As always, thank you so, so much for all of the lovely reviews and pms, follows and favourites! I really love writing this story but knowing that other people enjoying it too!

Quick Author's Note:
I usually respond to guest reviews quite generally because I can't send guest reviewers a little PM to say thanks. Thanks a bunch to all the guests who dropped a review on Shackled.
I particularly want to thank a reviewer named Marie.
Thank you so much for your review, Marie. Honestly and truly, thank you. I understand that Shackled has a quite a number of questionable messages, gender portrayal issues and shows a manner of society in both terms of what is alien and what is human that is quite harrowing.
But thank you for overlooking this and judging this fic by the quality of the writing and story rather than the potential sociological messages. Thank you, my dear lady. :D Just want to clarify that the upcoming message was not solely written as a response to your review- more or less, just because I've been in the process of reading a lot of material lately with some particularly toxic messages and now have the deathly fear that Shackled has been travelling in the same vein. I hope you keep reading Shackled and I hope you enjoy future chapters!

Basically, I know that as readers, you are all intelligent folk who should be given the right to read into a story in whatever manner you wish. However as a writer, I know that I have the responsibility to state that I do not condone the kind of relationships or lifestyles portrayed in Shackled.
If anything, if you are ever in a relationship that mirrors Cassidy's and Michael's, I would strongly advise you to get out of that relationship as soon as possible.
This is the world of fiction, of course, and for the sake of horror, stylistic writing and shock value, things are going to twist in directions that real life relationships ordinarily should not. I simply as that everyone read this as a work of fiction and not as a work prescribing how people should behave in relationships or how people of any and no gender should present themselves.

Anyway, back to the story!

This is chapter 34.
Welcome and salutations. I hope you enjoy your stay!

For now though, please enjoy the chapter.

Karida had tried her best to ignore Ariel's invisible but insufferably smug, taunting presence.

She knew that the wandering Angel was dithering around, listening to her as she trained and truthfully she could not find the need to care. This was her last chance to prove herself to her father.

For so long, she had sat isolated and distraught, without any hope of being reconciled.
She had feared that she would descend and deteriorate to the role of a pariah- shunned by own tribe, cast out by her once loyal followers and disowned by her beloved sire.

She struck the stone pillar for the fifty-fourth time, easily slicing through it with her claws.
As she drew back one of her arms, a strain in her upper back caused her to let out an involuntary yowl of anguish.
She recoiled slightly, trying to flex her wings for comfort- only for her to realise that she couldn't.

At times- in her most sinful, weak moments- she found herself questioning the pain.
But then she would remember that the pain was only part of the process.
The necessary process.
The path to true loyalty to the Archangel Nathaniel, to true acceptance of her role within the tribe and thus to the achievement of true power.
The pain would surely aid her.
Yes.
The pain was good.

"Is that the manner in which all Angels of a young age ornament their wings? Forgive me. I am not entirely accustomed with the ways of the fledgling masses any longer…"

Karida lifted her head.
The harlot could linger but speaking was not permitted.

"Leave me," she said coolly, determined not to show a single sliver of rage in the wake of the obvious torment. "I must prepare for the mission set to me by my father."

Ariel gave a small whinny of amusement in response and with a brief beat of her wings, she was at Karida's back. Her eyes were averted, allowing the younger Angel movement, but the older of the two did not need a direct gaze to ensure that her scorn was felt.

"…for such a supposedly seasoned huntress, you have great difficulty in distinguishing the difference between a genuine mission assignment and a false task intended to be used as a distractor…"

"You should not speak without evidence or explanation, Angel Ariel. Particularly concerning issues that do not concern you. It is truly stunning how you persist in interfering with the intimate business of those upon on whose charity you depend…"

"You are truly something to behold, Angel Karida," Ariel mused mirthfully. "Skewed by the opinions of one who barely cares for your well-being and truly unable to recognise when another is genuinely trying to assist you…"
Karida could not see Ariel but could easily sense her presence drawing closer, indicating that she was walking as she spoke. "I mean it, fledgling. I am only trying to warn you. There is no need of you to exert so much effort in this mission- particularly while injured. The Archangel Nathaniel is only using you to gauge Iblis' current strength and provide another distractor to the human…"

"My father is giving me the opportunity to prove my loyalty and strength. You simply resent the fact that he has come to trust in my judgement- that of his own blood- rather than yours."

Ariel was silent for a moment, though Karida was willing to bet her own talons that she was trying to suppress another peal of cruel laughter.

"Certainly, certainly. Hmm…I do believe I remember being of your years and desperate to show off how mature I was at the cost of appearing somewhat overly eager and lacking in sense…"

"Of my years? And when was that?" Karida responded sourly, taking another swipe at the rock. "Just over an hour ago?"

Ariel made no attempt to conceal a shrill trill of laughter. "I suppose my youth still lingers even after all this time, in my skin if not in my judgement. Your father once commented on it whilst he was confiding in me."

"My father does not confide in you. Do not fall prey to such delusions"

"But I imagine he confides in you regularly?"

"Regularly."

"Of course. In that case, I believe congratulations and felicitations are in order. I was so very happy for your mother to hear of the Archangel's plans."

Karida lowered the outreach of her stance. "…plans involving my mother?"

"Oh? He has not informed you yet? Your father intends to sire another cherub with your mother. Apparently he feels the need to extend his bloodline beyond you and your dear brother."

The younger Angel's stance was slightly thrown, her balance fleetingly dissipating as she stumbled to remain upright. "My mother is to bear another cherub?"

"Precisely. I do find odd that supposedly even though Nathaniel chooses to confide in you regularly that he would not speak of this…but perhaps he thought you would be far too busy with your …" Ariel's voice hovered in the air for a moment, garnering the optimum level of condescending and disdain before dropping into false politeness once more. "…mission."

"When did my father convey this to you?"

"I apologise Angel Karida, my sweet, I would simply love to stay and chat but I have a mission of my own that begs completion. I am due to make a particular rendezvous with a new friend of mine. She's bringing guests and we're all going to play for a while…"

"You've been sent to-?"

"No. I have not. Our targets are not the same individual. Yours is a female human. Mine is someone a little more extraordinary…"

"But who-?"

"I really am in a hurry. Do not worry. You shall see the fruits of my labours very soon. Your clan will receive what they want. Your father will get what he wants. And I shall have what I desire too…and all shall be right once more." Laughter trilled beneath her voice. "And do tell give your mother my best regards and congratulations."

Karida felt Ariel's presence vanish and finally dropped her sparring stance.
Feeling her brother's flesh torn to a pulp beneath her fingers had briefly filled the void in her chest but now it had been replaced with a new and monumentally terrifying abscess.

"Why does he need another? Am I not enough to continue his lineage?"

"I would not be so quick to worry, daughter."

Karida had not been aware that her mother had even entered the glade nor that she had been speaking aloud to herself until Althea's voice rang out.
The younger Angel's quantum lock briefly activated as her mother surveyed her and her body returning to flesh heralded the older Angel's gaze dropping to the floor.

