Guardian
Angels, by necessity, are a lonely race. Orbiting helplessly those living who burn the brightest, they may never look at one another, never touch, never share a memory, lest they be locked in eternal stone. Angels are always a lonely race, living for their brief moments of pleasure as they absorb the potential energy of a living being.
Yes, always lonely—but never like this.
He had been the last in the universe, dormant in the cargo hold of a ship that had crashed—a rescue mission for his desiccated kin. For a while there had been the comfort, at least, that he was not the last. There had even been hope, that the cracks in time would provide a neverending feast. Of course, the feast was poison in the end, a poison that had eaten his race again, erased them forever, in the truest sense of the word. He had survived, and he was the last again.
It was the hair that first caught him. In the patina of grey in which the Angel lived, it was a brush of color, an eye-catching crimson. As the Time Lord, the half-woman, and the girl with the brightest hair climbed from the wreckage of the Bysantium, he followed. Silently, swiftly, quietly, cautiously.
Surely a girl with such bright hair would burn just as bright with energy, enough energy to sustain him until he could again find a civilization to latch onto. The trouble was getting into their box—no means of entry, and no place to hide. But these earthcrawlers were slow, much slower than he was, and so he slipped inside behind the turn of a back and was down and around a corridor, safe in the machine's inner workings.
Time passed. He stayed, alone in the darkness, until one night he was drawn back into the machine's heart. He stood over her bed in the deep stillness and looked again at her hair, so bright in his eyes. A flame in the darkness within him. More than a candle; a torch. A beacon.
He watched her at night, and during the day in the end, careful to stay out of sight, and he learned. He learned that here was a girl who was filled with fire, with its uncertainty, its fickleness, its fits of rage. With its passion, its love, its warmth and protection. Here was a girl who was not afraid.
When the man of dreams came out of the Timelord's soul, he watched her. When the Timelord and the jealous boy left her alone with the man of dreams, he watched her. When the dreamlord finished his taunting and his thoughts turned to things worse, the Angel found himself in front of him, a snarl on his face, keeping the insubstantial monster away from the girl with the fiery hair. Turned away, she didn't see him, but the insubstantial man did, and he left her alone after that.
When the stars blinked out and the half-woman began the loop, he stayed. He waited for the girl to return, and she did.
Then the Timelord brought the machine out of the universe, and a creature crawled inside it and chased his crimson-haired girl through the hallways. It made her scream in torment, and the Angel emerged into the control room, clawing helplessly at the circuits in which the House dwelled. He was gone again before they returned. He hated himself, in those moments. He hated that he could not do anything to stop her screams.
His excuse of the coming feast wavered and broke. He was trapped orbiting the girl with the flaming hair, her eternal protector, her invisible guardian.
Until he was careless. Until he stepped into the light, and someone saw him.
It was early morning. The Angel had been watching, absorbed in his girl's pacing around the console. He had grown careless, and suddenly he felt himself turn to stone.
"Doctor!" came the yell.
"What is it, Rory?" demanded that girl of fire.
"There's a… thing. Not a good thing. Very bad thing."
The Timelord was there now, running up from beneath the glass floor, coat forgotten.
"Step away from it now, Rory. Don't touch it." His voice was low, tense.
"Doctor, how can that be here." Her fire was in her voice, too. In every part of her. The girl filled with fire.
"It must have stowed away. It's been living here, hiding, waiting…" The Timelord paused. "So, why aren't we dead?" He began pacing, up and down. "We should be dead, it should've gotten us long ago." He leaned in close to the Angel. "What are you up to?" he breathed.
The Angel wanted to show them. It could not speak, it could not make them understand, but maybe it could show them. So it began drawing the lights away, all of the lights.
"Amy, Rory, don't blink. Don't look away."
"Doctor…" She was panicking. He wanted to comfort her, but he had to show her this. He had to show her that he was her Angel.
So he pulled again, and he felt, one by one, the lights go out. His body relaxed from its petrification, and instinct pulled at him to feed, but he ignored that. He held the lights out for a long moment, then let them flicker back on. Arms to his sides, he heard their gasps as they saw him still where he was.
"Why didn't it get us, Doctor?" She seemed even more scared now. Why couldn't she understand?
"I need you all to trust me," the Timelord said. "On my count, I want you all to close your eyes."
"Doctor—"
"Trust me." The Angel could feel the Timelord stepping closer, speaking lower, just to him. "I know you can hear us. And if you were going to kill us, you would've done it by now. So I'm giving you a chance to show us what you're up to. Ten seconds." He stepped away. "On my count, then. Three… two… one."
They must have listened, for the Angel felt his body relax again. He had ten seconds.
Moving forward, he scratched something into the floor, so fast that the humans only heard a quick screech. Then he paused. He knew it was not a good idea, but he couldn't resist. This was his chance, maybe his only chance.
Only a second had passed. Slowly for an Angel, he moved behind his girl. He tentatively raised a hand, and, feather-light, laid it on her hair. He moved his fingers through it softly, careful not to alert her of his touch. He brought a tendril up to his face, and he had never felt something so soft. The Angels never wept, of course, but he felt something in his throat and behind his eyes, and he thought that maybe, if he was another sort of being, he would be weeping now.
In his mind, he felt the seconds trickling away, and he felt himself crystallize again as the humans opened their eyes.
"Amy!" the boy yelped.
"No, Rory," said the Timelord. The fear was gone from his voice. He looked at the Angel, frozen behind the girl, her hair in his stone fingers, pressed to his face, and crouched down to read the floor. The girl slowly moved away from him, and the Angel felt a tearing loss as her fire slipped from his stone fingers. He could only imagine what his face looked like.
She turned to look at him. "Doctor… it didn't get me. It could've, but it didn't."
The Timelord was tracing the scratches on the floor now, a bemused smile on his face.
"What's it say?"
The Doctor looked up, and looked at the Angel.
"Guardian," he said quietly. "It says Guardian."