin, but Sam could only see the shock and horror on Dean's that must have been mirrored on his own face. Castiel threw his arms around Dean, laughing, and Sam watched as his older brother cautiously brought his hands around to the hybrid's back, feeling for the appendages that had always been there.

When Lucifer walked up to Sam, he didn't hug him. Lucifer, it seemed, noticed their reaction to Castiel, and when the brunet turned to face the blond, he knew he had tears in his eyes.

Within a second, Lucifer had reached out, his palms resting lightly on Sam's shoulders. In the blink of an eye his wings were back, brilliant and luminescent, his head cocked to the side in confusion.

It was then that Sam hugged Lucifer and listened to the hushed, comforting words his hybrid offered him. It was a manipulation of grace. They would always still be there, but it was a way for them to move unseen through a crowd. But when Lucifer shifted his wings away again, Sam had a hard time looking over at the blond and seeing his Lucifer.

Castiel, it appeared, either didn't notice Dean's anxiousness about the development or didn't care that Dean was upset. He didn't offer to bring them out, and Dean, looking confused, scared, and lost, didn't ask.

Instead, when the Winchesters were lying on their cots in their former jail cell, Dean tried to school his breathing. He was very good at it, Sam thought, way better than Adam. Unfortunately, Sam knew his brother was awake, and Dean knew that Sam knew that he was awake. There was no avoiding the conversation.

Although, Sam was angry that Dean put his own fears into words.

"They're going to leave us," Dean whispered into the dark.

Sam didn't say anything. He remained still, and schooled his breathing into steady inhales and exhales, mimicking the sound of sleeping. Dean didn't fall for it, either.

"I don't know why they're even keeping us around," Dean continued. "Because they don't need us anymore. Before, there was a mutual bond. We had a symbiotic relationship. They gave us power, and we gave them protection using that power. There used to be a mutual benefit."

"Yeah," Sam whispered. "We used to be more mutualistic. We needed each other. Now we're parasites, at worse. All we can ever hope for now is commensalism. We can benefit and hopefully they won't be harmed."

But in the dark, Sam heard Dean rustling and knew he was shaking his head. "No. We won't benefit. They were basically our prisoners because they couldn't blend in. Now they can. They're going to leave us."

After that, they quieted down, but it was still a long while before either of them fell asleep.

On the night that Gabriel told them they needed to move on, Lucifer and Castiel actually looked sad. They were chewing their lips, making soft noises from their throats, and even when Sam pushed his shoulder into his hybrid's, it didn't seem to cheer him up much.

They were wingless, still. Gabriel said it took a lot of practice to make sure they didn't slip. A few lapses in concentration happened, especially when they were either flying or trying a more powerful display of grace, but overall, they were both fast learners.

"You can tell we're related," Gabriel said, grinning at the hybrids with pride.

Lucifer and Castiel smiled, albeit forced and saddened, back.

"Dudes, don't even be sad," Gabriel said, still smiling. The kid seemed to almost always be happy, but Sam figured that if he were the most powerful guy in the room, he would be happy too. "Because remember what I told you. We're doing this so we can have basic human rights. If this works, we won't have to stay in hiding, and you won't have to keep working in the Unit."

Dean looked away, fingernail scratching at the Mark of Cain on his arm. Even from this distance, Sam could see the angry red lines he was cutting into himself. He couldn't activate the Mark with his own blood, but it seemed like he was trying.

"Instead," Gabriel continued, ignoring Dean. "We could all be like a family, you know? We could have picnics in the summer and I could go to real school even though that sounds boring as hell, but still. Maybe I want a chance to go to prom or whatever. And what about your future kids?" Sam felt bile rising in his throat. "Your kids could do whatever human kids do."

Lucifer's hand was suddenly wrapped around Sam's wrist, putting a constant, reassuring pressure over his pulse. It wasn't until the human started calming down that he realized his fists were clenched. He slowly opened his hand and was surprised when Lucifer's palm slid into his own, his fingers spreading to lace between the human's.

Sam looked up at him, but the hybrid was looking at Gabriel and nodding.

"One last thing," Gabriel said. "Well, two last things. First, I haven't mentioned it before because I'm all about leaving the bad news until the last possible second. You're safe here. We're all safe here. This spot is like the Quidditch World Cup and everyone else are muggles or that one time in Deathly Hallows when Ron leaves their camp. If someone ends up wandering around here, they can't find us. When you leave, you won't be able to find us again."

"So this is..." Castiel started, but Gabriel waved his hand at him.

"No, idiot. Like I said. I'll be able to take the seriously impressive grace charm down when it's safe for us to be out there. Then we can find each other. Trust me. I'm really good at gathering intel, and I can only imagine the trail the four of you will leave.

"But this is also kind of really serious, guys, because when you leave here, you aren't protected anymore. If you're out there and your wings flicker, people are going to know who you are practically instantly. There's a huge downside to being such a rare hybrid, okay? It's hard to hide. The only plus is that since you've always had these beautiful wings, nobody was ever really looking at your butt-ugly faces."

Without meaning to, Sam's fingers tightened around Lucifer's fingers, trying to communicate that none of that was true. Sure, Sam loved the hybrid's wings, but he had always seen his face. He'd always loved his face. Beside him, Dean's fingernails broke the skin and blood started oozing up from the scratch over the Mark. He made a low, angry sound in his throat, and Castiel grabbed his hand, sighing.

The angry sound stopped, but the vicious look on his face remained.

"You'll be branded illegals," Gabriel said. "And you know what happens to dangerous illegal hybrids."

"Shit," Lucifer said.

"Yeah," Castiel replied. "Michael will come for us."

Sam wanted to squeeze Lucifer's hand again, but he was afraid that too much more pressure would break the hollow bones in his hand. Instead, he pushed his shoulder into his, but even knowing that Adam would be hunting Sam just like Michael was hunting his brothers, he somehow felt worse for the hybrids. Being as rare as they are, they only ever had each other… and the Winchesters.

It was quiet for a handful of seconds before Lucifer asked, "If he finds us, do you want us to tell him?"

But Gabriel just shrugged. It was the first time Sam had ever seen the kid without an answer.

"And the second thing I needed to do before you go out on your adventure to save Jody –" Gabriel cut himself off as he held out his hand, snapping into the space between himself and the four of them. The bracelets on both Lucifer's and Castiel's arms fell from their wrists.

Early on, they learned that the only thing the bracelet inhibited was their bond. The hybrids still had all the grace, but they weren't free to share it. With the wall separating them cut, Sam gasped as the grace flew back into him. After so long without feeling it – the longest time he had ever gone without feeling it in his life – it was like a punch to the chest or air in his lungs after he had been submerged too long.

Or maybe a bit of both.

When he final seemed like he could breathe again, he turned to look at Lucifer. The blond was smiling, and Sam wondered how this would change the amount of grace the hybrid could use. His wings never flickered back to existence, so Sam assumed this took very little effort.

'Hi,' Sam thought, but quietly, uncertainly, like he was afraid that it still wouldn't go through.

But Lucifer just smiled and thought the same word back at him.

And that was the end of their conversation. Gabriel talked a little bit more, said something about a car he needed to give them in the morning, and then got up to go to sleep. The hybrids, free of their chains, stood up too.

It wasn't until later, when Sam was back in the little room he and Dean had been staying in that he really truly believed what Dean had said earlier. Despite the fact that he could feel Lucifer at the end of their bond, sleeping peacefully and deeply, the hybrid hadn't said anything more to him all night.

But now, Sam knew that what Dean had said was going to be true. Lucifer was going to leave him. The thought of it made Sam's chest ache, and the human laid in bed, falling asleep for small lapses at a time, until the sun came back up.

Gabriel really didn't understand bonding. Of course, he wasn't old enough to be bonded even if he was still a prisoner in a government facility, but talking to Lucifer and Castiel proved that their bonding to the humans was only made official at the age of ten. Before then, they had both grown up with the humans.

It sounded a lot like baby ducklings imprinting themselves on the first thing they see.

When Miguel would talk about his parents, being the only mated pair he'd ever seen, he had always made it sound so positive, too. His mother the wolf loved his father the human. Sure, his dad was able to use grace (which in werewolf was called something else, a word that didn't have a real translation to outside communities, but something that had to do with the moon). But that was just the formal use of their bond.

The mating, Miguel had said, was so much more than that. It was like classmates falling in love after years of working together, denying that the easy affection was caused by something more than a mutual respect. It was like falling in love with a best friend, someone who had always been there, had always been supportive. It was like being born with half a soul, and when they were bonded together, they were two halves made whole.

