faces on faces

The Slytherin dungeon was not her favorite place. It was dark and broody, she’d often thought. This wasn’t her first time here, though, and it wouldn’t be her last. Her best friend was to blame for that. Casper, a Ravenclaw, felt as though he united with the Slytherins better than their fellow Ravenclaws. She could see why, though. He was smart, but he put in a lot of effort in leadership, and using his intelligence to get ahead, rather than just embracing it. ‘You’re late!’ She smirked at the familiar voice, and pursed her lips.

“Well, you know us. Better fashionably late than never,” she quipped, her eyebrow shooting up at Casper. Stepping forward in her booties, she brushed a stray hair out of his eye. “Boyfriend’s great, sent me a howler yesterday, but what’s new?”, she joked. “So, tell me!” She rested her hands on Casper’s shoulders and steered him towards her favorite table—the punch table. “What about you? Find a girl who tolerates you yet? Blow up some buildings with your bloody potions yet?” Jeanette hadn’t seen Casper around lately, other than brief passings in the hallway, so naturally she had to be nosy.

He did react when she mentioned the howler, however. “A howler? An actual howler?” He asked, not willing to drop it. He could tell she was trying to keep it light, but honestly? Even Cas wouldn’t send a howler to his worst rival. That was just... low. Inexcusable. Petty. Cas could think of a dozen other adjectives to describe Jean’s boyfriend, but he forced himself to remember that he had been a somewhat decent guy when he had met him during their summer break. 

A howler though... Jeez.

He let himself be steered towards the punch table. Of course. The corner of his lips tilted upward. Typical Jean. “A few, though they all turned out to be crazy,” he admitted. “Okay- by a few, I mean just one. Agatha from orchestra. Don’t let her responsible air as first chair viola fool you,” he joked. “Two other girls were pretty normal, but we just bored each other to death, I think. We were just interested in very different things.” 

He let out a small laugh then, a breath of air from his nose, and then turned the corner of his mouth up into a grin. “I like the polite part more so than the affirmative part,” he admitted, scratching the back of his neck and feeling a small amount of heat rise from his skin. “That was always my Mother’s expertise. Thank you, though,” he nodded to her, smiling genuinely again.

Connor, for the most part, tried not to stare. At her, at everything, at anything. But it was hard. It had been some time since he’d been in school – and never at a University lecture hall filled with people who hadn’t been scared away by his protection detail. “Do you always come so prepared?” he asked, eyes glancing briefly to the layout of her desk. “I feel like…” he trailed off and rummaged around in his backpack, pulling out only his laptop. “… So not prepared. It’s been some time since I’ve been in school. And never in a Hall as big as this.” His eyes traveled around the room again with an almost childlike fascination. “This place is huge.”

Now somewhat self-conscious herself, Belle glanced at her desk, fingers going up to play with a strand of her hair. “I, uh, I-I’ve just always been extremely organized,” she explained. “I w-was one of those kids who o-overprepared for class in high school and college.” She was made fun for it in high school, but thankfully, college students hadn’t been as obtuse about it. It may have had something to do with how intimidated they were by her (going to college at 16 had been... an experience).

Thinking calmly, Belle tried to fall into her role of a stranger. “D-did you go to a small c-college?” She already knew the answer to that, though. She had received a file of records about Connor’s life the President had found important that she know, which was, to say, almost everything.

Withdrawing a laptop and his bottle of water from his backpack, Connor organized the space in front of him in anticipation (And excitement and nervousness). It’d been some time since he’d been at school – let alone completely by himself – and a small bubble of panic was stirring in the pt of his stomach. Not that he wasn’t confident in his abilities. He was. Physiology and movement were fascinating to him and it was far easier to study things you actually wanted to study as oppose to things you were forced to.

“I’m, uh, I’m Connor, by the way,” he turned to the girl next to him in an attempt to distract himself, sticking out his hand. A moment passed and he let out a huff of air from his chest in laughter. Was he really going in for a handshake? God. He’d spent too much time with diplomats and governors. Connor was pretty sure normal people – let alone people their age – didn’t shake hands. Clearing his smile he offered a small smile mixed with a wince and an apology. Invading someone’s personal space on the first day? Smooth, McDowell. Really smooth. “Sorry. I’m… ridiculously used to shaking hands. It’s a weird habit.”

