Crestfallen {Samandriel/OC}
Inspired by Tyler Johnston's gorgeous eyes and stunning acting (almost as breathtaking as Ben Wishaw's...), and this quote;
Samandriel: "I think too much heart was always Castiel's problem."
And also inspired by the song, "Set the Fire to the Third Bar" by Snow Patrol feat. Martha Wainwright. Beautiful.
A friendly warning: I'm not holding back at all. This story will be incredibly cheesy. No following the 'rules' this time.
Also, Alfie now works at a café rather than a fast food restaurant. Works better.
Chapter 1
She was there every day.
She would sit by her table at the window - table 13 - and stare out at the people passing by, drinking a hot beverage. Sometimes she'd read a book, and sometimes she would write in a small notebook - probably a diary or journal of some kind.
Through his vessel's eyes, the Angel of Imagination saw her as a beautiful young lady who was distant towards everything around her and residing solely in her own thoughts. She was a reserved soul, and appeared to be the kind of person with many thoughts; ideas and daydreams.
Given the chance, Samandriel would have loved to look inside of her thoughts, to see her imagination. To make it real. But he would never even begin to hope for that chance to come about. Those were just his values. He would never pry inside the mind of a human unless they were to give him direct permission to do so. He knew what it was like to have someone enter your mind against your will.
During the time that Samandriel had taken to encourage Alfie to allow the angel to use him as a vessel, there was always a pattern when Samandriel watched over him, studying his mannerisms to allow himself better understanding of his vessel's body, and this pattern consisted of Alfie serving the girl, each day planning to ask her to dinner, and, in turn, each day failing to do so.
Alfie nodded to himself and rubbed his hands habitually, muttering to himself. "You can do this. This time you'll talk to her." He nodded and bounced on his heels for a moment longer before he walked out from the toilets - though not before fixing his hair slightly - and grabbed his pad from the counter, walking over to where she sat, table 13 as usual.
"Hello, nice to see you here again." He greeted, catching his temporarily lost balance when her soft auburn eyes looked up at him, the same as every day. "W-What can I get for you today?" He readied his pen to write her order.
He took note of the way her eyes crinkled as she smiled, little bags under her bottom eyelashes that showed usual late nights, and he found himself wondering what she did on those late nights. Was she reading? Writing? Or was she simply dreaming; vivid imagery and stories played out in her head?
His thoughts were cut off as her voice pierced the silent yet warm air around his customer. "I'll just have a hot chocolate, please. Three sugars and no marshmallows." Her order was the same as every day, too.
Alfie waited for a moment before nodding and walking off, quickly telling a girl behind the counter the order for her table before taking off his apron, his shift finally over, and leaving the café in a rush, turning on his heel and walking away from the block, but not before glancing through the glass and taking in the girl's appearance once more, watching as she turned the page of her latest book.
He huffed and walked away, taking long, disappointed strides as he covered block after block, walking through about four before he crossed a road and came to a park. He went to the park a lot. All it had was a swing set with a single swing that he would always sit on.
Alfie's father had taken him here many times when he was a child, and though his father didn't approve of his current job at the café, and didn't approve of nearly anything the boy did or had done during his relatively short lifetime, he knew that his father still thought of the old memories when he drove past this spot every day to go to work, donned in his uptight businessman suit. Perhaps being in the car alone was the only time his father would allow himself to let down the stern expression that resided on his face all the time. Perhaps being the operative word.
Alfie sat on the swing, pushing back and forward lightly, feeling some of his disappointment fly through the air around him, surrounding him almost like a bubble as the wind ruffled his hair.
Again, he thought. I did it again.
He stopped swinging and planted his feet firmly on the ground. "If I can't break routine with her," He began, "Then I can break it with you." He looked up towards the sky as he spoke, as if addressing the grey clouds that were slowly drifting along, the sun no longer visible behind them. Funny, he mused, how the sun always seems to disappear randomly throughout the days. Turn your back for a second and it's gone, take a moment to wonder when it left, and suddenly it's back again. The pattern of the sun. The sun's routine. Everything has a routine. Even the swing. Back and forward, back and forward. Even the swing breaks routine better than I do, Alfie sighed. It can go from side to side.
"I know you're listening." He called. "You're always listening." He muttered the last part under his breath, though the ever-nearby Samandriel heard every word.
"I have to listen." His voice rang throughout the park; though obviously not his true voice, for Alfie would be long deaf. "I have to... Understand." The angel thought carefully about every word that he spoke.
Alfie, his mood already sour, only became more irked by this response. "Stop speaking in another language." He said. "You know that I can't get heads or tails from what you say."
Samandriel shot out his response shortly after Alfie's annoyed reply, trying his best to allow the human boy to comprehend him. "I have to listen in order to understand your kind. Humans are so vastly different from my kind." The angel's voice almost radiated the tone of wonder that coloured his words.
The boy began slowly rocking back and forward again on the swing, the air that ran around him calming him down by miles, yet still not enough. "What is there to figure out? We humans are filled with hatred for one another. We forget about arrangements we make, break the hearts of others and are, ultimately, the cruellest species on the planet." Alfie didn't often speak bitterly towards Samandriel, but it wasn't a new thing to the angel, as it had happened before.
