[A/N: I'm publishing this as a Christmas gift to you all before I leave for vacation. I'll be gone until January 9-10th. Until then, happy reading!]

Peridot hated her job.

Most people would be overjoyed if they could do what she did, but she'd easily rant about how after three and a half centuries of helping mortals, it gets routine. Boring. Tedious. At first she had been happy. Really, who wouldn't want to be an angel? Big fluffy wings, cool powers (invisibility, the ability to walk through walls, flight), and the chance to help the innocent: it's a dream come true! So when Peridot, at the age of twenty, had a terrible accident and found herself an angel among other angels up in the heavens – well, she was both devastated and ecstatic, but mostly ecstatic; she didn't have any good family or friends left, so leaving Earth wasn't too bad.

Five years of training and she was deemed ready to go out and help the general populace. She was assigned to some depressed human and had to help them, either until they gave up on life or until they were ready to move on by themselves. It sounded so glamorous (changing the world, one person at a time!), and at first, it seemed so too. She was to show herself to the human, encourage them, help them; basically be a therapist for them until they could work out their problems. Pretty cool, she told herself. Pretty cool.

But being an angel wasn't all it was cut out to be. And goodness knows Peridot found that out. Time after time she was set to help some poor human who had lost sight of their future. Usually she succeeded in helping the mortal shape up; once in a while she failed, and that left her sad for a while, but she got over it. She always got over it. And then she was sent out again. Let me tell you, after a while, she got tired of her job. The first time was exciting; the third time was nice; the fifth time was pleasant; the tenth time was okay; the fifteenth time was routine; the twenty-fifth time was boring, and so were all the times after that. She always showed a smiling face to the mortals, even when she felt like punching someone – it was part of her job, to act like a stereotypical perfect angel. Three to five years she spent per mortal, helping them up when they were down, encouraging them, pretending to love them and support them even though inwardly, she grumbled about how 'seriously? This has happened before and it'll happen again. History just repeats itself and I'm really tired of watching it.'

When she wasn't working, she watched the centuries pass with a mingled sense of amazement and dread. Now it was the year 2015 and the whole world was full of technology that awed her. She wished for a break, a chance to go and experiment with it, but it was not to be. The irritable Peridot, tired after three years of working with a person who ended up falling too far into misery to be saved, was all too soon assigned to a twenty-year-old girl living in the dirty suburbs of some city or other.

Grand. Yet another of those miserable humans. And I must go and try to pick up this person from the dumps of life that she fell into somehow. Peridot rubbed her forehead in annoyance as she swooped over the rooftops of the city. From her bird's-eye view, the city was really quite a sight to behold; Peridot wasn't in the mood to appreciate it, though. All too soon she arrived at the location where she sensed the girl to be; some run-down coffee shop in a poor neighborhood. Now she just had to watch her subject until the time was right to reveal herself.

As she waited, she ran over whatever information she had about the girl. Twenty years old last month, lives in an apartment on her own. Works at that coffee shop, apparently. Depressed, with PTSD from some unspecified incident as a teenager. Single and homosexual. Her father is dead; her mother doesn't bother with her very much. Self-sufficient and stubborn, according to some Watchers. Her name is Lapis Lazuli; she goes by Lapis. That's all I know about her personality. Visually, she's rather attractive: wild blue-dyed hair, ocean-blue eyes, tanned skin, and a charming smile. Not, of course, that her appearance matters. It wasn't much to work with, but hopefully she could find out more soon. All she had to do was wait for a moment when the girl was alone, then appear to her. For now, Peridot would just maintain invisibility and hang around out here, peeking over people's shoulders to see their phones and marvel at the cool technology.

Finally, a while after the sun sank over the horizon, the coffee shop emptied of the few customers it had and the girl – Lapis, Peridot reminded herself; she should think of the girl as Lapis – exited. She waved as she left, and the short girl behind the counter waved back cheerfully – so Lapis was probably not friendless, concluded Peridot dully. Following protocol, she fluttered after her subject as Lapis trudged home. There were too many people around in the streets, so she couldn't show herself now.

Lapis unlocked her door, yawning. It was a small, one-room apartment, Peridot noticed uninterestedly. A bed, a small kitchen, and a tiny bathroom; that was all. It was awfully messy though. Obviously Lapis didn't bother to clean up after herself, which was rather exasperating to Peridot, who had always liked neatness. But that was beside the point. Lapis was alone, and now was the perfect time to reveal herself.

Peridot had found through experience that it was best not to startle her subject into screaming at the sight of a mysterious figure appearing out of nowhere. She knew better ways to introduce herself, and in this case, fell back on a classic trick. Staying outside, she waited for a minute, then solidified herself and knocked on the door.

"Who could that be?" she heard the young woman inside ask herself. She really had quite a nice voice; melodic and gentle. Peridot found herself taking more interest than she usually did in her subjects. After all, not all humans were attractive young females – but of course that was beside the point, wasn't it. The door opened and Lapis's eyes fell upon the angel standing outside. It must have been quite a sight. Blonde haired and green-eyed, Peridot would have looked strange no matter what. The enormous feathery wings sprouting out of her shoulders just enhanced that image.

"Hello," Peridot said, forcing herself to sound cheerful. "I'm Peridot."

"Hi." Lapis was obviously shocked and confused, but she hid it rather well. "I'm Lapis. Are you an angel?"

"Yes." The reply was matter-of-fact. The truth was, Peridot was slightly impressed; people usually though she was a prankster or something. "I'm your guardian angel now, actually. Apologies for being so blunt and all, but yeah, I'm gonna be hanging out with you for the next however long it need be." Peridot's ways were strange: she told her subject the whole story. Most angels just said they were here to help or something, and hid their wings – Peridot didn't like that method. And her way worked in most cases, so she stuck to it.

"Uh... if you say so." Lapis stepped back. "Come in then, I guess. Sorry about the mess." As Peridot stepped in, she heard Lapis mumbling to herself. "More of these weird hallucinations... they've never talked before, though..."

"I'm not a hallucination." The angel didn't even pretend she hadn't heard. It was important that this was clear to Lapis. She hovered a few inches above the ground, avoiding the mess.

"But angels aren't real," Lapis countered.

"They are, and I am one." Peridot was going to have to reveal more than she usually did, but convincing the girl was important. "Peridot Diamante, born 1695, died 1715. I've been helping mortals ever since then. You were singled out as needing help so, here I am."

"Okay. So even if you are an angel, which is totally bizarre because I highly doubt they exist, you've still got something wrong. I don't need help. I'm doing fine." Lapis closed the door and leaned against it as she spoke, obviously tired.

"Yes, you're doing fine, but you're suffering from depression and PTSD as well as some other minor conditions. I'm here to help." Peridot wasn't going to take no for an answer.

"This is too weird to deal with right now," Lapis finally said after a minute of silence. "I'll deal with this later. For now, I'm just gonna go take a shower. Don't look – whether you're a figment of my imagination or not."

"I'll be here when you come back," Peridot told her, seating herself in the air as if there was an invisible chair. She wasn't surprised by Lapis's reaction; most people reacted with disbelief and she was used to it. "No rush. I have all the time in the world."

Lapis left, still mumbling to herself in disbelief.

Well, this will be interesting, the angel thought to herself as she watched the slender human pick her way across the trash-littered floor and slip into the bathroom to shower. Perhaps I'll start by getting her to clean up her house. Then her life. Then I'll be done and I can move on again. No big deal... she's just another poor mortal, after all. One among the others. Just a... particularly nice-looking girl with a bad story and a future that might be looking up.