Much like when he'd been on patrol as a soldier, work involved a lot of boring waiting around followed by short periods of extreme excitement. Right now he was waiting for a fairly low-scale touch of road rage to escalate into something bloody and wrecked - a spark of flame in the wrong engine and boom, they'd be on the next road down to the underworld, filled with the rage and red mist that'd consumed them all through their lives already. It was a happy coincidence when two souls who'd spent vicious years filled with such blind, bloody fury met, and neither was able to back down. He slouched back against the tunnel wall - not that any mortal could see him unless he wanted them to - zoning out slightly as car after car tore past in and out of Heathrow, late for this holiday or that business trip, thinking it was the most important thing in the world. Still, most of 'em were blameless enough, he knew - just average, boring souls who'd probably get another round trip as a human before they got to go Up or Down or...On. It would have been amusing to show himself to them, but fun wasn't on the menu today. He just had to wait, lurk in the shadows away from the powder-blush early morning air, cut through with vapour trails...this was an easy job, the kind he couldn't help but like. No risk and maximum amusement at the stupidity of humans.

He tilted his head for a moment as a trace of something drifted past his ears - something inhuman, something audible only to a non-mortal. For a second he paused, then shook his head. Whatever. Probably one of his - he smirked nastily - brethren - out and about on some sort of similar job, or tempting or seducing or whatever they got up to in airports. Liminal places, airports. Room for all sorts of sin.

Hells, waiting was dull.

-

Unlike their counterparts down below, who - presumably - couldn't be trusted out in the world at large, she and some of the other ascended human angels lived on earth, in small rented accommodation run by some commercial arm of Heaven that she wasn't privy to, although the thought of angelic bankers amused her. Even so, she didn't quite feel like going back home right now; the nagging sense that something she was doing wasn't quite right, was disingenuous somehow, was too strong. That man had really loved her, and although she'd had immense affection and familial love in return, and he hadn't loved her anywhere near as much as his dreams, mercifully, it just sat bitterly in her mouth that he'd felt that way.

"You don't have any control over other people's feelings. You made it clear always you didn't feel that way in return, and he wanted you as a friend nonetheless," her mentor's voice rang in her head. Ah, yes, lucky Helena never felt any doubt over her actions - but Helena was old, even by angelic standards. She was a creature of light and joy, bringing that moment of ascended emotion to artists and musicians in the height of their creation. That felt less like toying with someone's feelings than simply...amplifying them. That was a good job to have.

She dithered unhappily, finding herself simply walking out of the airport towards the model 'plane on the roundabout by the tunnels, with no especial destination in mind. I should ask someone. But who? How would I say it? She knew she wasn't perfect - that she was small and soft and hopelessly vague - she wasn't a warrior and never would be. Perhaps she wasn't even good enough for Heaven after all...

She stared over the causeway, sure angels weren't meant to feel like this.

-

He could feel them approaching, now - a little additional trait he'd been granted was sensing heightened emotions in humans, and he could almost draw a line down the road to trace the lines of crimson rage veering through the other cars, ready to hit head-on. There'd probably be other casualties, but that wasn't his business. He pushed himself upright, a hulking figure in the shadows, and smiled humourlessly as he moved forward.

-

She frowned, sensing something - something was wrong, something that made her heart flinch beyond her own introspection. Something external was coming that was the antithesis of her softness; something hard and dark and brutal and hurting. She closed her eyes and reached out - yes, now she could see the fury of the drivers racing towards inevitable collision on the pass. Her eyes snapped open, and pushing away the bile and fear rising up her throat, she hurried forward. Maybe I can help them - this feels wrong!

-

He shook his head - the sensation of being not quite alone was still there, and for no reason. He growled to himself, pushing it away. I've a damned job to do. What the hell is this? Nothin' matters but the darkness. Nothin' matters but winning. Gettin' their souls down to the boss. The anticipation was rising now - a kind of schadenfreude, a reverse vengeance on people he couldn't take actual vengeance on any more. Hey, who should know joy and love if he couldn't? And he recognised the hate in their souls, even from a distance. They were coming.

-

"I'm coming, I'm coming," she panted as she scrambled down the roof of the tunnel and into the underpass, towards the red-alert panic sensation of disaster. She wasn't meant to get involved with these things as a matter of course, but any angel who happened to be around a potential emergency was allowed to intervene if they could help. If people's lives were at stake, people who weren't ready to move on yet. If extra years could be given to learn lessons, that was a positive step, and yes, she could see the glare of the headlights now but she wasn't moving fast enough...she grit her teeth and forced herself forward. Trying to unfurl wings from under her clothes at this point would be slower than running, so she kept going.

She was running, but it wasn't enough; too slow she dashed down the workman's staircase into the tunnel in time to see the expressions on the drivers' respective faces - hate, fury, and finally, terror. A collision was never pretty, and she'd been just too slow to try and do...something, redirect traffic, anything - her heart crumpled like the metal casing of the cars as the unstoppable crash, in painfully slow motion. And not just her heart - her lungs tightened as a smell she knew - a smell she'd been warned of a hundred thousand times - started to choke up her breaths. Brimstone? She raised her watering eyes.

