So fast.
Faster than she had even thought was possible.
Of course, given what manner of creature she was, that shouldn't have been surprising.
One instant he had been just in front of her, all fluffy hair and bright green eyes. And the next…
Gone.
Because she hadn't had the self restraint to control herself. It was always about trying as hard as she could to try, every time, just to get a little bit closer to him. But this time, she had dared too much. And now, she found herself robbed of all will to move before she could be seen, to continue her existence. She would remain where she was, draped across the steps of the mausoleum, until she crumbled into dust and the stars twinkled out.
This was her self induced punishment.
It should never have happened, and somewhere deep within the cold recesses of her stone heart, she knew that. But she had spent too long… How many millennia? How long had she spent frozen, stealing the life from those beautiful humans when their backs were turned to send them reeling into the past? She couldn't even remember anymore.
When one was a statue, the days and nights seemed to blur together endlessly, repeating in a cycle that was never interrupted. Humanity changed, obviously, and she saw this as the long years slipped by her, providing her the only form of entertainment possible for a Weeping Angel.
The others, they mocked her, in what little language they had. Stupid. Idiot. Wasteful. They called her, not understanding the fascination she held with those who were supposed to be nothing more than their sources of energy to survive. They didn't know why she moved so frequently, trying to get a change of scenery whenever possible. The answer? Standing on a pedestal in the middle of a cemetery grew mind-numbing after the first several hundred years.
So she moved. Town squares, rooftop gardens, fountains, anywhere she could that would provide a new vantage point on those fascinating humans that filled her world.
Until she found him.
It was a new location for her, one side of a wrought iron gate leading up a long winding drive that ended at a large, beautiful home. It was on a secluded street, so there weren't a lot of people around to prevent her from coming and going as she liked. And while the people watching was interesting, she had grown tired of standing under open skies where those awful little feathered creatures would drop their refuse on her. Being beneath broad, leafy trees was a good change.
No longer than two days after being at this new "home" of hers, she watched as a little boy come running down the drive, feet pounding, with his school bag in one hand, coat flying out behind him. A woman followed him, barefoot, with her hair disarrayed.
"Theodore! Theodore, love, you can't just run off like that." She cried, finally catching up to him.
"Mummy, it's the first day of school! I can't be late!" He responded, shaking his head in frustration at her seeming to not understand the importance of this piece of information.
"I know darling, but Mummy has to finish fixing her hair, and then she'll take you. It's much too far of a walk for you."
"No it's not, I'm a big boy! I know the way and everything!"
She chuckled, ruffling his shaggy blonde hair. "That you are Theo, but that doesn't mean you can walk. It's not safe. When you're older perhaps."
The little boy (Theodore, had the woman called him?) stuck out his bottom lip in a pout she found oddly endearing, which was strange, as she was not familiar with emotions of the positive kind.
"Fiiiiiiiine, if I MUST." He answered her, taking her hand and following her back up the drive, inside the house.
She reflected on this domestic scene she had just borne witness to, and resolved to remain where she was. The boy was charming, too much so for her to uproot again so quickly after arriving. After all, a human's lifespan was a speck of dust in the wind in comparison to hers. He would be long gone soon enough, and then she could find somewhere new to spend her time.
And there she stayed. She observed Theodore as he grew from an adorable rosy cheeked little boy to a lanky, awkward adolescent who seemed to constantly be in a temper when he arrived home from school to a beautiful young man, who grew into his build very well. She watched him as he went from being driven by his glamorous mother, to walking with his friends, to riding his bicycle, to finally taking the wheel of the car himself down that long drive and off the road. He would be driven home, and burst out of the car, jabbering excitedly about what he had learn that day, which melded seamlessly into racing up the drive with his friends on their bicycles, seeing who could be the fastest and make it to the house first, which, before she knew it, was replaced with a dark car turning off the road, and he would get out, after which he would go around to open the door, at which point any number of gorgeous young women would take his hand to step out onto the drive.
