Who: Satan, Michael Where: Somewhere in Israel When: A century or two after the rebellion in Heaven What: Satan talks his way out of Hell, only to encounter his irate big brother.
Convincing his Father had not been easy. Well, Satan assumed it hadn't been easy. Father hadn't been very communicative during Satan's litany of pleas. Those pleas had not been especially dignified, and had contained promises of good behavior and absolute obedience in between complaints that it was incredibly dark and eerie down there, and Lucifer sans any emotion or personality was the creepiest thing Satan had ever beheld. He had been making those pleas for years. Centuries, even. There wasn't much else to do in Hell.
What Satan had finally received was less forgiveness and more of a job offer. God needed someone on Earth to be the Adversary, to tempt the humans and weed out the wheat from the chaff. The angels could learn to do this, but Satan had been uniquely designed for it. Satan would be released from Hell to do his job. The words 'Now, shut up' had not been included, but Satan had detected a faint hint of them anyway before he was quite suddenly rocketing up through the Earth's crust.
Ascending from Hell was less of a graceful release and more like being coughed up violently through the ground. It resulted in Satan landing in a tangled heap in the dirt, his coils almost twisted into knots. It took several minutes of blinking and staying very still before he could tell up from down. Carefully, hesitantly, he stretched himself out and let the sun sink into his scales.
The sun. The wind and the sky. Even the dirt underneath him held more appeal than the dirt in Hell. Satan felt a moment of elation, of pure joy, and turned instinctively to tell Lucifer. Except Lucifer was not there.
Of course he wasn't. Lucifer was still in Hell, with the other rebel angels. Satan's bargain hadn't included Lucifer. Why would it? Lucifer was incapable of feeling thanks or bitterness or anything at all. There would have been no point in securing his release, and that was something Satan had told himself over and over again while he prayed to his Father. He'd told himself it enough times that he'd been convinced. But faced with freedom that came without Lucifer's, Satan felt a terrible sense of guilt.