-

Work of a moment, and the looks on their faces when they saw him were hilarious, as ever. He had to admit, he loved the knowledge of his power over them, that finally, he was the one they should fear and worship and respect...yeah. That was worth any number of endless days and nights of torment and sleepless nothingness - those moments when men saw his face and their eyes went wide. He loved that. When he raised his claws, they whimpered, but to no avail.

"Hey, no need to feel lonely," he told them, grinning, gesturing at the portal in the road nobody else could see. "I'll catch you shortly. Down below." They didn't try to run, this time - shame, that. That was always a moment's entertainment. They just went, and his boss was there to greet them on the other side. All he had to do was torch the joint, finish off the chaos, and leave. He held out a hand, and with a hollow pop, a tongue of flame burned upwards from his palm. He weighed it in his hand, considering.

But there was something - someone else here - the sense of warm personhood he'd felt before, something he'd been told to avoid or kill, for preference. Something he knew.

He lifted his dark eyes and with a shock strong as a punch in the gut, met hers.

-

Her first instinct was to scream and run, run like all the hounds of hell were pursuing her - well, one of them. And not a hound but a demon - a good foot and a half taller than her and twice as broad, claws, armour, brown-black deepset eyes, hellfire in hand, the works. But he wasn't moving to attack her from the other side of the wreckage; no, he was staring at her as if he'd never seen an angel before. Perhaps he hadn't. And the emotions pouring off of him were stilted and stymied, but under the choking sense of jealousy, bitterness, slyness and all-consuming rage feeding off the souls he'd just ushered into the portal to hell, was hurt, and it was perhaps that, that stopped her simply turning and running.

Miraculously - no pun intended, and embarrassingly through no work of hers - no other serious injuries had been sustained in the crash; horns were blaring, lights were flashing and people were

getting out of cars with bruises and cuts, screaming and panic-dialling the police and who-knew-who-else. In the florescent lit tunnel, blood and screams and car fumes every which way, it was bizarrely close to how she might have imagined hell to be. For one hideous moment she thought she might faint, if supernatural beings were capable of such things. This was a situation someone like her was never meant to be in, and she was frozen, stupidly pitying, pathetically afraid, and entirely unable to act. Please. Someone help me...

He opened his mouth. She braced herself.

"Get out of here," he growled at her, eventually, looking as surprised as her that that was what he'd ended up saying. "Go on - shoo, run off, little angel, piss off. Get out of here." He narrowed his eyes at her.

"I...I...th-thank you. I..." she stammered helplessly, shamed and grateful and confused beyond measure, and turned to do just that as his eyes bored into the back of her head. But just as she made to move, someone had grabbed her.

-

What in the name of seven hells had made him say that? She would have been absolutely easy prey, tiny little angel lost on his patch, who knew what the demons above him could do with a weak, pretty little thing like her? A long time ago I wanted to save people like her...No! He crushed that thought right down - no room for old regrets and naivety, not any more. Pathetic idealism, when he'd thought he could be a hero. People like him only had one path to tread, and he'd do it damn well. Even so, she was turning to go now, and he could see the pattern of her folded wings on her back and...

"What have you found now?"

She screamed as his boss stepped calmly forward from the shadows and seized her arm, pulling her forward, staring down into her pale face with impassive scorn. He pressed one finger to her forehead and she fell limp in his arms, allowing him to simply throw her over his shoulder like a sack of potatoes. He hadn't even seen his superior pass through the portal, let alone cross the road, but he found himself staring into his narrow ice-blue eyes as he walked forward.

"Interesting. How did you manage to draw this one down?"

He hated the relief that his boss hadn't heard him telling her to run, clearly. "She just...turned up, sir." It sounded absolutely pathetic and he waited for the blow, but his boss just stared.

"Interesting," he said, again, and it could have meant anything. He turned to leave, back through the portal, following the screams of the newly damned souls, the prone angel over his shoulder, her limp arms swaying down his back; tiny, soft hands curled into little balls even in her unconsciousness.

"Are you gonna...?" shock pressed the words to escape his throat before he could stop them and this time he got the backhand he expected.

"I have told you about asking questions," said his boss blandly, massaging his knuckles - he didn't punch weakly. As he forced himself to stand, dizzyingly - weakness wasn't smiled upon in hell - to his amazement, his boss carried on,

"But since you're here, since for whatever impossible reason you seemed to find her, you might end up in charge of her. Wouldn't a prisoner from the other side be a nice bargaining chip? If you can't corrupt her, we don't need her in one piece, after all." His smile was a gash across his face - as a full Demon, he had the happy capability to smile with more teeth than any mouth should contain, and his smiles were rare, so all the worse for it.

"Sir," he managed, as something deep down in him screamed. He silenced it. The hell? This is your job. This is your life. An opportunity, too. Get somethin' out of her. Tear off her wings. Make them pay, the shinin' ones, whatever. That's what I'm for. His own wings - steel and bronze plating rather than the more traditional bat - twitched on his shoulders. He imagined having them torn away would be unbearable.

"Don't dawdle," his boss warned him before heading back into the portal. He nodded, and snapped his fingers under his metal claws. The cars burst into flames.