Always, Miguel had said, mates were in love.

Knowing that from the start, Gabriel knew he needed to keep the humans away from the hybrids. They would be a distraction. Love, Gabriel knew, was just a warm, fuzzy-feeling distraction. It wasn't anything he'd ever experienced, but he had seen it happen over and over with the wayward hybrids who came to train with him.

So he cut them off.

At first, Gabriel thought he found the cure to the bonding. The humans took the separation poorly, but that was to be expected. They were basically powerless without their proxies, and being cut off like that must be like an alcoholic who can no longer drink. Gabriel didn't feel bad for the humans; humans rarely felt bad for any of the hybrids after all.

Lucifer and Castiel, with their lessons a perfect distraction, didn't seem affected by the lack of a bond at first. They were dedicated, and while Gabriel would like to think it was because they believed in the cause, rationally he felt like they just had a lifetime of training.

Instead of obeying John Winchester's orders, they had transferred to Gabriel.

But then he started to notice that it wasn't his training that had kept the hybrids from the humans. By that age, by their twenties, the bonded pair were always together Miguel had said. If there isn't love, a bonding won't work. They're mates, partners, compatible soulmates or whatever, before they hit puberty.

After puberty, those terms just morph and start to mean something different.

Gabriel had never met a bonded pair that weren't over the age of eighteen and not fucking each other, but it was about time that the tiny hybrid was surprised.

At first, he thought it was kind of funny. But then it was just painful and sad.

"Why do you think that is?" Gabriel asked from the top of the treehouse. He was biting into an apple, leaning back over the roof, looking down at his latest students. Lucifer and Sam were sitting under a tree in the shade, a map in hand, looking over the route to Jody's hotel. They were shoulder to shoulder, pressed tight against each other, but any idiot could see that the tension they shared was unresolved.

Lucifer and Sam were rough to watch, but they were almost adorable. They were like teenagers in adult bodies. They were starting to test the waters and explore their feelings. They were like adult virgins – no, literally, they were adult virgins – with practically no sex ed who thought handholding was scandalous.

Castiel and Dean were a nightmare to watch. Their unresolved sexual tension involved less touching than Sam and Lucifer, and because of that, they both constantly seemed on edge. They were two thickheaded souls who both refused to make the first move, but they were both getting increasingly frustrated with the lack of development.

"Internalized fear," Miguel said, shrugging. "Think back to your history books. Remember when people used to be afraid of gay people and certain groups would convince kids that something was wrong with them if they were gay?"

"Stupid," Gabriel said, taking another bite.

"Well, yeah, but it was ignorance and fear. People weren't as educated on that topic then as they are now. John probably told those guys their whole lives that despite the fundamental purpose of a mate is a partnership born from love that allows both users to become more powerful, that their natural feelings were wrong," Miguel's eyes left the scene before him. Castiel and Dean were starting to fight as they packed up the car Gabriel had created for them. With his hearing, he knew that they were actually fighting about the car: Dean thought it was awesome and Castiel thought it was too flashy. Gabriel and Dean were far more alike than they were different.

"Someday, when all this is over," Gabriel said, moving his arm back before hurling it forward, throwing the half-eaten apple with all his strength. "I'm going to kill John Winchester for what he did to us."

"He didn't do anything to you," Miguel added softly. It was an argument they had had several times, and Gabriel made a low, frustrated noise. This was not the time for a repeat of this fight, and so he let it go for now.

"If they're afraid of their own feelings, how do I fix that?"

"I don't know," Miguel supplied, but it really wasn't much of an answer. And anyway, it was too late for any last minute trainings. Gabriel had relinquished control; he had trained the hybrids and now they were someone else's mess.

"You think someone else, someone bonded like Charlie, will help them with the whole sex thing?"

"I think," Miguel said, turning vaguely pink, "that they have other things they should be worried about right now. Maybe after they get us our right to at least exist, then they can worry about buying a nice house and settling down and fucking out their issues." After a second of silence, while both of them watched Sam and Lucifer put the rest of the supplies Gabriel had given them in the trunk, he added, "Also, I think you're kind of young to be worried about that stuff yourself."

Gabriel shrugged. Without a glance back at the tree house, the four visitors entered the car. They never stopped surprising Gabriel; instead of Castiel taking his spot beside Dean in the front seat, he slid in the backseat behind his parter. He wondered if the thought ever crossed their minds to sit next to their bonded instead of their sibling, but it was probably so engrained in them as a protocol that they still lacked the understanding that they had been manipulated by John.

Gabriel had planted the seed. Life away from the bunker would let it grow.

The four of them never looked back, they never waved good-bye to Gabriel. Admittedly, it was a fault of his, but Gabriel hated saying good-bye. He remembered the look of devastation on his dad's face when Chuck had gently taken him from his arms, just a few minutes after taking a picture of them together. He remembered his mother saying good-bye as she handed him over, thinking that she would see him again in just a few short hours.

Instead, he told the hybrids that he was needed elsewhere, dumped the supplies on them and ran before they could say good-bye. He was a master at manipulation, so he just sat on the roof with Miguel and hid them both from everyone.

"It isn't good-bye this time," Miguel reminded him. "And the next time you'll see them, they'll probably have Michael with him."

"I know," Gabriel said, watching them drive away. He felt them leave the camp, felt it like four souls that used to be safe suddenly in danger, and he wished he was powerful enough to keep them hidden from a distance. He wished he was allowed to go with them. "But I've already had to say good-bye to my mom and dad. I didn't want to have to say it to my uncles, too."

"I know," Miguel said, and Gabriel knew he did. Miguel's uncles were dead now. His whole family was dead now, and he never got to say good-bye. But it felt like a jinx. If he said it…

Overall, Gabriel wasn't a very superstitious person, but as he lifted the metaphorical invisible blanket he and Miguel were hiding under, he couldn't help but hope this would work out for everyone.

Dean loved the car that Gabriel seemed to create for them out of thin air. To be honest, he was kind of worried that once he left the magical bubble of the rebellion that the car would cease to exist, just like their apparent magical protection would, but as he kept driving along a long stretch of windy backroads doing fifty-five, he grew more confident in the kid's abilities.

It had been a whirlwind of a week, and while Dean wondered how Gabriel even knew that Dean loved his father's old Impala more than anything, that was one of his lowest worries on the list. Instead, he had handwritten directions to Charlie's house on a piece of scrap paper some two-days journey away, and he had two wingless hybrids in the back seat, still practicing with their grace.

They were going to leave.

Dean tightened his hands on the wheel, knowing he needed to keep his eyes on the road and watch out for deer, but he couldn't help but be drawn to the rear-view. Castiel and Lucifer were practicing altering perceptions, and Gabriel had told them that it was easiest to start with close-up magic. Castiel was currently pulling things – cards, scarves, and bunnies – from seemingly nowhere, then disappearing them without a bat of his eyelash. It looked like magic in a traditional sense. He looked like a dude who was performing street magic, not using honest-to-god grace, and Dean wondered, not for the first time, why there wasn't equivalence.

Castiel had always been the best at creating spells with actual ingredients, and there had always been an equivalence to it. Things went into it: iron and copper and other materials turned into a blade or a radio, but this ability to create seemed to alter everything he knew about grace.

Grace, it seemed, was limitless. And now it was Castiel's and Lucifer's for the taking.

They had been driving for several hours when he finally stopped focusing on the witchcraft in the back and started glancing over at his younger brother. Dean adored Sam. For someone who was raised as an experiment, Dean felt an honesty-to-god family bond with Sam, and to a somewhat lesser extent, Adam. After enduring the experiments for two years before Sam was born, Dean was always willing to step up, to take the torture for his younger sibling. He was rarely able to step in, to save him, but he had made sure to teach Sam everything he could when they were younger. Even after Castiel was created, Dean made sure to keep Sam close.

And he could read his brother very well.

Sam had been silent for hours, and while that wasn't necessarily an oddity considering they rarely communicated aloud with their hybrids, Dean was pretty sure that Sam wasn't talking to Lucifer. In the back seat, the blond and the dark-haired hybrid had been having an intense, hushed conversation, and there wasn't enough of a lull for Sam to be involved. Instead, Sam was resting his elbow on the door, his head in his hands, and had been staring out the window for hours.

Sam looked as abandoned as Dean felt.

He was about to start talking to Sam when he heard the hybrids shifting in the back. Lucifer yawned, stretched, and for a moment, sun seemed to shine in the window, casting shadows over the back seat where his wings should have been. "I hate riding in a car," he said, grinning at Castiel, who nodded. "It's so slow and confining."

