"sweet dreams are made of this,
who am i to disagree?"
-the eurythmics, sweet dreams (are made of this)
part 00: the way it goes
there's Heaven, there's Hell, and there's Earth. and a long long time ago, before your thousandth grandfather's thousandth grandfather, they all existed in harmony.
(well—these things change.)
now it's a bloodbath.
basically, there's three types of Angels: Guardians fight for Heaven, Reapers for Hell, and Infants—called Charges by Guardians—live on Earth, unknowing, unseeing, unwitting, and unborn. these are the ranks of soldiers fighting the never ending war. being an Angel is random—no one knows exactly why certain people become them and some people don't. it has nothing to do with goodness, with morals or humanity- it's something about them that makes them special. something in the way they think, the way they move and talk and act and do and live that makes them amazing. that makes them Angels.
(but sometimes i wonder if that special something is a curse or a blessing.)
Heaven and Hell are what you'd expect them to be—great big storage vaults for almost everyone who's ever lived, except one of them is on fire.
(and of course you know the Earth—it's where you live after all)
Hell started it—the first ever Angels were Reapers sent by the Devil to corrupt the human race. because even now your good and your bad are weighed against each other and your soul is sent to the proper place to rest for eternity—it's just that the normal souls don't get that much attention anymore.
(wars always do make the headlines after all)
the Devil wanted more souls, at the heart of it the human race is predominately good after all, so he decided to make them his. to change what should have happened into something else entirely. as you can imagine—chaos ran rampant. Heaven didn't know what to do, they couldn't believe that even the Devil would disturb souls from their rest and use them like that.
(souls are fragile—most will turn to dust the minute they're disturbed. some however, are stronger)
eventually, Heaven decided to fight fire with fire. they sent their own Angels—the first Guardians—to hold back the Reapers.
(but of course, nobody knew what they were doing. the addition of more Angels just threw Earth deeper into chaos)
the Earth was insane—and by this point neither Heaven nor Hell was accomplishing anything. so God proposed the introduction of Rules. a system by which to use Angels that kept the Earth in balance and let them conduct their war quietly and viciously in the background.
the Devil agreed, and order was restored.
(but at what cost? Angels are people too after all)
Angels are rare, unbelievably rare. one in one million people have the right soul for it, the right kind of soul that can be woken up and survive. of course, even Angels can't survive very long by themselves, they need someone to connect to, to cling to until their job is done.
(an Angel needs an Angel to survive)
Angels can be found on Earth as Infants a few years before they die, and at that point it is assigned both a Guardian and a Reaper.
the ultimate goal of a Reaper is to kill the infant before its time—the wrongness of the change, even if the Infant itself should have gone to Heaven, will send it straight to Hell. but first, the Reaper must kill its opposing Guardian. the Guardian's job is to stop the Reaper from killing, by killing the Reaper first.
(murder, murder everywhere. but is it murder if the victim is already dead?)
if it isn't killed before its time, every Infant will go to Heaven.
because, at the heart, every Angel is a good person- but they're also strong. strong and good don't often mix well. of course, the Angels have their own theories about the war. whispers twisted by bitterness and hurt, but still mostly true.
(of course they whisper—how can they not? they're only human after all)
AN: It's DOOOOOOONEEEE, or at least part 0... :P but i hope at the very least this clears up the ridiculously confusing part of Wings. these are personal stories of the Angels, it's sad and complicated; just forewarned.
up next, the lunatic.