"Nathaniel's decision bears no ills towards you. He simply wishes to ensure that I will not attempt to leave him again…"

Karida turned around to look at her mother, studying her stone-locked form with confusion.
"Mother…what do you mean? Again? You have never attempted to leave my sire."

"It was before your birth. Long before. I had the opportunity to leave the tribe…to return home."

"What do you mean of this, mother? We are home. This is our home."

"To our true home, Karida. To the home world. An opportunity presented itself and I made the decision to leave Nathaniel with a small few of our fellows…however we caught, intercepted and brought back. Nathaniel executed all of whom he deemed to be the treacherous conspirators. I was spared for no other reason aside from that your father claimed that I had acted under duress…" Althea's voice became slightly bitter and a small bark of laughter escaped her lips. "Because for what other possible cause could I find reason to leave him?" Her voice softened slightly, becoming what Karida might have called wistful if it wasn't so obviously tinged with pain. "So knowing that I needed a significant drain on my energy to prevent me from trying it again…he impregnated me."

Karida stood in silence for a moment.
Her right hand clenched into a fist and released, her fingers stretching outwards, lightly rippling against the lower part of her epidermal folds. Her talons caused the flesh to pucker and drag as her fingers blindly sought purchase against a kind of non-existent support structure.

Then in a sudden, violent swiping motion, the young Angel's claws lodged into a nearby flagstone- embedding to the tips of her fingers as a peal of infantile laughter erupted from her throat.

"Oh, mother!" Karida gasped between heavy, manic giggles. "Mother, you jest. You always say the strangest things when you are hungry. Doubtless, you are in the wrong state of mind to contemplate the task that father has set you to perform. You should do your best to curb those fanciful thoughts though...the others would surely be upset to hear you say such things- not to mention what my beloved sire would think…" The young Angel clasped her hands together. "You need to calm yourself in preparation for the task that father has chosen for you. If it sits to please you, mother, I must make preparations for mine…"

Althea allowed her daughter to pass by, allowing her the benefit of not being frozen to stone but the faint, ominous jingle of the chains that bound her wings tinged the older Angel's heart with pain.
She had tried to remove them earlier- against Karida's wishes- but as soon as whispers of her benevolence began to travel amongst the group, she desisted. Binding her daughter's wings was a cruel and detestable punishment but at least h had not yet attempted to pluck her wings. Even at the cost of not being able to remove the chains for fear of provoking the Archangel to further rage, she could at least be assured that her daughter would not be subjected to the unimaginable pain and humiliation of having her feathers ripped from their rows.

A sound that inspired greater pain in her being still was the sound of her daughter's distant laughter.
This laughter usually provided an eerie finale to the end of the story.
That was the fourth time that she had tried to tell her daughter the story of how she had attempted to leave Nathaniel.
The fourth time she had tried to remind Karida of her father's tyranny but to no avail. No matter how many times Althea had tried to free her child, the lasting effects of Nathaniel's control reigned strong.

Filled with both renewed heavy dread and the soft gracing of recurring listlessness, the Angel waited until her daughter had left before setting her mind upon a mission of her own.
Allowing her own, dear Karida and that rather lecherous Ariel to distract Nathaniel with their antics was a necessary sacrifice at this time.

She needed to ensure that the task at hand was completed for the sake of the future of the tribe.
She merely had to be certain that she intercepted the correct moment in time.
For the sake of her family, now was not the time for mistakes.

An hour from that moment, three Weeping Angels entered the active time stream.
One acting in vengeance.
One acting in devotion.
One acting in love.

But for all three, the stakes could not have been higher.

Morning stole over her like a bridal veil, dragging over her sleeping features, clinging to her lips and lashes as it illuminated the room and slowly roused her from the serene torpor that she had finally been graced with.
She felt herself smile despite the heaviness in her limbs.

For a brief and blissful period of slumber, marked by the sanctified lines that protected dreams from reality, she had completely forgotten everything.
No.
Not everything.

She had a very vivid memory of feeling safe.
She had fallen asleep in the throes of this feeling.
Perhaps it was so vivid because she hadn't felt it in a very long time; the sensation of falling asleep and awakening with the assurance of such security.

She felt his arms encircling her and realised her head was resting upon his chest.
As her senses slowly returned to the world of the living, she became aware of his scent- making itself known to her like an uninvited but welcome visitor. Unexpected and strange but not threatening.
His scent was difficult to place, of course.
He didn't quite smell of anything that she could place a name to.
So in her hazy, morning-time trance, she mentally dubbed it his scent and was content with that.

She also felt his skin beneath her fingertips, faintly cold but not uncomfortably so. The varying textures of his skin- both taut and bundled, both smooth and soft.
She absent mindedly fingered the folds of his skin, pressing her face against the soft ridges and seeking further comfort.

Still in the depths of her amnesia, she leaned into the touch of a hand against her face, running through her hair.
Just as her eyelids began to flutter open and a hand came to rest over them, rendering her blind.

"Not yet, Cassidy. I daresay to look upon me now would give you great discomfort…"

"Mmmph."

The human woman murmured incoherently, sighing as reality seeped into her being once more, trying to push herself up into a sitting position before promptly giving up in favour of being warm.

"Hey Michael, there's been something I've been meaning to ask you…"

"And why have you not asked it yet?"

Cassidy muttered something under her breath that might have been "damn pedantic aliens" but then again, it might have been.
She rested her cheek upon her hands, neatly crossing them over Michael's chest.

"…What does it feel like to fly?"

"To fly?"

"That's what I said."

"I am uncertain if there is a human experience that I can compare it to. I suppose I found it to be extremely liberating…empowering…I felt a kind of pride in myself upon my first flight. As though I were defying nature itself…"

"Sounds absolutely amazing," Cassidy half-yawned, placing her hand over Michael's fingers where they covered her eyes. "Hmph…I wonder what it would be like if humans had wings…"

She felt Michael's fingertips tracing the jutting bones of her shoulder blades beneath the material of her pyjama shirt, prompting her to give her back a sudden and deliberate jolt.

"Oi. What're you doing, Angel?" Cassidy lifted her head.

"This is where your wings would be, if you were of my kind," Michael told her, continuing in his tracing and undeterred by her obstinately petulant jostling. "Here and…here…extending from your bones…"

Cassidy's slightly chapped lips were pulled by the strain of a rapidly fraying frown. She could not place why but aside from the very definite dislike of being compared to one of his kind, there was a much deeper discomfort in her being at this statement.
Her frown fell away like a spool of unravelling thread as her mind was unable to grasp or retain this initial feeling of unease.

It was as though, something in her subconscious held an inherent fear of such a comparison.

