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The Angel of Fire

"So… how do we do this?" Ray looked uncertainly at the young woman in the middle of the flaming circle, the fallen demons forgotten in favour of the immediate problem. "Dump a bucket of water on her?"

"This is a trapped angel; we can't just wake her up and hope everything's in order," Constantine said, shaking his head in exasperation. "We don't do this properly, she's liable to just blow up because that body's not ready for her-"

"That 'body' is my sister-" Lexa began as she stared angrily at the exorcist.

"Which is what we need," Barry said, eyes widening in inspiration. "We can't wake up the angel; we have to get through to Linda."

"Linda?" Mick looked inquiringly at his former foe-turned-occasional ally. "The screwed-up Satanist-"

"That's my sister," Lexa cut the arsonist off with a cool glare. "She made mistakes, but she's not a Satanist."

"…Check," Mick said, rubbing his cheek where he had just been slapped, even as he looked at the young police officer with a new air of respect.

"Getting back to my point," Barry cut in as he looked around at the group, "from what Constantine's told us, we're all fairly sure that this angel… I'm not sure if 'possessed' is the right term here, but it's using Linda's body to act while it's on Earth, right?"

"Right," Sara nodded even as she looked questioningly at Barry. "So… what are you thinking?"

"I get that I'm not exactly the expert on all things supernatural here, but if it's using Linda's body, there has to be something of her personality left in there, right?"

"Well… like I said, there's precedent for angels on this level bonding to humans to get perspective," Constantine conceded, looking at Barry with a thoughtful smile.

"Right, so… if we can get through to Linda somehow, maybe we can help her… talk to the angel?" Barry shrugged. "I mean, I know it's not the same thing, but I helped a meta with a split personality and magnetic abilities get some control over her other self a couple of years back before her other side killed her abusive father; could we do something similar here?"

"Maybe…" Constantine nodded thoughtfully. "You might be onto something there, Allen; right now this angel's basically in a raw state… if we can get through the current chaos going on in there, maybe we can help Linda talk with it…"

"You mean… if we do something like that… Restitutionum thing you used to save me?" Sara looked at Constantine with a new sense of hope.

"Good call," Constantine nodded at Sara before he turned back to the flaming circle. "And with all this already going on, it's actually a bit easier to set up another one of those than it was back then…"

"Cliff notes, please?" Rory raised the hand with his heat-gun in it. "What the Hell is a… Restitutionum?"

"It's like a… reverse-exorcism," Sara explained, as Constantine began to scrawl a series of sigils around the flaming the circle. "A couple of years back, I went through a… spiritually traumatic experience… and Warlock helped a few people close to me bring me back to myself by drawing my soul back to my body."

"Reverse exorcism?" Lexa asked uncertainly.

"Instead of trying to banish something from Linda, we'll be projecting ourselves into her to help her find herself on a spiritual level. Don't ask me how it works, but-"

"We're ready," Constantine stood up and looked at the rest of the group. "Now then, I'm going to have to stay out here to keep the link steady, but I can send three of you in there to try and get Linda and her new co-pilot to work something out that'll let them both cool down…"

"I'll do it," Sara, Barry, Lexa and Ray said at once. After a brief moment as the four of them exchanged glances with each other, Ray shrugged and moved over to take up a semi-defensive stand alongside Rory.

"Guess we're on guard duty if anyone else shows up?" the former CEO glanced over at Constantine.

"Can't hurt; this kinda thing could get choppy," the exorcist nodded before looking back at the three. "Just remember; I can't let you out of this until you've found straightened things out in there, or there's no way of knowing what we'll drag out."

"What we could… drag out?" Sara repeated in confusion.

"At this point that angel's a burning mass of power who's still struggling to work out if it even wants to take control of Linda; I stick you all in there, you'll be exposed to that same raw power," Constantine explained grimly. "You're safe enough if you can wake that winged sucker up on your own so she chooses to let you out, but if you try and duck out without straightening things out in there, you could come out with fragments of that power that you can't handle and then… you don't want to know."

"Uh… I get that this is probably a stupid question, but is this anything like how in Supernatural angels would basically make humans blow up if they tried to inhabit someone as a vessel who wasn't suited for the role?" Sara asked.

"Actually… from what I've heard about that show, that's probably a good analogy," Constantine nodded at his team's leader before looking over at Barry and Lexa. "So, you up for it?"

"She's my sister," Lexa said firmly.

"We're here," Barry shrugged with a brief smile. "Let's go."

"Right then," Constantine said, directing Sara, Lexa and Barry to take up position around the flaming circle before he held out his hands and began to chant. "Pelako ameso yobe eleggua, imbone ukuchila panshita. De domino vestro, aliquis.Et stabit de domino vestro.Audite vocem meam.Ancor, anchor, candones helosi, et vos eleutis phugori...De cruinne-ce agus akasha, seall me do solas!"

