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Sam's small London flat usually looks like a bomb's hit it, but in a comfortable, cosy kind of way.

This is neither comfortable, nor cosy.

Sofa and chairs are over-turned, their stuffing ripped out; the TV is not much more than a smashed, smoking pile of scrap metal; food is everywhere and there's a very disagreeable-looking (and smelling) stain in the middle of the carpet.

Sam enters edgily, though his magical senses tell him there's no-one here any longer. No-one other than mundane, at any rate. His face is even paler than usual, and his black eyes are glittering in a way that bode no good at all for the person or persons responsible as he props the door to Milliways open with what remains of a table chair.

"Well, it's not quite the makeover I'd been hoping for." Voice unnaturally calm.

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Guppy follows through, glancing around before he steps into the room fully.

"Do you want me to call the police?" he asks, peering cautiously behind a turned over sofa in case there is anyone behind it.

Sam shakes his head. "Nah. I've better ideas by way of punishment. Hopefully they grazed themselves on something, will make tracking them down a bit easier."

He glares at a fire smouldering in the TV's corpse until it goes out.

Guppy begins turning chairs upright.

"Anything missing? I mean your normal burglar would have taken the TV wouldn't they?"

He nods. "I've got my dagger on me, but..." In the kitchen, where the taps have been turned on and the floor is flooding, but he successfully retrieves his Very Important Address Book from the only tin of biscuits that the intruders failed to open before turning the taps off.

"Well, one thing's safe at any rate."

Heading squelchily for the bedroom, where his most important things are. He'll tidy the kitchen later.

Guppy follows. It would be silly to not stay near Sam if the intruder could, as far as he knows, still be there.

"Er, Sam. There's no chance your burgler could go through the portal is there?"

Sam doesn't answer. He's too busy staring at his bedroom wall, where a terrifyingly-familiar ditty is painted in suspiciously crimson ink... at least, presumably it's ink.

'Little Light and Little Fire,
Loved and lost an awful liar;
Dared to love Love’s own sweet daughter,
Dared to hope more than he oughta:
Little Light and Little Fire,
Mae a fool by fool’s desire!'

Guppy stops and looks at the wall.

"Not much taste in poetry have they?"

Distantly, "No."

Shit, this is really not good.

Stonily, "'Little Light and Little Fire' is what they called me in Heaven."

Several seconds for him to pull himself together. "You. Milliways. Now."

Guppy isn't the sort to ignore instructions like that from someone who is Satan. Questions can wait.

Unfortunately he is the sort to forget which way he came up, which is why he ends up in the bathroom and one of the other rooms before he gets to the stairs again.

Sam rips his own wards down with sheer force of will, pulling his sword and the small, battered box containing his crown from their hiding place underneath his bed as he turns to follow.

"Guppy?"

As he reaches him, the front door is thrown off its hinges to reveal a beautiful, blond-haired, blue-eyed, apparently young man in sleek red and silver robes, wearing a delicate, twisted golden crown.

Sam is between Guppy and the newcomer in an instant. "Hi, brother. You always did like to make an entrance."

The man's voice is cultured, but there's a cruel twist to his mouth that he can't quite hide. "Whereas you, little brother, preferred to make an exit, as I recall."

He appears to notice Guppy for the first time and looks him over casually, rather as a farmer might look over prospective livestock. "Aren't you going to introduce us?"

Sam sighs, forcing himself to speak pleasantly through gritted teeth as he plays for time. "Guppy, this is my half-brother. Apollo, get out of my flat."

Guppy gets the bizarre feeling he is being compared to a sheep.

"Nice to meet you." he says as calmly as possible, keeping eye contact and hiding his horror well.

Apollo raises an eyebrow scathingly, ignoring Sam's order. "A mortal, Lucifer? Well, I suppose you had to replace Freya somehow..."

Bad move. Sam's face is frozen, but his hair throws off sparks and his eyes could scare snakes. He brings his blade out of its sheath and up, pointing it at Apollo. "Get. Out. Of. My. Flat."

His brother only comes closer, his own blade suddenly in evidence. "She's screwing Jehovah now, did you know?"

Sam snaps. His free hand slams forwards through the air; Apollo is picked up and slammed against the nearest wall with a sickening thud as Sam roars. "Guppy, GO!"

Guppy would normally be frozen to the spot by this point. But he's not. He makes a run for the door, leaping over a sadly dismantled chair.

He dives through the door, slamming it as he gets to the other side. There's nothing he can do to help Sam, and he knows it. The only thing he can do is stop Apollo getting into the bar.

He catches his breath back in the bar, then sits at the bar, waiting to see if Sam will come back.

Sam hears the door slam and breathes a momentary sigh of relief. But only for a moment.

He approaches his brother; Apollo, more resistant than any human, is picking himself up with a groan. Magic picks him up again and hurls him once more against the wall, so hard he makes not just an imprint this time, but a man-shaped dent.

"I suppose it's you I've to thank for the charming new decor?" Sam enquires conversationally, though there's a hard note like steel in his voice. He kicks Apollo's golden sword away from him. This is not the Sam Linnfer Guppy knows, this is Lucifer, bastard Prince of Time.

Apollo pushes himself painfully up on his elbows to find the tip of Sam's own sword at his throat. "Seemed it would suit you, Princeling dear." Through a voice strained with pain. "Not that there was much to do to get it this way."

The sword presses harder. "Was that you in Bangkok as well, brother mine? Firedancers seem like an appropriately cowardly choice for you. Never did like coming down from your ivory tower and getting your fingers dirty, not when your sister could do it for you."

"I have no idea what you're talking about."

Sam's smile is almost a shark's. "I think you do, brother. And I'll use the Light to prove it, if I have to."

A glint of something that could almost be fear in Apollo's eyes. "You... haven't got the nerve, it's all over Heaven how terrified you are... of yourself."

Hard black eyes meet his gaze, forcing Apollo to look away first. "Will you take that chance, Apollo? Dare me to discharge, to read every single secret thought you ever treasured, to see your soul?" He kneels to be on a level with his brother. "You invade my flat, you threaten my friends and the only brother I've ever called friend... Don't think I won't do it. Don't ever think I won't." And the black eyes tell Apollo that he speaks the truth. "What were you after, brother? What made you send Firedancers to Bangkok and mortal vandals to my flat, then come yourself when they failed you?"

Apollo has lost all his suave charm now, snarling like a wounded animal. "Bugger off, bastard prince. You want no part of my mind!" Bright golden light sweeps up, taking Sam by surprise and sending him sprawling blindly backwards to the floor, desperately trying to uncloud his vision as Apollo scrabbles for his sword and finds it, bringing it sweeping down in an awkward arc towards Sam’s chest. Sam brings his own sword up just in time, using magical senses to see as best he can as he stumbles to his feet. Magic picks Apollo up for the third time, more weakly now as Sam tires, hurling him through the gap where the front door was and down the stairs to the front door where he falls in a broken heap like a rag doll and eventually crawls off into the London darkness.

Sam’s never yet killed a sibling, close as he’s come at times. He wants to believe he's better than they are, needs to believe. So the only thing that follows Apollo down the stairs is his crown as Sam slumps, gasping, to the floor. He does not move for a long time.

Guppy won’t be seeing him again tonight.

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