Looking down at Connor’s outstretched hand, Belle took a deep breath just as she always did when touching a stranger for the first time. Everyone who worked with Belle before or knew her on a more personal level knew about her aversion to touching and so kept touches to a minimal, going so far as to warn people she was meeting for the first time that she didn’t like physical contact. It was both annoying and thoughtful; on one hand, it made her seem like a broken girl, but on the other, it saved her from a lot of panic and potentially embarrassing situations. Fighting was different. It was quick, sudden, and had a point when it was used. Belle had been adverse to the idea of hurting someone at first, but then she remembered how often she had thought it’d be nice to make her father pay for everything he’d done to her and she’d gotten over that pretty quickly.

“B-belle,” she answered, carefully taking his hand and shaking it once before letting her hand drop. As it were, shaking hands with Connor hadn’t been that bad. She was still careful to hug her arms to her sides, however.“It’s fine. S-some people do it, some people d-dont. J-just means you’re more polite and affirmative than most.” It wasn’t supposed to be a compliment, even if Belle realized it came out sounding like one. She tried not to blush, hoping that Connor wouldn’t read it like that.

Z snickered as the nurse brought a tray of what could loosely be called food. His snicker got a little louder when he saw the phone number and broke into a full guffaw after she left, “I mean I can’t fault her taste but is it really the appropriate moment to give someone her phone number? You’re about 40% broken right now. Clearly her standards are low.”

Nodding, Caleb let out a huge breath then picked up his spoon. He eyed the gruel suspiciously, pushing it around in the bowl this way and that as if doing so would magically improve its taste. Deciding that he couldn’t go hungry, he scooped some into his mouth. It was bland, but it wasn’t as terrible as he had been expecting. Gradually picking up speed, Caleb put bite after bite into his mouth until the whole plate was gone. "So,” he said, taking a gulp of water before picking up the apple. “You just going to sit wherever I am and watch me like a mama hawk, then? This is a 24/7 kind of job?” He took a bite of the apple, trying not to flinch at the rubbery texture of the skin and the slight grittiness of the fruit. Juice flowed down his fingers. Subconsciously, Caleb’s tongue darted out to lick some of it before continuing to chew.

His voice wasn’t exactly distorted through the mask, though it did have a feeling of being filtered, filtered to sound soulless. Any lesser man (like the pilot) would have been unnerved, but Andrei’s faced his share of freaks and abominations and so was therefore unfazed by the Seraph’s mask and psychotic declaration of chaos. Hell, he saw a monster in the mirror whenever he bothered to check his reflection, and he’s threatened chaos to countless people more times than he could care to count. 

Andrei studied the Seraph, eyes cold and assessing. He was little more than a child, maybe; in any case he was definitely younger than he was. He only deigned a response minutes after the blue of the Seraph’s 3DS screen lit up his mask. “Get in line. I promised Hill last week that she’d walk into her office to find everything in shreds one day.” It wasn’t something Andrei was actually going to go through with, but if he accidentally slipped and he was seriously pissed... a week or two in solitary wasn’t going to kill him. At most, he’d come out disheveled and leave a cell covered wall to wall and floor to ceiling with poems he’d memorized.

It always seemed that without fail the notification that he had to prepare for a new mission came in the middle of the night. A part of him knew that with the time differences between Maria Hill’s office in the Triskelion and his home in the middle of the ocean at the Fridge meant it was a more appropriate hour when she made the call… but a far larger part of him knew that she was going it to inconvenience him. He’d been fast asleep when the alarm had gone off in his apartment/prison cell, and when the mission file downloaded his bad mood only increased. 

Information extraction. Single target. Deadly force authorized. Co-Asset accompaniment. Codename Vanator. Departure from Fridge: 0730

The dossier went on to explain exactly what information the organization sought to have him torture out of their target but what really got under his skin as he made a pot of coffee was the phrase “co-asset accompaniment.” Zeke had always worked alone. It minimized the amount that the rest of SHIELD knew about his role. He certainly wasn’t someone that they wanted the world at large to know about. A smile tugged across his scarred face; frankly that was exactly the way he liked it. As he stirred cream and sugar into his coffee he scrolled to find the attachment that revealed anything about the agent that would be travelling with him… only to find that that section had been left off. Presumably another form of punishment from the ever sadistic Director Hill. 