"I'd like wings I think…I'd like to fly…maybe…it would definitely make life a lot handier…" She furrowed her brow, her fingertips lifting and tracing circles upon the Angel's pectoral muscles, perfectly mirroring his tracing of her back. "Though I can only imagine that turning to stone mid-flight would be a little annoying to say the least…"

"The very least," Michael agreed, his hand lifting to skim the side of her face. "Sometimes I find myself cursing the hands of evolution…it can be terribly kind in some respects and then unspeakably cruel in others…"

Cassidy shrugged, keeping her eyes shut and turning over slightly to nestle against the Archangel's body. "I'd like to think that evolution is quite fair. We were all brought into this world as the same useless lumps of clay and evolution just grabs us and shapes us. Like an artist…and when you've studied artwork for as long as I have you learn that artists can have lots of beautiful aspects to their work but in each piece there'll also be one or two ugly aspects that they won't exactly be proud of…"

"I suppose the "ugly" part of we Angels would be our quantum lock in your opinion. Am I correct?"

"Well, not being able to move when you're looked at has to be a little bit of a raw deal." She lifted her head slightly. "I'll never be able to look at you while you're moving…"

Michael ran his fingertips delicately over her eyelids. His claws barely skimmed the hollows above her eyes and she shivered. "Yes…it is a regrettable fact of your existence and mine…"

She lifted her hand, swatting his fingers from their intended pattern of tracing and instead clasping his hand in hers. For a moment, she simply held it there, feeling the threatening, almost imposing weight of his fingers as they moved somewhat restlessly but mostly compliantly against her own.
Then, defiantly and all at once, Cassidy lifted a second hand to Michael's face, her finger picking out the lines of his cheeks and tracing their way to his own eyes. She delicately prodded along the lines where his eyelids met his bare eyeballs.

"Please stop doing that."
He addressed her with a watery version of the firm but gentle tone of an adult addressing a rowdy child but did not make any attempt to stop her.

"Do you even have eyelids?" she asked sleepily, still partially caught in a low-hanging cloud of drowsiness and struggling to recall if she'd ever seen him with his eyes shut.

A flap of skin flicked beneath her fingertip, drawing downward like a window-blind.
"Yes. Three in total."

"Three? Like a cat?"

"If a cat happens to have three eyelids then yes."

"…cool. Even if you barely need them because your lot don't sleep," Cassidy breathed, leaning forward and keeping her head upon his chest. There was something oddly relaxing about their positioning. At this point, his hand was resting limply against hers, seemingly content to be in contact with her skin without necessarily having any hold on her. It was this point that something occurred to the archaeologist that hadn't occurred to her before. "Your lot don't sleep…so you stayed up the entire night…just lying here in bed with me?"

"You requested for me to remain with you."

His response was simple and without any notable vocal nuances but the notion that Michael was now actually acting based on her whims? That stirred something in her stomach for more reasons than one.

She found herself smiling, feeling a little manic as she pushed herself up to his chin. The crown of her head lightly nudged the rise of his throat. His hand fell away from her eyes and as she turned her head, his lips grazed the faintly scaled flesh. She felt him shift slightly beneath her and smiled wider. "Ticklish?"

"Pardon?"

"Are you ticklish? Do you feel ticklish?"

"What does ticklish mean?"

"Do you…ever feel a sensation on your skin that makes you want to laugh?"

"Yes. Frequently when I am around you."

"Oh yeah? I make you ticklish?"

"Yes. Sometimes when you touch me, I cannot decide how to feel about the contact. Part of me is starved for your life years, part of me is repulsed by your touch and part of me somewhat yearns for it…" He shifted again, one of his hands lifting to run against her fringe, jostling the unruly, morning-raggled wisps. "And my indecision is so uncharacteristic of me that I sometimes find myself laughing."

Cassidy found herself laughing at this point, pushing herself up upon her elbows and freeing herself from the Archangel's grasp. She rolled to the side, sitting up and opening her eyes for the first time. The bare lights of morning were faint- mainly tinted by the yellowish glare cast by the street lamps. Late Winter had brought dark dawns as its herald.
Despite this, she felt her eyes strain for a moment, adjusting to the shadows of the room around her.

She rifled her hands through her hair, pulling a face when she realised that it could probably use a long overdue wash and that a fresh breakout was ready to make an appearance across her hairline.

"Are you ticklish, Cassidy? You are laughing."

"No, no…well, I am a little, I'll admit but that's not why I'm laughing…"

"Why are you laughing?"

"You."

"You are mocking me?"

"Not at all. You just say some strange things sometime and you do it in this voice as though what you're saying is completely normal."

"In what other manner should I speak these "strange things?" Human, it is often you who speaks in complete nonsense…"

Cassidy glanced at the Archangel over her shoulder, looking at him for the first time.
The living statue had managed to adjust his gargantuan body so that he was now nestled against the sheets of her bed- still managing to look both magnificently regal and intimidatingly heathen even in ungainly surroundings.

She shrugged, turning her back to him once more. "Maybe I do. You'll just have to deal with that, won't you?"

The human woman made an attempt to stand but stumbled backwards slightly, groaning in pain. Her mid-section ached from her sternum to her navel, forcing her to double over a little.

"Bollocks," she grunted, massaging her stomach where it protruded slightly over the waistband of her pyjamas. "Son of a two horned-…"

"You are hurt. Do you require my assistance?"

"No, no, no, no," Cassidy murmured, waving him off. "It's nothing serious. Just whatever way I slept…"
And the events of the night before, more than likely.
As her mind slowly began to awaken once more, her attack from the previous night began to trickle back into memory once more. Not wishing to speak about it or to actively recall it at all, Cassidy continued speaking.

"…I'll throw a bit of deep heat on it and I'll be fine."

"Should you not see a human medic?"

"I think I've spoken to and seen enough bloody "human medics" in the last month to last me a lifetime." She stood up, adjusting her pyjama bottoms and shivering slightly when the temperature finally hit her. "The sooner I start into today, the better. The quicker I get moving, the quicker I'll get better."

"And where precisely are you moving to?"

Cassidy jumped slightly, not having even heard the Angel move from the bed but realising that he was standing right behind her. She turned to face him, tilting her head slightly.

"Well, I've got a report on Dickens to finish, I'll have to visit my mother's grave and then you and I are going to have to deal with the issue of your troublesome family, aren't we?"

"You still wish to confront my tribe?"

"A promise is a promise. Besides, you helped me out with my dad. I may as well repay the favour, no?"

"How precisely do you propose that we go about the demise of my father? Seeing as you have clearly opted to take the lead in this campaign," Michael chided, his tone rapidly flitting between bemused, sceptical and (surprisingly) anxious.
Truth be told, Cassidy was starting to ask herself that question for the first time.

"Well firstly," she said, gathering back her hair into a topknot and securing it with a stray elastic from her pyjama pocket. "Once I've showered, you and I are going to sit down and you're going to make a list with me…"

"A list?"

