Have you ever wanted to do something that goes against everything you have been taught to believe? That is me right now, trying to decide if me going against every single code we have is worth the comfort that I know I will bring to Ariel.
I am her guardian angel and yet I am not allowed to change her life to ease her suffering.
For years now I have been carefully watching over her, watching life take shot after shot at her. To be honest I am amazed that she hasn't done anything to herself, I don't even want to think what would happen to me if she were to decide it was all too much for her. Of course, here and there I have broken some little rules for her to try and ease her suffering in very small amounts.
I can't really get rid of pain but I can sometimes nudge her into into safety when she is in danger. There is always that day every single year, her birthday, that is the most difficult for me. My mission is to guard her and look out for her and yet I am not allowed to stop the bad things happening every single fucking year.
It's the most frustrating thing, knowing that I have to watch her go through all of these things fr some reason, but I have not been told what that reason is. Lately I have been struggling more and more with that fact. That I have to take someone else's word for everything, seeing the woman that I have fallen in love slowly kill herself with her drinking and dangerous habits.
I can't read her mind but her actions speak for themselves in the way that I don't think she cares about herself anymore. In the first couple of years since her 18th birthday I could see that she still had some fight left in her, she was willing to get up once she had been down. Then at one point I don't remember when, she stoped fighting.
That was when my 'job' got so much harder, I have magic and I have the power to make any of her dreams come true. But I am not allowed.
That fact creating more and more anger inside me, an emotional that an angel should not be feeling. We even have regulations about what emotions we are allowed to feel and express. I have no idea if they have any way of monitoring the way we're feeling but I would not put it past them; with time I have learned that even the good guys do bad things. They're just better at hiding their tracks.
As her 28th birthday approaches, in a week, I have no idea if everything is going to follow the pattern and something bad is going to happen again. I don't really want to see how she is going to cope for the 10th year in a row if something goes wrong.
The simple fact is that I have a bad feeling about this year, I may not be all human anymore but I still have some of my old memories, not all of them, but some. I remember what it was like to have one setback after the other, it takes on hell of a person to even just keep waking up in the morning.
I know that I am probably going to get turned down, as I have done for the past 8 years but I have to give it another try. Even though Gregory always turns me down, I see the sympathy in his eyes every single year but his hands are as tied as mine.
I know only a little bit about his history, but I do know that he understands where I'm coming from. That's why every single year I ask to be told what is going to happen to Ariel, asking for permission to intervene but the rules are against it every single year.
I try anyway.
"I see it's time for your yearly visit." Gregory greets me as I walk into his office, we have been friends for a long time as he was once the guy that helped me understand why I was given a second chance.
"I know there's nothing you can but I have a really bad feeling this year. I don't know why but I have a feeling that this year I have to do something, I feel like she is on the brink." I explain and I mean it. Even though in previous years I have wanted, no needed to help her, this year I have this dread in the pit of my stomach that something irreversible is going to happen.
And I am going to have a front row seat of the disaster if I don't do anything about it.
"You're not just exaggerating?" he asks, but I know that he has to. We have known each other for too long for me to be able to lie to him. I can read him like a book and so can he.
"No, I have this gut feeling that something bad is going to happen this year if I don't do something, anything. I don't see why everything bad has to happen to her, she is wonderful woman and it's not okay for them to be allowing this." I rant as I pace along the front of his desk. He might have more power and be older than me but that doesn't mean he's all powerful and can bend the rules whenever he wants.
"You know that I can't give you the go ahead to change anything but I could tell you a story and you can decide what to do afterwards." He leans forward in his chair and stares me down, I know that there is no more fucking about when he gets like this. Even though the nerves are wrecking my body, I know that I don't really have a choice and have to listen to whatever story he thinks is relevant.
"I don't think that I have a choice in this." I mope a little as I fall into the seat in front of his desk, I just don't want to spend another minute doing nothing but sitting on my ass.
"Don't be a smartass Sam, I'm trying to do you a favour here. Ariel is not the one who has to make a choice but don't think you're the first one to fall in love with a human after you were made an angel. We used to actually live around the people we were guarding but I was the one to fuck that one up." He rolls his eyes but like I said, I know him too well and I know that this is his way of deflecting from something that must have really hurt him.