Bags packed, he sat on the landing pad, feet swinging off a crate as he waited for his mysterious partner and the SHIELD jet that would take them to their target. Music pumped into his ears as he slipped his mask over his face, taking advantage of the gap between his preparation and the Vanator’s arrival to play a couple stages in Fire Emblem. He looked up as movement in front of him revealed the jet had landed and it’s cargo bay door was opening. Smiling softly behind the soft velvet lining of his mask he snapped the DS shut and pulled the headphones out of his ears.

“You’re late.” he called out, looking at a watch that read 0732. He stood and gathered his bags, walking towards the jet, “Let’s go cause some suffering.”

Easy. 

Such missions always left a coat of blood on him, though, which meant a shower after a mission was always a must. Now, smelling like whatever basic-ass soap and shampoo SHIELD kept at the Triskelion, he found himself being summoned to Maria Hill’s office for another hunt. 

After a short briefing and being handed a file, Andrei marched back up to a helipad, where he had disembarked from a jet not an hour ago. The jet was still there, but once Andrei climbed inside, he could tell that the pilot was different from their height. Andrei thought he could smell something like fear on the new pilot. They must’ve been a newbie, if they honestly thought the Vanator might shift at any given moment to sink his claws and teeth into their skin. No- it was shit like that that got mutants locked up in the Fridge or killed, and Andrei treasured his freedom too much to even think about attacking SHIELD personnel. 

Once he was settled in and they were in the sky, Andrei pulled out the file, which was in Romanian. His eyes narrowed as he saw that he would be assigned a partner. Andrei usually worked alone, meaning that he didn’t need to worry about some idiot who probably would get in his way. However, he did work with the Black Widow at one point without wanting to rip her throat out, but it was quite possibly because he knew she could rip his out, if she tried. 

There wasn’t much on his partner in the file: just a codename and his ability. Even SHIELD wasn’t stupid enough to assign Andrei a partner without telling him who he was, especially a partner with an ability such as the Seraphs.

When they landed, he stayed seated as the Seraph called out and walked towards the jet. “Sorry for the wait, prinţesă,” he mocked drily. “We’ll try to not get caught in the middle of a storm next time.”

“Sixty years? Try 57 years, eight months, thirteen days and six hours.” He paused for dramatic affect and shrugged broadly, “We have a book on your life. I read the ending….. beware hunchbacked gypsies riding wheat threshers.”

He waited an appropriately long amount of time, smoothing a hand down his chest and picking non-existant dirt from under his fingernails before he couldn’t hold his laughter in anymore and burs out in a hearty chuckle, “Oh my gosh your face. There’s no book. Humanity has free will. Your life ends whenever it ends. Nothing is preordained. But Father on high your eyes got really wide.”

For a second, there was nothing else but the sound of the air con and Zavarel- Z- fidgeting. Then, the angel exploded into laughter, prompting Caleb to cross his arms and give the angel a real, full-hearted glare. “You’re just going to keep messing with me, aren’t you?” 

He was still glaring at him when the door opened yet again. Caleb quickly neutralized his face, trying not to make a look of disgust once he saw the food that a nurse was carrying to him. Eugh. Well, Caleb had always wanted to lose a few more pounds. Maybe the shitty hospital food could help with that. He thanked the nurse, who only smiled a bit nervously and then left. Looking down at his tray, Caleb saw a napkin with a number scrawled on top. He sighed. 

“Too bad there isn’t a way to just let people automatically know I’m gay,” he said, picking up the spoon to play with the porridge a little. He glanced at Z. “Does... God really have any stance on that, really? Or, well, the rest of heaven...?

“I served in the Divine Legion. I was there when we took back the Garden of Gehanna, at the Siege of Gomorrah. You think I can’t handle watching a single human for your miserably short lifespan?” He chuckled dryly. “I can handle you, Caleb Joyner.”

“I wasn’t wearing my wing talons… count yourself lucky. I could have slapped you a lot harder.” He shrugged and thought, “If I fail, and you die in some way I could have prevented I’ll be sent back to the Legion, demoted, and probably forced into terribly difficult missions. But don’t worry. I have no intention of letting you die.”

Hearing his full name fall from Zavarel’s lips was... weird, to say the least. Caleb chose to ignore the feeling in his gut, though. “Hey- short to you but long enough to me, buddy.” 

Wing talons... What the fuck were wing talons? Caleb decided that he was never going to get into a physical fight with the angel, no matter how annoying he was. Not to mention that he could probably beat Caleb down onto his ass without them; all Caleb ever did to exercise was run and do some pushups and shit. 

