Chapter Text
Riri Timurov didn’t know she was being watched as she walked through the street.
She didn’t know that somewhere above the flow of pedestrians, a scope had settled on her, precise and unmoving, holding her perfectly in the center of its crosshairs.
She should have felt it.
But it was a new city. New streets. She had no recognisable patterns yet. Nothing familiar enough to be used against her.
Riri had survived enough attempts on her life to learn an unglamorous truth: danger didn’t whisper. It interrupted. It announced itself loud and clumsily. Especially when everyone that was sent after her were idiots paid by a desperate imprisoned lonely man. So yes, she was presumably safe.
Still, her gaze kept drifting upward, snagging on the same stretch of rooftop again and again. There was nothing there except concrete and railing, but the habit lingered anyway, a thin residue of paranoia she would never fully manage to scrub out.
She checked her watch. She was early. Embarrassingly so.
The watch itself was equally as embarrassing; it was shaped like a tiny inflatable swimming pool with three rubber ducks floating across the face. A gift from her sister’s now-fiancée, each duck styled to resemble one of them, down to the hair, the outdated mask and the two with matching purple lips. Riri had protested when she opened it on her birthday, but she wore it the entire day.
A younger Riri would have chosen something designer. She wouldn’t have had a choice. Appearances used to matter.
This Riri wanted the opposite.
She wanted to disappear into the crowd. To be another coat, another pair of shoes, another person early for something unimportant. That was the entire point of moving here, was it not? To have no press, no awful history, no one who knew what her surname was supposed to mean.
Why would she want to be noticed?
Her appointment wasn’t for another hour, but that had been deliberate. She needed enough time to prepare herself, figure out a game plan. There was a coffee shop just outside the building. It was a perfectly average 4.3 stars, close and most important ordinary. She could sit, warm her hands, and let the city pass without engaging it for a few occasional random hours of the month.
As she waited for the light to change, her attention drifted to the trees lining the street.
Same height. Same spacing. All identical.
No biodiversity at all.
It struck her as faintly irritating, and then passed, like everything else.
She paused outside the coffee shop long enough to look through the windows and scanned for a preferred seat, something small, tucked away, and out of the bathroom’s line of fire. There was not one. It was almost impressive, the way every chair that met her standards was already occupied, as if the room had rearranged itself in opposition to her.
Fine.
She pushed the door open, the bell chiming overhead, and claimed the chair closest to the window by draping her bag over it. The bag would be fine. And if it wasn’t, that was manageable. She might not live the way she used to, but she could replace a bag every day for years if that needed be.
The counter sat just below chest height, pale wood worn smooth by impatient elbows. Behind it stood a woman with tightly coiled hair pulled up and back, a few strands slipping loose around her face like they’d escaped on purpose. Pretty, in an unintentional way and weirdly familiar, in a way Riri chose not to investigate.
She smiled.
Riri smiled back before deciding whether she meant to.
“Triple espresso,” Riri said. Then, after a beat, “And a slice of the red velvet.”
She might as well indulge. It had been that kind of morning with the power outage in her entire area. The same power outage that, as soon as she entered her car, was resolved.
While the machine screamed into life, she paid with her platinum card, sliding it forward without ceremony. The barista placed the coffee on a tray beside the cake, the receipt tucked beneath. Her eyes flicked over Riri in a clearly appreciative way while she reached for a Sharpie.
She didn’t get far.
The tray tipped. Not from a stumble, but from a sudden, violent flinch, as if the other woman had been jarred by a sensation only she could perceive.
Riri moved on instinct.
She ducked, caught the cake midair with one hand. The coffee missed her fingers and splashed instead across her jacket, heat blooming sharp and immediate. The smell that followed was oppressive. Coffee was an already overwhelming scent and now it was suddenly everywhere.
When she straightened, cake intact, she found the barista staring past her, dazed, attention fixed somewhere over Riri’s shoulder. As if something had slipped out of alignment. A colleague was already there, hands moving, towels appearing.
“Oh my god,” the colleague said. “I’m so sorry. Please. We can remake that—”
Riri shook her head once.
She wanted out. The smell clung to her now, bitter and invasive.
The colleague pressed a sealed box into her hands anyway. Instead of a slice she got the entire cake. An apology wrapped in cardboard. “Please,” she said again, softer.
The pretty barista still hadn’t looked at her, too focused on her colleague.