He had to disagree. "Yet there is so much more! Your kind feels so much. Love, loss, pain, happiness, sorrow... We angels... We don't feel in the way that you do. We don't become attached, and we don't learn from pain, because we don't feel that kind of pain. Because of that..." There was a pause. "Some of us even wish to be human."
Alfie only noticed it slightly, but the last part seemed to strike a chord inside of Samandriel. Alfie was better off not knowing what the angel was referring to as he thought of all his brothers and sisters falling around him, ripping out their grace. He had watched hundreds of angels die around him as they fell over the years. Samandriel had seen too much darkness around the angels to agree with all that Alfie was saying.
"Samandriel..." Alfie seemed to almost say something, but it appeared that the boy stopped himself short before continuing with something entirely different. Samandriel did not even try to figure out his friend. He wouldn't have a chance. With his little knowledge of how the human mind worked, he probably wouldn't get anywhere.
"Yes."
Samandriel had to do a double take when his potential vessel spoke, the single word ringing through the air like a million echoes in a damp, dark cave. "What did you say?" He asked, just to be sure that he had heard correctly. His values were at stake.
"I said, 'Yes'." The boy said, an almost firm edge colouring his voice as he stared forward. Had Samandriel looked any closer, he might have seen the disturbance that rested in the blue eyes of the human. Maybe.
Samandriel was silent for a moment before he questioned the young boy. "Are you sure?" He asked cautiously. He had to make sure that the boy was positive.
"Yes. I can't break routine with anything." Alfie took a breath. "Day in, day out, always trying but never actually doing. I'm sick of it." He noted the angel's hesitation and continued. "Maybe it isn't the best reason to accept you, but I have to. It's proof, Samandriel; proof that I can change it."
The angel nodded before realising that the boy couldn't actually see him as he could see Alfie, and instead responding with a curt, "Very well."
To anyone passing by, nothing would appear to have changed; no one would guess that the body of the boy dressed in café uniform had been passed over to a higher being. Only Samandriel and Alfie knew.
There was one thing, though. As Samandriel rose from the swing, there was one last whisper before the boy's voice faded from his mind.
"Just so you know, I don't think you angels are as different from us as you think you are."
That had been a few days ago, and Samandriel had heard nothing more from his vessel. Perhaps that meant that the boy was not awake in the angel's mind, perhaps not. He wouldn't know unless he heard from the boy, but that mightn't happen at all.
Meanwhile, though, Naomi had summoned Samandriel shortly after he began to use his vessel and given him orders. Samandriel didn't like feeling as though he was a soldier; he didn't like being treated like a disposable experiment. But he couldn't exactly defy her.
Apparently he was to stay in the body of his vessel - Alfie's body - and reside in it until further notice. And the icing on top of the imaginary cake was that she had ordered him to go about the boy's day to day activities, judging by what he had observed. Though maybe that was for the better.
For Alfie's sake and Alfie's sake alone, he decided that he should follow the order strictly, for he had grown close to the boy through the few weeks that they had interacted.
It was because of the order that Samandriel had ended up in the café that Alfie worked in, fully dressed in uniform, and picking up an apron before getting to the work that he had observed in Alfie throughout.
And, just like a chain reaction, it was because of the order and because of Samandriel's will to follow the order, that he found himself standing before table 13, before the girl who Alfie liked, as she wrote in a little notepad. Samandriel, when he cocked his head slightly, could see the scribbling that ran across the lined pages in black ink. That's all it was. Scribbling.
"Uh..." Samandriel opened his mouth and spoke, for the first time, through the mouth of his vessel. "What are you doing?" He asked her, noticing the softness in her eyes as she looked up at him. Perhaps this was why Alfie was attracted to her, he thought. Perhaps she was considered beautiful among the humans.
Her lips didn't curl upwards like most human's would in this position, instead she remained blank in her expression as she glanced back down at the scrawl and back at who she saw as 'Alfie'.
"It's just patterns." She told him simply, not saying anything else.
Samandriel, when he paid attention, could feel the inviting warm atmosphere that surrounded her, though he could also see deeper into the feeling that Alfie had for the girl. Even as an angel, he knew how inviting the air around a person could feel. Or how repelling. Either way, it had become obvious exactly why Alfie was initially attracted to the girl.
The angel studied the notepad for a second longer before frowning slightly. "I can't see a pattern. It isn't like anything I've ever seen." He said, millions of different patterns from the Stone Age to the distant future racing through his mind, trying to connect even just one to this so called 'pattern'.
The girl shrugged, looking back out the window once more. "It's just patterns." She repeated her earlier self but this time didn't allow for a response on Samandriel's part as she flicked back up, their eyes meeting once more. "Hot chocolate, three sugars, no marshmallows." This time, when she spoke, she flashed a small smile towards Samandriel, throwing him off slightly due to the cool air around her.
"Of course." He said simply before walking away, heading over to the counter and telling the lady behind the counter the order. He waited for the hot chocolate so that he could take it to her and thoughts invaded his mind.