"Yep. A list. You're going to help me list out all the different ways that you can kill a Weeping Angel…"

The last thing that Clara could remember was Abbie acting strangely and some bizarre ringing sound before everything became blurry.
Like a watercolour painting that she had seen in a museum once.
She couldn't remember if she had taken the Maitland kids to see it before or if she'd maybe seen it with her gran.
Either way, it felt as if her own body had turned to watercolour paint, hazily dripping and blending in with the rest of her surroundings, melding and mixing until she was no longer a separate being to all those around her.

She could very faintly recall the feeling of being thrown like a child's ragdoll across the TARDIS console as the mighty, time-scaling vessel seemed to warp- akin to the vortex that it usually traversed so easily- flipping on to its side.
Everything after that was a mismatched patchwork of surreal confusion and sudden pain.

The TARDIS was suddenly in silence for a moment, completely unstirring.
Clara blindly scrabbled in the dark to find the dashboard, seeking to lever herself into a standing position. Her head began to throb in sporadic bursts at her temples but she could not ascertain whether it was from the unceremonious bump that her head had just taken or from pure anxiety.
She felt nothing but raw, unbridled fear as her eyes desperately tried to pick out the outlines of the figures around her.

"Doctor?" she called out, wincing as her legs slowly steadied themselves. "Abbie? Are you-?"
She flinched as an arm shot out to grab her by the wrist, only feeling slight relief as the light of a kinaesthetic torch illuminated the Doctor's face.
Her sense of relief dropped dramatically by the second at the sight of his expression, shadowed with dread, eyes wide, bright and staring.

"Don't move," he warned her, his voice quavering slightly as his shaking fingers fumbled to pass her a torch of her own. "Don't move…and keep your eyes open…" He spoke in gruff, hushed tones that didn't suit the youthful countenance of his face but effectively marked his fears all too clearly.
"Now," he whispered, beckoning for her to crouch down behind the TARDIS console as though hiding from something. "Where…is…Abbie?"

He shone the torch around the TARDIS' main deck, various implements catching the glowing beam and casting their own glare in return, as if sending back some kind of signal.

"Doc-!"
The Doctor silenced his companion, clapping a hand on to her shoulder and signalling her with a finger to his lips as he continued to scan the darkened ship around them.
Clara tried her best to ignore the manner in which he shivered as she joined him in his searching.

They both froze at the sound of pattering footsteps at their back, followed by the high pitched giggle of a child. The two whipped around attempting to follow the noise with their torches- only to find nothing there but an empty space.

The sound was suddenly at their fronts.
And then at their backs again.
Each time, their torchlights followed the sound and each time, there was no one there.

The Doctor lowered his lips to Clara's ear. "There something in here with us. Something other than Abbie. No sudden movements. Nothing. We have to be clever here. I'm going to try to reactivate the TARDIS' interface networks…"

Now it was Clara's turn to grab the Doctor's wrist.
"If there's something in here with us other than Abbie, how do we know that starting up the TARDIS again won't just rile it up? If it somehow managed to switch the TARDIS off, it probably wanted it that way. How do we know that we're not just making it worse by undoing what it did?"

"We don't have that many options right now," the Doctor told her, pressing his torch into her free hand. "Just keep the beams out. Whatever it is. It's reacting to us. We need to keep it busy…and we need to find out where Abbie is…"

Clara reluctantly nodded, swallowing and giving both torches a few more clicks for good measure before hesitantly returning them to shining upon the TARDIS walls.
The giggling got louder and the footsteps became faster.
Clara inhaled loudly through her nose, her grip tightening around the torches; there were times when the footsteps and giggling seemed to come from separate parts of the ship.

One a disembodied voice and the other, a voiceless body.

"Come on, come on," Clara told herself, mentally strengthening her own resolve as the Doctor continued to tinker with the various knobs and levers at her back. "Keep it together. You've got to keep it together. Come on, find Abbie…you're good at finding things…you found your favourite pencil, your schoolbag, your gran and your mojo…come on…find Abbie…go to a quiet place…"
Briefly going against every fibre of her being, Clara shut her eyes tight and tried to block out all sound, listening only to her own shallow breathing, her own thudding heartbeat.

"Come on, think. You know children. You know children better than most people and certainly a bit better than space-boy here," she assured herself mentally. "Children know how to hide from monsters…they practice for it…they train for it by playing hide and seek…and every child knows where the best places to hide are…come on, what did Artie say? The best place to hide is under the bed…" She exhaled, her brow furrowing as she opened her eyes slowly. "And when there's no bed to hide under…every room has a door…and behind the door is a classic…"

Clara pivoted on the spot where she crouched down, lifting the torch and casting it over the TARDIS' doorway.
"D-Doctor," she stammered breathily, grabbing the Time Lord by the arm and forcing him to follow her stare.

There stood Abbie, her back firmly pressed against the door, standing bolt upright.
Her eyes were wide and glassy- like that of a porcelain doll's- and her teeth her bared in a wide, almost maniacal smile.

Clara stood up slowly, her legs starting to quiver again as the Doctor put his sonic screwdriver aside and mirrored her.

"Abbie, love? Are you ok?"

"Alright, Abbie…I need you to be very, very brave and very, very careful right now…just start walking-…"

"HA! HA! You found me!" the little girl suddenly exclaimed, shrieking aloud and pointing at the two adults "You found me! You found me! Now we have to play again!"

She turned around and started fumbling with the TARDIS door handle, intent on pulling it open.

"No!" the Doctor pleaded with her, sharpishly making a bolt for the other side of the main deck. "No! You can't, Abbie! Don't open the door!"

But before he could reach the little girl, she had already darted out and around the door, into whatever lay outside.
The Doctor froze in his tracks, staring into mid-air for a moment before he turned on heel and ran back to the console. The vessel slowly began to whirr to life beneath his fingertips.

"We have to go after her!" Clara all but shouted, starting to run towards the door but stumbling over some contorted metal on the ground. She looked downward to inspect what had caused her to lose her footing, only to find the remaining remnants of the Doctor's "timey-wimey detector." It looked as if something had torn it to shreds.

"If there's still an Abbie to go after…" the Doctor murmured faintly, looking rather like a lost child as his chin fell to his chest, his eyes downward and unfocused.

A shiver ran from the nape of Clara's neck to the base of her spine- spreading coldness throughout her body as it went, like morning frost.
The last time she had seen that machine, it was in the little girl's arms.

The TARDIS had begun to regain activity and the Doctor did not waste any time in checking the main screen for answers as to what had just happened.
"Thankfully…we've landed. She didn't step out into any kind of abscess or dormant vortex…"

"Something landed the TARDIS?"

"Something forced us to land."

"Where are we?"

"Earth…we're still on earth…"

The Doctor began to walk over to the door, rolling up his sleeve as he walked and Clara followed him, thrusting the torch back into his hand.

"Ok, better question. When are we?"