There was a brilliant burst of white light, and then it seemed to Barry as though everything around him except for Sara and Lexa had vanished-

-Linda was accepting an award on stage-

-A bloodstained rug was being carried out of a house as Linda watched in horror-

-Linda was talking with Buzz under a tree as a bald man with a dark beard made a speech on a podium further down the field-

-Linda was being led into a house that looked like something out of a BDSM party-

-Linda was arguing with her parents about something; something was heard about them wishing she'd never been born-

-Linda was watching as a woman bled out in front of her, Buzz standing to the side with the bloody knife in his hands-

-Buzz basically gutted a familiar bearded man as Linda watched with a satisfied grin-

Once the final burst of white light faded from his retinas, Barry wasn't entire surprised to find himself standing in what looked like the warehouse they'd initially traced Linda to, albeit with holes in the walls and shattered boxes around it that gave the impression that there'd been some kind of explosion here. Glancing over he saw that Sara and Lexa were standing alongside him, Sara still in her White Canary outfit while Lexa's police uniform now included a bulletproof vest and additional weapons.

"Is this… where it happened?" Lexa asked, her eyes drawn to the familiar circular design scrawled onto the ground.

"Probably," Barry conceded. "I mean, I won't pretend to know how Linda ended up in that cave, but from what we worked out earlier, this is where she was-"

He was interrupted mid-explanation when there was a sudden flash of what he could only describe as 'dark light', which shifted to reveal that the warehouse was now 'occupied' by a small group wearing long dark robes that Barry could only think of as a cult, a symbol on their heads in the form of a circle with a triangle inside it and a dot in the centre. Barry's attention was briefly drawn to the rift in the air, the energy around it resembling a breach but in a clearly triangular shape rather than the relatively rough nature of the breach, before he saw the brunette who was the only person in this place in normal clothes, screaming in the centre of the robed figures.

"Linda!" Lexa yelled, as she saw a knife slammed into her sister's back, before a golden light emerged from the portal behind her and entered the young woman's body, throwing her off the blade and to the ground.

"You think that was-?" Barry began as the robed figures began to move away.

"The moment the angel entered her?" Sara finished, looking around as everyone else in the warehouse suddenly froze. "Yeah, I think so… Lexa, wait-!"

When Lexa's fingers touched the fallen form of her sister, there was a sudden golden flare from the fallen girl-

-A prison of flesh and blood and bone-

-Suffocating in a limited universe of five senses-

-Sound so basic, vision only able to see a fragment of what they were used to-

-All the bacteria and disease each human carried around with them-

-Why do they endure this pain?-

"GET OUT!" a voice screamed from all around them, as the three found themselves back in the warehouse, now empty apart from the wreckage Barry and the others had found in their first visit.

"No!" Barry yelled, grabbing Lexa and Sara's arms as he stared in the direction of the voice; he didn't know if he could actually do anything in this situation, but as the only metahuman present he felt that he was at least better equipped to cope with what he was facing. "We're here to help-"

"Help?" the voice yelled, sounding like it was on the verge of laughing at the idea. "Nobody can help; I've damned myself! All this pain and suffering and frustration and despair and rage… how can you cope like this? Why should humans have to-?"

"Because it's not all about that!" Lexa protested, looking desperately around herself as though seeking someone to talk to. "I get that it must seem like we're all about hurting each other, but we're… there's more to us than pain!"

"When I was drawn to this world because a few pitiful demons convinced a group of humans that sacrificing one of your own would give them power?" the voice- the angel, Barry realised with apprehensive awe- said, rage and contempt in her voice. "I was just trying to help, and now I've damned myself to this chaotic mess… trapped in a limited sack of flesh and fluid that has nothing but chaos and pain, even with such limited senses-"

"You just need time to get used to it-!"

"And why should I do that?" the angel yelled indignantly. "So many primitive urges and the constant pains of the flesh-"

"Like Lexa said, it's not always like that!" Barry protested. "I'm not saying that we're perfect-"

"'Perfect'?" the angel repeated mockingly. "When the man you consider a hero tortures others for his own ends? When his closest friend has betrayed him time and again? When the woman he loves has gone against his plans over and over? When the man you believed was your mentor was your greatest enemy and you yourself have been deceived and betrayed by-"

"Oh yeah, because everyone deserves to be judged by the times that they screwed up!" Barry cut the voice off, deciding not to question how the angel knew all that in favour of focusing on defending the human race. "I'm not saying that it's always easy, but the whole point of life is that things aren't just black and white! Oliver's a hero because he's learned to move beyond his some of the darker things he's had to do, he and Digg are brothers because they can forgive each other when they disagree, Felicity and Oliver work because they give each other a different perspective, and every time someone on my team's made a decision I didn't agree with…"

He shook his head in exasperation. "Look, I'm trying to appreciate that it's probably harder to see how we all make it work from your perspective, but the whole point of relationships is that we accept the flaws and take people as they are, not define them by one or the other!"

