Jesse felt the bullets go in, but not the floor come up. No, he wasn't dead before he hit the ground, he'd just been taken out before the pain started. Taken also meant his body could no longer fight to live. It forgot how to breathe and couldn't understand what it was looking at. A death like this was serene for the body, when it could have been traumatic for the spirit. The angel who took Jesse's soul felt a bit proud of himself for doing it at such the right moment. It was over for the meat suit, but he'd done a good job.

"Not bad at all." Said a man seemingly to himself, cocking a brow in admiration of his own work. Black suit. No tie. Big old grey wings on his back.

"Jesus!" Jesse gaped in awe of the sight of him, stumbling closer to where Mia and Dom hugged and sobbed on his mortal coil. Jesse's body was doing a good job of dying, spilling out all that blood. Jesse gasped at the wide wings, and also gaped down at his prone body on the concrete. "Do something! Do something!"

"Nothing to be done, Child," explained the angel in the suit. "But please mind your manners and not take Our Lord's name in vain in these last moments. That is a sin, you know; not one that counts against you right now, though. Come on. I've got a schedule to keep."

The guy looked no more willing to help than he did surprised by the events unfolding. He turned away from Jesse, passing by his Nissan and beckoned him to follow. Jesse was too flabbergasted to move. Standing there, under the glare of the sun in the panic of his family, he felt like only a coward would leave.

"Mother Jesus, you're an angel? Would you do something here?!"

Guy didn't turn back. He beckoned again over his shoulder.

"Come on, haven't got forever." The angel had an oddly silken voice that was probably millenniums years old, but it missed any humane mark of reason.

Jesse saw a light start to emanate from just in front of the angel. He was leaving. He was turning his back on all this that was so overwhelming, and Jesse knew he should follow. He heard Mia yelling, though. He looked back and Mia pleaded with Dom, and Dom looked to be growing a deep anger. Vengeance was something Jesse knew Dom did well. It was something that always hurt him the worst, though.

Jesse turned then to Brian, always looking at him and knowing he'd be reason incarnate. He wasn't disappointed. Brian grew a look like Dom's, but his was calculated. He looked off at the retreating motorcyclists who had done the drive-by with the guns that shot Jesse, and backpedaled to his vehicle. The guy who had become Jesse's friend was going to follow. He was going to go get those guys.

And Jesse would join.

He was fast. He'd always been fast. Fast runner, fast driver. Liked all that motion. Jesse rushed and dove into Brian's Supra with the top down, landing in the skinny back seat a second before he took off. Jesse crowded into the center, leaning right up alongside Brian. They were then in hot pursuit and immediately Jesse felt like he was going to be blown away, left behind. He grabbed forward for purchase, his arms finding Brian, finding him a solid thing to hold onto. Not like holding a real person, but whatever was within Brian was really what kept Jesse there with him. He held on.

"Get those assholes, Bri!" He demanded.

He didn't even care where that angel had gone. Into the light? Gone like he expected Jesse was just going to follow him?

Jesse was all over this race instead. He patted Brian's shoulders, spurring him along, and Brian drove like he didn't even notice. Adrenaline and a bumpy road roughed them up, but thanks to Brian the two motorcyclists never left their sights. Then Brian hit the NOS on a longer stretch of road and they really caught up. Boy but Brian could drive!

It was all happening so fast around him, the chase and then the bullets. It was all actually starting to be too much. He held on tighter and for dear life, feeling that something was really trying to pull him away from all this. He registered this was happening while he was dead, but it was all out of focus, like a high that was all too wild.

When Brian slammed on the brakes and took down Johnny, Jesse saw red fire come for him, and that was the moment he fully realized he really was seeing something only a dead guy could see.

"Oh god. Oh god - oh god - " Jesse held on so tightly to Brian that he was dragged out of the vehicle. Not what he wanted. He wanted Brian to stop and stay back. "Oh, come on, Bri! Don't go over there!"

Jesse stumbled along as fast as Brian ran, though. His eyes flicker over Tran in sweeping motions, disbelief and fear washing over his bravery as he witnessed red flames that consumed Johnny. Like ice cream licked off a stick, Johnny was swathed in it. And Jesse couldn't not see the dark shadow that swam within that red fire.

"Brian! Step back!" Jesse pleaded, but Brian moved right atop Johnny like he didn't see the flame, checking for a pulse.

Then Johnny broke free of his body and flailed, screamed. His burning flesh reached out for anything to hold onto and he grabbed hold of both Jesse and Brian.

"Let go! No!" Jesse yelled.

