The young angel tucked his legs under him, watching the amber liquid swirl in his glass.
"And God saw everything that He had made, and, behold it was good," he said softly. "For a while, it was good. Siblings fight. There's nothing for it. They bicker and argue, but most of the time they do love each other and they forgive." Samandriel took a breath, letting the weight of things settle over him. "Lucifer... Lucifer was beautiful. One of the First. The archangels and then all the rest of us. He was an artist, a musician really, but he did other things as well. I was quite literally made for him, made to sit at his right hand and be as a muse, to paint the skies and laugh with him. And he rebelled. I wasn't there when the fight that kicked it all off happened. I know it'd been building for a while, but that's Lucifer and Michael for you. Two brothers who love each other and love fighting each other more."
He cleared his throat. "The fighting was awful. Heaven tearing itself apart in smoke and blood and ash. Brother against brother and..and critical eyes on me like I might be the next to turn. I'd never used my position for combat, never imagined how I might harm or kill anyone. I suppose if Lucifer had consulted me, he might've won. That whole time, centuries after the Fall, perhaps longer I was trying so very hard to stay alive, to prove myself loyal to Heaven's mission, to my superiors. But every time I was alone, or had a moment of quiet to breathe, all I could see were a thousand thousand different nightmares. All the ways things could go even worse than they were, all the ways our family could continue to pull itself apart." Another long sip of his drink.
"Loyalty," he whispered, a bitter laugh breezing past his lips. "Like being loyal didn't mean sticking together and working things out somehow, listening." Samandriel looked at the art on the wall, an abstract piece that looked so much like fire and blood and pain no matter how beautiful it was that he hadn't been able to bring himself to give Mitchell the reasons behind. "I never stopped loving him. He's my big brother. He taught me...he taught me so much. He taught me to fly, to sing and paint and make such music and he was never anything but gentle and kind with me, understanding, encouraging. A lot like Mitchell is to me, actually." Lucifer was different to others, of course, but Samandriel had known he was special. Valued. Irreplaceable. Losing him tore something out of me, something I will never, ever get back."
He looked over at Clint, eyes wet with tears he was refusing to shed and unwilling to ask for sympathy for. "Maybe my own fall has been long, long overdue."