A/N: Another prompt from the writing challenge I'm doing with a friend; I don't own anything.

"For the love of the King," Adeiraphel whispered, watching as the human walked forward once again. "For the love of the King who loves you, I will practise patience."

Angels in general were patient; they could afford to be, for they saw clearly who orchestrated all events in the universe, and they had never once seen His timing play false.

But these little creatures made in His image were so blind sometimes. Remnants of the King Himself glimmered in their blindness—when the woman kept on loving the man who always hurt her, when the parent served the child who was old enough to know better—the man and the child were wrong, but the patient, tender love of the others, though lacking the King's wisdom, had some of the King's beauty.

But then there were the idiots.

The young man—brown-hair swinging in a ponytail, dark-skinned forehead beaded with sweat, brown eyes utterly determined—reached one long, skinny arm back up to the climbing wall and began to raise himself up.

Without a harness.

"Did you never think," Adeiraphel commented, white wings beating with steady gusts as he rose with the climber, "that one of the King's gifts to you was fear?" The gusts of air stirred by his wings raised goosebumps on the man's arms. His face was covered with new sweat, and Adeiraphel could smell the sharp, metallic scent of fear. "Fear is meant to teach you what is good for you, and what is bad." He reached out and knocked, very lightly, on the handhold the climber should hold next. The man's head turned at the small sound, and lit on the correct handhold. Adeiraphel sighed as the man weighed it, deciding cautiously on his next path. "That is well done. Perhaps doing so before you get yourself stuck next time? For then I would not have to be so obvious in my care."

The man grabbed the handhold and rose up higher; he stood, panting, three times his height above the floor.

Without a harness.

Adeiraphel really wished he would use the harness. But there had been a drunk dare the night before, and someone recording the whole thing on a cell phone. (The same person stood on the floor, still recording the entire ascent, and Adeiraphel wished he could use just a little of his power and burn the cell phone to ashes and twisted metal in the person's hand, but…heavenly rules were one of the good things he was trying to teach the man about.) Therefore, his young charge, after having overindulged in alcohol the night before, was climbing the wall, to the top, without a harness, and with a headache.

He wouldn't have been allowed, by the very sensible people who ran this place, were it not for the fact that his friends distracted the trainer.

Consistently.

One of them was a pretty girl who couldn't manage to put her harness on correctly, every single time. Adeiraphel commiserated with her guardian angel on a regular basis. Being pretty could be just as dangerous to the human soul or body as being an idiot could be.

The young man rose higher and the wall grew harder, and Adeiraphel moved to the left. The neighbour's harness hung slack, the man on the ground shoving genially with his friends.

And Adeiraphel's charge tried for something just beyond his reach, straining to the left. He leaned a little further, a little further, and—he fell.

Adeiraphel beat his wings twice, hard, pushing the air and swinging the rope towards the falling body. The man, whose excellent reflexes were another gift from God, grabbed it in both hands, his climber's gloves rubbing against it, slowing, slowing, till at last he swung, face blanched, perhaps six feet from the floor.

His neighbour, who had most definitely noticed the jerk on his harness when the rope took the weight of another full body, had begun shouting, gesturing to his friends, and they quickly grabbed the loose end of the rope and ran in circles, wrapping it around the hanging climber's body, giving him a bit more safety. The trainer, finally pulled away from the pretty girl, ran onto the mat, giving orders, asking the neighbour to climb up a few feet to lower the man down, bracing him as he climbed.

The friend with the cell phone had, finally, dropped the cursed thing and run forward to help once his friend was a few feet closer to the floor, and Adeiraphel took great pleasure in stepping on it, leaning forward with more and more strength, till the screen shattered and the electronics broke.

"Now you will not watch the video and decide it was cool, rather than foolish," he said in satisfaction. He looked back towards where the humans were crowded around, the trainer checking his charge's hands, the friend with an arm around his shoulders, the rest clustered and ready to help. "You were made to be so generous and so great," the angel said, watching the group with fondness.

The fondness faded when the charge stepped towards the wall once more.

"But you still fall so far short," Adeiraphel grumbled, wings beating, ready to rise once more.