The bullet came faster than he expected.

Not that he had never known the speed of bullets; he had, but this one…

It'll slow down, he thought, it'll miss. They always miss.

Sure, some hit lower. Some skimmed his legs when he pursued the criminals of London, but they never hit. When the bullets missed him, they seemed slow. Merely a factor of the environment. Harmless.

This one…. This one was fast. This one was sharp and burning when it pierced his skin and he felt himself cry out involuntarily. This one struck his hip and pain flared from it like a fireworks of nerves and senses, sending him reeling. He lost his foothold on the banks, and he saw the waters of the Thames come up to meet him graciously.

Drowning? I can't drown. That's too normal. Too boring. Sherlock will have no fun with that at all.

Maybe it was a stupid thing to worry about. Maybe he should have been more concerned with the water filling his lungs and the refusal of his muscles to work and the pain numbing in his hip. In the end though, he was concerned with the method. He had planned to die at the hands of a criminal. All cops did, whether they said so or not. For him though, the closest cop to Sherlock Holmes, he had planned something stunning. Maybe Moriarty.

Whether he would admit it or not, he had planned for his death to be a pawn in Sherlock's games, and now he felt like he was letting the madman down.

Drowning. How dull. Said his inner Sherlock, and he felt like laughing. How bloody dull indeed.

He could hear someone shouting. Sally? Maybe Sally. Shouting for him. Didn't know where he was. Didn't see him fall.

Oh Sally. I hope you don't beat yourself up over this. It's not your fault. I fell in. My fault. I should have been more careful. I should have known about the gun.

But he didn't. He feels the last burst of air leave his lungs and his back meets the riverbed. It's almost comforting as his panic recedes. All he can keep repeating in his head as his vision fades, is Sherlock's tut tut of displeasure, because HOW DULL, Greg. DROWNING.

And then he is gone.

When he wakes, he doesn't wake, which is the first worrying thing. The numbed heavy feeling of sleep doesn't pull back from his mind. He is just….. There.

The next worrying thing is where he is. Or, rather, where he is not.

He is not anywhere, and this is severely alarming.

"Hello?" He says groggily, and it comes out warbled and tone-deaf in the void of nothingness. The words are swallowed up around him as he says them.

"Hello" says the Void and he wishes he could blink in surprise.

"Where are you?" he asks desperately, the nothingness making him feel small and sick and infinite.

"Anywhere" the Void replies plainly, "Everywhere."

"Where am I?"

"Nowhere. Everywhere."

He tries to make sense of this and fails, the sense of being condensed increasing constantly.

"Am I dead?"

"Yes. No. Maybe. It is undecided."

After a second, the Void flickers visibly, and a second later takes shape. Greg blinks, and then feels immense satisfaction and wonder that he can blink again. He looks down at himself, still in his suit and splattered with small amounts of blood, then around him. The latter makes his head spin.

He is in a café. A normal café with chairs and napkins and coffee and sausages that no one likes but people buy anyways. Tables around him are filled with chatting patrons, and he feels a bit of sickness at the odd and unnatural fact that their conversations are muted and far-away sounding. They take no notice of his standing over them, and he wonders if they can see him.

"Hello?" he asks again of no one in particular, but none of the patrons look up.

Except one does.

"Hello." Says a girl sitting alone at a table, watching him blankly.

Greg jumps a bit, startled, but the girl takes no notice. He stares at her in confusion. He can't seem to see her exactly, and this worries him.

"You can sit." The girl says, gesturing to the chair across from her, "I thought this environment would be more hospitable to you."

He does as she says, sitting and examining her. She is the size and shape of a young girl, a child really, but her outline is strange and shimmering. She appears to be made of gold light, filtered around her like wisps of smoke outlining her small body. Shining wings are folded delicately behind her, and she has dark deep eyes, the most visible part of her.

"I thought angels had blue eyes" he says, unable to think of anything else to say.

"No." she says with her twinkling voice that seems to be everywhere and nowhere at once.

"Are…. Uh…. All that big empty stuff, was that you?"

"Yes." She says simply.

"Do you answer anything without being vague?"

"Yes."

He frowns in exasperation, looking around at the not-patrons talking.

"Heaven is a café then?"

"No."

"Hell?"

"No."

"You're still being vague."

"You are asking vague questions."

"What questions should I be asking?"

She smiles at him in a strange way that he hasn't seen in a while. It takes him a moment to place it.

It's pride.

"That is a good question" She assures him. The angel is proud of the human.

"You said I was…. Dead and not dead? It's undecided?"

"Yes."

"What decides it?"

"I do." She lifts her chin a bit, propping it on her bright hands, her black eyes examining him.

"And who are you?"

"Ataxia."

"Ataxia?"

She nods.

"That's a disease." He informs her, "A…. something neurological. You're named after a disease?"

"A disease is named after me." She says without offense, simply stating a fact, "ατάξις. 'Lack of order'. It is Greek."

"Greek? So…"

"I am the Greek angel of Order and Disorder"

"Can you really be in charge of both?"

"Yes."

He accepts this answer, stretching back and watching the other patrons. No, not patrons, ghosts. Memories? Illusions.

"What do you want with me then?" he asks eventually, "order or disorder?"

"Both."

"Both?"

"Yes."

"That…. I'm sorry. I don't understand."

She shifts her wings, and for a moment Greg is stunned by their luminosity.

"You are both dead and not dead."

"Yeah, you mentioned that. How?"

Her dark eyes stare unblinkingly at him. "You have left something behind."

"What?"

"Something you missed."

"What?" he repeats again, hoping it'll have more of an effect.

"Something you encountered, but overlooked. Something you missed."

He blinks confused. "Something though?"

"More specifically, someone."

Greg nods soundly, because now at least he's getting somewhere. Someone he met was supposed to be important, but wasn't. He overlooked them. Okay. Starting to make more sense.

"So….What now? I missed someone. I'm dead….ish. What now?"

"I will send you back."

"Oh." His eyes widen suddenly at the understanding. "Good. Thanks? That…. That would be the disorder. Sending me back?"

"Yes. You are supposed to die. "

"But I'm also supposed to find… whoever it is?"

"Yes. Sending you back will cause both order and disorder."

"So… what's the deal then? You send me back and what? I get to live?"

"Yes. No. Maybe."

He throws up his hands in exasperation. "Ataxia, come on, give me a straight answer here, what do you want me to do?"

"I cannot send you back indefinitely." She says patiently. "There are rules. I must follow them. I will send you back into your life as many times as my power will allow. "

"And if I don't find the missing thing?"

A still silence falls over them, and Greg already knows the answer before she vocalizes it.

"Then you will die."

Find it and I live, lose it and I die. Simple enough.

"Alright." He nods, because what else does he have to lose? "Okay. I'll do it."

"Pick a moment."

"A moment?"

"A moment in your life. Any moment. The earlier the better. A moment where you could find the thing."

Something I missed….. He rolls the thought over in his mind. What did I miss? Who did I miss in my life? What did I overlook? What did I not see?

The list feels endless. What was supposed to be more important to him than it was? A girlfriend? A relative?

"How many chances do I get?" He asks

"I don't know."

"Guess."

She watches him silently for a few minutes.

"Five."

"Five," he repeats. "Okay. Five."

Five things I missed. Five people. Five people that should have been more important.

He takes a breath.

"Take me back to before my father died, Ataxia." he says.

And it begins.