Annoyed, upset, and alone, Dean was a second away from making a smart-ass comment, but instead, Lucifer started rolling the back window down. In a second, his seatbelt was unbuckled and he was shifting his weight, crouching on the seat on his feet with his knees bent. By the time he started moving himself so he could sit on the edge of the open door, Castiel was unsnapping his seatbelt too.

Sam turned around, confused at first, and then worried. "Lucifer, what the hell are you doing?"

The blond hybrid ducked his head out the window, his feet perching on the door. His hand was wrapped around the frame of Sam's window, holding himself half-dangling from the car. His shirt was whipping in the wind and before long, Castiel was mirroring him on the other side.

Sam's hand was scratching at Lucifer's trying to latch on in case he fell. Dean started easing off the gas, trying his best to avoid braking suddenly so the hybrids wouldn't go lose their hold and fall. Sam's loud, desperate pleas didn't seem to deter Lucifer. If anything, the hybrid only grinned.

"Don't worry, Sam. Don't you remember? I can fly."

And with that, Lucifer let go of the car with his hands, pushed off with his legs, and Dean lost sight of him.

"Cas!" he screamed, but when he turned around, Castiel was gone too.

Knowing they must be behind him, skinned up or dead on the road, Dean slammed on his breaks, but Sam was already turned around, looking out the back window.

"They're not there," Sam said, turning around, leaning forward so he could look at the sky over the dash. "Keep driving."

Seconds ticked by, and as Dean gained speed, he felt every fiber of his being telling him to stop, to go back, that the hybrids weren't above them, but behind them, hurt and mangled in the middle of the road somewhere. Thirty seconds passed, and then Sam pointed to the sky, making a quiet, relived sound. "I can see them."

But Dean couldn't help but look ahead of him in the road. Sometimes when birds of prey would fly around the bunker in the setting sun, their wings would cast shadows over the land, making them look huge. From their height, Castiel and Lucifer's wings casted huge black shadows over the road, going beyond the two lanes and into the tree line.

The hybrids had always been a sight to see in the sky, but Dean had never paid much attention to their shadows before. Now, Dean could pick out how leisurely they were flying, occasional flaps of the wings to push them upwards while they drifted from side to side, making the flight more interesting.

They were on a backstretch of road, where practically nobody else drove. For almost an hour, Castiel and Lucifer led the way, keeping the humans updated on the sights from above.

'There's a town a few miles to your left,' or 'Deer in a field about a mile ahead; be careful in case one jumps out in the road,' or a teasing, playful jab of 'Wow, you drive so slow.'

After not hearing Castiel in his head for so long, it was like music to his ears.

The journey to Jody's would take two days. With Dean speeding to keep up with the hybrids they made great time, and Lucifer had always been conscious of other people, pointing cars out to his brother so they could fly higher and remain undetected.

Flying was a little like riding a bike. Unless something happened, it was impossible to forget how to do it. But like riding a bike, it was much harder to go slower when flying. At a nice, comfortable speed, the hybrids didn't have to think much. The wind would fly over their wings and just a gentle flutter every so often could keep them airborne. When going slower, as slow as a car on a windy back road, they lost altitude faster, and Lucifer was thoroughly enjoying the acid building up in his back muscles. Their stamina experimentations had become infrequent at best, but Lucifer enjoyed the distance. He, Sam, and Castiel were the best distance runners, and flying for long distances gave him the same burning pleasure in his lungs, even if his quads weren't the muscles that were throbbing.

Most of all, Lucifer enjoyed the climb and dive when they neared a town or another motorist. Lucifer and Castiel could fly miles out of view and back again before their humans would truly miss their shadows; however, when the sky started fading from blue to pink, he knew they would need to land soon and sleep through the night.

After signaling his descent to Castiel, Lucifer used his wings to lower himself while still keeping the speed up. He was practically just above the Impala, maybe five feet ahead of it, so low to the ground that the humans could look out and see his form flying in front of him, before he asked Sam to slow down. The younger human, who had taken over driving a few rest stops ago, started breaking before Lucifer asked him to stop and let him back in. When the car stopped, Lucifer angled himself up and touched down gracefully with his feet.

Within seconds of touching down, Lucifer spread his white wings wide, glancing behind to see them. From such a long flight, his wings were a mess and he would need to groom himself as soon as he had some space and privacy and a bit of rest, but instead of worrying about it now, he willed them away and they were gone, hidden as they had been for the past week.

And just like after a long time riding a bike, Lucifer's legs felt like jello. He walked unsteadily back to the car, watching as his brother landed just a few feet away. Castiel leaned over and tried to rub some blood back into his legs before he started the uneasy walk back, and when both hybrids climbed into the back seat, the humans were grinning at their awkward display.

"There's a town about three miles up the road," Lucifer said, strapping himself into the back. "We should rest there for the night."

"How are you feeling?" Dean asked, turning around to look at Castiel with a smirk.

The hybrid grimaced, resting his head against the cool window as he tried to roll his shoulders. "Sore."

Lucifer always dealt with exercise with a little bit of delirium – like if the blood was pumping to his muscles it couldn't possibly be in his head – and he had a half formed pun about sore and soar, but he couldn't figure out the words to vocalize his joke so he just snorted.

"We'll get two rooms," Sam said, looking away from the road toward his brother for a second. Dean nodded and Sam looked back at the road. "We'll meet briefly in one to go over the plan for tomorrow..."

Castiel groaned, as tired as Lucifer felt, and begged, "Please, let's just do the briefing now so that we can sleep."

Sam laughed, but agreed. For the next several minutes, Lucifer fought to stay awake while the humans went over and decided on all the details. The hybrids were used to it; Michael may have been their leader but Dean had a veto. He rarely used his superiority as a human to veto one of Michael's plans, but it was just a subtle way that reminded the hybrids they were inferior.

It wasn't until they were pulling into town that Lucifer realized that this was the first time he would be sleeping in the same room with Sam since their capture. Gabriel hadn't understood what the bond meant, and if anything considered the bond a weakness more than a strength, and had kept the partners apart at night.

Then, he wondered if Sam had meant the two rooms would not be separated by partnerships like their rooms at the bunker had been, but separated by sub-species like they had been at the compound. He turned his head to look at his brother, but Castiel's eyes were shut and his breathing was light and steady; there were puffs of air fogging up the window with his every exhale.

In the end, Lucifer didn't need to worry. Sam had gone in to get the room keys, Dean had gotten some of the supplies out of the back, carrying those over one shoulder while draping his hybrid over the other to help carry him to the room they were sharing. Lucifer grabbed his and Sam's things and met him at the door.

Despite the fact that Lucifer had slept in the same room as Sam since he was ten years old, he felt awkward, standing with their bags at the door, waiting for Sam to feed the key into a lock in a shady motel, his hands shaking with exhaustion. It made Lucifer feel like the panicky, shy virgin he was but had never actually felt like until this morning. When he walked over the threshold of the motel door once Sam managed to unlock it, he felt like he was a teenager on prom night, not a rebel hybrid on the run from the law.

In the end, Sam just helped him by grabbing one of the bags and asking, 'Would you like to have the first shower?' After only a week the hybrid was so conditioned to not hearing Sam that he jumped when his voice boomed loudly in his head, but he offered a small smile and a nod, walking to the dated bathroom, shutting the door, and stripping of his sweaty clothes. He was freezing with the cool sweat still clinging to his body, and he turned on the hot water and stepped in.

The hybrid shower in the bunker was much larger than the one in the hotel room. This shower was designed to accommodate reasonable-sized humans – Sam, he knew, would have a hard time fitting under the spray of the water without ducking down – but for Lucifer's wings, it would be nearly impossible. He decided to keep his wings hidden while he showered but to groom himself with the oil from his glands, which would be an extra hassle but easier than trying to wash and dry them in the confines of the tiny room.

They had never had to share shitty motel rooms before, even when their hunts took them across the country. There were always safe havens for them, with other Men or Women of Letters, and the last time Lucifer had been in an actual motel had been during training exercises. He knew that motels had shitty water pressure and even shittier hot water tanks, so he tried to take the fastest shower he could while still scrubbing the sweat from his body.

Finally, when he stepped out, he knew he had taken too long and hoped Sam would still have enough water.

Although the mirror was steamed up, Lucifer was still drawn to his blurry reflection. With a towel, he wiped of the mirror, studying himself. It was bizarre to see his reflection without it being surrounded by his giant, white wings, but the more he looked, the more he forgot what he looked like with his wings and the more he made this more human form his reality.

