My first shot at Night World. Would have been better if I was able to get the books to recap on the characters...but we can't always get what we want.
LJ Santa 2009 drabble.
For Shaneelah - the mythbusters, orange ostrich and green chilli gave it away ;)

Rashel blinked against the rain drops coolly caressing her face, and stared blindly up at the murky twilight sky where puffs of angry grey clouds obscured the stars. Her every limb ached from the abrasions of a losing battle. This was it – it was over.

Facing a merciless life of hunting; assigned mission after endless, precarious mission – Rashel had come to believe that they could never truly win. Not really. Thierry's good intentions to save the world had seemed infallible at first. Circle Daybreak had the uncontested weapon of four Wild Powers; everybody had been so sure that the good would triumph.

Footsteps scuffled to her left, and she barely had the willpower to turn her head toward it. The ground was hard and unyielding beneath her; loose bits of tar and broken glass cut and poked into her back. It was so cold tonight – the wind soaked into her body, turning her skin to ice and numbing her muscles.

The hard part had been to convert the Wild Powers into Daybreakers... or so they'd all thought.

No one ever considered that the bad guys would counter them with a weapon that was equal in power, and destructive by tenfold. Circle Daybreak was being ripped apart with deliberate, brutal efficiency, because they'd underestimated how deep evil could go.

Take one down, and the other will fall.

Before, it was different because she knew in her gut that she could do this, that everything would be okay, because she was not alone. Somebody reliable had her back, and she had his; they were brilliant adversaries to the enemy, and they had been two of the best agents to ever traipse through the Night World. They should have expected that they would be of the first to be targeted, but everybody had been too hung up on protecting the Wild Powers.

Timmy's face hovered above her malevolently, his grotesquely innocent face masked by the shadows of night. She could feel his eyes pierce into her; two malicious orbs savouring her suffering, drinking in his victory. Rashel was thankful for the rain right then, disguising the hot tears of grief and frustration and misery that seeped from her eyes.

Nobody had seen this coming – and Rashel's entire being was screaming why. Why had it not been predicted, why had they not even considered the possibility?

... Because it was too malignant. The thought never crossed their minds, because none of them could fathom any life without their partners. This was it, the final times before the apocalypse – there would be no next life, no second chance.

The link that had connected her with Quinn had been severed forever, locking her in a cruel cage of despair and numbness. She was vulnerable, and hollow without him, and the fight had gone right out of her. She merely existed now, going through the motions with a heart as heavy and dead as rock. She did her job because she was obligated to, but Rashel no longer cared whether the Night World would conquer. She wanted it all to end.

Rashel had done what she could to continue to fight for Circle Daybreak, and she'd done better than some of the others. Poppy hadn't lasted long after James got taken out – she'd gone mad, and had tried to storm the Night World alone, without backup, without a plan – a wild dash of insanity driven by raw emotion. Galen hadn't been in his right mind either when Keller was killed, but even though Hannah and Blaise succeeded in restraining him, he'd become useless. He couldn't function anymore, and there had been heavy debate about what to do between the House of Shapeshifters and the Harmans thereafter. An unresolved issue to date.

Rashel couldn't even sympathise with Galen – the part of her that was able to feel had switched off when she'd been forced to watch the Night World torture Quinn for days before they killed him. That was over a year ago, of course, but the memory was still fresh in her mind. She'd done well...she'd done her best.

Timmy crouched down beside her paralyzed form, his breath tickling the hair against her neck. Just do it, Rashel thought desperately. Just kill me already.

And that was the Night World's strategy, of course. Kill the best, break down the rest – it made for a relatively easy win.

She saw Timmy's mouth open in her peripheral vision, felt the touch of something sharp burn across the tender flesh of her neck. She pinched her eyes closed and waited to feel the fire of canine piercing skin – and heard a sharp intake of breath.

Rashel's eyes shot open, startling her out of her momentary paralysis, and she bolted upright to see a dark silhouette thrashing the little monstrosity around. She couldn't make out who her saviour was, the shadows kept him well hidden from her sight, but he moved with agile strength and brutal finesse, fighting in a no-nonsense way. Her heart, which had been as lifeless as stone, gave a sudden thump in her chest, squeezing back to life.

It couldn't be... no, it couldn't be Quinn. He was dead – she watched him die with her own eyes. But the way her masked hero moved in the night seemed strikingly similar to Quinn's fighting style. The obscure thought that she might be dead flashed through her puzzled mind. Was she dead? Was she already thrown into the afterlife and didn't realize it? If she was... if she was, that meant that she wasn't seeing things – that meant that it was Quinn coming to her aid...

He made short work of Timmy. The boy was rendered unconscious against the wall, and then strong hands were hauling Rashel to her feet. Her legs yielded beneath her, and she leaned heavily against her saviour, weakly grabbing onto his shoulders to keep herself standing. It was all so surreal...

Only one way to wake up and smell the coffee.

Impulsively, Rashel reached up and cupped her hands around his masculine jaw, and kissed him. His lips resisted hers for a fraction of a second – and then there was a flare of golden sparks enveloping them both; frighteningly familiar, excruciatingly sweet, and doubly as intense as she recalled. The link between them reconnected, stronger than she'd ever felt it, and their minds rushed to reconcile with one another and merge once more.

The second it did, her euphoria ripped into terrifying bewilderment, and she wrenched herself away from him. His hands firmly kept her locked in place, and she couldn't break away. Rashel blinked furiously up at him, and then she could make out his handsomely chiselled features in the dim light. Familiar, yes. She knew him, yes. But it wasn't Quinn.

Her breath came out in short hysterical gasps as she stared back into those usually hard eyes. Ash had been as mercilessly cold as ice when Mary-Lynette had been taken from him. His eyes had always carried arctic waters in them that chilled everyone around him. Now they were smouldering flames of passion, reflecting the fire that had been resurrected inside of her.

"Ash?" Rashel could barely make sense of it.

"We have to get out of here before the little twat's backup arrives." Ash said, his own chest heaving with deep, shaky breaths. Then his voice steadied. "Can you walk?"

"Yes, I think so." Rashel whispered.

Neither of them moved away though, and they stood staring at one another in amazement riddled with confusion.

"How-"

"Does it matter?" Ash cut her off, and then his lips laid claim on hers, and the world around them fell away.