Riri took the cake, the soggy receipt folded in on itself, Sharpie ink bleeding halfway through a phone number that never finished. She didn’t check it. She didn’t look back.
She left the coffee shop with sticky fingers, a damp jacket, and a feeling that had nothing to do with either. A feeling of a thread, pulled taut from a point high above, now following her as she moved back into the flow of the street.
Mary lowers the gun with a sharp, frustrated motion that rattles through all four of her arms.
She shouldn’t be angry. Angels are not supposed to be angry. But the feeling burns anyway, immediate and humiliating. The shot had been perfect. The trajectory was unarguable. The bullet had slipped through the coffee shop window like light through water, leaving the glass intact, harmless, exactly as designed.
But her target just had to duck at that moment.
Mary exhales, wings tight against her back, eyes fixed on the woman below as Riri Timurov straightens with a slice of cake in her hand, coffee soaking uselessly into her jacket. Impossible. Mortal reflexes did not move like that. No one moved like that unless—
Mary stops the thought before it finishes.
She has never missed before. Not once. Not since she’d been given a quota and a bow and told this was what love looked like from a distance. She has never failed. She hits her marks. She makes people fall. She makes things begin.
At least the collateral had landed.
Her gaze flicks briefly to the two baristas inside, already orbiting each other in the aftermath of the spill. Mary knows how that story ends. Seven months. A whirlwind. Late nights and shared playlists and the kind of laughter that only exists when neither of you knows what’s coming next. Their families will tear it apart eventually.
It will be tragic.
It will be worth it. Love always is.
Not that Mary would know.
Her jaw tightens. She disassembles the rifle—barrel, chamber, stock—each piece peeling away into nothing as her extra arms move in perfect synchronization. The remains vanish into a small, humming portal that snaps shut the moment the last fragment passes through.
She stares down at Riri one last time as the woman disappears back into the street, untouched. Unchanged by Mary’s efforts.
Fine.
If shooting this frustrating mortal wouldn’t work, then she’d try something else.
Desperate methods, after all, were still methods.
Mary doesn’t bother with subtlety this time.
She drops out of the air directly in front of Riri and shoves her sideways into the alley before the mortal can register what’s happening. Brick scrapes fabric. Breath leaves lungs. The world narrows.
Riri recovers fast.
She spins, momentum clean and practiced, and suddenly Mary’s back is against the wall instead—pressed there by a forearm at her throat, close enough that Mary can feel the heat of her body, the sharp control in her grip.
“You’re the one,” Mary says, breathless and furiously offended by proximity.
She twists and slips out of Riri’s hold like smoke through fingers, landing lightly a few steps away. “The one who’s been decreasing my perfect score,” she continues, voice sharp. “I’ve been top five in the department for two thousand years. Two thousand. And you”—she gestures at Riri with all four hands at once—“you’ve already knocked me down to top ten.”
Her wings twitch, agitated. “I’ve worked so hard. And a mortal like you just decides to ruin my life.”
Riri doesn’t answer. She turns, clearly deciding that whatever this is, it’s not worth engaging, and walks straight toward the mouth of the alley—
—and stops short, palm hitting something invisible with a dull, ringing thud.
The barrier shimmers into view: transparent, smooth, edged faintly with gold.
Mary watches Riri test it multiple times. She wasn't panicked, just interested, a focus that made Mary’s wings feel oddly still.
“I can give you what you want,” Riri says, voice level, already calculating. “Just tell me what it is. How much?”
The offense hits Mary like a slap.
She straightens, wings flaring wide, all four arms spreading as light gathers around her. “Behold me, mortal.”
Riri freezes.
Mary watches the effect with grim satisfaction. Speechlessness. Wide eyes. The way mortals always go quiet when confronted with divinity. Fear, awe or some potent cocktail of the two. It was a classic and it never gets old.
She launches into the speech she’s practiced exactly never.
“I have been assigned to you from the Compatibility and Development Department,” Mary says, too fast, hoping it sounds official. “The closest you humans have in your mythology to me is an angel. Or a cherub. Or Eros, if you insist on being inaccurate.”
She lifts her chin. “What I want from you, Riri Timurov, is for you to fall in love.”
Mary puffs out her wings, trying very hard to look authoritative and not like she’s breaking at least thirty different angelic regulations by even standing here.
Her target is clearly upset. Mary notes the flushed face, the red creeping into the tips of Riri’s ears. Anger, probably. Mortals hated being told their lives had scripts.
