Lawrence Clinic just after the call goes out: Demon!Simon and River (later Mal?)
[[Yeah I'm that annoying person who writes super long intros.]]
Andras had worn humans before, scores and scores, he'd lost count. Timelessness, losing track of exact numbers, of the clarity of memories, it was one of the things he hated about existing as a demon. His numerous climbs from The Pit were now blended into one indistinguishable journey he couldn't remember, not really, not as anything more than the smell of searing flesh and blood and mud and dead and weakly buzzing, dying flies crusting into his every orifice, the only air sulfuric and burning so that what made it past the aforementioned substances was almost unwelcome. He shouldn't have needed air, he shouldn't have had any orifices, not as a demon, but in Hell logic didn't matter, 'possible' was irrelevant, and whatever was worst was what was real. The climb was horrible (everything in Hell was horrible) but when he emerged, when he claimed a host, it was all worth it because he could sink into their memories, fill up every crevice of their minds, and slide into their perceptions: he could perceive time again, he could remember.
If he had been wise, he would reflect (when he could reflect), he would have just stayed in his first host until its death and then hopped to the next one and the next, lived out life after life. But you didn't get to be a demon by yearning merely for a normal life, meals and memories and love. He didn't remember his life as a human, years and years ago, so far into the past that most demons would have considered him old. He didn't remember his human life but he suspected, though not consciously and not often, that his crime against God had been fear. He had heard someone say once “fear is a lack of faith in God” and he had raised the hand of the host he was wearing at the time to strike without knowing why. Perhaps he really had only wanted a simple life but had been afraid he was somehow unworthy, had been foolish enough to make a deal, to take by force what he could have had freely.
Maybe that was why he sat now in this mind that was everything he'd wanted, held every quality he'd chosen the young doctor for, and thought only of leaving it. Simon Tam's mind was a paragon of order. Every sense was sharp, every mental faculty regularly exercised, and flicking through his memories held the thrill of using a state of the art computer after a tired old system that took a day to so much as boot up. He fought, of course, he argued and hurled the weight of his consciousness against Andras' control, when the demon had lured his sister into conversation on the network he had even tried to make a deal. Leave her where it's safe and I won't fight you the words had whispered up into his awareness, and when they were ignored, I can tell you things faster than you can find them in my memories, just leave her alone and then, finally, please and a picture, a memory, of a little girl knee deep in a koi pond reaching for the shining, flitting, fish.
Yet even Simon's struggling and arguing and deal making was predictable. Each step followed the last as logically as brick upon brick. Andras put him to sleep and turned his hopes on the sister whose mind was chaos but who had power, such power. If he could tame that mind, rebuild it to his purposes, no one would ever send him down below again. Even if the apocalypse failed he would never have to go back, never have to make the climb again. So he had put Simon's mind into a deep sleep and shut down the computer, walked to a chair by the window in exam room three, and sat down to wait. His associate was in the next room, waiting for the right moment to enter and claim Simon for herself after River arrived and Andras took her as a host. Then it would be time to join the fight raging outside in the downtown area, hopefully in time to see Lucifer rise and to be counted amongst the faithful those to be rewarded.