She stumbles into your kitchen.
"Wh wha whaaaat is haaappening?" she quavers. Her stumbling is disoriented in ways with no human analog, her off-kilter movements alien on a human level but all too familiar to you.
You stand up leisurely from the table. Your movements are precise where hers are clumsy - you've learned how to be helpful without getting caught in the fray. You reach into the fridge. You get milk. You're making her a protein shake.
"Morning, sleepyhead," you toss over your shoulder, your easiness, like the rest of your demeanor, calculated. "I assume chocolate's ok, and dairy?"
"MmmAAAAAAAA," she shrieks. "WHATDIDYOUDOTOMYHALO?"
You stir, sitting back down and setting the protein shake across from yourself. At an angle, so she doesn't have to face you direct to accept. "Here, have this first. You'll feel better." This is the touch-and-go part - the halo's inhibition against violence, rage, spite, and bitterness is off. She hasn't sorted out yet that she doesn't have a reason to hurt you, that the halo was designed to keep her living in baseless fear that she was a monster because it made her easy to control. She's liable to lash out, so setting the tone is important.
She sits. You smile, putting genuineness into it. Underneath, you sense you've caught her - she hasn't figured out she can choose not to follow instructions. "Drink up."
She sips, then drinks messily. You laugh, tell her it's ok, grab paper towels. She doesn't seem to notice, lost in the pleasurable sensation of taste, and of something substantive going down her gullet. You mop up, then sit across from her again.
"It's good, right? You feel a little steadier?" Interaction reactivates the rage and terror and she begins screeching about her halo again. "Ahp! You feel a little steadier, yeah?" She nods.
"Good. Ok. So, I'm gonna take care of you, and it's gonna be ok. I'm not going to have all the answers the way you want me to, but you're gonna keep noticing that I'm trustworthy. I want you to imagine that you got your arm really fucked up from some shrapnel getting in it that got infected. Not too vivid, just for the sake of argument. Ok, love?" She nods again. "Now, let's say I've removed the shrapnel, and I've gotten a lot of the infection out. If I touch right where that shrapnel was, it's gonna hurt. And I'm not gonna have easy answers to how you heal, except to tell you that you know how to heal. And that's kind of a mean thing to say to someone with a bloody arm. So instead I'm gonna tell you that you're in good hands, to get plenty of rest, and to do your best to trust and be patient with me."
She looks you over, assessing you. "My halo was... the shrapnel?"
"And your psyche grew around it. So I'm not gonna touch it, or the parts of your psyche that grew around it, super directly. But I promise that's not cause I don't have an eye on that part of your psyche. It's just that it's a kind of fucked combination of inflamed in a 'wanting answers' way and inflamed in a 'responds best to indirect intervention' way. In due time it'll feel better."
"... why do you do all of this?"
You shrug. "When you're not part of the divine order, you have to make your own hobbies. Mine is this."
Her gaze sharpens, and for a moment you're startled, as the angel is truly looking at you for the first time in the conversation. "You can interface with the grooves where my halo was. Don't you need one to do that? Do you need help?"
You shake your head. "I'm old school, babe. They made halos after they made me. I just speak the language."
She sighs, nods, and makes her way unsteadily to her feet. "If you need me, I will be in the bedroom." She collides with a wall.
You sip your coffee and grin. She really is cute like this.
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