AN: So glad to know there are other Fallen Angels (Syntaxians? Fans of FAN?...) out there reading this! We're a small community but we'll get there. Thanks to everyone who has reviewed and subscribed.

Special thanks to Susan E. Clark, if you happen to wander back for this chapter, it's a real honour to know you've read this and enjoyed it. I love the world you've created and I'm thrilled you feel I'm doing it justice. Being able to bring one of my worlds to life in the way you have is my dream, so you're a real inspiration to me. Cheers!

Innocence

If Chell was being completely honest with himself - which he rarely was anymore - he was a little bit jealous of her. Ever since the first day that she had joined their little group, there had been something different about Shia. They had found the firestarter completely by accident, and although the men had been leery about the young Asian, Fenway had recruited her. No one could deny that she was powerful, if a little air-headed.

For some reason she had taken to Chell like a puppy, trailing him around the headquarters and hanging on his every - few - words. At first it had annoyed him to no end, answering her infinite list of questions and explaining things to her multiple times, but after a while she had grown on him. After being bossed around all day by Fenway and Hemlock, it felt good to have someone below him. Someone submissive and pliant. If he gave an order, Shia would fill it. It gave him a sense of control that he had lost at some point - perhaps at the time he'd lost his arm and leg, and consequently his humanity - and he loved it.

Their relationship was symbiotic: Chell drew strength from his superiority and status over her, and Shia flourished under his tutelage into a vicious sociopath to rival them all. He was equal parts irritated and infatuated with her.

It took him quite a while to put his finger on just what it was about her that had always caught his attention though. Nothing made sense to him until they were locked up together in the basement of a Scottish boarding school. For the first time, she dared to ask real questions - not questions about fighting or strategy, but about him. About his bio-modifications.

Somehow that struck something inside of him, something that he had dutifully buried. He had forgotten what it was like to be cared for, to have someone concerned for his well being. The others' only concern had been if his modifications had healed enough for him to fight again. There had been no questions about comfort, about pain, about the loss. He had tried not to think about it, because no one else cared. But she did, somehow. Despite the darkness and danger all around them, she's still so incredibly human.

He felt part of him coming back to life again, and he glanced at her hands before he asked, "What about you? When you make fire, does that hurt?" She rubbed her fingers against her palms, and when she looked up the sadness in her eyes stabbed straight through him. "Every time." Something like guilt churned in his stomach; all the times he had pushed her through training and target practice, directed her in a fight, and he had never given any thought to whether it hurt her. And she had never refused, never questioned, never even wavered under his commands.

A distraction arrived when the door shifted, and Chell glanced up hopefully. He wanted to get out of this small space, away from her and the strange, alien emotions that she had somehow drawn up in him. Unfortunately instead of the Dogs, it was Steven Bramwell that stumbled through the door and Chell felt himself tense in anticipation of a fight. It killed him to be crippled while one of the Angels was there, and it only grew worse when Bramwell pointed a sword at Shia.

His mind instantly began running numbers and statistics. Shia could have easily incapacitated Bramwell with one well-placed fireball. The question was whether she could generate and throw it before that sword put a nasty hole in her chest. In a larger space with more room between them, maybe. But in this broom closet? The odds weren't looking good. And they only got worse when Bramwell sneered, "It's obvious you're no real threat to me, as your comrades didn't even see fit to rescue you before coming after us."

"You don't know what you're talking about," Chell growled angrily, frustration and betrayal flooding into him. "Shia, do not listen."

Bramwell smirked and took a half-step forward, the tip of his sword level with Shia's throat. "They're already in the building. They have been for some time."

Chell fought the urge to punch something. He had seen it coming, really. It wasn't the first time he'd been deserted by teammates, and he had done it before as well. In the end, the mission was all that mattered, and deep down he had always expected something like this to happen. In their place, he would have done the same.

It was Shia's hesitant voice that finally pulled him from his thoughts. "They wouldn't abandon us, would they?"

And in that moment he finally realised what it was about her that he was so captivated by: she was so blissfully innocent. She believed in things, fully and completely; she believed in things like camaraderie and teamwork. She still thought that there was a genuine bond in their team, and she trusted the people they worked for to protect her. Somehow, their world hadn't yet robbed her of her naivety.

It was captivating.

Which is why when she looked to him for direction, he backed down from a fight for the first time in his life. He conceded defeat to get her to safety. They would get their revenge later, he was sure of that, but for now he was going to make sure they lived until that next battle.

Her innocence was something magical and unattainable for him, and he would make sure she kept it for as long as she could. It softened the harshness of his life, and eased the aches. That naive faith in him brought a new light to his world that had been missing for so long, and he wasn't going to let it go so easily.