Samandriel could certainly understand why Alfie liked the girl. The atmosphere around her and the distance she held towards the rest of humanity - or at least those in the café - did seem an obvious reason for an attraction, and her possible beauty would only succeed in adding to the desirability. What he didn't understand, though, was the pattern. All that had been drawn onto the paper were messy scrawls, overlapping and swirling in some places. There was no pattern. Humans were smart creatures, he knew that from simple observation, but he couldn't figure out why this girl would find a pattern amongst scrawl.
By the time the hot chocolate was ready, the girl had lost interest in the notepad and was now staring out the window, her hands resting on the closed leather pad and the pen hanging out of her mouth.
Samandriel took the hot chocolate and walked it over to her, careful to avoid knocking the silver tray on which it sat as he set it down in front of her, doing what Alfie had done each time and reciting the order to her. "Hot chocolate with three sugars and no marshmallows."
She smiled at him, but that again raised something he didn't understand. Why smile at him? Was it something he had earned? Did he do something good? What reason was there to smile for him? He was obliged to deliver her the hot chocolate; it was his job. So why did she smile so gratefully?
Samandriel found himself sitting quickly in the seat adjacent to the girl, surprising her slightly as she sipped at her hot chocolate, raising her eyebrows at the boy before her.
He could use the excuse that he was breaking the routine that Alfie had always hated, that he was saying something else to the girl, simply because Alfie had always wanted it, and Samandriel was the angel in charge of making people's dreams real, but he couldn't fool himself into thinking it. He knew that he was just interested in why she called a few scribbles a pattern. He wanted to understand, just like he wanted to understand human kind.
"I, um..." He hesitated before speaking, trying not to sound otherworldly, regardless of the facts. "What's the pattern?" He asked, setting his hands in front of himself, resting them on the table and fidgeting slightly.
The girl just smiled before looking back out the window, watching as an old man and his dog walked by, as well as a young lady holding hands with a little boy. After a minute or two of patiently waiting and sipping occasionally at her drink, she turned back to the ever present boy before her, surprised that he had stayed so long and been so quiet. Over the last while, he had always seemed jittery and nervous whenever he served her, always seeming to have more to say. It was as though he had suddenly changed drastically.
Perhaps he had.
"You really want to know the pattern, don't you?" She cocked her head, frowning ever so slightly and waiting for his response.
Samandriel's first instinct was to launch into an in-depth explanation of exactly why he wanted to know the pattern. That he wanted to understand why a human would call a few scribbles that lead nowhere a pattern. But, of course, that would be an idiotic thing to do. So, instead, he proceeded to continue with, "What's your name?"
The girl looked surprised once again before the surprise turned into another bout of confusion. "Wha... What?" She breathed out a laugh as she shook her head faintly. "Angel."
Samandriel's eyes widened and he felt himself freeze. "What?" How could she know? She wasn't a demon or a hunter, by the looks of it, and she certainly wasn't an angel. How in the world did she know about angels, and let alone that he was one?
The girl raised an eyebrow for what seemed, to her, like the millionth time in the last five minutes, before she addressed his confusion. Why he had reacted as he had was unknown to her, and she couldn't even begin to imagine what had him so shocked. "It's... my name? Angel?" She posed it as a question, silently asking why he was so surprised by her name.
The boy, at this, seemed even more surprised than he had been in the first place, only this time relief flashed in his eyes and he let out a full on laugh, shaking his head at his own stupidity.
How could he have been so silly? He asked himself. There was no way she could ever know about the angels, or the demons, or the hunters, or anything else that was supernatural out there. Ordinary humans didn't know that kind of thing. He was dense to even assume she had any inkling of it all.
"Ah, sorry." Samandriel replied finally. "I didn't realise." He told her, trying to give her as much of an explanation for his reaction as he could. "It's something of an inside joke of mine, about angels." He flashed her an embarrassed smile, one that he had seen Alfie pull off quite a few times, before she laughed at him.
"Oh." Was all she said, and suddenly the atmosphere became slightly awkward before she broke it again after a short time. "So, what's your name?" She asked, smiling her head in the same way she had done earlier, throwing Samandriel off slightly once more.
He caught himself easily, having had practice with not saying his true name to humans. "Alfie." He smiled again and the act was reflected like a mirror as she returned it.
"Nice to meet you, Alfie."
"You too."
~*~*~*~
A/N: As I said previously, this was inspired by Tyler Johnston and the moment above, along with the song. But also, I'll be writing this story - as best I can - in 3rd person, to try and strengthen my abilities to write in that area... Because I'm not too good at that, yet I feel like it's a more... convenient way to write? Expression. It's expression. And sophistication.
Either way, thank you so much for taking the time to read this. I am very, VERY excited to see how my first multi-chapter 3rd person story turns out. I think it may turn out better than my 1st person writing. I like the style much better, suits me personally, and it's just so much neater. Meh. It's hard to explain.
Thanks for taking the time! I won't leave any promises as to when I'll be updating, considering I am the worst writer for updating XD Though, this along with a Sherlock story and two other possibles are my priorities :)
Thanks!
~Maddie.