What she is witnessing is nothing short of a miracle, and despite being wide awake, she is certain this is all a dream she will wake from sooner or later. This must be the fever dream that precedes death, the entrance of the afterlife; slow, soft and warm, gently smothering the flame of life out of the body. However, her eyes are wide open, the air is cool against her skin and her wings are firmly attached to her back.
The only thing that feels different, now, isn't her dreamy haze: it's the colour of her feathers who have gone from a silvery white to a charcoal black.
She could have left as soon as she was conscious of it and disappear into the night. In fact, when she woke up without ever expecting to, her first reflex was to fly away very, very far from this place – but she got swayed into staying, somehow.
She could be leaving now. She us all alone in a room in a house she has most likely never seen, despite how much she was supposed to watch over this city. Her wings are entirely functional; she is not even hurt or in need of a rest, since she just slept for the Sacred Ones know how long. Even the strong smell of rose (her perfume) permeating the room makes her want to get away. Oh, no, she could leave over and over again, but the thing is, where would she even go? It is not like she has a home to return to anymore. Heaven, she does not even have something to do, now.
This is what happens when you are supposed to ascend a hero but live to see humans' sins catch up to you, when you decide to defy the odds against your best judgement.
The sound of footsteps entering the room breaks her out of her pensive trance, prompting her to rise her eyes (she would never lift her head now that the burden of shame is heavily weighing on her shoulders, it would feel like committing yet another blasphemy and the Sacred Ones know how badly she does not want that to happen). Rises from the other room her saviour: a clear-eyed, cream-clad woman with short blonde hair and an aura she can only describe of steel and silk, of the delicacy of gold mixed with the sturdiness of ivory, with a white rose in the breast pocket of her suit vest.
Truth be told, she is beautiful. She walks with a grace not unlike what she'd imagine to be a goddess's gaunt. Not in a superficial way: it is like being faced with a deity of justice or wisdom when you are nothing more than a sinner who betrayed her own kin. They are not supposed to be in the same room at the same time, especially knowing what she did and where that got her. A mortal should not be approaching a being who has been rejected by the skies.
A bowl of small, round black fruits and a (crystal) glass of water gets put in front of her.
"Why are you doing this, mortal?" She asks, puzzled like she's never been before.
Her saviour sits on the other side of the table. Considering the state of things and her deeds, truly, the fallen angel should not be sitting at a mortal's table as if she were just a guess greeted in by the selfless… rich? Nothing about her life is tale-like like she was led to believe by her centuries of duties to the Sacred Sprits.
"Am I not allowed to simply help someone in need who was unconscious in front of my door?" The woman replies in a self-assured tone, her face as stoic as a marble statue. This human sure seems confident for someone who is in the same room as a being who could very easily end their life. Could it be the hybris they have been warned against so many times on her lifetime?
"You know why you should not have picked me up. Have you not seen it?"
As a sign of warning, she slightly opens her wings, letting a couple black feathers fall to the ground. It is quite a flashy way she would have minded using a couple days ago, but now that she has essentially been cursed, it could at least have the merit to push away the curious by-passers who get too close to her for anyone's comfort.
The woman does not seem fazed at all, considering she has risen an eyebrow and kept her jaw strictly shut before drinking her glass of water.
"You've had about thirty chances to either leave my house or end my life. I don't believe you mean harm."
"I do not understand your decision. One does not help those who have already been doomed. Misfortune will be brought upon you. For your own sake, do not do this."
"I appreciate your concern, I truly do; but I believe I'm doing the right thing by helping those who need a hand in a dire situation. Would you not have done so, would have I been at your doorstep, exhausted and injured?"
Right, the bullet in her chest. The one her own comrades shot square where a human's heart would have been for disobeying moral conducts. One of the first things she noticed upon waking up was the bandage around a wound that would have healed in seconds would have she remained a Guardian; instead, it healed much slower than she was used to, albeit it must have seemed very quick to the eyes of the mortal woman who disinfected a wound that could not get contaminated by outside threats.
"I was a guardian angel. My mission was to protect mortals like you from harm if possible. This is not the same as a human saving a fallen angel."
"I don't see the difference. You have saved countless lives before; it is only natural people give this back to you in some capacity."
Some silence ensue, but the "relief" was short-lived.
"What is your name?"
"…Naomi, Guardian of the Souls."
"I see." A smirk appears on the woman's lips. "My name is Irene. It is a pleasure to meet you."
