(A/N): I am obsessed with wings. I am also obsessed with Skyffery. The most obvious next step was to combine these great loves. This is the result. I don't know how often I'll be updating, but think of this as a thank you for putting up with me and my crazed ramblings. You are all my best and brightest creatures.
...
...
"I don't want to."
"You have no choice."
"I can resign."
"You can't resign from being a guardian. It's what we do."
"It's stupid."
"No, stupid is throwing your purpose away on a whim."
"It isn't a whim. I told you years ago I despised the idea of becoming someone's chaperon."
"Skye, your job is to protect a single human all their life. There is no pursuit more honorable or imperative than that. Embrace it. It is what you were meant for."
"I can't be the first to say this. Hasn't anyone else ever come to you, begging to fall to Earth and become a struggling artist or chemistry teacher?"
"Why would anyone want that? Those are trivial pastimes, designed for humans alone."
"At least they get to choose their own lives. I envy them."
"Don't. Never envy the wretched masses."
"How do you know they're wretched? Have you ever even walked among them?"
"Of course. They spend their days starting wars, instigating bloodshed of the most rancorous sort, poisoning their planet with a veritable cocktail of chemicals and carcinogens, betraying and abandoning people they make vows to, kicking and spitting and snapping at each other in the name of religion, losing their lives over pithy battles, discriminating against groups of all kinds, and systematically destroying every great and beautiful thing they have. That is where you come in. Your job is to—"
"I know what my job is."
"Good. Hopefully you will come to see its value. Until then, you'll have to attend to your duties as guardian."
"Just tell me who I'm supposed to be watching."
"I've got the file somewhere… Ah. Here it is: Male, sixteen, Caucasian, resident of North America, more specifically the Berkshire Mountains of Massachusetts, only-child, cohabiting with mother and step father, name: Jeffrey Tifton. You begin tomorrow. Good luck."
…
Skye could fly to earth; a striking blur of mercurial eyes and dove colored wings, but instead she focuses on the geographic coordinates shimmering cheerily on the Master Globe, head throbbing with an unpleasant mixture of nerves and dread, and magics herself to the correct location. She experiences the usual vertigo and tumbling innards, side effect of instantaneous transportation, but shakes the sensation off as her eyes adjust to the dimness.
She is standing in what looks to be a bedroom. A few rugs hug the maple paneled floors, and the only thing breaking the line of crisp eggshell paint on the wall is a framed graphic of a band called The Beatles. Skye wrinkles her nose, trying to understand the why anyone would elect to name a band after the lowly insect, but she has long given up trying to fathom the ways of human beings. They remain, much like everything else, beyond her comprehension.
More interesting is the large black instrument to her right; a piano, if she recalls correctly. The lid is pushed back and the exposed keys look like an expansive gap toothed smile. She pads across the carpet and gives one of the white keys a gentle press. It chimes, surprisingly loud in the stillness, and she grimaces, cursing her lack of common sense. Now is not the time for bothersome family members to come waltzing in, looking for the source of the noise.
Blessedly, no one hears her and she remains alone.
That is, until a freckled, teenage boy comes stumping in clutching a school bag and slams the door shut behind him so roughly the windows rattle in their panes.
He flings the bag to the floor, glaring at it, and kicks it once, twice, three times; eyes ablaze, knuckles clenched ghostly white.
"Hello," says Skye, and his head snaps up.
He gapes at her for the length of three heartbeats, his gaze flying from Skye's bleached Converse, to her sundress, to her ghastly silver hair bow—all part of the uniform—and ending on her face.
"Who the hell are you?" he asks.
"I'm a friend. Who the hell are you?"
"A friend?" he echoes, staring, and she stares right back, quill dangling from the corner of her unsmiling mouth.
"Of sorts. You haven't answered my question."
"I'm Jeffrey. And you're sitting on my bed. And I've never—I don't kno—you're not one of Mother's friends, are you?"
"Nope."
"Then why… I mean, how did you get in? Churchie always greets visitors at th—"
"I didn't come in the normal way." Skye plucks the quill from between her lips and sticks it in her pocket.
He blinks at her.
"Okay, you've got questions."
"Obviously. I come home from school to find a strange girl sitting on my bed, so yes. Yes. I've got questions. A plethora. An abundance. A boatload, if you will."
"Shoot."
"How did you get in?"
"I'll get to that. Ask me something else."
"You said you're a friend of sorts. What am I supposed to make of that?"
"I don't know, but I assume you usually treat your friends better than this."
"I don't even know you."
"You will."
She grins at him then, and her stomach flips inexplicably when his mouth quirks into an almost smile.
"Why are you in my room?"
"I have some things to tell you."
"What things?"
"Good news or bad news?"
He frowns. "Good news."
"The good news is that, at age sixteen, you now qualify for a guardian. A.k.a, a heavenly being to watch your every move, and defend and safeguard you in times of danger."
Jeffrey goes pale. "Oh," he chokes out, and his eyes are huge and very, very green. "Oh."
"The bad news is that I am said guardian. Sorry," she offers belatedly.
"You—oh my god." He sinks into the armchair opposite, palming his forehead. "Wow. This is—I'm ju—"
"Are you okay?"
"Not really. I know where this conversation is going and its zip code is 90213-I-am-having-a-heart-attack-and-I-think-I-might-be-in-the-emergency-room-within-the-hour."
"Didn't you ever learn about guardians in school?"
"It's actually a pretty taboo subject. I asked Mother about it once when I was a kid and she wouldn't answer me."
