He let his chin rest in his hand for a moment, watching her destroy the food in front of her.  Well, at least the girl had taste.  "Careful."  When she paused only to cast a questing glance, he chuckled.  "Don't make yourself sick."
        It'd be hard to do more to myself than you have.  She didn't bother to give voice to the thought.  It wasn't that she was accusing him personally, nor that she was bitter toward him... but she wanted to be careful about what she said.  She didn't want to risk running off her only chance at slipping out from the control of that "clinic"...  "I'll manage."
        Grinning at that, he shrugged and took up his plastic fork to stab again at the sweet and sour chicken.  Might as well get some while he still could.
        "You said you had a feeling."  She spoke softly, quietly.
        He swallowed, not quite prepared to get involved in serious discussion that quickly.  "I... yeah."
        Her eyes narrowed subtly, searching.  His lack of eye contact was puzzling, to say the least.
        Her silent pressing finally got him to continue.  "I guess I always had the feeling... you were... 'different'."
        That wasn't enough to satisfy her by any means.  But she would have to accept what he offered.  He was too gracious to be prodded... just yet.
        Regardless, he was sure that her curiosity had not been sated.  He didn't want that to be the case, especially after how forcefully... "protected" she had been for her entire life.  It was just... so hard to express.  "The paperwork that I found... there was a word in there.  'Nephilim'."
        She swallowed a little hard, then.  A sip of that lovely sugary liquid contained in an aluminum can was just the thing to help.  Unwilling to risk speaking in case it may derail his thoughts, she merely gnawed on another rib.
        He noted her response... as well as her silence.  "I was familiar with certain biblical texts.  Certain very obscure texts.  Probably because they were so obscure..."  He trailed off, both in voice and in subject.  It was just a story.  Just a stupid story from a stupid book he'd lost all faith in long ago, bastardized a million times over from language to language, king to king.  "Is it true?"
        What a question.  "You'll have to be more specific."
        Hm.  He could understand that, he supposed.  "Are you... half... I mean... is there such a thing as an angel?"
        There was no reason she shouldn't be honest.  "I don't know.  I don't know what you think angels are."
        "What you think angels are..."  No, he didn't suppose that everyone had the same view on heavenly winged creatures.  Of course not; he'd read enough comic books to know that.  But...  "Does that matter?"
        They were delving into a territory that she'd been trying to figure out since she had the ability to think straight.  "Yes and no.  I'm not human.  But I'm not... inhuman.  Unhuman?"  The language was so hard to follow, sometimes.  "I am part..." she paused, searching for the word, "Celestial."
        "'Celestial'."  He repeated in a whisper.  The word held a completely new meaning.  "As in... beyond human?  Above human?"
        For the sake of simplicity alone, she nodded.  The idea was close enough--and at least he didn't attribute it immediately to the idea of heaven.  "How... or why... I wasn't able to find out."
        Damn.  What he'd give to know that much...  "But you learned the rest of this... how?"
        Finally, she wasn't hungry anymore.  Though she doubted it was entirely a full stomach to blame.  Laying the plastic utensils on the table, she attempted to press the shudders from memory aside.  "I did what I felt I had to do."
        He felt a freezing cold travel instantly down his spine.  The way she'd spoken... the cold wall that suddenly veiled her eyes...  "What was that?"
        She sat back, tilting her head ever so slightly as she met his eyes with perfect honesty.  Regardless of the dangers, the infinite number of unpleasant possibilities... she could not find it in herself to lie.  Nor to garnish the absolute truth.  "I killed some people.  Very slowly, at first.  Faster, near the end."
        "You're a sinner."  He clasped his hand over his mouth immediately.  He hadn't meant for those words to slip out--
        "I am told all demons were angels once."  She responded coldly.
        No, that wasn't what he'd meant...  "I'm so sorry--"
        "Don't apologize, Robbie."  She used his familiar name, what he'd introduced himself to her as.  "Sinners and saints... they don't mean anything to me.  Just a book.  And a bunch of morons."
        The shift in conversation left him completely open--the sentiment got him laughing.  And pretty damn hard, at that.  Something about her, the way she was, carried herself... told him that she'd probably had a desperately lonely life.  A pretty terrible one, in his opinion...  So, the laughter didn't fare well on its own.  "I..."
        "You wonder..." she finished for him, reading the spark in his eyes.  "You wonder about what created all of it.  A 'higher power'.  If it's actually real."
        Silence.  Fear.  Awe.  He nodded at last, unable to speak.
        She shrugged, passing off the tension to some far-off, other place.  "I wouldn't know."
        Part of him was more set at ease with the fact that she was, in a manner of speaking, as lost as he.  As lost as humanity, really.  The other part could sense that same bit of... frustration of not knowing that he had, though.  The wanting to know... but being unable due to the boundaries of the world they lived in.  He could almost... taste that sensation.  And yet his mind turned sharply on... what he'd seen of the others at the "clinic".  The ones that weren't... whole.  What...  "What happens to them?" he whispered, not even caring if the question seemed out of context.
        It wasn't, somehow.  Her thoughts had similarly shifted, wondering...  "They're... 'subdued'."  Really, she didn't quite know how... but she could guess that a lobotomy was to blame in most cases.  After all, their faces had to be changed, anyway.  They couldn't look like the failed projects they represented... an angel experiment couldn't result in what humans would automatically assume were demons.  And then, of course, they had to be able to be someone incorporated into the rest of the world... even if they looked and behaved like brain-damaged accident survivors.
        He shouldn't be asking more questions.  It seemed plain and simple rude to keep pestering her...  "And why are you still..?"
        "Whole?" she finished for him.  "I don't know that, either."
        His hunger had dropped away entirely.  As had his thirst.  As had just about every instinct or desire he'd ever had... but to watch her.  What he was looking at... was something beyond his understanding.  Beyond all human understanding.  And yet... she was a girl.  A teenager.  A pretty, petite, dark little thing...  "I-I...  Are you crying?"
        Her head dropped; not with the shame of her emotions, but the weight of them.  "Is... is there a place... where I can see the stars?  Close by?"
        He grabbed his coat instantly and lead her down the stairs.  No pause, no words. 

        He drove another hour away from the city they'd left, through a delicate rolling valley lit only by a sickle moon and his headlights.  Once in a while a car passed going the other way, managing to scare them both every time... but it didn't matter.  He had a general idea of where he was going.  It had been a few years, but he remembered.
        Finally the land slanted upward noticeably, and the car took a little speeding to get it to make some of those leaps.  Parking and turning the lights off, Robbie said nothing as he got out, walked around the car, and opened the door for her.  It wasn't something she was used to without getting dragged out of the vehicle... but noting how he seemed more to be waiting for her rather than rushing her on her way, she stepped out by herself.
        There was a slight chill in the breeze, but more on the side of pleasantly exhilarating than actually cold.  He took her hand delicately, leading her through a hole in a barbed wire fence that hadn't changed in fifteen years.
        Kara had never smelled night anywhere but in the city, before.  The fragrance was so mysteriously... perfect.  With each breath she could smell the lightness of the wildflowers, the weeds, the pollen, some... truly unpleasant animal fragrances...  Not that the last one mattered as much.  Lead carefully up a small hill, she stopped abruptly when her guide did, finding him looking straight up.  She did the same...
        It had been a good thing that he'd been close to her.  He'd felt her body drop just a bit, thinking perhaps she had fainted... but she was just overcome.  Completely, reverently overcome.  Never in his life had he seen anyone have that reaction merely to looking up... and it made him glad to be alive in that moment.