It was like the time Adam had braces, he figured. For the first week, he had been self-conscious of the metal in his mouth because he couldn't even recognize his own smile. It hadn't taken long for him to adjust. It hadn't taken Castiel long to adjust to a wingless life; his brother had been obsessed with hiding for as long as he could remember.

Lucifer was more proud of his wings. He was also proud of his ability to be able to hide them.

When Lucifer dressed himself in a pair of shorts to sleep in – no use putting on a shirt since he still needed to tend to his hidden wings – he left the bathroom, keeping the door open to air the steam out.

Sam had been sitting on the bed, the only bed, Lucifer suddenly realized, but when Lucifer entered the room, he stood. He took a deep breath in, and Lucifer noticed the way the human glanced at his chest, taking in his form without the wings.

Humans, it seemed, were less adaptable to change.

"Hey," Sam said, his eyes skirting around Lucifer's shoulders, looking for what he couldn't see, before finally darting back to Lucifer's face. Gabriel had mentioned it several times, in his sleepy, fearful rants against the majority, that they should be wary of humans – even their bonded humans – because they were tools to them and nothing else. Seeing him here, Lucifer realized, Sam must see something lesser.

"Hi," he said back, his voice rough but quiet. He wasn't able to look his human in the face; instead, he looked at the carpet, drawing his hands to his chest, rubbing his palms over his elbows.

"Uh…" Sam said, moving around Lucifer toward the bathroom door. "I hope the bed is okay. I didn't think to ask for two."

"It's fine," Lucifer said, walking toward the bed. He knew the pair of them had just done a bizarre dance, tip-toeing around each other to reach their destinations, and he would have never guessed that just one week of being disconnected could separate them so throughly. He sat down on the bed, watching as Sam palmed the door handle, ready to pull the bathroom door shut behind him.

"Alright," he answered, a small smile playing on his face. "I won't be long…" and with that, he stepped backwards into the shower and shut the door behind him.

As soon as the human had disappeared, Lucifer released his wings with a sigh. It wasn't until the rest of him had been cleaned that he noticed how uncomfortable his wings were, matted down and wind-swept. He spread his left wing as far as he could and started as high as he could, rubbing his fingers through his oil glands to slick them, then smoothing and untangling feather-by-feather.

Birds were very effective at cleaning their wings; however, they were also quick to de-tangle any feathers that were aggravating them. They would be comfortable landing in any perch, digging at their feathers with their beaks until the pain went away. An endurance flight like that meant that Lucifer didn't have time to fix every stray feather as they were blown out of place, but he was also not as evolutionarily perfect as birds. They had millions of years to evolve so that they had the perfect head size, neck size, and rotation, so that they could always groom themselves.

Lucifer didn't have that. He had a human body with avian wings, something that made him a bastard, evolutionarily speaking. He wasn't designed for the level of care his wings actually needed.

So as he fought, trying to hurry through the grooming, he knew he was missing spots, but there wasn't much he could do about it. Well there was one thing he could do, but it was… embarrassing. It was intimate and intimate was the one thing John Winchester told him he couldn't be with Sam.

Unfortunately for John, Sam took very quick showers.

Lucifer didn't even hear him leave the bathroom over his own concentration and the angry, frustrated sounds he couldn't help to make when his strange human arms couldn't reach a particularly painful spot. Instead, he only knew Sam was out of the bathroom when he felt the bed dip behind him with added weight.

When he turned around, Sam was there, eyes wide, hands half extended toward Lucifer's wings. He had stopped though. Lucifer knew that Sam wouldn't touch him – and certainly not his wings – without permission, but he also had a look of utter amazement on his face that proved to Lucifer how much Sam wanted to.

Lucifer found himself nodding before he was even fully consciously aware that he wanted it; he really, really wanted Sam's sure fingers fumbling through his wings.

From the first touch, Lucifer let out a deep breath, draining his lungs and dropping his head. When he breathed in again, he felt the rise of his wings, pushing back against Sam's hands as the man ran his fingers over the oil glands, slicking his fingers before moving to a spot that Lucifer hadn't been able to reach.

He was gentle, far more gentle than Lucifer had been with himself, as he groomed him. After fixing a set right by Lucifer's shoulder, Sam asked, "Is that okay?"

His voice was deep, raw, and Lucifer shuttered at the sound of it.

"Yeah," he said, embarrassed that his own voice sounded just as wrecked. "Keep going."

Lucifer tried to think of anything but the feeling of Sam's hands on his wings, but it was a distracting sensation. He knew that social species of birds often preened each other, it was a way to show family bonds, but still… his family had never done it. And as he reached for a pillow, placing it over his lap, he understood why John had tried to keep them from touching.

It was a kin to torture. A beautiful sister of torture, maybe, but family nonetheless. After years and years of pushing away his feelings for Sam, the feelings that had existed before their bonding but had only gained when they had been connected through grace, he knew that outside of John's influence, Lucifer would be forced to act.

Through the hour, as Sam carefully treated Lucifer's wings like something precious, something that should be cherished, he kept thinking the same thoughts over and over again: stay focused, stay facing away, stay away from Sam.

As the human was finishing the last of the tangles, Lucifer was nearly screaming the words in his head, his every cell wanting to turn around and share his love with Sam.

"Why do you have to stay away?" Sam murmured, finishing the last bit of the wing. Lucifer could feel it, like a breath of fresh air. He knew all his feathers were exactly where they needed to be. It was like how an itch felt after it had been scratched, except less painful. He didn't have to scratch a layer of his skin off to get rid of a minor annoyance; instead, it was like he had traded one annoyance for another.

His wings felt fresh, alive, but he was so aroused that it hurt and knowing their bond was intact, he was embarrassed knowing that Sam could feel how much he had enjoyed it.

"Sam…"

"He's thousands of miles from us now, Lucifer," Sam whispered, letting his fingers travel down the expanse of the hybrid's wings before settling his palms over Lucifer's shoulders. Subconsciously, his wings spread to accommodate the other man between them. "And we're not going back."

With that, Sam pushed one shoulder, pulling on another, and Lucifer took the hint. He turned in his friend's arms, willing his wings away so that he could turn more easily. He sat on the bed, cross-legged, the pillow still covering his lap. When he finally managed to push aside his taught-shame and looked up at the human, he couldn't believe that he hadn't sensed it before.

Sam was aroused too.

"You know that we're free now, right?" Sam asked, setting his hands back on Lucifer's shoulders and offering a soft squeeze, emphasizing his words.

"Not yet, we're not," Lucifer said. "But we will be soon."

Kevin sat at the big meeting table in the Men of Letters' library. There was another meeting place in the bunker, which is where they usually spread out their things for important issues. Kidnapped government hybrids and soldiers was a very important issue to practically everyone at the table, but the Unit wasn't missing to Kevin.

He knew exactly where they were.

The only reason it had been moved from the usual spot to the library table was in hopes that they could get Michael or Adam involved. Both of them were ready to go at a moment's notice, but as the days turned into a week, the elite force was falling further into despair. They had both lost two brothers on top of losing two friends; four people they had known practically their entire lives were gone and they were useless to find them.

Kevin would pity them, if he didn't know what would happen once they left Gabriel's hideout and were able to be found.

The young human kept an ear out for anything that resembled a lead, and if they seemed to get too close to where Gabriel had them hidden, he would try to think of a way to bring up false sightings somewhere else. It never got to that. He was a Man of Letters. He had always been Chuck's assistant, his protégé, but the rest of them didn't really want to listen to him. Even though Chuck was gone and Kevin had unofficially stepped into his role while he was away.

He was with Charlie, supposedly using their longtime hacker to try and look through facial recognition software to pinpoint a location. Really, they knew where they were going and were trying their best to make sure no trace of them could be found.

Kevin was to keep them informed of what was happening on this end, so Charlie and Chuck could cut John off at the pass if need be.

Unfortunately, Kevin had spent most of his life learning how to ignore John Winchester, which Chuck said was a vital skill that needed to be mastered before he could take his place, so he didn't catch the new development until a new voice was talking over a speaker.

"Yeah, it's really weird, though," the man was saying. The voice unit was staticky; he must have called the bunker from a cell phone. "The man behind the desk this morning said that he witnessed two human males at check out who matched the description of your sons. We tested the rooms for DNA, and Dean and Sam were definitely here this morning."

"But no sign of the hybrids?" John asked, the worry on his face turning to anger. Captured was one thing, but freely on the run meant something a lot worse. Kevin's heart was pounding as he pulled out his phone, texting the development to Chuck.