"I do not understand why you would be pleased to meet someone – or rather, something – like me."
She looks down into the bowl, whose she finally recognizes fruits: they are blackcurrant berries. They bring back bittersweet memories of times spent with a cherished one, times cut short by her failures. A bouquet of white roses put in an ornate ivory-coloured vase separates the two of them (white roses again – surely there is a message to be deciphered there). Would she not know better, she would have believed this was some sort of romantic rendezvous. (It couldn't be further from the truth, but to be fully transparent, she wouldn't mind as much as her internalized morals would make her think).
"Then, tell me why you got banished. This should tell me if you truly are misery that doesn't deserve company."
The memory is vivid. She can still feel the blood on her hands, the panic and fear her mind was suddenly taken over with, the desperation that possessed her into betraying her own kind and committing one of the cardinal sins she had been taught all her life never to commit unless she wanted to be eternally considered like the scum of the earth, becoming the textbook counterexample to what the ideal angel should be.
However, as with everything which sounds this scandalous, which seems too good not to make into a sort of tale-for-the-ages, the reality is much more complicated that and, unlike her plumage's colour change, nothing is black and white.
"I brought a girl back from the dead," she confesses without hesitating because, if one person is going to listen, it may as well be her mysterious ivory-clad saviour.
"I assume bringing the dead back to life constitutes as a crime against your kin's rules?"
"This would be exact. I… I had never done that for anyone ever, even when I witnessed families getting torn apart by illness. Even when I saw friends and loved ones cry over someone's deathbed after their dearest met with Death herself in the hands of a tragic accident, I did not do anything against it. I let life's natural course happen, as I had been taught and as I believed."
She takes a breath, as unnatural as it seems for an angel. Losing her holiness must have meant she'd also lose her immortality. It still came to her like a natural reflex, that's surprising…
"This little girl was different, however. I had failed to save her parents right before her eyes, but she thought I had done my best and still saved her in the end, so she forgave me and continued living with relatives. I would visit her every day or night before, after or during my rounds. She would gift me trinkets and the blackcurrant berries she'd pick from the orphanage's gardens. I still have their taste in mind, in fact. They weren't anything special, truth be told, but just because they were her present, it made them worth the world to me. I… I got attached to her bright smile. So much that, when she was killed by the same people who claimed her parents' life, I… I couldn't stand it."
I… I can't let her die…! I can't let Alyssa die!
"I did what I was never meant to do and used my powers to save her. It costed me everything, but at least, I saw her smile for the last time before I got taken away and executed. I have no regret, just as much as I have nowhere to go and nothing to do now."
Irene seemed touched by her story, at least up to some extent. With a thoughtful expression, she keeps her silence for a minute or so, before opening her eyes back up.
"I run a clinic that is in desperate need for a new doctor or surgeon. Would you be willing to fulfil this role? I will provide all the formation, teachings and experiences you will want and need in this task."
"You trust me with doing this?"
"As you said, you have nothing else in your life at the moment, and you sacrificed everything you had ever known and done to save a little girl's life. I entirely trust in your will to protect mortals even if it means adapting to a learning curve."
For the first time since saving Alyssa, there is a feeling of relief blossoming in her chest… no, not even that, it's also a feeling of happiness. She's happy, despite everything that happened, because someone just gave her a hand at the moment she needed it the most.
"It is a deal, then. When do I start?"
"I will talk to my collaborators about it this afternoon. I expect you to start tomorrow, if it doesn't bother you, since I suppose finding your footing as a winged human must be disorienting at the very least. You can live here in the meantime; I have more than enough rooms for the two of us in this empty mansion…"
"Thank you very much for your help, Irene. How can I repay you?"
Her interlocutor softly smiles.
"Just do your best and keep me company. This is all I ask for."
"Perfect."
Would it be ironic to say a fallen angel just got a match made in heaven? Because, if it is, then maybe she just got her revenge on those who did not understand her pleas, who never listened to what she had to say. Perhaps she can even reunite with Alyssa as a mortal? Could she then adopt her and quite literally take her under her wing?
Hope felt like a foreign sensation up until a couple minutes ago, yet now, she can finally foresee a brighter future. Her fortune is much luckier than she'd have ever expected it to be, and this, all thanks to one person who was confident and bold enough to save and discuss with a fallen angel.
Naomi bites into a blackcurrant berry as she observes the white rose on the other side of the table.