A bit of WhoLock for your reading pleasure! I wrote this about five years ago and posted it on Tumblr, but I thought I'd share it with a wider audience. Enjoy!
The angel was a young creature, as far as their kind went, but by no means was she an adolescent. She was clever and had chosen her 'home' well, settling herself in an isolated but expansive English cemetery. To most who passed through its gates she was just a monument to another life lost and she earned not a second look. One angel among dozens, most humans didn't notice her or how she moved throughout the cemetery. Those who did notice something peculiar about her disappeared before they could ever talk about it, living out the rest of their lives in another age and leaving no trace for anyone to find.
Most of her kind took no pride in the way they hunted their victims, simply following anyone and everyone who had the misfortune of seeing them for what they were. No finesse, no skill. Just wait, stalk and devour. Since they were as old as time itself she didn't see the harm in playing with the humans for a few days before she struck. To the angels a few days was nothing more than a heartbeat or the tick of the second hand on a human watch. Because no matter how she caught her prey, it always ended the same: the unfortunate souls were sent back to another age and the energy they left behind kept her alive and thriving. Even though the practice was frowned upon by her elders, she delighted in the pursuit of her next victim, taking great care in terrifying those she believed to deserve such a fate. Those she deemed to be worthy of a more peaceful end met their deaths with a subtle hand they never saw coming.
When the humans arrived to bury another of their dead, she always paid close attention to those who visited and watched them from a perch somewhere nearby. She was fascinated by the droves of them who came to these ceremonies but how few of them returned to visit. Some brought flowers when they came; others brought small trinkets and baubles to place on the headstones. Some were very emotional while others stoic and she couldn't determine the reasons why. She was still confused by the traditions humans carried when it came to their dead, even after several millennia spent observing them.
One autumn afternoon a small group of humans followed a shiny black car to a plot at the edge of the cemetery. They were all bundled against the wind that swept through trees above and they huddled together for warmth and support, save for one. He walked with a limp and a cane and leaned on no one, his head down against the wind. She watched as he refused the chair at the grave site, standing straight and at attention. She assumed he had been a soldier of some kind and respected him for that, and she could also easily see the exhaustion and grief behind his eyes.
Another one with thinning hair brought up the rear of the group, gripping the handle of an umbrella tightly, using it as a walking stick. He stood off to the side and on his own after receiving a furious glare from the one with the cane. The others stood next to the one with the cane, staring at the mahogany casket as it was lowered into the ground. Whatever the one with the white collar was telling the rest of them didn't seem to be helping, and she could hear the mournful and lonely cries of the two female humans clearly as the wind died down.
The ceremony ended and the one with the silver hair leaned over said a few words to the one with the cane, clapping a hand on his shoulder before walking away. With one last look at the hole in the ground he said something the angel couldn't hear before limping back toward the walking path to join the others. She watched him lean heavily on his cane for a moment, his shoulders sagging, his eyes closed and chin nearly touching his chest. When he raised his head he looked straight at her, a solitary marble angel covering its eyes in grief. He may have been looking for solace. He may have been looking for salvation, she didn't know. But the moment his devastated gaze fell upon her, the frenzied urge to kill him she usually experienced didn't bubble up within her. She felt no urge to stalk him. There was no pressing need to make him vanish. She had never felt anything like that before and it both terrified and excited her.
After staring at her for a moment, he sighed and looked down at the ground as he walked away, leaving her alone again. She studied the area around the grave site they had just visited and chose a spot from which she could watch him if he ever came back. She was prepared to wait as long as it took, so when he returned a few days later she was pleasantly surprised and prepared.
From her vantage point nearby she heard the rumblings of the machine the humans used to move about, immediately followed by the rhythmic knocking sound of his cane hitting the pavement as he walked. Had they been born with hearts, hers would have been pounding erratically. As it were, it was nearly impossible to remain in her position and simply watch him. She felt as if she were being drawn to him, that even being as close as she was now wasn't close enough.
He stopped in front of the grave site and studied the shiny, black stone for a moment before he spoke. He cleared his throat loudly, startling several crows nearby. When he spoke, his voice was barely a whisper.
"You… you told me once that you weren't a hero. There were times I didn't even think you were human. But let me tell you this, you were the best man, the most human… human being that I've ever known, and no one will ever convince me that you told me a lie, so there."
She listened as he continued talking to the ground, his voice breaking as he pleaded with the human to not be dead. They didn't have emotions as the humans did, but she believed she was feeling something similar to what they called 'empathy'. She wanted to comfort this human and protect him from anything that would cause him pain, to prevent him from experiencing anything like this again. She watched as he walked back toward the road, alone, panic rising within her.