"Well, that's the weird thing," the officer went on. "We asked if there were two hybrids with them, but the man said there were two other males with them, but he couldn't tell if they were hybrids and asked if they were wolves."

"What?" John asked. "How could they not know they were hybrids, did you ask them if they had fucking wings"

"Yes, sir," the man said. "The guy was resolute that they didn't have wings. But we found their DNA in the hotel rooms as well. The four of them were here, together, last night, and the man said they headed west, which, is heading back toward California, sir. They may be traveling home."

"Was there any sign of… Jesus Christ, did they cut their wings off?"

"Well, we can't be sure," the man said. "The manager said he didn't notice that they were in pain and there was nothing here to indicate any injuries. There's no blood, no bandages. We're really just not sure."

Kevin was trying his hardest to keep his grin from splitting his face. He texted that development to Chuck too. He knew he should be scared; west of that hotel was where the hybrids would be heading. Knowing their general direction meant they could get the foot soldiers – Michael and Adam – at least a place to start searching and even though it had been a couple of hours.

It was only a matter of time until they were found, and without any de-brain washing, Michael and Adam would pose a serious threat to the mission.

"How are we going to handle this, sir?" another man at the table asked, a medic. He had been patching up the six members of the Unit since they were kids, and here he was, suddenly scared of four of them. Everyone here had been taught that illegal hybrids were so dangerous that the second someone they've known for years leaves the strict path they were allowed to follow, they suddenly became something to fear.

Kevin remembered how sweet Michael had been when he held that medic's infant son, how Castiel had read to him and how he had trusted Lucifer to keep him in his arms as he flew low circles in the yard. Not long ago, this man had trusted them. Now, he was itching for John to say what Kevin knew he would.

"If they're free and not coming back here, then they're illegals," John said, looking at the map pinned up in the corner. There was a pushpin in the motel's location, and Kevin could easily connect the dots and see that they were heading right to Jody Mills' hotel in South Dakota, where she and Donna Hanscum would be waiting to for the electoral college to meet in a few days.

John, it seemed, hadn't put the two together yet.

"But," John went on, turning to look back at the men at the table. "They're still ours. We'll send Michael and Adam to search for them, but we'll tell them to try and bring them back here, alive. We can question them then, and if need be, we can euthanize the hybrids if they are, in fact, rogue. 'Cause right now, we don't know. Maybe they're just searching for their captors. We need to question them, if they allow it."

"And if they attack?"

"Then Michael and Adam know their duty. They'll have to euthanize the hybrids on the spot."

Kevin's phone was shaking in his hands. He had never been very good at ignoring John Winchester. "And what about the humans? Kill the hybrids but save the humans? You know that if they attack, they attack together, right?"

"Of course I know that," John snapped. "But if the hybrids are a eliminated, the humans don't pose a threat anymore."

"Those humans are your sons," Kevin said. "Those hybrids are your sons' best friends. You think they'll come back here quietly after you've sent their brothers to kill the people they love most?"

"People?" John asked. "They aren't people. They wouldn't even by alive if it wasn't for our experiments and equipment. They don't have any rights. If a dog gets rabies, kid, you have to put it down. Now, go get Michael and Adam, and don't say shit to them. Actually, Cole, you go with Kevin to get them. We're sending them to that location to try and track them, and if they find them, and they put up a fight, they'll be euthanized. End of story."

"You mean murdered," Kevin shot back, standing up from the table. He ignored Cole, who stood up and eyed him suspiciously. He was quick to text Chuck on the way to gathering the last members of the Unit.

It was a worst-case scenario, but hopefully, Dean, Sam, Lucifer, and Castiel were as quick on their feet as they were when they were kids. Hopefully, they had Gabriel's trump card, and they would know how to play it.

Michael and Adam would be the most difficult to be set free from John Winchester's spell, but if they could push Michael in the right direction, Adam would fall quickly.

There was no joyous flying today. After they had checked out and gotten back in the car, they had been calm and relaxed. Although nothing had happened, much to Sam's dismay, just holding Lucifer in his arms while they slept had been practically a divine experience, knowing that it wasn't just a stolen comfort.

When they had occasionally shared a bed in the bunker, there had always been fear of being caught, and it had always been for comfort. If one of them were sick or injured or scared, their bond made them crave a physical closeness, knowing they could never share the type of closeness that they wanted to.

Away from John, it became easier to believe that a new day was coming. Soon, hybrids could be given rights, could be treated as equals. They had to listen to John because he held the constant threat of termination over their heads, but if Jody Mills fulfilled her promise to give hybrids full rights, then John couldn't just euthanize any of them of any perceived misdoing.

They could live together, free.

'Be careful,' Lucifer thought, his head turned away. He was looking out the window, growing more anxious as they reached the hotel. 'Good politicians aren't kings. They can't just wave their wand and declare it is so. Even if she wants to give us rights, look how long it took for other minorities to truly share the rights of the majority.'

Sam knew. Chuck had insisted on giving them history lessons, even though John thought all they really needed to know was how to fight. From the time other minorities were granted citizenship to the time they could actually vote without fear was decades, and even now, there were still prejudices. Some people had weak hearts, and feared what they didn't know. If they could fear someone for being a different color or being gay for so long, of course they would fear a being that was not-quite-human (as far as DNA was concerned), who – because of grace – were far more powerful than humans.

Of course they were scared. And of course there would be hybrids who would take advantage of their power, just like there were humans who murdered others. Evil, Sam knew, wasn't an illegal hybrid who had escaped torture, escaped death, and wanted to be left alone. Evil was something else, and it existed across boarders.

How many innocent hybrids had he killed who were just scared and alone? How many had only been violent due to circumstance?

He was the evil one.

'You can't think like that, either,' Lucifer thought, reaching across the seat to take Sam's hand in his.

"Okay," Dean said, pulling into an underground garage. "We're here."

The hotel was fancy, the kind with a big ball room that people got married in or politicians held fundraisers, and despite the fact that there were guards around to protect Jody and Donna, there weren't enough and they were all human.

Sam figured that the hybrids didn't need to learn how to hide their wings for the mission, but figured it helped when they got out of the car and suddenly four guys were pointing guns at them. Lucifer was the first to raise his hands, and Sam followed soon after. These guards were no threat to them, and Sam was glad that Gabriel had insisted that the humans cover their tattoos before they pulled into the meeting as well.

"Whoa," Dean said, hands raised to about his shoulders, "I think this is just a hotel, guys. If you treat patrons like this, nobody's going to want to come back."

"State your business, here," one of the men said, and beside him, Castiel sighed.

"Senator Mills requested our presence," Sam said, before Dean could bait the guards anymore. "She's expecting us."

When the guards didn't move, Lucifer sighed. "Seriously, go get her. It's Dean and Sam Winchester, and Lucifer and Castiel Milton. We didn't train and travel all this way to have guns in our faces. Besides," he said, lowering his hands. Sam saw his fingers spreading and sighed. God, sometimes Lucifer and Dean were both so stubborn and proud that Sam couldn't believe that they weren't the two related. "You bullets won't hurt us anyway."

"No," a voice said from behind the guards. When she asked them to stand down, the guards lowered their weapons. "I can't imagine much of anything can hurt you." President-elect Jody Mills stepped forward and reached out her hand, to Lucifer first, who looked at it like she was going to poison him. After a second he looked up at her face and extended his hand.

He never shook hands, Sam knew. Even when the government gave them awards, the hybrids never were the true recipients. When he shook her hand, unconfidently, he was smiling though. She smiled back.

"It's very nice to meet all of you," She said, moving to shake the rest of their hands. "Now please come in. We would like to go over the threats with you personally."

In the first hour after meeting the soon-to-be new president of the United States, several things happened. First, they were given suits to match the other secret service members, even though Dean and Sam weren't happy about having their arms covered. Second, Lucifer was given a cell phone, and Chuck was on the line, letting him know that Michael and Adam had been sent to the motel and that John was looking for them and they needed to keep a low profile.

They'd also been told how the next week was supposed to go: one of the two pairs would be within eyesight of the president-elect and the vice president-elect for as many hours as possible. Obviously, they had to just stand guard when they were in the bathroom or sleeping, but any time that wasn't considered private was deemed important enough to have a guard. Sam and Lucifer had the night shift; Dean and Castiel would have the day shift.

They also were given Comms, different units than they were used to but practically still the same thing so they could be in contact with each other and with Chuck and Charlie. There would be times when they would overlap; for example, if Jody wanted or needed to leave.