"What did you ask?"
Jeffrey grimaces. "This stupid kid I know named Teddy Robinette told me he'd seen his father's guardian once and that he was hovering above the ground. Like, levitating. So then I wondered if guardians had wings."
"And out of every possible thing you could have asked, you chose that? Do we have wings?"
"What," he snaps, flatly defensive. "Humans have been obsessed with wings for centuries."
"There's nothing special about wings. And yes, we do have them."
"Then how come—" he gestures at her wingless backside.
"I can hide them. Make them invisible."
"At will?"
"Of course. I'm an angel. What do you expect?" Skye leans forward and raises her brows, smiling mischievously. "Want to see them?"
Rule Number IX, Addendum II: Never, under any circumstances in which humans besides your guarded may be present, should you make your wings visible.
To hell with rules, thinks Skye. They were made to be broken. If Azalea gets angry at me and removes me from my duties as guardian, even better. I don't want the job anyway.
"I—yes," he says, rapt. "Please."
So she unfurls the great feathery appendages, stretching them as far as the room's width will allow. Her wingspan is a good six feet and her feathers are, to her eternal chagrin, a common snowy hue, tips tinged with the palest violet. When she was small, she'd watched her elder sister unfurl her wings for the first time and had gasped to see the coal colored feathers blend in with the star-shot sky like a fresh coat of black paint.
"I want mine to look just like those," she remembers saying, and Rosy had laughed with exhilaration and pride, twirling about with flushed cheeks and celestial sparks in her eyes.
Two years later, Skye's own wings grew to maturity but the first unfurling revealed dull, ordinary, white plumage. Like Clarence the angel from the mawkish human blockbuster, It's a Wonderful Life. She'd sulked for weeks. Worse was the fact that her fair hair, impossibly blue eyes, and porcelain complexion made her look exactly like the delicate, cherubic renditions of angels in children's fairy tales, a laughable contrast to her dry, obstinate nature.
"Make the best of it," her father had advised, adjusting his spectacles. "At least you're not a Fallen."
To be a Fallen is to be nobody.
Even Skye knew this when she was six years old, staring through Azalea's telescope at Earth, studying the grubby looking—naked, that's what the slang dictates them to be—homeless that blended into the pavement and backdrop of street corners. They are the failures of society, Azalea (wings of gunmetal gray, lined with mauve) had told her, and they are the ones whose mental health and aspirations dwindle into nothing, once their wings molt and fall apart, leaving behind—disgusting—bare backs.
No one wants to associate with a Fallen. They are cursed, the lepers of the angelic realm.
"True," Skye had replied, giving her father a reluctant nod.
"You'll become a brilliant guardian one day."
"Ha." She'd been unamused. "I'd rather walk the earth."
And then her father had given her the same, sorry, played-out line Azalea and all the other elder angels were so fond of saying. "Never the envy the wretched the masses."
Skye hated that, the psychology of it, the distance angels so liked to place between themselves and humans. It seemed incredibly counterproductive, really, given the fact that their job was supposedly to protect that human race. Never envy the wretched masses. Which really meant: Humans are lowly, inferior creatures, and we, the angelic race; the guardians, must be their salvation and their redemption.
The thought made her sick. Still does.
She gives her wings an experimental stretch and stifles a yawn, smirking at Jeffrey's priceless look of astonishment.
"What do you think?"
"They're… God. Spectacular."
Skye blinks. "You are the first person ever to tell me that."
"Wait, really?"
"Yes. Where I come from, these are plain and uninteresting."
"You're joking." Jeffrey slips out of his seat and approaches her, the tip of his tongue trapped between his lips. "What do angels consider interesting?"
"Multi-hued, ombre, iridescent, glossy feathers, especially if they're lined with a complimentary color. White wings are the angel equivalent of having brown hair."
She realizes too late that she has just made the comparison to a boy who himself has brown hair, but he doesn't seem affronted.
"Can I?" he asks, extending a hand toward her left wing.
"Yes, but be gentle."
Jeffrey rests his palm softly on the outer apex of her wing, fingers moving ever so softly through the down. Skye braces herself on the mattress as inconspicuously as she can, a hot rush of sensation searing through her core.
"Um," she says when Jeffrey buries warm fingers in her scapulars, and cannot meet his eyes.
"Is this making you uncomfortable?" he asks, bringing his downward stroking to a stop.
Skye clears her throat. "No."
She has never been ashamed at not being human, but there is something in the way Jeffrey looks at her that makes her feel undeserving of his regard. She's his guardian; Jeffrey shouldn't be looking at her like this, like she's something precious, something that should be kept safe evermore.
"I don't know why I'm even here," she blurts.
"What?"
"I could have ditched my responsibilities as guardian. I almost did."
"Why?" He cups a palm over her ulna.
"I've never wanted to be a guardian. Seems so stupid, you know? I don't know why I'm here," she repeats, gazing at the place where his fingers disappear into her plumage.
"Could it be that you care?" is the soft whisper.
Skye freezes.
There are a hundred different things she can say, but they are all jammed together in her mind, like paper stuck in the printer unable to be transcribed to something readable.
And then, just like that, oh, the answer.
Mistaking her expression for something else, Jeffrey moves back, swallowing heavily and looks away.
Skye watches him, grim-faced, thinking how unexpectedly wonderful her human is, how this might be the beginning of something brilliantly unfettered, how this could be their—
And that's when Mrs. Tifton bursts through the door.