“You won’t be forced,” Mary adds quickly. “The process is completely natural. Humans just need a spark. We provide it. I’m only asking that you stop avoiding it.”
Riri finally moves, breaking eye contact with the four slowly spinning halos framing Mary’s face. She stares instead at the pavement.
“I’m not avoiding anything,” she says.
“You are,” Mary snaps. “Every time I try to hit you, you avoid it.”
Riri pokes at the barrier with one finger, unimpressed. “Why would I willingly want to get hit?”
“It’s a beam of pure love,” Mary says, incredulous. “Who wouldn’t want to be shot by it?”
She pauses, then adds, thoughtfully, “My running theory is that you have an avoidance to being loved due to feeling like you don’t deserve it.”
Riri exhales through her nose.
“Please save this,” she says flatly, still not looking up, “for when my actual therapist talks about it.” She glances at her stupid watch. “Speaking of which, my appointment is really soon. Can you let me go? Please.”
Mary sighs.
She drops the forcefield. The gold light dissolves like mist.
Riri doesn’t hesitate. She walks out of the alley while Mary floats after her.
She pulls her phone from her pocket, thumb already moving.
Mary watches it with immediate suspicion, she doesn’t need a mortal spilling divine secrets. “Who are you calling?”
“No one,” Riri says, not bothering to slow down. “I assume you’re invisible to anyone but me, which means I already look like I’m talking to myself.” She flicks her screen dark, tucks the phone against her ear anyway. “I don’t appreciate being called insane again.”
Mary drifts along at her shoulder, wings pulled in tight to avoid brushing passersby. They won’t notice but it always feels strange when a human passes through her. “That wouldn’t look good to a potential love interest,” she says, smug.
Riri hums. “Sure.” Then, dryly, “Can you just give up on that?”
“I won’t give up on you. Even if you desperately want me to.”
They pass through the building’s front doors and into reception, Riri straightens a fraction, shoulders squaring the way they always do when she enters a room with witnesses.
She raises her voice just enough to be heard by the front desk and no one else.
“I’m hanging up now,” she says into the phone and directed at Mary. “Angel, can you wait for me outside reception? I’ll be finished in about an hour.”
Riri stands in the middle of the office, hands at her sides, unsure where to put herself now that she’s here.
The room is warm in a deliberate way. Soft chairs that look supportive without being indulgent. Bookshelves that suggest experience. She chose this therapist carefully. Court-mandated didn’t have to mean she was stuck with someone not fit for her needs.
An older woman sits across from her, silver hair pulled back neatly. She looked like someone who wouldn’t dismiss her. Someone who wouldn’t try to dig with blunt, outdated tools. Someone who wasn’t a man.
That part mattered the most. Years of trauma with her father made it rather unlikely that she would ever trust them.
“Hi, Riri,” the woman says gently. “I can call you that, right? Your notes say it’s your preferred name.”
Riri nods.
“Good. Feel free to take a seat.”
Riri does, folding herself into the chair like she’s trying not to leave fingerprints behind.
“So,” the therapist says, crossing one leg over the other, clipboard resting loosely in her lap. “What brings you here today?”
They are doing that. Wonderful. “Have you not read all my notes?”
“I have,” the woman says easily. “But I like to hear it in your own words. This session will mostly be questions. Future sessions will be different.”
Riri considers that. Then answers.
“My sister and her partner submitted evidence against my father,” she says, “During the trial, he submitted evidence that I killed multiple innocent people. I admitted to it. We were both found guilty. He’s serving life. I received two years of house arrest and mandatory therapy.”
The therapist doesn’t react the way people usually do. No visible shock. No disgust or even pity.
“You were an abused and blackmailed minor when those crimes occurred,” she says. “The system is focused on rehabilitation in cases like yours, not punishment.” She looks directly at Riri. “Do you think you need to be punished?”
“Yes,” Riri answers immediately. “I think I’m a murderer and should face those consequences.”
The therapist pauses.
“Okay,” she says slowly. “I think we need to put a pin in that.”
She looks down at her notes, flipping a page. The sound of paper makes Riri’s jaw tighten.
“How is your social life, Riri?”
“Non-existent.”
Her sister’s face flickers through her mind. Kira had offered. Of course she had. Offered a home shared with Yumeko, laughter bleeding through walls, tenderness she didn’t want to witness up close. After years of house arrest split between her step-mother and her sister, Riri had needed something else.