If they could remain undetected, Jody wanted them to stay on until she could get the hybrid amendment ratified. And once it passed, she would hire them officially if they wanted the job. If they were detected, they needed to stay at least until the electoral college met. Donna, she knew, would do everything in her power to ratify the amendment if she was assassinated, but she couldn't trust anyone else in her party to do the same.

For the first few days, nothing happened. It was like an extended training that was out-of-state. Lucifer mostly felt like he was doing a lot of standing around and he was never very good at just waiting. Plotting, yes. Relaxing, yes. But this was neither of those things.

They were waiting for an attack.

How many times had John sent them on a training far away, having them practice nearly this same thing? Lucifer remembered the last time they had an extended training like this, he and Sam had been sixteen. Puberty had sucked for all of them and they were just getting back into the swing of things, except Sam's grabby hands made it hard.

Rebellious, Sam wanted to push the boundary his father had set up to see what he could get. Lucifer knew if they were ever found out, he would be euthanized. Sam never got very far.

But now, they would stand in relative silence, watching the woman who would champion their freedom for the past few nights, and when Castiel and Dean woke up, they would head back to sleep, pressed tight against each other, and Lucifer really believed that someday soon, they would be able to get the one thing they ever wanted: to have a life together.

Unfortunately, just two days before the electoral college was set to meet, they were found. After being cooped up, the president-elect was growing restless. She had spent enough time around the Unit to be comfortable with them, to trust them completely, and she wanted to go to a restaurant despite the threats on her life.

The president wasn't quite a celebrity, but people still took photographs.

It had been a nice night out, Lucifer had never eaten in a restaurant before, and Jody and Alex were talking about all the nice places they would all have to go some day, when the Comm in his ear buzzed to life. Jody was placing money in the little black sleeve when Chuck's frantic voice rang in his ear.

"You're at a restaurant?"

He pressed the side of the Comm unit in his ear, un-muting this side of the conversation. Chuck had offered them all privacy during the long hours when nothing was happening, something they hadn't been afforded during missions before.

"Yes, maker," he said, looking away from his dinner parties who suddenly looked at him. He gestured to his ear and they nodded. "Castiel and I couldn't go before because of our…"

"I mean… you're at a restaurant with the president and some idiot with a phone took a picture of her and put it up on twitter," Chuck said. "I found it, which means that John's probably seen it as well. He knows where you are, now."

"Oh," Lucifer said, then he looked up at the rest of the table. "They know we're here."

At that, Castiel pushed his Comm, too, and when he talked, Lucifer heard the echo of real life and the slight delay of the Comm unit in his head. "What are we supposed to do?"

"Well, that's kind of the problem. Lucifer and Castiel are still government property so you're technically illegals and John can have you killed," Chuck's voice seemed calm, but Lucifer could hear the anxiety in it. "But the only thing he has to bring you back quickly is Michael and Adam."

"Is there any chance they won't get here for a few days?" Dean asked.

"Not a chance. They'll be there in a few hours."

"We've got even worse news," Charlie chimed in. "We've been tracking as many unsympathetic groups as possible, trying to determine who is most likely to try and assassinate Madam President Mills and some of them have militias. Like, bonded human/hybrid teams just like you. We've noticed something strange, though: a bunch of them were being moved this morning."

"What do you mean, being moved?" Castiel asked.

"I mean, their evil avengers is assembling. Based on the travel distance, they could be there within two hours."

"Okay," Dean said, nodding at Jody and Alex. "We need to get you to safety. And not just back to the hotel, we need to move you to the safe room."

Lucifer expected Jody to fight, but she just nodded. "We have to go back for Donna."

"It's too dangerous for us all to go," Sam said, and Dean had nodded.

"We'll get Donna," Dean said. "Even though I don't think you're supposed to have the president and the vice president in the same place when something serious is going down like this."

"Thank you," Jody said, and stood up, gathering her things. Dean and Castiel nodded at their brothers, kept the Comm lines opened, and headed to the door. There were other secret service men outside, and they were able to take one of the SUVs and drive back toward the hotel.

"We should leave soon," Lucifer said. Sam nodded. With a potential threat imminent but not immediate, they were conditioned to be at-the-ready but calm. Lucifer took the wheel while Sam crawled into the passenger's seat, the women in the back, so that Sam could take off his suit jacket and roll up his sleeves as far as they could go.

They had the route to the safe house memorized, but Chuck kept offering directions quietly, cutting out his voice to the other Comms. As they drove, the safe house was nearly half an hour away from the hotel, Lucifer started thinking about Dean and Castiel. Charlie would be helping Dean and Castiel, and even though he wondered about them, he didn't want to ask and break their concentration. They shouldn't be too far behind them, maybe fifteen minutes at the most.

When they pulled into the driveway at the safe house, Lucifer hit the garage door opener button, driving the vehicle into the garage. Their protocol stated that they needed to hide the cars they came in because the big, government SUVs usually looked pretty out of place in any neighborhood, even a rural one like this. The nearest neighbor was just about a mile away; Jody had picked this house several months ago for two reasons, and one was because if there was ever an attack on her when she was hiding here, none of her neighbors would be put into harm.

The second was because of the deep basement, which made the modifications so much easier.

After he shut the car off, Lucifer and Sam both got out of the car, asking the women to stay inside so they could check to see if they were followed.

Lucifer could hear the echo of Sam's breathing in his ear, but could practically feel it at his side when they looked out the window, then opened the door slowly. With arms raised, they exited the garage.

If they made it through this attack and Jody wanted to keep the safe house, Lucifer was going to recommend attaching the garage to the actual house. Having them cross the yard to get to the house was a risk, but after a quick look, there was nothing. Lucifer unfurled his wings and took to the sky. He made note of a car parked by the side of the road half a mile away, which was strange because there was nothing but woods on either side, but this town was crawling with hunters.

'Cover them,' Lucifer thought, 'but bring them to the house.' From above, flying slow circles around the house, he watched as Sam ran with Jody and Alex to the house. He waited for the women to get inside before he started making his descent, but when he was a couple of feet off the ground, something crashed into him from behind, slamming him into the ground.

"Lucifer!" Sam called, but the blond was quick to recover. He tossed all his weight to the side, which was enough to roll whatever was on him off, but as soon as Lucifer was on his back, ready to sit himself up, it was back on him again.

The tawny, hawk-like wings spread wide, a display of dominance, and despite knowing he had to fight, he had to get Michael off him, Lucifer's years of conditioning made him still.

Despite the fact he wasn't struggling, Michael stayed sitting on his brother's chest, his arms holding Lucifer's down. Sam had run at them, but had stopped a few feet away, and on their other side, Adam had run from the woods.

Sam and Adam both looked at the ready, hands just inches from their arms, and for a second, Lucifer wondered why Michael had tackled him when there were more effective ways of getting him down. He took in the man's face, set with confusion and rage, and remembered his brother couldn't use the grace on his own.

"Why did you run away?" Michael yelled, digging his hands harder into Lucifer's shoulders. "Why didn't you come home? I thought that you were dead!"

"There was so much blood," Adam agreed quietly, and Lucifer blinked, turning his head to the side when one of Michael's tears dropped onto his cheek.

"I can explain," Lucifer said, but Michael shook his head.

"I have to take you in to them," Michael said, his voice low but full of anguish. "They're going to kill you."

"No, they won't, Mike, just listen…"

"I can't listen!" Michael yelled, pushing down hard enough for Lucifer to flinch in pain, struggling to physically remove himself from his brother. Sam made a move to go forward, but so did Adam. They were at a stalemate, a cold war. One wrong move meant mutually assured destruction. "You know I have to listen to John. You know I don't have any…"

"You do too," Lucifer whimpered. "You have free will. And I'll tell you something if you promise to get off me, to fight with me, just for now."

"I can't…"

"Tell me," Adam said, and Lucifer's eyes jumped from his brother to the youngest Winchester's face. His eyes were set, cold, but he nodded. "I can tell him."

"The president's in there," Lucifer said. "Some hybrids are going to attack her soon."

"The new one?" Michael asked and Sam nodded.

"She asked us if we could protect her," Sam said.

"It doesn't matter. John doesn't know about it, so it isn't sanctioned. You're acting illegally. If you don't come with us willingly, I have to kill you here."

Lucifer looked up at Adam, then to Sam, then to Michael. He sighed, knowing there was only one thing that had ever been more important to Michael than his duty. There was only one thing that could get them out of this mess with everyone alive.

"Fine," Lucifer whispered. "We wanted to surprise you, but fine. You asshole."

"Lucifer…" Sam started, lowering his hands.

