Authors' Notes: There are no words for how excited we are about this story! We hope you love it as much as we do.

The first third of this story is completed. The first seven chapters will be updated sporadically as we finish future sections, but after that chapters will be once a week, on Monday afternoons. There will be 27 chapters of the actual plot plus a few bonuses thrown in from time to time.

We don't own any of the characters you recognize and we probably own very few of the ones you don't, except that we've put our own twist on them.

This story is unbeta'd but we tried to catch as many errors as possible. If you want to beta or Brit-pick for us, please let us know!

Falling
Act One, Chapter One
The Sentence

"You have been tried and found guilty…"

He stared at the ground, feeling nothing. Nothing but the accusing stares of his brothers and sisters. He had not moved through the entirety of the trial. A small area, perhaps two meters square, had been designated his prison for the duration of the trial; but he had remained completely still, not even lifting his head when he was called upon to speak.

"… murders of hundreds of humans and … "

The trial had been unnecessary. He wished that he could have skipped straight to hearing his sentence, skipped past the torturous week between crime and punishment. There had never been any doubt of his guilt. It was written into every single one of his charcoal-grey feathers. He had admitted to his crimes freely; he had never tried to hide them.

"In light of this, and because of the extenuating circumstances, you are sentenced to penance. You will become a guardian of humanity and you will remain in that role until your wings are once again white."

Or until you fall. Those words didn't need to be said. He was only one step away from falling in any case. He hunched his shoulders, the only defense he had against the crushing weight of his guilt.

"You will also be stripped of your name. Until you have redeemed yourself, until you are reinstated as a warrior of God, you will be known as Nine. You will thereby pay tribute to the nine angels you have killed."¹

It was a cruel punishment. Every time someone addressed him, it would be a painful reminder of the lost angels. They had been his friends: Phanuel, Jophiel, Koschei, Eremiel - the lot of them. The twelve of them had fought side-by-side for thousands of years. He bowed his head, accepting the judgement.

"Have you anything to say for yourself, Angel Nine?"

For the first time since the beginning of the trial, Nine lifted his head fully and stared at his brother. His face was bleak, his eyes empty.

"Thank you for having mercy on me," he rasped unfeelingly, his voice unnaturally loud in the otherwise-absolute silence of the chamber. He bowed his head again and moved no more until every other angel had filed out, leaving him alone.

On the surface, his penance was lenient. At least he wasn't being cast out. A few hundred years of being a guardian angel looked positively gentle by comparison. On the other hand, he only had to imagine himself hovering protectively over the cradle of a human infant and he began to wonder whether it even mattered. He was much more likely to make a mistake and fall than he was to succeed. He shuddered.

But the choice was out of his hands now. No matter what, he was now a guardian angel. He would be tethered to a human infant and would be given absolute responsibility for the tiny life. He, whose hands had only ever destroyed, would foster a fragile mortal through its most vulnerable years. Then he would do it again, and again, and again, until his penance was served. Or until he fell. Doubtless he would hate every moment of it. He had no idea how to care for a human. He was not cut out to be a nurturing soul. Being forced to go against his nature so totally would be difficult, painful. It would scrape against the raw places of his soul, the jagged wounds left by the deaths of his unit. One missing, one dead by demons' hands, nine dead by his. Whatever he had to endure to repay their deaths, it was less than he deserved.

The city of Heaven, one of the Creator's greatest achievements, gleamed brightly in the light of the Son. Massive towers shot up from the shining streets below. The citizens of the city, angels and souls alike, bustled merrily amongst each other, enjoying all that Paradise as to offer.

Nine, a black smudge amidst the glory, kept his eyes down upon the golden sidewalk. He trudged onward, feeling the averted eyes and accusations hissed behind hands from the teeming crowds of beings around him.

Up ahead an angel caught sight of him and with wings mantled and finger pointing, he approached. "It's your fault! Your fault that so many children are dead!"

Nine chose not to respond, because any reaction would be on the front page of the newspaper in minutes. A scowl began to form on his face as cameras flashed. He kept onward. Before he could go any distance, the angel grabbed him by the lapels and halled him back.

None of Nine's brain took part in what happened. Battle instinct took over and within seconds the other angel's grip had been broken and he had been slammed against the nearest wall with all the strength Nine could muster. Nine froze as conscious thought took over again. He let go.

"You're insane!" the angel gasped.

"Sorry," Nine muttered, "Battle instincts."

"Battle instincts!? You tried to kill me!" The angel whirled, trying to capture the audience of pedestrians around them. "Did you see that? He tried to kill me!"

More cameras flashed. Nine mantled his wings, pushing the crowd away and giving himself room to escape. A group of new souls gasped in surprise as he pushed his way through them.