"If humanity must exist in such a state-!"

"They don't," Lexa said, now staring resolutely in what Barry hoped was the direction of this strange voice. "From what I've heard, the Flash has probably seen some of the best that humanity has to offer, but there are smaller acts of kindness to be found every day. Some local shop-owners trust people enough not to pay them immediately because they know the other will pay them later, a robber can give up his chance to escape to help his intended target after the old man had a heart attack, even some killers aren't so far gone that they'll just kill anyone…"

She shook her head and looked up with a smile. "I'm not going to say it's always straightforward to know who's who, but you can't just assume the worst of humanity because you feel like that's all there is."

"Lexa's right," Barry put in, hoping that the policewoman wouldn't mind him using her name this casually. "Life is hard, and there's always going to be moments where people basically fight even with their closest friends, but what's important is what we do in the end. Maybe the world isn't always fair, and maybe people do end up hurting each other more than they help… but that's why people like White Canary and I do what we do."

"What do you mean?" the angel's voice said, now sounding tentatively curious rather than outright hostile.

"It's like a show I used to watch said," Barry continued, hoping that this message still worked for something this relatively alien to humanity. "People like us try to act as though the world is the way it should be… because if we can live like that and help enough people, maybe someday it will be that way."

"Ba- the Flash is right," Sara said, stepping forward to stand beside him, looking upwards in what at least seemed to be the direction of the voice. "One of the best men we know failed to prevent the deaths of over five hundred people, but the only person who truly judged him for failing was himself. People may have used him as a symbol of how the disaster was allowed to happen, but everyone who knows him directly knows that he did everything he could with the facts at hand to prevent that death, and that is what we use to judge him."

"You… you truly believe this?" the angel's voice said, the previous tentative curiosity now sounding almost pleading, as though she genuinely wanted to be told that she was wrong.

"We do," Barry affirmed, briefly surprised to find himself taking Sara's hand as they looked up at the angel in solidarity. "The world is flawed, but there are people out there who want to make it better… and just because someone stumbles doesn't mean they're a failure."

Silence fell in the mental void as the trio waited patiently for a response, and then the angel seemed to chuckle.

"All that pain…" she said, an edge of grim amusement in her voice that Barry wasn't sure how to interpret. "But I can help it… I see how I can help it…"

Barry didn't have time to ask what the angel meant by that last comment before he, Sara and Lexa were forced to their knees, each clutching their heads; Barry felt like someone had opened up his skull to take a look at his brain, and he could only imagine the two women were feeling something similar…

There.

"What the-?" Lexa's voice broke into Barry's confused mind, prompting him to realise that he was back in the real world, sprawled on his back on the floor of the cave. Scrambling to his feet, Barry glanced around to confirm that Sara and Lexa were all right, but then turned around to find that Ray, Rory and Constantine were now fighting with a new wave of demons, this group putting Barry in mind of overgrown, misshapen insects rather than anything humanoid. He moved quickly to help Sara and Lexa to their feet, but before any of them could do more than assume a battle stance, a strange wave of blue energy burst from behind them to wash over the attacking demons. In a matter of moments, the assembled demons had either fallen down or outright vanished from the cave, leaving only a few staggering remnants who were swiftly taken down by Ray's photon blasts.

"Huh," Rory looked at the remaining fallen demons in surprise, before he turned back to look at the others and his eyes widened even further. Barry was about to ask what he was looking at when he turned around and found himself looking at something he definitely hadn't been expecting to see.

The suit was a more vivid shade of blue than he was familiar with, the skirt seemed to be a bit longer, and her cape looked like it was curled around over something, but for the most part, the woman that had previously been Linda Danvers definitely looked like Supergirl.

"I choose to see the best in them," the figure said solemnly, before she indicated her body with a slight smile at Barry and Sara. "And this represents what you think of when you picture the best of mankind."

"Uh… I thought Supergirl-" Ray began.

"Supergirl is the most human and compassionate being I've ever met; her origin doesn't change that," Barry said firmly, before he looked back at the apparent angel. "So… are you Linda, or… I'm sorry if this is blunt, but are you the angel?"

"I am both," the figure replied.

Looking over at Lexa as she stared shakily at the figure in blue, Barry hoped that the angel could give them a better answer to that once they got out of this cave.