"Ahhhh!" Screamed Johnny, fighting, struggling against the flames. "Ahhhhh!"

He had them both. He was pulling on them both. Jesse held so fiercely to Brian and tried to pull him back the other way.

Brian's soul slipped. Slipped just as - in the quiet and pristine world visible to Brian's mortal eyes - Brian saw Dominic come over the ridge. Dom stayed in his vehicle looking down on him with Johnny on that quiet road under the pass. Brian stood.

Then Brian suddenly collapsed flat on his back right next to Johnny Tran.

Dom saw Brian go down. He wasn't expecting it. He nervously drove down the hill and parked on the side of the road, getting out and going over. Someone in a sedan was on a cell phone calling an ambulance. Dom walked past her, intent on the blonde on the pavement with the lax grip on a hot gun.

Dom crouched down and slowly reached out to touch the cop who chased down Johnny, splattered him all over the road just a few feet away.

Check if it was true what the cop now looked like.

It was.

A woman tapped her pen hard and fast on a black desk as she looked a file over. Typical HR moment. Brian had filled out so many reports and been pulled in for meetings like this so many times. Enough for a lifetime. She had her hair pulled back, framed glasses, glossy lips turned in a frown. Nothing he really cared to focus on.

Her eyes narrowed at some part of the paperwork and her pen came in to tick a box.

Whatever. Brian got comfortable.

His slouch was just a typical move, but it made someone he hadn't noticed next to him jump.

"What are you doing here?" Brian asked in wonder of Jesse. The guy was twitching up a storm, legs going just as fast as the woman's pen, arms holding his own body tightly.

"I fucked up. I fucked up." He groaned.

It was that typical panic that people get when they are caught committing a crime they knew was bad. Drunk driving. Hitting a bicyclist. Petty theft.

Brian spread his hand out over Jesse's shoulder, his grip easing Jesse down just a bit.

"I've got you, man." Whatever he'd done, Brian would have his back.

He looked back at the woman, scrutinizing them from over the edge of the paper in her hand. She flapped the pages down onto the desk and slapped her pen on top of them, too.

"You boys are really doing my head in." She didn't lose a beat as she pulled a drawer open and took out a bottle of amber liquid and a shot glass. In no time, a shot was poured and she downed it with a knock back. She licked her bottom lip and poured another one. "Gonna be hell to straighten this mess out."

Brian watched the second shot knock back and got a real feeling that this wasn't the average HR woman.

Wasn't the average HR room, for that matter. He realized now he was just filling in the blanks on some freaky stuff. What he originally saw as her desk was...scaly. What he thought were walls were...fluttering. What he thought was a chair he was sitting in was...n't.

It was white bones.

Jesse curled in on himself and covered his eyes, legs closing together and his arms clenching over his head. He let out a low moan of fear.

Brian cast his eyes back onto who he now realized wasn't just a woman. She was Woman, female, just not regular. Her form made him shiver, made his vision flicker as if there was some sort of glitch. Wasn't just flickering...Brian himself was jittering. He looked down on his own body and saw the arm not clasped on Jesse grip the arm of the chair, then a moment later it flickered and it was gripping his own leg. Then it flickered again and his leg was crossed over the other one.

No control. Only the arm on Jesse stayed still. He had to look away from his own self before he lost it.

The Woman didn't have glasses; they were dark orbs within a white shell. Her teeth were sharp. Her hair was...wires. What he thought was lipstick was shiny...unnatural flesh. Her suit was oil painted on her body. He had to look away from her, too, before fear overtook him.

He looked upward, long neck arching. No ceiling. No roof. Utter blackness and the sound of wind and...voices. Far away voices in the dim.

He didn't notice, but the stretch of his neck defined the muscles in his throat, causing the woman to salivate, pupils dilating black-on-black.

He took a deep breath and squeezed Jesse, reassuring himself that his friend was real, something he could feel. Jesse had been gunned down. It felt like only minutes ago that Brian had chased down Johnny and Lance, but now that he was here in this place where nothing made sense, he really couldn't have said how long ago any of that had happened. He had no idea what was going on.

"So, we have a problem." The Woman said in a human enough voice. A little slimy.

Brian closed his eyes briefly on the hellish world around him.

"The problem is, both of you shouldn't be here."

Brian nodded, too stunned to speak, but in agreement.

She stood up and leaned closer, clawed hands spread over the scaly table.

Brian turned his face to her. Behind his eyelids, he knew what he'd see if he looked. She was every bad dream, every dark nightmare, come to life. He schooled his face and heart and he opened his eyes. She had a very slight tilt to her demonic head. Body language told Brian he was looking at someone curious about what they saw. She was relaxed, calm, and nonthreatening despite being something wholly unnatural.