"Can't say. Can't say at all. Something's throwing off the TARDIS' ability to read dimensional time signatures. Either way, it all bares in complete irrelevance to the fact that there's a little girl out there who needs our immediate help…"

"Agreed. Now what did the Lady in Blue say about where we're currently parked?"

"It's cold outside. Very cold. Almost too cold to be above ground…"

"So we're somewhere subterranean? Like some kind of catacombs? Tunnels? Subway?"

The Doctor shook his head. "Perhaps. Perhaps to all of the above. Whatever it is out there and wherever we are, the landscape is extensive and uneven so we'll need to act quickly…"

Clara nodded but then froze, something dawning on her for the first time. "What about that thing that was just in here a few minutes ago? That thing besides Abbie?"

"Gone. The TARDIS couldn't detect anything when it came back online…"

"…do you think it was an Angel?"

"It seems the likely answer…though considering the potential time energy contained in this area alone, I can only imagine that a Weeping Angel would be somewhat reluctant to exit the TARDIS…"

Clara looked up at the Doctor, voicing the question that suddenly plagued his mind. "…so why did it leave?"

"The Angels are hunters. The only reason they'd abandon prey is if they found something better…it's not hunting the TARDIS, it's after something else…"

The Doctor opened the door a fraction and peered outside.
The terrain outside the TARDIS was rocky and uneven, revealed by his torch and betrayed by a stretch of naturally formed bedrock.
The torchlight only managed to unveil a single wall of rock; nothing but complete blackness stretched beyond.
The Doctor's expression became stony.

"I know you want to help Abbie but, Clara, I'd like you to stay in the TARDIS."

"I'm coming with you."

"No-…"

"Doctor, I don't care if you think you're protecting me by having me hold down this fort; I'm not staying here. I'm going to help you find Abbie. We've gone into the unknown before and I've been fine…"

"This is not unknown. I know exactly what will happen if you leave the TARDIS and trust me when I say that it is not good. Not good at all." The Doctor placed his hand on Clara's shoulder and she could feel that he was shaking. "I'm not asking you to stay in hopes that you'll be protected. I'm begging you to stay so that you can protect the TARDIS." He reached into his pocket and after a few seconds of rummaging, pulled forth what looked like an ordinary CD sleeve with a single disc inside. "If things get bad and I mean if anything starts to look like it's taking a turn for the worse, put this into the slot beside the yellowy clicky thing."

Clara examined the sleeve, trying to restrain her own nerves in lieu of the Doctor's apparent anxiety. "What'll it do?" she asked, becoming increasingly aware of the fact that there were faint rumblings coming from behind the door that they stood beside.

"It'll get you out of here. Both of you. You and the TARDIS."

"And what?" Clara responded, her breathing starting to pick up. "And what? I leave you to die? Leave Abbie to die?"

"Clara, if the Angels get their hands on the TARDIS, we are all going to die. Not just you and I. Not just Abbie. Everyone. Everything. All of it. All of life. All of existence. In a hearbeat…" The Doctor swallowed back, running his hands through his hair. "In the blink of an eye…"

Clara stared at the Time Lord for a moment before nodding slowly, placing the sleeve into her pocket. "Alright…I'll stay…but you have to promise me…" Her voice started to quiver. "You have to promise me that if anything goes bad for you that you'll do your absolute best to get yourself and Abbie back here. You can do that, yeah?"

The Doctor said nothing for a moment, only smiling shakily and dropping his hand from his companion's shoulder. "Thank you, you clever woman. Thank you."
He kissed his fingertips and tapped the doorframe of the TARDIS and Clara could not tell whether he was speaking to her or the mighty, blue box herself when he murmured aloud: "Take good care of her, alright?"

With that, he slipped out of the door and into the dark.

The first thing the Time Lord realised was that it was cold to the extent that it was hard- definitely labour inducing- to breathe normally, even with a bi-vascular system. The air was heavy with dampness too.
Guided by the light of his torch, he made his way through the blackness, studying his surroundings carefully. All he could see were the walls that seemed to stretch endlessly into the dark ahead of him and the ceiling that sloped only centimetres above his head.

He moved as swiftly as he could manage- at the risk of being caught- sacrificing stealth for speed. The creatures that most likely shared the dark with him were undoubtedly already aware of his presence. Every few steps, he pivoted on the spot, checking over his shoulder.
He became acutely aware of a faint rumbling in the distance but was quietly becoming more and more aware of a much more immediate noise.
The whistling noise began as a quiet whine but it soon mounted in volume until the Doctor was capable of identifying it as the faint sound of a child crying.

He happened upon Abbie, crouched in a corner, her hands covering her eyes as she mewled.

"No, no…"

"Abbie?"
The Doctor crouched down, calling to the small girl and offering the tiny, shuddering figure his hand. Trepidation, rather than tentativeness, lined his every movement as Abigail Drake slowly lowered her hands from her face.

"I didn't want to do it but she made me…Muh…Muh…Michael asked me and I was afraid to say no so I did it but…but…sh-she…she made me do it…"

The Doctor didn't bother with asking her "who did it?" or "what did she make you do?" or any other flimsy comfort questions that he already knew the answers to.

Sometimes he truly hated being clever.

"Abbie, we have to go now," he bade her, extending his hand further and further, almost nudging her until she accepted his grasp. "It's…it's…probably…going to be fine. Clara's waiting for us with the TARDIS. We'll be back home soon."

"I'm sorry," Abigail choked out, tugging on the Doctor's sleeve. "I'm so, so sorry…"

He straightened up, rashly checking the immediate area with his torch before starting to coerce the little girl into following. "It's alright. I don't know what you think you did wrong but Clara and I, we forgi-…"

Suddenly Abbie's fingers tightened around the Doctor's, vice-like and unwavering and the little girl's head slowly dropped forward. Her mouth slowly pulled- as if spread by an invisible clamp- from a limp, anxious frown to the wide, maniacal smile that she had worn in the TARDIS.

"What's the matter, Doctor? Don't you want to play with my friend anymore?"

The Doctor froze, both of his hearts almost seizing as he slowly dropped Abbie's hand, bending down to survey the child in the glare of his torch. "…Don't call Abbie your friend. She's not your friend. And you're not here. You've been controlling her all the while."

"Very good, Doctor. You're perceptive as always. You almost impress me."

"And as always, Angel, your methods are cruel. You most definitely disgust me."

The Angel's words sounded markedly odd in Abbie's voice.
"Well, Doctor, you of all beings should understand that certain means can be justified by their perceived ends. Are you not going to ask what my objective is?"

The Doctor gave a low sardonic snort of cold laughter.
"I'm not going to ask what your objective is because I know what your objective is and you're all fools if you think that you can achieve it."

"It's a tad presumptuous to assume that I'm working as part of a group…"

"Alone or in a group, it doesn't matter. You'll never get your hands on the TARDIS. One click of a button and it's gone so far into the time stream that you'll rot in the vortex before you catch up with it. So do yourself a kindness, let go of Abbie and leave. Your target couldn't be further from your reach."