"I know where your son is," Lucifer said, feeling Michael's grip lighten instantly. "He's alive. He's like, eight, and he looks nothing like you, thank God, but he's really cool. And I'll take you to him, but only if you fight with us now."

"My son?" he asked, sitting back on Lucifer's chest, letting go of his hands.

"Get off me, Michael. You're crushing me."

"Oh," he said, but said nothing more. Instead, he moved off of Lucifer, and when Sam moved forward, patting Michael on the back, Adam lowered his hands, too.

"You're not lying are you?" Adam asked, but Lucifer shook his head.

Sam said, "His name's Gabriel."

Michael laughed. Until he cried.

"Fuck," John yelled, knocking a stack of papers off the desk. He was storming around, and Kevin stepped away, unable to hide his grin. He walked into one of the observation rooms that overlooked the experiments, the ones that used to torture the hybrids and still occasionally kept them up at night. He pressed his finger on Chuck's name on his phone and listened to it ring.

"Hey," Kevin said. "Michael and Adam took out their Comms, but John still knows the location. Nobody will able to make it there for at least a day though."

"We heard," Chuck replied. "Through their Comms. They had to tell Michael about Gabriel."

"He's going to hate you."

"He will," Chuck said. "Until he sees him. Then he won't."

They were quiet for a long moment before Kevin asked, "What's the plan? They only need to protect them for another day or so, but John's out there calling other Men of Letters trying to see what units they can send after them. They'll have to leave before then."

"Charlie's sending Gilda to work on it. It is the exact opposite of the optimal situation, but I don't think we have a choice. What I need you to do is to keep John fully focused on the hunt for the Unit, and no matter what sightings or supposed compounds filled with illegals comes up, I need you to burn them."

"You're going to…"

"He's the only one that can hide her, hide all of them. Everyone at the compound knew the risk and they all voted for him to leave. They all know that Jody is their best bet. Just make sure John doesn't catch wind of the it."

"Okay," Kevin said. "I can do that."

It was a few moments later – Adam and Sam comforting Michael, and Lucifer rubbing out the kinks in his sore bones – that another SUV pulled up. It didn't follow the same protocol; instead, the passenger jumped out of the car with it still moving. Castiel raised his hands, then frowned, shutting the door behind him so that Dean could hide the SUV in the second part of the garage.

"Michael?" Castiel asked, stepping forward. He had stopped crying but he was still sitting on the ground, looking down. He looked up when he heard his name. "Must be you told him about Gabe?"

"Gabe." Michael said, smiling. But then he frowned. "Where are your wings?"

"Seriously, guys," Dean said, one hand on Donna's back as he led her to the safe house. When she went inside, Dean folded his arms, grinning at them. "Don't you know this is supposed to be an assassination attempt? Get your shit together. We need to set up a parameter, get changed into our armor. Chuck said they'd be here in like an hour."

"Chuck was wrong," a snarl came from behind them, and Michael and Adam were quick to stand up, at the ready again. There was a werewolf coming from the tree line, but three cars pulled up, and several more humans and hybrids were emerging from the woods. There were a ton of them, and they were varied. Some werewolves walked beside vampires. Djinns got out of the car, followed by a shifter. There were more humans than hybrids, and Lucifer instantly recognized them as demons. "We're here now. And this isn't no attempt."

"You're right," Castiel said holding up his hands, palms toward the werewolf with the big mouth. Beside him, Dean had a hand just over the Mark of Cain. Michael's wings were at the ready, but he would have to rely on physical attacks. Adam was facing the demons. Sam's arms were just over his bicep, and Lucifer was the only one who had his arms stretched apart. "You'll never get past us to even attempt assassination."

The werewolf growled and shifted, a more advanced and trained beast than the usual illegal, but Dean's hand came down on the Mark, and he was charging him. Lines from the mark seemed to form in his hand, a jaw-bone shaped blade forming.

Just before Dean got to the werewolf, or the werewolf got to Dean, Castiel snapped. The werewolf stopped, coughed, and looked down. From somewhere inside his chest, there was a glowing orb of light. Just as he was about to expand it, Dean jumped forward, snarling as he sunk the blade deep into the werewolf's stomach, tugging up until he got to his chest.

Castiel turned to look at Lucifer and grinned. "One for us."

"How did you do that?" Michael yelled, standing behind Adam, concentrating his grace for the human to use..

"Oh yeah?" Lucifer asked, and bent his elbows, raising his hands to the sky, closing his eyes. Suddenly all the demons stood still, then, one by one, a small flash, much like the orb, occurred at the head, lighting up their skulls from the inside. Then, as each light faded, each of the demons fell to the ground.

Three of the Djinns and their humans froze, halfway to Lucifer, watched it happen. Sam turned to Lucifer, almost looking fearful of him for the first time. But Lucifer just looked back at him and said, "What? They're only demons."

One of the vampires said something in a different language to one of the others, then the six of them nodded, raising the hands and getting on their knees.

"Please don't kill us, brother," one of the vampires on his knees said. Quickly, the djinns and the rest of the werewolves followed suit. "We have to," the man said. "We had to, I mean. You know what it's like, when they tell you that you have to."

Dean growled moving toward the men on their knees, but Castiel ran forward, catching him by the wrist before he could attack their surrendering foes. He held him back without any trouble, able to use grace now, and when Dean turned to throw a punch, Castiel dodged it easily, his hands finding Dean's face to start the lullaby. Castiel started dragging his fingers down Dean's face, under his chin. Although he was wearing a shirt, his fingers traced over the material, finding the way to down Dean's bare arms. By the time Castiel had reached Dean's hands, the Mark had returned to a flesh colored scar, and the human's forehead rested against Castiel's. Dean turned his hands, capturing Castiel's in his own.

"What are you?" the vampire asked, but quickly changed his mind. "Who are you?"

"We can protect you," Sam said. "From your masters until you're freed by law. You know the woman you were sent to kill wants to free you from them, right?"

"Can you protect all of us? Our families, our friends still with our masters?"

"I don't know," Lucifer said. "But we can try."

The Men of Letters had incredible power within the government, and Chuck had incredible power within the organization. How he managed to get all their masters arrested so quickly was a mystery, but they were all guilty of the treasonous offense of attempted assassination. As soon as the cops had dragged the masters away, Chuck and his team showed up to collect all the hybrids.

They had a ton of them.

Sam had never seen so many hybrids, even though he was only seeing them in pictures, and as the vampire, Benny, got ready to leave to be with his family in one of Chuck's rehabilitation centers, he hugged Dean, a man who – just hours ago – could have ripped him apart with his bare hands.

The six of them were still at the safe house. John and his borrowed team of new illegal hunters would be there by the morning. Once Chuck's men had showed up to take the hybrids and their humans to a safe haven, and the pictures of their small but illegal liberation made their rounds, Sam realized how tired he was. He was quiet, sitting on the couch with his leg and side touching Lucifer, watching as Castiel sat cross-legged on the floor across from Michael, trying to teach him how to do the easiest spell there was: creating a glowing orb of light.

It was funny. Castiel kept sending lights dancing around the room while Michael could barely manage a faint glow, but his fingers did seem to have a slight light coming from them. They figured that he would need a better teacher.

Alex loved watching Castiel's light show and tried getting Lucifer to do something. After shaking his head for a few times, he ended up sitting, reaching out to grab Sam's hands. He put Sam's hands together in a cup, and then put his hands under Sam's. He closed his eyes, and Sam wasn't sure what he was trying to do. He looked far more strained than he had when he had systematically killed the demons earlier that day.

"Take it easy," Sam said quietly, afraid of the hurt he could do from concentrating too much but suddenly, there was something small, red, and warm glowing just above his hands. After a second, Lucifer opened his eyes and blew on it, and a tiny flame was floating just above their hands.

Alex didn't think it was impressive, but Michael jumped up, wrapping his arms around Lucifer's shoulder. "You made flame."

"It's just a spark," Lucifer said, looking pale. When he and Sam pulled their hands away, the flame went out. "But we made it."

Sam didn't know why he thought of it, why he did it, but suddenly he reached his hands out, touching Lucifer's face just like Castiel did to Dean during the lullaby. Lucifer smiled at him, but Sam just grinned.

"Well, if you want to see a spark that we can make…"

And he leaned in, pressing his lips against Lucifer's for the first time.

Spark wasn't the right word, although that was how Charlie had described what it felt like to kiss her bonded. Instead, it felt like they were one. Sam could use the grace that Lucifer could pull from around them, but when they kissed, it felt like he could draw the grace right from his lips. It felt like a complete circuit, and when he pulled back, resting his forehead against Lucifer's he was almost felt electricity.

