Casualties (AU Hayden)
Hayden went down on one knee and pushed his fingers into his eyes.

Kathleen Guevara. A second Inquisitor dead under his command. By now, Harrison's body would've been located and brought home. There'd be a flag over his coffin, a medal in his sister's hand, a name carved into brass.

It wasn't easy to lead. It wasn't something he sought when he joined the Royal Inquisition, but neither was combat. He was a scholar, recruited out of University as an interpreter, having mastered four of the modern languages. During his first year of service, before he met Victoria, he accompanied a squad on a mission out of England. A town had become a haven of sorts for demons; he was there translate for a member of the Inquisition, who didn't speak the native tongue. Word of their delegation's arrival spread quickly. When the raid happened, he picked up arms alongside the others and was one of nine survivors in a squad of twenty.

Afterwards, his career picked up momentum. He was a natural pick for leadership; he was intelligent, steadfast, loyal to a fault, and most importantly, he bought into the doctrine. Bit by bit, he drifted from academia, until there was little left except strategy, directives, targets and ammunition. He was intended to check his questions at the door and simply fire.

Hayden wasn't cold. He stone-faced his way through conflicts and then he shut the door and gave in to the weight of it. Not even his wife saw the guilt he often felt, guilt because he couldn't save everyone, and guilt because he knew the losses of friends and enemies should make him doubt, and yet he didn't.

The Inquisition was right, even if unjust The methods were harsh, the collateral damage nearly unforgivable, but the end justified the means. Soon, they would have chased every trace of the supernatural from the world. Even the old religions had fallen out of favor. Science was god.

Faith wasn't meant to be a casualty of his service. Then, neither was his leg. It throbbed with the strain of kneeling and praying to a God he wasn't sure heard. He wanted guidance. In the absence of betters to call for orders, Hayden found himself alone with impossible decisions and a mounting restlessness he sensed in his squad. This world, infested with sin, demons, disease, war, and poverty, had somehow managed to accomplish what theirs could not: an uneasy peace between the pure and the tainted, in under two years.

They all knew it. They flailed their arms and shouted about impropriety, but they were people who had been challenged on their beliefs and now grabbed wildly for argument. In fact, some of them doth protest too much.

An earlier news report brought it home for Hayden. He was in a pub on reconaissance and the nightly news played on a large television. On the report, a scientist spoke about generating a substitute for the blood that vampires needed to survive; he posited that providing an alternate source of food would eliminate attacks on humans. It was an ignorant idea. Anyone who understood what 'soulless' meant would see it. Vampires drank blood for survival, just as humans ate meat, but sadism couldn't be sated with a pack of nutrients flavored like blood.

The point was, they were trying. That's what punched him in the gut. They would try and they would fail, and their uneasy peace would fall like a house of cards, without the Inquisition's intervention, but they wanted to try. It was hard not to turn their backs and leave them to it. This, the world seemed to say, was what they wanted. Why should good men and women -- people like Kathleen -- die to save a world that didn't want help?

Hayden got up and picked up his radio.

"This is Inquisitor Maragos. You are ordered not to intervene on demon confrontations, unless you have confirmation on the involvement of a fugitive. I repeat, do not intervene on demon confrontations. The signal will be complete in a matter of days. Your mission is to hunt down our fugitives, capture or kill. These orders will stand until we receive reinforcements from home."