Her beauty was perfect, carried as much in body as by her smile, unmarred by the blood. Maybe it was because it was hard to imagine her any other way; like Athena with her armor, she must have been born covered in a network of scars and a crazed grin missing half her teeth, nails filthy and fingers twisted and badly mended due to overuse, one leg missing and bleeding a solid red stream and an arm hanging by thorn muscle and flesh.
The angel stared back. It had no mouth to smile with, or ability to express, and so far in its existence it had never needed such a thing. But experience was experience, and the angel stared her back expecting her to fall because that was the way of things; it struck, and they fell.
"Go on." Said the woman between gritted teeth, impatiently, as if she was about to break out into laugher and wanted to get it out before that made her unable to speak.
There was nothing in the angel's design that enabled or encouraged emotion, only very basic foundations that in flesh and blood might inspire such a thing. It was aware of bodily damage, and of dangerous situations and had the sensibility not to suffer harm that might take time and resources to mend. It had memory, and the forementioned experience, and expected things to be a certain way. But in what reasoning it had, as life doesn't train the invulnerable to think much of anything, it couldn't grasp this new sensation.
"Go on." Insisted the woman, and leaned in as if to get more on the angel's face but almost lost what little balance she had. "Come on, fool."
Because looking at this woman, it didn't just feel uncertainty. Such a feeling it discarded thoughtlessly, as it had never had consequence for it. The woman was anomalous but anomalies were a regular experience, to be observed if there's nothing demanding one's presence.
"Go. On." She repeated, "Strike me down."
Because the angel, for the first time in its existence without a begining, felt a compulsion it could not meet, a motion no muscle in its body could achieve, a word outside the divine verb it willed. The angel, for the first time, felt it had to do something but wasn't sure of what this something was.