A/N: written: May 16, 2013
edited: August 23, 2013
I don't own anything! The title is from a poem by Richard Siken. Spoilers for 8x23.

"Meteorologists nationwide have been perplexed by the recent meteor showers in almost every continental state in the country," said the woman on the news, gesturing in front of the screen that pinpointed every place something had cratered the earth.

Melanie shifted at the counter of the café she ordered brunch from every weekday after her morning run, biting into the strawberries with which she'd topped her waffles. Her tongue flicked out onto the fork contemplatively as she, like the rest of the coffee shop dwellers, eyed the television displayed in the corner curiously.

"Conspiracy theories are running rampant as even famed studiers of space can find no asteroid belt from which these meteors broke away," the woman continued, her Botox-enhanced face stretching into something almost like concern.

The door to the café swung open, eliciting a cheery jingle from the bell that hung above it. Melanie, enraptured by the news report, didn't spare the man who dragged himself into the seat next to her a glance. The waitress silently took his order for a coffee.

"Now we bring in astrologist Dave Whitman for his opinion," said the newswoman as the waitress deposited the coffee next to Melanie.

"Never in all of eternity has this happened," mumbled the man next to Melanie.

She glanced over at him. He was outfitted in a soiled trench coat, so stained with dirt that she couldn't tell if it was tan or a darker brown. He hunched his shoulders like he couldn't stand up straight, his face haggard and drawn. He was unshaven, with a mess of dark hair sticking up atop his head, and dirty fingers reached shakily for the mug of coffee. A hitchhiker, Melanie thought. A traveler.

"Meteor showers are pretty rare, huh?" she said conversationally, her lips curving in a small smile.

The man took a sip from his coffee. As he went to set it back down on the counter, his hands continued to tremble sporadically, his steaming drink splashing onto the faux granite. "It was not a meteor shower," he stated lowly.

Melanie half-smiled; he said it in a way that was so serious, so certain, that she had to humor him. What could this bedraggled man in a trench coat in a coffee shop know about meteor showers? "It wasn't?" she asked. "Then what was it?"

He looked at her so unexpectedly that she almost squirmed away in her seat, the smirk wiped from her countenance. The lines of his face suddenly seemed so deep, his skin slack and sallow with exhaustion. His cheekbones stood out too far and his lips were chapped. There was a crease between his brows of perpetual fatigue, a world-weary set to his jaw. Yet his eyes, a startlingly clear blue, looked impossibly young, new, shining like polished dimes. Young, and anguished—she saw agony, wide-eyed pain, raw and etched into his face like crude scars. All at once she felt it, if only for a moment—a profound grief, something cold twisting in her gut.

I have done everything wrong, said the man's eyes.

"Angels," he said. "They fell."

Melanie watched as he unfolded from his chair, shuffling towards the door, back slanted with the burdens of someone much older than he. The bell sung again as he pushed out onto the street. He stood, unmoving as a statue, outside the café as if he expected to just disappear into the throngs of people, and when he didn't, he dropped his head to his chest and walked away.

"I've never seen anything like it . . ." murmured the astrologist on the television, but Melanie wasn't listening. She watched the man until she couldn't see him anymore and even then kept looking.