Then the little girl started to laugh.
Hysterically.
Pitchily.
Madly.

"Oh, Doctor…my target could not be closer…"

The Doctor raised a slow eyebrow. "…is that so?"
He stared at the laughing child for a moment as realisation slowly dawned over him. "Oh…"

If there was anything that the Time Lord hated more than being clever, it was being thick.

"Old and thick," he murmured under his quivering breath. "The TARDIS was never your target…your target was me…"

Abbie's laughter suddenly subsided and the child's terrified expression returned.
She stared up at the Doctor with a horrified gaze, shaking her head. "Doctor…" Her voice dropped to a bare, quivering whisper. "She's standing right behind you."

"What's the matter, Doctor? Don't you want to play anymore?"

"…what is it then? What do you want? My energy? A trail back to Gallifrey?"

"Nothing quite so complicated, Doctor. Something a little more classic. Sweet and simple, revenge."

The rhythmic clicking of the keyboard was starting to unnerve her. It was a single hollow rattle in a vacuum of silence. She had contemplated leaving the television or radio on simply for the sake of the extra background noise but something deeply ingrained her since childhood about wastefulness stopped her from doing so.

"The cave system that your Tribe live in…are you sure it's in Sherwood Forest? The place where I found you. Are you sure that's it?"

"Unless they have moved in the last century, a fact which I highly doubt, then I am nothing less than certain."

"It's just that I've been searching the Geo Archive documentation of Sherwood from the Museum and I can't find any visible cave sites, above or below ground."

"Our home was there, whether your human devices detect it or not. I can assure you of that."

"Ugh…I'll try expanding the search to all of Nottingham."

Cassidy's fingers drummed across the keyboard once more and it wasn't long before the clicking started to perturb her once more. The maps were slowly all starting to look the same and her eyes strained as she tried to make out the differences between the faint line markings.

"How do Weeping Angels kiss?"

She couldn't see him with her back turned but at this stage, she could practically sense when his eyes were on her. The confused look in his eyes was merely a humorous guess.

"Presumably in the same manner that humans do. With our mouths."

Cassidy rolled her eyes, swallowing back another mouthful of coffee and shaking her head. "No, no, no. Not what I meant. Let me rephrase that…" She finished off the dregs of her coffee, pondering the fact that it didn't taste as unbearable as she thought it might. Michael had been insistent on adding the spoonfuls of instant coffee. The Archangel had developed a bizarre fascination with human food preparation for reasons that Cassidy could only guess at.

"What I mean is," the human woman went on, opening a new Google tab on her laptop. "Like, you mentioned that Angels don't do the whole mouth to mouth thing unless you're feeding or whatever but like, do you have any kind of equivalent to human kissing? Like what do you do to express…affection?"

The Archangel, Cassidy noticed, had moved from the vigil that he was keeping by the window. She had decided to skilfully ignore the harrowing levels of anxiety that ruled over their time together. Since the attack on Michael and with the knowledge that the Angels knew where she lived and had been keeping surveillance on them, paranoia had very gradually cast its shadow over them.

"They still believe me to be dead," their intended target had assured her when she had finally shaken the sleep out of her head and voiced her concern. "They shall leave well enough alone. Be certain of that."
Yet he had not stopped looking out of the windows.

"We express affection verbally," he told her. "We simply tell others when they are of use to us or are pleasing for companionship."
Cassidy turned around in her seat, looping one leg over the other and sitting back in the seat.
"Yeah…but how do you express like things that are more than just companionship and usefulness…like romantic feelings?"

"During mating we usually give gifts…tokens of appreciation…"

"And you call us lot materialistic. I beg your pardon for saying this but Angels don't seem to be particularly physical unless you're fighting or something."

"Physical contact is not considered to be particularly romantic among my people…" Michael's tone shifted slightly. "Why do you ask?"

Cassidy shrugged, polishing off her coffee and quickly replying. "Just trying to make conversation. I don't like when things get too quiet. I don't know…I like being reminded that there's something else alive in the house."
"Ironic that the something else is you, aside," Cassidy almost added, deciding that while she was no longer walking on eggshells around the Weeping Archangel, she still saw no good reason to antagonise him. After all, he had been nothing but docile and vigilant since his return.

Thankfully.

"Humans are so obsessed with contact. Contact of all kind. Are you not?"

The archaeologist exhaled, placing aside her notebook atop the ungainly stack of history books beside her laptop. "Yeah. I guess we are. For us, contact is comforting…"
Cassidy suddenly felt rather cold, her shoulders automatically hunching and her body starting to feel hollow and shivery. A numb realisation seemed to permeate her conscious mind and in sudden, sorrowful second, she craved an embrace from her mother.

A tristful, tear-brewing sigh had only barely escaped her lips when Cassidy heard Michael's voice at her back.
"Keep your eyes closed for a moment, please."

Cassidy raised her eyebrows and after a moment of self-coaxing, she slowly dropped her lids.
Her now-trained ears made out the bare skimming sound of the Archangel moving across the floor and she felt the arms of the chair creak as Michael leaned down to her level.
Her heart picked up speed, her mind flickering between wary and curious like a waning lightbulb. Little by little, she could sense his face nearing hers.

She flinched when she felt something cold at the back of her neck, having to force her eyes shut when she realised that it was his hand. His fingers lightly relaxed against the nape of her neck, applying the slightest amount of pressure to coax her head forward.
She complied, tilting her head downward until her forehead pressed gently against his. She could feel the bare coolness of his skin, the coarseness of where his hairline began. Her own breathing was loud and try as she might, she could not still it.
A warm stirring in her chest began as Michael's head gently pressed over hers, his naturally taller frame dwarfing her ever so slightly.

"Angels in mated pairs sometimes perform this gesture," he told her, his voice deep and clear but quiet, almost reverent. "It is a gesture of trust and commitment. I imagine it is the closest cross-culture comparison that I can make to human kissing…"

Cassidy tried to nod but found herself far too nervous to move her head even slightly. She swallowed a little against her breath.

"The gesture is incomplete, however," Michael went on, his breath gently lapping against her face.
"…oh?" Cassidy managed to say, her hands aimlessly fisting at the material of her pants in her lap.

"Yes. In order to complete the gesture, you must move your hand to the back of my neck too."
"I…I see."

The two sat in silence for a moment, motionless but not uncomfortable.
If anything, they rested against each other- silently content.
Until, that is, Michael asked Cassidy a question. It was one that he had asked her before but his tone was different this time.
It was not as intimidating.
Not intimidating at all, in fact.
But it still made her feel slightly uneasy.

"Are you afraid of me, Cassidy?"

She found herself answering in the same manner that she had answered before.
Not the same words but they carried the same sentiment.

"I'm not sure…in some ways, yes. In some ways, no."

Michael's fingers stroked the nape of her neck as he asked her a new question.
This question set a coldness in the base of Cassidy's stomach, contrasting with the intense warmth stoked in her chest.

