Lucifer rises as his brother does, and though there's a difference in the heights of their vessels, it's an immaterial difference to the two of them. What they really are is light and starstuff, and the size of the meatsuits they're folded up inside don't matter much. What does matter is that his temper is rising like a glacier, cold and inexorable and liable to crush everything in its path.

"I wouldn't want you to fill our Father's shoes either, Gabriel," he said. "Not that I think you could. But how can you stand to sit here and muddle through your delusion of domestic bliss while our whole family is dead? Does the genocide of our brothers mean nothing to you?"

It wasn't war, it wasn't in-fighting, it wasn't the Apocalypse. It was the systematic extinction of their siblings, the systematic silencing of the celestial choirs. He had felt the hollowness of their dead Heaven during one dreaming-- white noise on angel radio and wings burned down to the roots-- and it had been terrible. Was there anything that their Father wouldn't allow? Would He simply let them tear themselves to pieces and never say a word?

"Someone is responsible for this. You might not care to go back and take care of it, but I do."

And the fact that he could deny his responsibilities, even now-- as though abandoning them for long enough meant that they had never existed in the first place-- is acutely infuriating. Building things, Gabriel says, as though that just isn't a kinder term for running away again. Lucifer steps closer, invades his brother's personal space because apparently he hasn't gotten through to him yet.

"Our family is dead, Gabriel, and where were you?"