I have so many questions but seeing the look in his eyes, which isn't a warning, but he is lost in his own head so there is no way that I am going to break that and interrupt him.
"The man that I was supposed to guard was a soldier in the second world war in Russia, so not the best conditions but I did what I could. I was right alongside him when he went through training and every single battle after that. I'm sure that you can see how back then me falling in love with a man, especially while in the army in Russia was one of the worst places and times that could have happened; but I did." He signs and suddenly I can just see all of the weight that is resting onto his shoulders.
"I never said anything, he never said anything but there was something more going on between us that you would have to be dead not to notice. Just like you, I did everything I could to save his life every chance I got, I couldn't be killed with their bullets being an angel and he started to notice that I was rarely ever injured or sick like everyone else. The conditions on the front line were horrendous, but I knew that first hand since I died during the first world war." He continues, I knew that he had died during the first world war but I never knew that angels used to live with their people before. We have such strict rules now about never interacting with them that it's a little hard to believe.
"It was near the end of the war when all of the biggest battles were happening and we were sent to Stalingrad, I had the same bad feeling you're having right now but there was no way I was holding back. So I used our magic to save him the second day we were there, the big guys up here weren't happy about that so they took away my magic for a year. Then I swear to God, there was someone messing with me and putting Andrei in even more danger, he would make mistakes that I have never seen him do. That got him killed and there was nothing I could do." Greg has to clear his throat as I see the emotion in his eyes.
Of course he doesn't go around telling this story to everyone, I'm almost certain that the only people that know about this are those who were there when it was happening. I don't know how he is telling me all of this, even with so many years between the events and the present, I can't imagine how much pain he is still in.
"How did they let you back in? Letting you train and lead other angels?" I ask since I always thought of him as one of the veterans and as someone who is so powerful that you don't really mess with him.
"They spent countless years 'teaching' me what was right and why Andrei needed to die, and how it was not my place to decide whether their orders were right or wrong. I learned the hard way that whatever they want is going to happen, you can fight it but you're hardly ever going to win. That doesn't mean that I wouldn't go back and do the same thing over again; because I would, every single time." He looks straight into my eyes as he speaks that last sentence.
We both know that they are most likely listening to us, even in our own private spaces. I also know that he is most likely going to get in trouble with beings much more powerful than he is because he is telling me all of this.
"You're the only one who can decide whether you can live with something happening to Ariel and not doing anything about it. There rules are always going to be there, admittedly they are a little tighter now because of what I did in the past but the rules aren't right for everyone. Everyone rebels against the rules at some point but you have decide if now is that moment for you." He says and even though I know everything he is saying is the right thing, it feels so good to hear it from someone else. To hear it out loud and to know that I'm not going crazy for even considering this.
I was given such an amazing second chance as a guardian angel that I thought I was never going to take for granted or throw away but in my own life there was always something that I wanted to experience but I never got the chance. I never got to experience love and as crazy at it sounds, seeing Ariel everyday and being with her through everything, I feel like she is a part of me.
"Did they ever tell you why Andrei had to die?" I ask, because it seems like our situations are too similar for my liking. Ariel has been given a life that not many can survive and it seems like she has been set out to fail.
"They never gave me a straight answer, they just said that it was the crucial turning point in the war and that I was a guardian angel and not there to bring him back from the dead every other day." He replies cooly, if I didn't know any better I would think that he has accepted their answer, but I can still see the underlying anger in his eyes.
Now I am even more curious how he decided to trust me all of those years ago, if I had to go through what he has, I wouldn't exactly be very trusting of anyone with our job title.
"I guess I have a very important decision to make." I break the somewhat lengthy silence that had fallen between us. I haven't always been the best at expressing my feelings and even though I know how vulnerable his past might make him feel, I don't know how to put it into words how it feels to know that I'm not weird or crazy for what I'm about to do.
I know that I don't need to put my feelings into words because I can see in his eyes that he understands completely. Now that my decision has been made for me, I have a lot of planning to do before next week and I just know that this conversation was not secret so now there is probably a bright red target on my back.