"We waited all this time when we could have been doing that?" Lucifer asked. He moved away, embarrassed that his brothers had seen his display, but that fear was short lived. Neither of them were paying any attention to him or Sam. Dean and Castiel were practically on the floor, and Michael was just moving away from Adam, pressing another soft kiss to his forehead, pushing his hair over to the side.

"Oh," Sam said. "We're trendsetters."

"Oh, you are not," A voice called from the doorway. Standing next to the president elect was Gabriel, his arms crossed and leaning against the jamb like he had just appeared there. He hadn't, though, because Gilda and her car keys and Miguel lacked that same casual look. "Also, ew, can't you get them to stop?"

Sam shot his foot out, kicking at Dean. Alex laughed, although she was red, and as soon as Dean and Castiel looked up to see they were kissing in the future president's house they looked thoroughly embarrassed.

"You have to forgive them," Gabriel said, elbowing the president. Lucifer hissed at him to stop, but the younger boy just kept going. "They've been brainwashed since they were kids to think that the connection they felt because of their bond – which is essentially love, by the way, a full on real, romantic love for these idiots – was shameful and that they could never act on it. I mean, they may have saved you physically, but you're saving a ton of innocent people with this amendment, chief."

Jody grinned down at the kid. "You know what, Mike, I think I like him."

"Is…" Michael stood up. "Is that?"

"Yep, it's me, dad," Gabriel said, moving forward like he wanted to go to him, but then frowned. "Is it too soon? I could totally call you Mike. I mean, even Michael. We could be formal here. It's nice to meet you, Mr. Milton."

"You have to forgive him," Miguel said, grinning. "He's been talking about how bad he wanted to meet you since the day I met him. It's not his fault though, he knew you thought he was dead."

"Shut up," Gabriel snapped.

"I'm so sorry, Gabriel," Michael said, practically tripping over Dean and Castiel, who scooted to get out of the way. "If I'd have known, I would have…"

"Which is why Chuck had to lie," he said "I'm glad you didn't kill my uncles and take them back to John. Or take them back to John to have him kill my uncles. I worked pretty hard on them."

"I can see that. You must be very talented."

"You have no idea."

After a second, when Michael and Gabriel just stood, looking at each other for a moment, Michael asked, "Can I hug you?"

For the first time, Sam noticed that Gabriel truly looked like a kid when he held out his arms and said, "Yeah, dad. Of course you can."

John came early the next morning, but Gabriel was ready for him. When the government SUV pulled into the patch of earth that looked like it may have been a driveway, it stopped and John got out.

Gabriel was especially good at altering perception, just like Lucifer was really apparently very good at snapping his fingers and killing someone. Gabriel stood halfway between the house and John, his arms folded, keeping the house, the garage with the cars, and all of the people out of John's sight. It was almost funny, watching him look around and frown, check his tablet to make sure that this was the GPS location where Michael and Adam went missing, then looking around again.

"Search the area," John called to the other men he was with, then he walked forward, right toward Gabriel.

"Don't let them touch you," Gabriel warned. "They won't see you, but it feels weird and violating."

But still, he didn't move out of the way of John. Instead he just stood there, his three and a half feet verses John's six, and didn't flinch when the man stopped just a few feet from him, looking around and frowning.

"I know what he did to you," Gabriel said. "I know everything he did. Every torture that he called an experiment, every lie he veiled as a half truth, and I want to rip him apart."

"Join the club," Sam and Lucifer said at the same time, but they were all still. Even Jody Mills, who wrapped her arms around Alex as if she could shield her from the men if Gabriel's barrier failed. But it wouldn't fail.

Gabriel had been keeping his people safe forever.

Since he was four and could control his power, at least.

As John and the men searched and searched, for nearly two hours, the people hidden watched, moving around them and listening to their quiet conversations. Gabriel was sure he could scare John away, but Jody insisted she didn't want him coming back, snooping when he felt brave again. There were only a few hours until she would be safe, not safe from assassination, but her ideas would be safely fought for, even though they were all pretty confident she wasn't in danger anymore, but that wasn't the case with the hybrids.

If they were found, there was nothing to prevent John from killing them right now. They had to wait until the amendment had been ratified. While Jody did have all the documentation she felt she needed, she also knew that presidents couldn't amend the constitution themselves. Instead, she was going to have to convince two-thirds of both the house and the congress to pass the amendment.

That may take time. It would take even more campaigning, and it may be years before her dreams were realized, but it was her one big thing. It would get done; she had no doubt about that.

And Gabriel didn't doubt it either.

"Where will you wait?" Jody asked them as John started piling his guys back in the van, looking around one last time to find what he knew was there but couldn't see. "So that he can't find you?"

"With me of course," Gabriel said. "I've been hiding innocent illegals for a long time, but don't worry, chief, I'm making sure they realize that we're not enemies. Many hybrids are more afraid of humans than you are of us."

"That's for sure," Alex said, and Jody reached out to touch her shoulder.

"But not to worry, 'cause though they may be bitter, they are also teachable. I mean, did you see the way I didn't just kill John Winchester. Look at my restraint. Look how well I'm teaching my flock," Gabriel grinned. Jody gave a nervous laugh, but said nothing.

"Dudes," Gabriel called, "Get in here. It's time!"

Lucifer rolled over, away from Sam and tried to hide his head under his pillow. It was early in the morning, but Sam reached his hand out, touching a warm palm between Lucifer's shoulder blades. The wings were almost always missing, and while Sam missed them, he knew it was easier for Lucifer's movement to keep them away unless he was flying.

"The Secretary of State is going to proclaim the adoption of the twenty-eighth amendment," Sam said, but Lucifer just groaned.

"I already know what it's going to say."

"But don't you want to go outside with me?" Sam asked, kissing Lucifer's bare back. "We can go wherever we want, do whatever we want, as soon as he proclaims the adoption."

Lucifer grumbled, but got out of bed, got dressed, and went out to the campfire where everyone was waiting. Gabriel had made a big screen, and everyone was sitting around it. Lucifer moved to sit between Castiel and Michael, the former resting his head on Dean's shoulders with a blanket wrapped around him, the latter kept prodding Adam to wake up.

The whole process didn't take long. Well, the process had taken about a year and a half, but that had been due to lobbying to get congress to submit the paperwork. The government, Gabriel had declared, was lazy, but he was enjoying time with Michael regardless. And once they were free to go their separate ways, Michael and Adam swore they would stay with Gabriel. Michael, the fearless and free-will-less leader of their Unit, was now nothing more than an advisor to his son, but they were all very happy.

When the Secretary of State appeared on stage, with Jody Mills and her daughter Alex just off to his right, everyone in the compound cheered. And then it grew quiet.

After a short speech, detailing the struggles of the hybrids, the Secretary of State said, "And so I proclaim this twenty-eighth amendment has been adopted."

While the rest of the compound cheered, Gabriel stood up and raised his arms. When he dropped them in a grand gesture, nothing felt different. They could still see outside his protective barrier, except now, there was no protective barrier.

A few of them, Lucifer and Sam included, stood up and walked to where the edge of the barrier had once stood. Some of them stayed, some of them left immediately, and some hung around for a while, just starting to make plans of where they would go, or what they would see.

The Unit had their plans already made. They had made them over a year ago, and now that it was the moment of truth, Lucifer knew their plans wouldn't change.

Michael and Adam would stay. Gabriel didn't really need protecting, but the rest of the people who were going to turn the compound into a community wanted Michael and Adam to be their police force. Lucifer liked to imagine his older brother in a different uniform, sitting with his feet up on the desk, chewing happily on a donut as Adam chased down kittens to save from trees.

The other four members of the former Unit would take President Mills up on her offer. It wasn't so much because they feared for her life, but because she had been the first to offer them a paying job, something that none of them had before.

Lucifer and Sam wanted some money to purchase a house, so they could live together. Gabriel had thought that was stupid, that Lucifer could snap and make his own dream house, but the older man insisted that he wanted to do it the hard way, the human way, because for the first time, he was allowed to have the American dream, too.

Dean and Castiel, it seemed, weren't ready to settle down and commit to a house yet. Their commitment to each other was another thing – everyone in the compound had complained about their commitment to each other – but they wanted the adventure. Castiel wanted to see the world, and Dean wanted to see Castiel happy.

When those had plans to leave started leaving – Castiel and Dean among them – and those who planned to stay turned back to their houses – Michael and Adam among them – Lucifer just stood by the campfire, looking up at the blank screen with a smile on his face.

Sam just touched Lucifer's waist, drawing him in to press their lips softly together.

Now, they were free.

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