Standing at my windowsill, staring out at the moonlight covered landscape, I contemplated what had lead me to this moment in time. A thousand yard stare obscured the details of what lie before me.
A rustle. Footsteps, barely recognizable.
Movement beside me. A hand brushing aside what locks of hair remained after my hatchet job. A soft touch, a man's hand gently brushing down my cheek.
Cassiel had come to stand beside me, leaning on the wall next to the curtain to my left. Deliberately calm stance, legs crossed, putting weight on his shoulder as he leaned in to look at me.
I leaned into his touch briefly, turning my head to gaze up at him. At knocking me out of my trance, he smiled down at me, bringing his massive black wings to to encircle me.
Saturn, the ever thoughtful featherhead, sought to eliminate as much outside stimuli as he could. To soften my emotional and mental transition to the here and now. He knew in my current state, coming back from the Sight, I tended to be impossibly vulnerable to the outside world.
A crooked smile on the impossibly beautiful features of his face. "How ya hangin' in there, love? You doin' alright in that head of yours?"
He cupped my cheek gently and stared into my eyes, his, a warm gray brown, overlapping my gray blue. The crown of feathers on his head glistened even in the darkness.
“You’ve been using the sight again, haven’t you, siren? It always makes you this tired.”
My lover swept me into his arms and carried me to our shared bed. The man I had claimed as my best friend. My Guardian.
My head hit soft pillows. I struggled to look up at him.
A soft shake of my head, eyes glazed over. A whisper. "I haven't been trying to. The visions just keep coming. It's all I can do to ride the current when they arrive."
A soft whisper fell upon the room. Time slowed. As it was just meant to be us in the moment.
"Then I shall ride them with you. All you need to do is ask."
"I’ll give us time to rest. Time to play. Time to endure."
I closed my eyes then, letting my weight sink into the cool sheets beneath my skin. A turn of my head as I buried my head into the crook of his neck, my arms coming to softly rest around him, pulling him closer to me.
The thing about angels is that they use their abilities like other creatures breathe. Easily, at will, and without thought.
One of Saturn's signatures was to slow or still time to give me a chance to recuperate or hide from the world. He did it often and unthinkingly, often wreaking havoc on the world around us. He typically regarded this chaos with amusement.
“Our world. My issues to fix later. To err on the side of caution without at least being smart enough to fix things in your favor is asinine.”
“Chaos in itself can fix issues. The world can handle itself.”
He curled up properly against me, letting me use his body as a comforting pillow. As we always did once he arrived.
"You know you're bending the rules again, love. Father'll be furious if we don't report in in the morning."
He grinned then. “I am. But I can control when the morning will come, my dear. He’ll have us reporting in at due time.”
A slow, crawling look down my form to settle at my chest, dragging itself back up to watch my face closely.
“For now, it is just us.”
Cassiel and I had a habit for disappearing together. Sometimes carnally, sometimes not. Always one of us seeking out the other. We were the closest of friends, those that came together in an unlikely friendship amidst the coldness and cruelty of the war we fought in together.
We always sought to comfort the other, attempting to soften the blows of the horrors we saw daily. The cruelty, the savagery of those we were supposed to be allies with.
We were cut from a different cloth, and it showed.
Once upon a time, my angel had been as emotionless and lethally efficient as a surgeon's blade. At some point, though, he stumbled his way into discovering a different path. One hotly disputed by our kind:
The discovery and release of his spark, kept caged through his childhood and early teenage years.
A spark I was proud to have helped stoke until it flared under my influence and came alive behind his eyes. What resulted eventually came to be the man holding me now.
The others accused me of corrupting their kind, but I stood my ground. I was of the belief the spark was necessary to each angel's internal evolution.
Without it, I argued, they were shells. Puppets.
Not the kinds of creatures I ever wished to work beside.
He was grateful to me, as he always was. His spark had brought him to life beyond measure and compare to his brothers before him. A soul. A conscience. A deeper understanding of the world beyond his sight and views.
Not a puppet.
Not an angel either. Something different.
A tear slowly snaked its way down my face, the exhaustion getting to me. We had been doing recon missions for months, something exponentially more difficult for me as our targets had once been our friends. Our family.
In those days, I had been far more softhearted. Gentle. Loving, if you disregarded the sarcasm and dark humor.
This was, admittedly, a very long time ago.
"Can we.. can we just stay here for a while, Cass? Can we stay in this pocket of time long enough to sleep properly? It feels like months since you were allowed to just.. hold me."
A soft smile from my angel at this request.“If that is what you wish, my love. Then it shall be. It has been a long time since we could just lay together like this. I’ll keep the pocket going. You get some sleep.”
A wrinkle formed between my eyes as my brows furrowed in concern. "You need the sleep just as badly as I do. I worry for your mental state at times, pausing time as you do so I can sneak across the borders and retrieve what Dad needs."
"I know what strain it is on you. You can't expect to keep this going forever. Eventually, something is going to give, and I fear it will be your health. Or your sanity."
My ridiculously self sacrificing angel. “I’ll sleep when I need to. I’m alright, don’t you worry. Whatever goes first will come back in time. My job, and my greatest joy is keeping you safe.”
“But if you want me to sleep, then I will.”
He yawns, almost on cue, curling up comfortably against me.
I battle my exhaustion, still worried. Dashing the tears from my eyes wearily, yawning in response to his.
"Will you wake me when the spell starts to falter? I don't want us to be late for the debriefing. They're expecting me to Speak. Again."
The higher ups had a vicious habit of forcing me to explain the enemy camps in detail, scrutinizing my face as I struggled with myself to avoid revealing too many details. As I omitted the details that would lead to the incarceration and death of those I still loved.
I couldn't betray either side. So, I relayed what information I safely could to both sides. Enlightening them just enough to save lives, casting into shadow the personal details that, if relayed, would be seen as a betrayal.
“I will, now. Get some rest, my sweet Dia. You need your strength for the meeting. I’ll wake you when it’s time.”
“I hate that they keep making you speak, though. Don’t they have others?”
My tone grew cold at this.
"You know why they choose me. They hope to get me to formally choose a side with their manipulations."
"I won't do it. They can go fuck themselves."
Cassiel held me tighter at this admission, his tone growing wistful. “They really can. I’m tired of the politics. And forcing you into them.”
“And well, no one else gets to fuck you. But me.”
Another yawn at this. "If I weren't so fucking tired all the time, that'd happen more."
"Goodnight, babe. Good luck in the morning."
I furrowed into his body and the covers he had slid over our forms, delighted to not be passing out alone over endless stacks of paperwork as I had been for months.
“I’d like that. But yes. Goodnight love. We’re going to need that luck in general.”
As I closed my eyes and fell into sleep, I neglected to tell my lover what I had Seen.
What was coming next.
Why I wanted a stolen night with him so strongly.
....It was one of the last we would ever have together.