He breathed through his nose. His jaw was clenched too tightly to open. He focused on his breathing.

"What are we going to do about you?" And she was smooth with her words. Not as big a threat as...she could be.

Beside Brian, Jesse moaned and hid deeper behind his arms. Brian had to do something. Trouble was, he didn't know what was going on. He had to fish.

"Sometimes trouble just finds me. Guess I just never figured out how to avoid it." Surprised himself he didn't puke along with those words. Opening his mouth was the hardest thing he'd done in his life.

"It's all brought into focus when your mistakes plunge right into my way and cause me problems, isn't it?" The Woman says quietly now, but Brian hears her just fine. She kept talking. Good, because Brian couldn't think of a response. "I usually don't have problems as big as what you've made. Put me in a bit of a spot."

"Am I dead?" He asked her.

"He surely is," she pointed a razor sharp finger at Jesse. "You on the other hand...not so much dead as...misplaced. No one really dies, do they?"

He let his gaze scan over her body again. He was making out details. His mind was filling in more blanks. What he'd seen before had just been some overlaid image his sanity had invented, maybe. He was fighting whatever mental invention that was, trying to see what was really there.

She had scales under the oil that painted her body. And his sense of smell was starting to come back to him. Petrol, easy to decipher. Sulfur, too, it was nasty stuff. Smoke, but it wasn't fresh like burning wood. It was like a trash fire. He looked around and noticed there was no light source, but there were long shadows going in every direction. It was as if...he looked at Jesse. He was glowing. He was the light.

He didn't need to ask to know that Jesse was meant for Heaven. The light was unnatural here in this place.

"Where are we?" Brian asked, eyes now lingering on the moving black walls where he could maybe see shapes moving behind them, as if the walls were thin fabric.

"You're in Hell, boys."

"And how'd we get here?"

She stood straight again, drawing Brian's gaze.

"Your soul was pulled from your body, and pulled down here. An eager mistake made by some who cling to life. That's not the real issue, though. Displaced souls happen from time to time. We just send them to Purgatory, let them either exist there or get picked up by Heaven's angels. Not usually a problem. Not usually."

Jesse had died by someone who probably enjoyed taking his life. Johnny liked hurting those smaller and weaker than he was. The Feds weren't on Johnny, but he was on people's radar. He killed Jesse over a pink slip, for fuck's sake. In a drive-by! Johnny had died by Brian's hand, and Brian couldn't honestly say he liked it, but he didn't hate the idea enough to not do it. It was part of the job, he might even say. But Brian had been pulled out of his body. He wondered about how he might have looked dying.

Maybe he shouldn't wonder about that. Maybe he should have been wondering about what his choices would do to him in the afterlife.

"So what's the problem?" His tone was as of someone asking something he didn't necessarily want to ask, putting out there a push for something to happen. And Brian wasn't at all sure he wanted anything more to happen than just to sit here in his bone chair. Never mind sitting across from the Woman; never mind Jesse in torment. Looking around, Brian knew it could get a lot worse.

She had a forked tongue. It slithered out and licked along her cheek. She was pleased that he had caught on. That he - for the most part - was keeping up.

"I can see your thoughts, Brian O'Connor," she confessed to him sweetly. "I can see what you see, too. You made this whole place look normal for a second there. You made me look like someone I might have even once been. You pretended I held paper, when in fact I held this," and she pushed forward the documents she had been holding, but it wasn't a stack of HR papers any longer. Brian saw the things, and it did have writing on them, but they were...were waxy. Thick. Pale…

He looked away from them.

"There are no trees in Hell," she clarified, lifting the pages and leafing through them again.

So many cultures had got the details of this place right.

"What's it say?" Brian asked, putting on a brave face.

The Woman smiled again, her tongue coming out again. She liked him. He always knew when people liked him.

"Nothing. You two aren't on the pages, yet. And I want to keep it that way. I want you to leave, Brian. We get the occasional hitchhiker. Send them off to Purgatory to get sorted out; let them over there get matters into hand. But you, Brian, you were taken down here by a real cosmic mistake."

The way she said it, felt strangely impressive to hear. "A cosmic mistake?"

She shrugged. "Someone we'd not like to engage with yet saw it happen. The sort of person that's bad for business. So, you're both going back," she pointed at them both and her large black eye sockets stretched over her white skull further. Her corrosive smile pulled back, too, her lips now well up past her fanged teeth. A jolt of fear nearly incapacitated Brian again, but he'd become accustomed to her looks by then and pushed it down.