The way that Zavarel talked nonchalantly made Caleb realize that the angel has really seen some shit in his time. Not the kinds of things normal people have seen, but actual bloodcurdling and twisted things that would make a mere human lose their minds. 

Damn if Caleb had never been so inspired to paint before.

He warily eyed the angel as he sat down on the edge of his bed, begrudgingly admitting to himself that he had a nice face. “Uhm.” He squirmed a little, uncomfortable by the sudden change of the tone of conversation from sass to sincerity. “Thanks, I guess. Sorry that’s about... sixty years of your eternal life you’re not going to get back.” 

As soon as the door was closed he leaned forward and bitch-slapped Caleb with the tip of a golden wing. “Shut up. Of course I’m still here. I’m fucking eternal. You know how hard it is to kill an angel? You certainly couldn’t manage it.”

He sat back down, scratching one of the glowing silver tattoos that cut across his torso. “This is unprecedented but… I think you’re going to have to get used to me. I’m not about to say I couldn’t hack it as a guardian angel to one of the Paragons. So. Get used to me.”

“... What happens if you, well, don’t do a good job?” he asks. 

“Not that, y’know, I’m over the fact that you just, I don’t know, bitch slapped me with your fucking wing. I’m just a curious guy.” He gave him his best withering look, though he was careful not to overdo it so that Zavarel could answer his question.

He huffed a long sigh and sat sideways on the uncomfortable chair; not the way it was intended to be used but the human craftsmen hadn’t really taken a fifteen foot wingspan into account when they made it and he’d just finished preening, he wasn’t about to mess up his feathers just to explain something to a mortal. 

“I’m gonna level with you. I don’t know if you’ll keep seeing me, or if things are going to go to the way they should be and you won’t notice me anymore. But since you can see me, and you know you’ve got one of us, I might as well introduce myself?” He hadn’t intended for the end of his sentence to lilt upwards in a questioning tone, but it happened anyway. So he was going to have to forge forth and pretend it didn’t happen. 

“I am the Seraph Zavarel; sent forth from the Throne of Glory to watch over and protect you from harm.” He cleared his throat awkwardly as he looked over the hospital bed and bandages, “For the record…. I started after you got yourself into this mess.”

Thus, he continued to sass the angel of heaven right as he had been doing. 

“Got myself into this mess?” His voice raised indignantly. “Damn asshole was walking out in front of the car and-” 

There was a knock on the door. Caleb whipped his head around to see a doctor step in, long hair up in a ponytail and a layer of lip gloss on her lips. 

“Mr. Joyner,” she greeted him, “I’m Dr. Michaels, and I’ve been taking care of you since you were admitted last night.” Her eyes flitted from Caleb to the angel- Zavarel- but from the way her eyes seemed to pass over the angel, Caleb quickly induced that she wasn’t able to see him. 

Either Zavarel was really his guardian angel or a very attractive and elaborate hallucination. 

“I heard... voices?” 

After Caleb reassured her that he had only been talking to himself, Dr. Michaels listed out his injuries. A concussion, several considerable scrapes, a few broken (but not cracked) ribs that had contributed to his life almost ending, a broken arm (not his dominant one, thankfully), and extremely minor fractures to his spine. After saying yet again how lucky Caleb had been to make it through and telling him he’d be out in a few weeks, she left him alone.

He looked back at Zavarel. “You’re still here,” he murmured, though his disbelief wasn’t as strong as it had been before.

Cole didn’t have a lot of friends, but it was nice to see the few she did have. Most of her friends were from the soccer team though, so she could see the same tense excitement on their faces that she knew was on her own. After school, coach would announce who the knew captain was going to be. 

She knew a lot of people assumed it would be Edison (she mentally sneered the name out of habit), because he was one of the best players and his family was involved in the community. But nothing was set in stone. She was the other top player of the team, and she worked her ass off in practice every single day. She had earned that spot as well as he had, without the family to match. And she wanted it. 

Finding herself trapped in the same argument she’d been having with herself all summer, Cole forced herself to focus back on Mr. Hunt going over the physics syllabus. And as soon as the bell rang, she bolted out the door and to the changing room so she could meet with the rest of the soccer team. She was the first one out there, but the other girls weren’t far behind, the boys only a few minutes after them. 