Also being in a space with a newly engaged Yumeko and Kira just sounded like hell.
“I see my mother often,” Riri adds. “I moved to be near her hospital.”
The therapist writes something down.
Riri hates when they do that.
“Any friends?”
Riri’s attention drifts upward, against her will.
Through the ceiling, upside down, is an angel’s head.
The angel’s multiple eyes are fixed squarely on her, unblinking and tracking her.
“No,” Riri says. “I’ve been trying. I just can’t find the initial connection. Or conversation topics.”
The therapist glances at her wrist. “Is that watch a way of starting conversations?”
Riri looks down at the ridiculous inflatable-pool face. The ducks grin up at her.
“Yes,” she says. “It makes me seem more approachable. I’m not particularly good at mimicking inviting facial expressions, so this was the best solution I could find.” She adds, “I’m not used to people seeing the lower half of my face.”
The angel is no longer upside down.
She’s floating in the corner now, wings tucked in, only two arms visible, both crossed. She was bored. Riri doesn’t know where the other two arms went. That somehow makes it worse.
“Yes,” the therapist says thoughtfully. “Expressions and emotions. How are you doing with those?”
“Fine,” Riri says. “You know my diagnosis. Autism. PTSD. And a few others. I struggle with identifying emotions, but I’m managing.”
“That’s great to hear,” the therapist replies, sincere. “It does feel like you’re making progress.” She checks her notes again. “In your last session, you mentioned still hearing your father’s voice. Are you still experiencing those things your brain creates?”
Riri’s eyes lift.
She looks directly at the angel hovering above the therapist’s head.
Mary tilts her head, curious.
“No,” Riri says carefully. “I’m not hearing or seeing anything unusual anymore.”
“That’s wonderful,” the therapist says. “What about nightmares?”
Riri swallows.
She doesn’t want to answer that with an audience.
“Where is your bathroom?” she asks instead.
“Second door to your right when you exit,” the therapist says. Then, gently, “But Riri…are you avoiding the question? We have limited time.”
Riri stands.
“I’ll be right back,” she says, already moving toward the door.
Mary follows Riri into the restroom with a scowl already forming.
Humans are strange creatures. They build entire rooms for things angels never need.
The lock clicks, the space is small, forcing them closer than the alley had.
Riri turns. “I told you I’d be an hour.”
“You are my target,” Mary says, getting even closer to the mortal automatically. “I need to observe you in case there are opportunities.”
Riri blinks. “I doubt there are many opportunities for me to fall in love in my therapist’s office.”
Mary tilts her head, the motion bringing her face closer to Riri’s. “The therapist?”
Riri stares at her. “You are not going to stick me with a random married fifty-year-old woman.”
Mary considers this seriously. “Are age differences an issue for you? I can add it to your file.”
“No,” Riri says quickly. Then, more firmly, “I just want some privacy.”
Mary frowns, genuinely confused. “You want privacy, but you brought me into a restroom. Which is typically meant for one human.” She pauses, then adds, deliberately, “Or two humans who want to engage in—”
“Stop,” Riri says flatly. “How long have you been watching me?”
Mary answers, “A few months.”
She doesn’t add that before Riri, her longest assignment had lasted six days. Six, before the mortal fell predictably in love with someone else and Mary was reassigned. Riri Timurov is an outlier. A statistical irritation.
“Well,” Riri says, attempting levity and failing, “at least you didn’t invade my privacy for too long.”
Then her face changes.
Mortification.
“Can you read my thoughts?”
Mary doesn’t hesitate. “No.”
It’s a lie. She can, if she concentrates hard enough, really hard. It’s a rare skill that not many angels can do. One she’s proud of. One she is not doing right now; this target isn’t worth her energy.
Relief floods Riri’s posture immediately, “Okay,” Riri says. “Then I’ll help you.”
Mary stiffens, once again offended by this human. “You don’t need to help me.”
“I will,” Riri continues. “I’ll accept helping you find someone for me to love. On one condition.” She meets Mary’s eyes, and the intensity there makes one of Mary’s halos stutter in its spin. “You leave when I ask. Like in therapy.”
She extends her hand.
Mary looks at it.
She doesn’t need this. She doesn’t need Riri. Riri is the reason she’s in this mess, the reason her record is slipping, the reason she’s standing in a human restroom arguing about consent and privacy instead of doing her job.
And yet—
Mary reaches out and takes her hand anyway.