What if he left and never came back? What if she never saw him again?
She quickly made up her mind to follow him back to his place of dwelling, keeping watch on him, her human. She never made her presence known and he had no idea he was being followed by a creature that possessed the power to blink him out of existence as he knew it. She intervened on his behalf more than once, removing threats to his safety and satiating her hunger at the same time. One human she preyed upon had drawn a weapon and was ready to kill him. He wound up in a cramped house in London just before the Great Fire. Another actually attacked him and knocked him to the ground, and when her human stood up again his attacker was nowhere in sight. She took great pride in dispatching of that one, dropping him into central Europe during the height of the Black Death.
She enjoyed following him around and looking after him, but he still visited his friend at the cemetery regularly. When he was out in the sunlight she could see how he had changed. His cheeks were now quite hollow, his skin had grown pale and his eyes had deep shadows beneath them, making him look much older than she knew he was. Some days he spoke to his friend, but most days he stood at the foot of the grave site, glaring at the name on the headstone. The more she watched him and strayed away from the cemetery, the more her strength waned and the weaker she became. To avoid being spotted and to regain her strength, she had to return to the cemetery and wait for the occasional wandering human, the time spent separated from him making her feel anxious and not in control of his fate.
Not that she ever really was.
After the snow came, his visits became more infrequent and when he did visit, he didn't stay for very long. She knew humans couldn't tolerate cold very well, but hers seemed indifferent to it. While most she observed had clothing covering their heads, hands and faces, hers wore none of that. His head was bare, as were his hands, and he stayed until his skin turned white with cold, nearly as white as the 'marble' of which she was made.
One winter day he arrived late in the evening, much later than usual, and instead of going straight to the grave site he walked further up the row and stopped in front of her newest landing spot several rows closer to his friend. He looked up at her curiously and stared at her a moment, cocking his head to one side.
"I've got to be seeing things. No way you could be following me around," he muttered. He put his hand upon her foot, as if he were checking to make sure she was made of stone, then rapped his knuckles against it. He shook his head and wandered back toward his usual spot at the foot of his friend's grave, wobbling slightly as he went, waving an arm about to steady himself. His cane made not a sound as it hit the snow beneath it, but he continued to be unsteady on his feet.
He collapsed to his knees when he reached the grave, tossing his cane into the deep snow several feet away. He was silent for a while and he sat motionless, snow falling silently around him. Then, without warning, he screamed into the darkness, the sound echoing through the cold, night air. When he ran out of breath his shoulders began to shake and he yelled at the headstone, berating his friend for leaving him alone at the holidays and for lying to everyone. His grief was terrifying, even to her, and she longed to reach out and comfort him as she had seen so many humans do.
Since his face was buried in his hands, she approached him. She was cautious at first, being careful not to do anything that would attract his attention. But when she realized he had no idea she was there, she appeared right behind him, a long, slender arm reaching toward him. When he let out another painful sob, she laid her hand on his shoulder to comfort him. Her human.
And the moment she touched him he was gone.
His headstone appeared in the snow next to the one he spent so much time visiting, looking as if it had been there all along. Immediately realizing what she had done the angel let out a mournful, piercing shriek as the energy he left behind coursed through her.
He was gone. Nothing she could do would bring him back.
She remained in front of his grave for quite some time, her arms reaching toward him, her claw-like fingers outstretched. When she felt a human presence nearby she moved and appeared at a small mausoleum several rows away. She didn't take her usual position, standing tall with her hands over her eyes. This time she leaned against an old block of granite, burying her head in the crook of her arm. She would stay in that position until the end of time and she would never gaze upon another human ever again.
Days later she felt a human presence like no other she'd felt before. It stopped in front of his grave before moving toward her. As it grew nearer and nearer, she felt no inclination whatsoever to track it and no desire to kill it. She ignored it like every other human that had come and gone since hers, until he laid a hand upon her shoulder and whispered in her ear. His voice was deep, articulate and angry.
"I know you can hear me and you will listen. You will take me to him and you will do so immediately. And if he has been harmed in any way, you will regret this day for the rest of your existence."
He walked around behind her, leaning into her other ear.
"And if you don't, I've called on a colleague who can be quite convincing."
A familiar sound echoed faintly in the distance, the sounds of an old enemy landing his ship. The sound her family heard before they were exterminated.
The sound of hope that her human could be saved.