Title: Balancing Accounts

Author: Jedi Buttercup

Disclaimer: The words are mine; the worlds are not. I claim nothing but the plot.

Rating: PG-13.

Summary: Drive Angry. For all that John Milton was literally damned, he had been granted rather more of the Lord's infinite mercy than most. 500 words.

Spoilers: Drive Angry (2011).

Notes: Found clearing out old scrapfiles: an introspective little exploratory bit set somewhere in the future of the Watered With Blood universe. I still intend to go back and write more of that, eventually.

When the Accountant asked John Milton, on the long ride back to Hell, when exactly he decided he could trust Piper Sparks with his granddaughter's life, he said it was when she burst out of Jonah King's RV, eyes flashing and hands all cut up from a fight.

(Though the truth was, he'd had his eye on Piper from the moment he saw her serve muffins and milk to a hungry child. Her boss had tried to punish her for her kindness by feeling her up in public-- and she'd near-castrated him for it, even though it cost her the job. Mindful that he'd have to leave his baby girl with someone even if-- no, after-- he got her back, John had figured better a foul-mouthed little lioness than the distant relatives Suzy'd go to otherwise. They hadn't given a damn about his daughter's fate, why should he trust them to care for hers?

It hadn't hurt, of course, that Piper came with a very sweet ride.)

Strangely enough, when the Accountant later found the opportunity to ask Piper-- in circumstances too tiresome to go into in brief-- why she'd decided to bind her fate up with a stranger born forty years, half a country, and a whole culture away from her, her answer matched up with Milton's like a pair of bookends.

She said it was because Milton said he needed her, but still gave her an out: of course she'd replied she was with him 'til the end.

(Though the truth was, she'd known John Milton for someone she could trust the moment she'd laid eyes on him: tall and slim, all black denim with a wry twist to his mouth, a helpful way with an engine, and respectful eyes. That hadn't stopped her from taking out a little insurance just in case-- her instincts had failed her with Frank, after all-- but she'd never felt threatened by Milton. Even after she'd realized what he was.

She could spot a lustful eye on a man at twenty paces, but Milton looked at her face, not her breasts or bare thighs. And it wasn't that he had a limp dick; he'd proved that at the Bull by the Balls. So dead man walking or not-- he was decent, and that made him a prize specimen in Piper's world.)

She was a forthright woman, not shy about defending what was hers-- and he was a forthright man, willing to go to any lengths for the same cause.

They couldn't have been a match made in Heaven, one would think, for obvious reasons. But for all that John Milton was literally damned, he had been granted rather more of the Lord's infinite mercy than most. For Someone had surely been looking out for him when He'd put Piper in John's path.

(Not a very satisfying summation, to balance against Milton's record. At least the Accountant didn't have to balance St. Peter's books... though he'd have given much to see that entry.)

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