Chapter Text
Wylan Van Eck is exhausted.
It is every single day preventing his human recipient from dying.
Sometimes it's making sure he doesn’t launch himself off a building, when that fails he has to make sure he doesn’t die falling off of the building. Then when he’s pretending to drown himself Wylan has to make the chains rusty so they snap off.
Wylan is starting to wonder if Jesper Fahey is stupid, or has a death wish. He knows he’s just trying to stretch Wylan's power (even if he doesn’t know Wylan exists), but what happens if Wylan can’t save him? He definitely hasn’t thought that through. If Wylan was a human, and found out he was immortal he would just go on living his life as normal, maybe be a little riskier, but he wouldn’t go skydiving with no parachute every other day.
Wylan stands and stretches from being over his table, the hologram of the building Jesper just fell from still pulled up, he can make out in the truck of mattresses Wylan had nudged forward and he groans.
“Why can’t you be easier?” Wylan mumbles, exasperated. He runs a hand through his ruddy curls before hearing a voice from behind him, making him jump.
“Jesper acting up again?” Nina’s familiar voice rings out, Wylan turns and sighs.
“Isn’t he always? I’m wondering why I even got assigned to be his guardian angel.” Wylan knows the truth, his dad, boss as well, did it to ridicule him.
“What did he do this time?” Nina chuckles, leaning against the doorframe.
“Jumped off a building. I’m wondering why I can’t just let him die. I thats not what I want,” Wylan gets flustered, “I’m not sadistic, but like, its getting to a point, you know? I uh-” Wylan stutters, Nina just blanks, looking confused,
“He was suppose-” She is cut off by a big, blonde appearing right behind her.
“Matthias!” She cheers, spinning around and opening her arms. He immediately returns the hug, while Wylan waves a bit, still a bit flushed.
Matthias, Nina, and Wylan are friends. Well, it's mostly because they were forced together out of the fact that their three human recipients are friends. Guardian Angels like to be near each other when all their humans are hanging out, or doing something dangerous, so they can combine forces. Wylan obviously has Jesper, which seems to be the most of a handful out of the three. Nina gets it easy with a Suli girl named Inej, careful and smart. Wylan is pretty sure Matthias wants his human, Kaz, to die, but does his job grudgingly.
“I hear Jesper is giving you trouble again.” Matthias comments, Nina still in his arms. Ever since they all met, it's been more of a Wylan third wheeling kind of thing, but he’s the one who really has to watch the monitor to make sure Jesper hasn’t walked into a fire, so he is ok with it.
Wylan has been sugarcoating it for them, he doesn’t want them to know he can’t prevent Jesper from walking into dangerous places. He wants to show them he’s capable. So instead of saying, “Yea, he jumped from 100 feet,” it's more of a, “Yea, he jumped from a building. All good though.” Not exactly great, but at least they’re not suspicious.
“Yea. I can manage though.” He shrugs, hoping it makes him look nonchalant about his job.
Matthias nods, opening his mouth to speak again, Wylan hopes it's not a piece of ‘wisdom’ that doesn’t work with Jesper's case, but it's worse.
“Boss wanted to see you in his office.”
Wylan’s heart drops.
“Oh, ok.” His mouth feels dry and odd. Nina gives him a sympathetic look as he grabs his satchel and walks out. “Bye.”
Walking to his office never gets less nerve wracking. It feels like his heart matches his steps, and his steps are quick, not wanting to upset him further.
He reaches the door, tentatively knocking.
“Come in.”
Wylan takes a deep breath as he opens the door and meets the eyes of his boss, and his father, Jan Van Eck.
Wylan steps inside, closing the doors behind him as he approaches the desk in what feels like a rhythm a normal, not nervous person would be walking in.
“Sit down Wylan.” He says coldly, and so Wylan sits. Of course his father rises, now a looming presence over Wylan.
“I’ve been observing your progress.” He moves in front of his desk, closer to Wylan now.
This is confusing. Wylan is sure he has been doing a good job, Jesper isn’t dead. Did he mess up today? Did the guy he made lean on the beam with the net hit his head? Is he ok?
“Do you know what a guardian angel is supposed to do?” He asks, and so Wylan speaks.
“A guardian angel is supposed to protect a certain person and lead them through their life on Earth.” Wylan responds, remembering Matthias stating this multiple times.
“Right. But, guardian angels can’t act against human’s free will. They can give them hesitation, or that feeling of dread when doing something bad, sometimes even another person to help save them.”
This might be about Jesper.
“But, they aren’t supposed to save them if they jump, or walk into danger,”
This is definitely about Jesper.
“That's their choice. This was all in the manual Wylan. Because, what would happen if a person kept being saved. Over and over?” His eyes pierce Wylan like blades.
“They…would be immortal.” Wylan chokes a bit. “That wasn’t my-I-didn’t know.” He stutters, trying to not be a complete wreck in front of his father.
“This was in the manual Wylan.” He sneers, “Did you not read the manual?”
Wylan’s heart sinks, any chance his father gets to rub it in, to show him how defective he is like he doesn’t know, his father takes it.
His fathers expression turns sour, nasty.
“Incompetent.” He hisses.
Wylan's heart thumps heavily against his chest, it feels like he’s sinking, and he can’t do anything about it.
“I gave you this job out of pity. Hoping maybe, maybe, you could do something worthwhile, not be completely helpless, but it's clear your deficiency has made it so you can’t do anything to pull your weight.” He circles around Wylan. Wylan’s breathing feels shallow, painful. “You, are useless.”
Tears prickle at his eyes, but he forces himself to reel them back. He can do that when he’s alone.
“You will be terminated from your position. Somebody competent will take your place, and hopefully your human will have some common sense knocked into him. Gather your things, you have a week until your replacement will be here, unless they are here sooner.”
This is all Wylan has. This job…it gave him a purpose, something to do besides think about how stupid he is.
“Please, father.” He gasps, looking at him, desperate at this point.
“Don’t call me that.” He snaps, glaring daggers at Wylan. Wylan flinches back. “Get out.”
And Wylan bolts for the door.