"Was that a demon?" one soul asked, turning to her tour guide. Nine flinched but didn't stop. However hurtful, he couldn't blame the new soul for thinking that. It was only one step away from true. He didn't feel much like an angel anymore.

Nine tried to escape back into the crowd. The flow of the crowd wasn't entirely random. Hundreds of angels were streaming toward a many-storied building, golden as the ones that surrounded it. However, this building had a sign on it marking it as the headquarters of the guardian angels. His heart sank as he looked at the cheerful building with its too-jaunty sign. It was so different from the stark, spartan barracks where he and his unit had lived all of their days. This was going to be more difficult than he had realized.

The building that served as the center of operations for guardian angels was not the largest in Heaven, but it was certainly one of the most heavily trafficked. Guardians returning from earth went there to await new charges. Omael, the angel in charge of keeping track of such things, was reputedly one of the busiest angels in existence. Her messengers brought down the files of children in need of guardians; the duty of matching children with their guardians fell to a squadron of angels under Gabriel's command. The net result was a bustling hive of activity which never slowed.

It was into this melee that Nine stepped, as if onto a battlefield. He would have preferred the battlefield, especially since no one here would get close to him. They drew away from him as if he was diseased, leaving him as the only angel with space to breathe.

"Nine! Angel Nine! There you are – good man!"

An angel pushed his way through the press and emerged into the clear circle around him. Nine tensed, his feathers ruffling at the sight of Gabriel's snowy white wings. The archangel was perfectly polished, as he had been whenever Nine had seen him: pressed white suit, golden blonde curls arranged to within an inch of their life, beamingly bright smiles, and hands made soft from centuries upon centuries of administration. He was, in every way, Nine's opposite.

Gabriel clapped him on the shoulder. Nine's wings mantled, reacting to a touch as unwelcome as any attack. He folded them quickly.

"First day on the job, eh? Well, you'll catch on quickly, I have no doubts! The rules are mostly the same. Don't interfere with humans other than your charge, unless it's absolutely necessary to keep your charge safe, and even then as little as you possibly can, et cetera. Self-harm is a choice, so you can't do anything about that because of free will and so forth. It's all pretty intuitive stuff. I'm sure you'll be fine."

He paused, waiting politely for a response. Nine said nothing and Gabriel continued.

"Well, anyway, we've got a charge for you. Fresh from Omael. Standard term is twenty years, of course, but… accidents happen." The archangel's voice darkened and he turned, drawing Nine's attention to a group of angels halfway across the room. Three angels clustered around a heart-broken fourth; the sobbing angel in the middle had light, dusty-grey wings. She, too, was being given space, although the angels avoiding her did so out of sympathy rather than disgust. Gabriel sighed. "Poor Mihr. She's never lost a charge before, not until last week. Seven years old."

Nine had made up his mind not to respond, but then the angel's words from outside came back to him.

"Was it my fault?"

Gabriel's lack of response was the only answer he needed. Nine wondered how many innocent lives had been added to his toll. The archangel handed him the file he was carrying and a pager. "She's due to be born in three days, so you have a little time to get situated before your term starts." He clapped him on the shoulder again. "And remember, if you need help, we're all here for you! No angel left behind, right?"

Nine looked around dubiously, feeling sure that Gabriel couldn't actually mean it. For any other angel, it was probably true, but him? When he looked back, the archangel had gone. That seemed to be adequate confirmation of his doubts.

The new guardian sighed and turned, eager to leave the Guardian Re-Assignment Centre (or, as Gabriel insisted on calling it, 'GRACE'). At the door, the crowd was so thick that the angels were unable to scramble out of his way. They cringed away from him as he pushed past, as if they thought that his touch would make them crumble to dust. It was possible, he thought bitterly, that they were right.

Nine used the stairs to get to his assigned floor and wandered the lesser-used corridors until he came upon his cubicle. It was maddening. The mere concept of cubicles was so totally alien to everything he knew. Fortunately, no one bothered him once he stepped inside. He took a seat upon the white office chair and opened the file. It was sparse, containing little more than a name, date, and location. He assumed that someone would add to it once the charge been born and lived a while. Maybe that was part of his job. Nine looked over what little there was: his charge was to be born on 7 May, 1986, at a hospital in London, England. The proud parents, Peter and Jackie Tyler, would name her Rose Marion.

"Rose Marion Tyler," he said aloud, and his lips twisted into an unhappy smile. "God help us both. We'll need it."

» Yes he does have a real name. But we're taking our cue from the show and it's never going to be mentioned. (But it makes us cry because it's so perfect.)

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