"Do you forgive me, Cassidy? Now that things are different, do you forgive me?"

She exhaled hesitantly, giving herself a moment to adjust to the feeling of her head pressing against his- both braced and supported.
Taking his weight as he took hers.

Cassidy shook her head, her hands clasped in her laps, her eyelids tightening. "I can't forgive you. I can't ever forgive you." Her resolve was strengthened as ever, even if her body was gradually fall into serenity. "And nothing has changed. Nothing. We've chosen to work together because it suits us both. That's it. That's all.

"Is that…truly what you believe?"

Both of their voices had fallen to a whisper.

"That is what I choose to believe."

"And you do not suppose you'll ever forgive me?" His tone was matter-of-factly but Cassidy could just barely detect a touch of rue. As he spoke, his head very delicately moved against hers, as though stroking her hairline.

She had never heard defeat in the Weeping Archangel's voice before and partly wishing to remind herself that she was in full contact with another living, breathing being, she reached forward until she touched his chest.
Her hand found the familiar warm patch and she spread her fingers across it, covering it wholly. "…no. I don't suppose I ever will." She found herself smiling with a painful bemusement. "Not even for a forest of roses."

No sooner had the words left Cassidy's mouth, a rush of cold air engulfed her. The chair disappeared from beneath her and her body dropped to the ground.
The human woman grunted as a familiar queasiness began to rise from her stomach and she frowned deeply as her eyes opened to see a blackened, night sky. The ground beneath her hands was strewn with partially, withered leaves and her fall had been cushioned by what she supposed to be dried earth.
There was not much of a wind but the air was still nothing less than algid.

She was most definitely not in her living room anymore.
Rage burned at her temples as she came to the gradual realisation of what had just happened to her.

"Did you just-?! Did you-?! Gah!" Cassidy desperately tried to pull herself into a standing position, willing her shaking legs to straighten as her eyes adjusted to the darkness around her. "Did you actually just transport me?! How dare you?! After everything I've done for you!? This had better not be the past! It was not night-time in London so where the hell have you taken me?! You bloody, scheming…" Cassidy's voice trailed off as she looked around for the first time, realising that she was surrounded by trees. "Where am I?"

"My mother used to take me here when I was young. I frequented this place a few times since then."

"But where…?" Cassidy didn't finish the question.
She found it unnecessary to do so for it was not long before her eyes began to adjust to the scenery around her.

The graceful boughs of trees seemed to reach upwards against the night sky. The pitch black sky was dotted with what seemed like radiant, silvery clouds of ardent, sparkling stars. Hazy purple clouds veiled the flocks of diamond that seemed to float just inches above the heaven-bound branches.
The pearly grey bark of the trees gleamed like polished stone beneath the light from above, their barren limbs making them resemble the most exquisite of artwork.

Amongst the interweaving cirque of shrubbery, Cassidy could make out small sprays of dotted crimson. The little claret blossoms seemed to travel up and along the branches of the mighty trunks of the trees and all across the ground.

She slowly walked over to further inspect the eccentrically beauteous sight and realised that the dottings of red were roses.
Hundreds and hundreds of wild, briar roses interweaving around the trees and forging their sanctuary amongst the carpet of plants that surrounded the clearing.

The petals of the roses were each lined with dew drops, the little beads of moisture turned to incandescent diamonds by the light of the stars above.

"It's…it's amazing," she eventually proclaimed in hushed tones, turning around to face the living statue at her back. "It's absolutely amazing…." She looked up at the sky, realising suddenly that there was not a trace of light pollution to marr its nightly glow. "Are we still in London? Or…in England, at all?"

"We are not far from your home land but I do not know the name of this place. All I know is that once it was a thriving green forest but that it died many years ago due to lack of water in the ground and impurities in the air. However, a little less than a decade ago from this minute, rose plants broke the soil and stimulated life once again. My mother would take me here to illustrate the question of hope." At Cassidy's eventual blink, the Archangel's eyes were on the sky. "The notion that even after years of bleak nothingness, there is always the chance of something unexpected appearing to restore order…"

"And who'd have thought that something would be a humble little rose bush?" Cassidy smiled, her curiosity getting the better of her as she examined one of the blooms, latticed on a nearby tree-trunk.

"Beautiful and strong. Such is the nature of roses. Do you recall me telling you that this fact is how they obtained their name?"

Cassidy nodded quietly, running her fingers over the petals and letting the pearlescent dew-drops falling down over her knuckles in thin, glistening estuaries almost illuminating the whitish, purple-pricked skin.
"This is where you got the roses from…isn't it?"

"Yes. When I heard you speaking of them, I found myself imagining this place."

The young woman moved her hand to the base of vine and delicately snapped the stem of the rose, lifting away the head. She took the scarlet petals into her hand, cupping the flower for a moment. Memories of both joy and anxiety flitted to the forefront of her mind.
It was slightly sickening to consider that something that had once been such a simplistic symbol of romance and remembrance had become a symbol of something much deeper.
Something much more complicated.

When she looked up once more, Michael was standing at her front.
"Do you know where the roses came from, Michael? They're not natural to here."
"No…my mother always told me that it was some kind of mystery."

"You're a mystery," Cassidy murmured, slipping the rosehead into her pocket and looking up at him. "And this…this is a forest of roses."

"Yes. It is. I had meant to take you here sometime sooner but there never seemed to be a good time."

"Good time would be a stretch of a definition to describe our time together, alright…"

She could feel the bitterness rising in the back of her throat again, souring the sense of wonder that had been cast over her. She quelled it, trying to drain it from her mind. She was sick of feeling contempt. Not because she felt wrong for feeling it but because it took effort to do so.

"You know I can't forgive you," she told him, folding her arms. "Ever."
"I am aware," he responded, his vision now directed towards her once again.

"Then why would you even bother wasting the energy to take me here now?" she petitioned him. "Especially considering that it's not as though you and I have time to spare."

"Because I wish not to dwell upon impending perils," Michael replied firmly. "Truthfully, it was my hope that here we could both be offered some… release from our current situation."

"How? How would that happen, exactly?"
Cassidy took a wary step backwards.

"It was my hope that you would see this place and take joy because of your love of roses."

"And how was that going to give you any kind of…release?"

"I supposed that you would smile."

Cassidy stared at him for a moment before an uncontrollable quivering entered her jaw, her lower lip curled and she started to laugh. The strength of the laughter bent her back and set her knees trembling.

"Are you mocking me, human?"

She sucked in air between her teeth, trying to settle herself. "No, no, no…it's just…you're absolutely bizarre, you know? I mean, it's absolutely balmy! You're like this homicidal sociopath and then you'd do and say all these daft things just to get me to smile!"
A cold droplet landed upon Cassidy's forearm but she ignored it.

"After you spent literal weeks making me miserable! And the worst part is that I'm going along with it!" Cassidy laughed again, now forced to lean against a nearby tree to keep herself standing. Another smattering of droplets joined their fallen brother, starting to trickle down from the lucent heavens.