She was never envious. She couldn't be. What right did she, a monster of the universe, have to hate this amazing young man for taking pleasure in the company of one of his own kind?
That was the difficult part to her. Over time, she felt her stone heart softening, filling with an unidentifiable emotion that, until now, she had never felt in the long, dreary years of her existence. She came to realize, from seeing how he acted around all of the young women he spent time with that this emotion was none other than… love.
Stupid. Angels do not love. Angels hunt, feed. The others would have scolded her. And for the first time in the many centuries of her life, she wished she had not been brought into the universe as she was, a monster, a stone creature incapable of all the pleasures she saw humanity able to enjoy. She wanted to be human herself, to dance and laugh and love and smile and take part in all of the beautiful things that this world held for them. She wanted to be able to experience them with HIM. But of course, the universe would not be so kind.
Like that, 25 years had gone by in the blink of an eye, and he was no longer a child, but the man of the house. This was a phrase she had heard through the sobs of his mother as a caravan of dark vehicles came down the drive, with Theodore and his mother in the very last one, a long, dark car with tinted windows.
Out of curiosity, she waited until they returned, and she had managed to overhear where they had gone (the very same cemetery that she had despised so much) and returned there that same night. It took some searching, but she eventually found the plaque on the inside of the family mausoleum.
It read: Alexander H. Ewing May 17, 1942-December 2, 2011 Beloved Husband and Father.
So Theodore's father had passed away. She felt little emotion, unsurprisingly. The man was not someone she had seen a lot of during the years Theodore grew up, as he had been a huge business tycoon, always away at some conference or another.
Something compelled her to remain there, standing as the lone sentinel over his father's grave, until Theodore returned, as she knew he would, being the good son that he was and wanting to pay his respects to the man who paid for all of his upbringing and seen everything done right for him, even if he hadn't done the familial and emotional role due by a parent to their offspring.
She didn't have to wait long.
The next night, just before dusk, he returned, with a bouquet of white roses to leave in the vase on the pedestal in the mausoleum. He placed it there, and spent a surprisingly long time pacing back and forth. He didn't say anything, which she had expected. Theodore was never one for dramatic gestures, least of all in a cemetery, where the man he was speaking to would not be able to hear anything he had to say.
Eventually, as the first shadows of night began creeping over the gate, Theodore took a deep breath, and turned to leave for home.
Knowing that his back was safely turned, she began to move, following him, so that she could return to her long held post outside of his home. She moved slowly at first, but then faster, thinking that maybe just this once she would be able to see face to face with the man she had grown to love over the course of his life without having to observe him from afar as a cold, lifeless statue.
This was her fatal mistake.
Clearly, Theodore heard her moving behind him, and abruptly stopped moving.
Unable to stop herself, she fell forward, cursing herself with every fiber of her being for the deadly speed that her kind were known for. Her outreached hand brushed his back…
…and he disappeared, catapulted into the past, gone forever.
She found that the will to remain upright had left her, and she actually fell, hitting the ground, as she was not currently in a quantum-locked state.
Her long dress draped across the steps, her large wings folded behind her as to not damage them, but she couldn't have cared less if someone came up and beat her to dust with their bare fists.
She had lost Theodore.
Her love, the one who she had spent time watching him grow up, falling in love with him not only as a man, but as an outstanding example of the best parts of humanity, the things that she loved most about them as a race.
And because she had been so confident that she could overcome a fact of her biology, she lost him forever.
In that instant, she decided to never move again. To never find another place to spend her time, for fear that she would do the same thing to another innocent human. She would never feed again, eventually crumbling away into permanent stone, ceasing to exist. It didn't scare her though, this prospect. In fact, she welcomed it, and wished time would pass faster so that she could fade into oblivion and perhaps come into the universe again as a better creature, one who didn't survive by robbing others of their time-energy.
And she found it bitterly amusing that despite being a Weeping Angel, she was unable to do truly the only thing she wished to do….weep.