She forced herself to ignore Edison as she trotted over to Coach Davies, although she could feel his scowl. She wasn’t going to acknowledge it. She was going to be above it. Also she liked to imagine that would piss him off more, so that was worth not looking at him. As they all arrived, the coach smirked at them. And then he waited as if he knew exactly what they were all waiting for, and was enjoying this. He probably was. 

Who else could the captaincy go to, though? The obvious second choice was Nicole (ugh), but surely the coach would see that she simply had too prickly of a personality to actually work with or lead? Maybe Drew, with his popularity and decent pitch skills, would be a candidate, but Edison wasn’t sure...

“Alright, guys,” Coach Davies said. Edison’s heart leapt in his chest, unable to contain his nervousness. Please, please, please. “I know this is the moment you’ve all been waiting for, so what we’re going to do is... take four laps around the field for warmup.” 

Edison found himself groaning with the rest of the team, though he was one of the first to get his feet pounding across the ground. Fuck Coach Davies, fuck his masochist ways, fuck this suspense.

Cursing everything and everyone he had ever had problem with quickly became a chant inside his head as he ran. Fuck school, fuck college admissions, fuck that bird that shat on my car...

Augustus starts when a body suddenly hits Andrei, sending Andrei to the ground. He quickly looks to the source and then back to Andrei and he hates how most of the people at this party look in their direction now. He sighs when his teammates step forward. 

The two teammates from the rival team glare at him, then take a step forward. They hesitate though, and a quick glance around him tells Andrei why: the rest of his team had gathered around them, forming a loose semicircle. 

“You still want to play, boys?” Andrei cocks his head to the side. “I don’t think captain or coach would be too happy if you got yourselves suspended in a fight, and I don’t think you’d be happy with yourself for getting beaten to pulp.”

Every angel served in the Divine Legion until they were either vanquished or moved to serve another function but as long as he had been dead, Zavarel had longed for a spot in the Guardian Angel Corps. Not because it seemed cushy or because it got him out from another ceaseless battle with the forces of darkness while the Throne of Glory sat empty, but because he genuinely liked watching out for people. 

So being assigned a human who was already broken was something of a let-down. It almost felt like cleaning up someone else’s mess.

The slow beeping of the monitors were driving him nuts as he waited for his new charge, Caleb, to wake up and start doing anything that actually required guarding. Luckily, however, hospitals seemed to always come equipped with a lot of magazines, and so he perched on the edge of a chair, reading one, idly preening one of his six golden wings with his spare hand. 

It wasn’t until the young man woke up, and spoke, that Zavarel knew something was terribly wrong. 

“Would you believe me if I said one of the doctors?” 

He hoped Caleb was too drugged up to notice the doctor had no shirt, shimmering tattoos of rank and affiliation, and six wings. Morphine was a helluva drug. 

“Then you’d be one hellofa doctor, goin’ ‘round shirtless an’ paradin’ ‘round your tats with... wha’s even on your back?” he mumbled. Another thought struck him. “You’re not a hal... hallucin... hallucination, are you?" Even in his drugged up state, he could tell that he was barely comprehensible at this point. “I wonder if I can sue the hospital for over... overdosage...” He said, trailing off. Words were starting to get harder and harder to say, let alone think; it was like trudging through mud or four feet of snow.

His eyelids grew heavier and heavier until they closed completely, the morphine pulling Caleb back into a synthetic sleep. When he blinked again, the lights were slightly brighter than before, and when he looked across the room, he saw that the stranger was still there.

Caleb’s mouth dropped open.

“What the fuck?” His voice was clearer than before. Perhaps someone had come in as he had passed out again (that had been no dream, his waking up to see the stranger) to lower his dose, because Caleb was finding it a lot easier to express his disbelief and surprise at the moment. “What the fuck are those?” 

Despite how fearless Augustus appears to be on the ice, off the ice, it’s a little different. Direct eye contact makes him uncomfortable, especially with Andrei who is at even eye level with him, and Augustus rolls his eyes again to mask the way he shifts his gaze to the right. “I came to threaten you, but yes, that’s all. If you need to leave, be my guest.”

Something hits him full-bodied, and Andrei flails as he falls under someone’s weight. “Pula mea!” he shouts, shoving the person off of him. Seeing that it’s his teammate, however, Andrei helps him up, then scans the crowd. “Who just did that?” He snarls, daring someone to step forward. Two stocky guys, whom he recognized to be from Augustus’ team, step up, arrogant smirks on their faces.