"You're a complete and utter mystery. A complete and utter bizarre mystery! And…I should be terrified of you right now! But I'm not! I'm just standing here, God knows where, laughing like a fool!"
It was now most definitely starting to rain, a soft hiss starting to echo throughout the forest as the droplets increased in their speed and numbers, throwing themselves to earth with no abandon.

"…if you do not mind me saying, Cassidy, at this point in time…it is your behaviour that could be labelled as somewhat…bizarre…"

Cassidy was about to reply when a sudden, brilliant flash lit up the entire forest, followed by a monstrous rumbling from the sky. Overcome by shock, she leapt forward into Michael's arms, automatically seeking refuge from what she bashfully realised was nothing more than a clap of thunder and lightning.

Michael sounded almost amused when he spoke to her next, having taken her temporary blindness as an opportunity to raise his wings as a shelter. "Does nature frighten you?"

In hindsight it would unsettle her to realise that she was still smiling, examining her own trembling fingertips for a moment before looking up at the living statue. "Not as much as human nature is frightening me right now…"

Cassidy stared at him for a moment, all too aware of the mounting vehemence within her. She needed to do something drastic. Something impassioned.
Something to quell the painful craving in her chest.

"Are you alright?"

"…no."

With the next roll of thunder, her lips were on his, acting on the inexplicable giddiness that had taken her over. She kissed him aggressively, her hands seeking purchase in his hair, dragging him down to her level as the rain fell around them.
Hysteria over came her as her arms reached around his neck, keeping him bent over.
For once, she was more aware of her own body than she was of his. She felt how her warm her skin was in contrast to the falling rain. She felt every single drop, each traversing her skin, bending and winding with each movement of her body.
She felt as though she was warping the will of the elements with her own emotions.

Her body perceived another flash of lightning and amidst the ensuing cannonade of thunder, she was certain that she heard a similar reverberation emitting from Michael's lower throat. His hands gripped at her waist, at her hips, pulling her against him, the barest trace of his talons against her skin.

It was the Archangel who pulled away from her, pulling his head back from hers and freezing to stone at the return of the human woman's vision. Cassidy couldn't help but feel a glimmer of pride at the slightly ragged, slightly shocked tone that seemed to have ruffled Michael's ordinarily authoritative tenue.

"Why did you do that?"
"...because I could. Why did you let me do it?"
"Because I wanted to let you."

The human woman pressed her lips together, in the process of coming down from her impromptu high. She could feel a stream of water starting to drip from the tip of her ponytail down her back.

"We should go back now…shouldn't we?"
"I believe so."
"First of all, there are two things that I want to do…"

Only minutes later, the two had returned to the London of Cassidy's time and the human woman had just placed a pristine, hand-tied bouquet of wild roses upon her mother's grave.
She stepped back for a moment, lowering her head with a sigh of slight contentment.
The sadness wasn't as painful as before. It was ever-present but not quite as jarring.

The late winter wind was slightly stinging but Cassidy refused to shiver.
To confess that she felt cold would be to admit to Michael that "going home to replace her wet articles of clothing first" was a good idea.
Cassidy had been more concerned about making it back to the graveyard before the gates closed, (completely forgetting the evident advantages of time travel).

She lowered her head in reverence for a moment, silently mouthing a prayer for her mother.
Usually, speaking aloud in front of any kind of crowd made her nervous and as such she avoided it whenever she could. Even though the graveyard was relatively empty, she was still very aware of the Archangel who stood only a foot behind her.
Disguised as a rather elegant though conspicuous grave marker, the Archangel stood. The cemetery was actually one of the few places that she and Michael could stand together in public without evoking confusion or otherwise unwanted attention.

As long as he kept quiet, of course.

"Your legs are starting to shake. Your body temperature is quite obviously dropping. You must return home now to restore yourself."

Cassidy would have gritted her teeth if they hadn't been chattering. "Give me a bloody second or two…" She breathed upon her hands to bring some feeling into her fingers once more before turning to face Michael once more. "I have to go pick up a few mass cards from the vicar here, alright? I forgot to pick one or two of them up after the funeral. I'll be back in a few…" She set off down the path, pausing only to look over her shoulder and add: "And if you're going to be following me, can you at least wait outside the church? Vicar Parsons is pushing eighty. The last thing he needs is a sudden anxiety attack…"

Cassidy had always found the inside of church eerie when empty.
The only light sources were the flickering flames of the candles outside the sacristy and the dim, scarlet light cast by the sanctuary lamp. Each of her footfalls echoed as she made her way up the centre aisle.
"Reverend?" she called out, nearing the altar. "Reverend?"

Her eyes wandered around her immediate surroundings, settling upon the mosaic upon the pulpit.
It depicted a cluster of grinning cherubs.

She swallowed, giddily shoving her hands into her pockets and turning on the spot to the heavy, wooden door of the sacristy. "Reverend? Are you there?"

She could definitely hear someone moving around in there.
The poor man was probably partially deaf, she decided, quickly darting up the steps beside the altar and knocking on the door.

Receiving no response, she gathered her nerves and, (silently praying that she wasn't walking in on the old man getting into or out of his vestments), pushed the door open.

She looked around, confused to note that the small chamber appeared to be empty.
Cassidy slowly made her way inside, looking around and realising that the only eyes to meet hers were those of a small cluster of saintly figurines.

"Reverend?"
She noticed a second door in the room, remembering it to be the one that led the downstairs mausoleum. Is that where he had gone?
Her mild frustration was doused by intense confusion when she realised that the door was still locked. The presence of a key indicated that it had been locked from the outside.

Maybe he had gone home early?
Cassidy shook her head, in the process of checking the time on her phone when suddenly the door of the sacristy slammed shut behind her.

She turned and immediately dropped her phone.
She was aware of her body once more- only this time, she had never felt less in control of it in her entire life.

Standing before her was a Weeping Angel.
Not Michael.

A female Weeping Angel.
Dwarfing her in height, claws outstretched and a defiant smirk laden with revealed fangs.

She noticed that the Angel's wings appeared to be unnaturally positioned, a kind of link-chain wrapped around them and for this reason, this only inspired further terror in the human woman.

Resolutely forcing her eyelids apart, Cassidy stepped backwards until her back met the mausoleum door.
She tried to speak- to scream- but her lips merely twitched in a noiseless whisper.

"So we meet again, Cassidy Albright," the Angel said in a voice that the human found all too familiar.

It was the Angel from Abigail's house.
It was Karida.

"I showed you mercy last time we spoke but now, my orders have changed slightly…"
An unnatural howl seemed to emanate from the Angel's predatory form, leaving Cassidy sick to her stomach. "…you have no idea how much I am going to enjoy what I am about to do to you…"

Thank you for reading! I hope you've enjoyed!

The next chapter will be up the day after tomorrow!