Work Header   Work Text:  He’s on his third cigarette. Nicotine
stains his fingers (so ugly, he thinks, such a cheap taint), and
there is ash … ash everywhere. The stink of smoke has
infiltrated his coat, sticking to him like a leach, leaving an
after-taste that penetrates through his skin.  The air changes,
thins. There is no implosion of life, no sudden flash of
existence.  There is just Uriel.  “It’s about time,” he says,
ice. Cigarette snubbed out beneath the heel of his boot. “Let me
know when you’re done.” He stays where he is, against the
charred remains of a wall, with the soot and ash (so much ash
that it flecks in the air and stays there). Uriel nods, moves
into the smoky remains that stink of a different kind of fear
now that Death has dropped in to dance with the corpses.  This
Death's scythe is a simple look, the light touch on the
shoulder.  He's on his sixth cigarette.  And Uriel moves, calm
instead of cold, detached in a way the nicotine has no currency
in.  They fall like toy soldiers.  A pol