"Back?" Brian repeated gruffly.

"Back. That's right. Back. We can make some deals; give a spirit a chance for a different path. We'll choose a turning point and a different outcome will naturally be achieved, because you'll remember everything. Everything between then and now."

"Jesse, too?" Brian rubbed along Jesse's back. The kid wasn't moving now. He was so far gone in his fears of this place that he'd gone utterly still.

She rolled her black orbs over Jesse and shook her head. "The way it works, all it takes is one deal to achieve the outcome we desire. All the souls taken in that time return, too. Collateral damage; it's why we rarely make deals like this. Souls might follow the same path. They might not. They might even go on living if things work out differently; if your choices turn out differently. Then again, maybe others might die instead and we get a bonus. You all die anyway, remember that. We all get what we want one way or another."

Brian met her eyes dead on and felt his insides churn. He had to look away again, down at her mouth full of sharp teeth. Again, he couldn't stomach the sight and looked lower, over her oily body. He thought of Johnny's body laying on the pavement and had a thought.

"If I'm going back, how far back?"

"If it's not obvious, this place has a bit of a smell, doesn't it?"

He looked around again. The walls swayed. Yes, it reeked.

"That sort of smell lingers. So you'll go back to before you smelled like this place. It'll keep 'nosy neighbors' from picking up your scent," and she rolled her head on her neck, snapping it loose in a few places. She sighed in relief, too. "If all goes well, you'll just go on with your pretty coppy life."

Huh. Brian looked at her again. She had jutted out her hip, her hand now resting on it. He distinctly got the impression that she didn't like cops. And...that these 'nosy neighbors' really were something that caused her stress.

"What if I talk about this place?"

She shook her head mirthfully. "Go ahead. They have institutes to lockup people who talk about us. It's not uncommon. Some people will even believe you."

Not letting go of Jesse, Brian pulled all his courage together and rose to his feet. He had a grip on Jesse's arm, tugging it slightly away from his head. He liked the familiar feeling of Jesse's arm, because it grounded him while he faced this demon with personality.

"We're doing this for real?" He asked her firmly.

"Maybe it'll turn out the same. Johnny might kill one of you sooner, might kill this one again. Or maybe you'll go back and shoot him without any reason why. Fair warning...that's murder. And we all know what happens to murderers." She tapped her finger on the scaly table. "It would bring you here, dearie. You'd belong with us, and you'd have come to us with reason. We don't make deals for legitimate souls."

A heat rose in Brian's belly, something unnatural. He gripped his stomach and felt it like an echo of what was to come to him. He did kill Johnny. Was it enough he did it as a cop? Was it maybe a little vengeful? Was it maybe only so Dom wouldn't have to do it?

Brian looked down on Jesse. He wanted to get them out of there. He wanted that more than anything else.

The Woman leaned over the table and reached out. Brian moved backwards instinctively. It was her clawed fingers, her focused black eyes, her skeleton head. It was all that and he just fucking didn't want her to touch him. He jerked Jesse out of his seat, away from her, too. Jesse just fell to his knees and curled around Brian's midriff.

Her hand hovered outstretched for him.

"Go back to before you smelled like this place and got the wrong attention. Good luck, officer. Good luck saving precious lives."

She snapped her outstretched fingers and all went bright as his vision exploded with light.

It was still glaring bright. Brian heard familiar music from a long ago, better time. A beat that drummed in Toretto's Market, a beat that reminded him of good lunches and good company. His legs were walking across a wide open street and the light turned into the glare of the sun in his eyes. His body moved towards a goal that he had no recollection of wanting. His pace slowed and he felt dazed, wobbling now as he carried on without purpose.

His legs took one more step halfheartedly and he fully stopped to get his bearings. There was a transition into shadow in that last step. He'd entered the Market. Toretto's Market. But the darkened interior had him looking haphazardly around, as if he'd see that demon Woman again in some corner, with her painted body and egregious eyes, her hand reaching for him.

He lost it then. His body staggered as his mind let go with the thought of seeing her here at this place. A rush. Then nothing.

Note from author: hey, so yeah, got another Dom/Brian story going. This one will be short I think, because it came from nowhere and I haven't got anything else planned to happen in it yet. That being said, I'll still try to update it every week until it's finished. If there are any suggestions on where this story should lead or something that might happen, please leave a comment about it. I haven't got a clue, see. It'll take place a few years before Constantine (2005) so keep that in mind. I'm trying to get better at writing characters and making them feel real... John arrives in the next chapter.