Work Text:
I wake up spinning around my Heart, and the first thing that springs to mind is, I've been doing this too often of late.
Theo's in the room before I've finished shaking Trauma-weariness out of my ring. Gives me a quick once-over, nods. He's not the demonstrative type. "You weren't the only one," he says, because I would have asked. "But you're the last to wake. It's been over two weeks."
"That long?" Usually I'm in and out of Trauma in three days flat. I spin close around him; even if he's not the touchy-feely type when on the celestial plane, it makes me feel better to check out that he's truly okay. Last I saw him, there was a piece of rebar going through his stomach and--it's not useful to think about this right now. It gets confusing and messy if I spend as much time trying to keep him safe as he does for me. Not a Cherub, never wanted to be a Cherub, and it's not my job. "Wow. At least everyone else is out of it by now, that's reassuring, and did we win? Um, wait, wrong terminology, did we accomplish the listed objectives for the mission?"
"Most of them," Theo says, and I have to wonder which ones we missed. I mean, items one, two, and seven were taken care of when the fire reached the second floor, though it did sort of make number four unlikely. "I've had the report sent to your office"
"Thanks." I detach from him before he can get uncomfortable. "I have to ask, since when do I have an office?" I don't want an office. I don't need an office. I'm only doing temp work here, and offices are for Sparkies, people who belong Heart and soul to Jean. I like the Boss, I really do, but I'm not one of his. I'm only on loan.
"Gariel requested that all angels under his direct supervision be centered within easy reach of his location, and an office came free over there. You're between Theresa and Mannie." Theo rears up on his hindquarters to examine me more closely, and I obligingly spin around in front of him. "Before you ask, no, nothing happened to the previous occupant. It simply requested an office in a quieter location."
I can dimly place the angel who worked there before, a Kyriotate who once asked me to keep it down when playing tag with Maharang in the hallway outside. "What am I supposed to do with an office?"
"Read reports."
That's a hint, but I can ignore it for a while longer. "I can do that in any of the lounges."
"Hold private conversations?"
"All the people I speak with privately have their own offices."
"Be found within easy distance of your supervisor, while not interrupting anyone else's work."
He has me there. I roll out of the Heart room into the straight, clean, perfectly logical hallway. There are times I'm tempted to round up a pack of relievers from Flowers and Wind, load them down with finger paints, and let them loose in the Halls of Progress. "I'd better go read that report. And, um, put myself within easy distance of my supervisor."
"A good plan," Theo says, and moves briskly away in the other direction.
I speed my way through the halls fast enough to almost not think about things I'm trying not to think about of late.
Mannie's office door stands cracked open, in the universally recognized sign for Come in, but only if it's important. I roll inside, tap the door closed behind me, wrap around him before he can stand up or turn around. "Missed you."
"You have the most uncanny knack for losing vessels in a spectacular fashion," Mannie says, and lets me twine all around him. I don't have the coils a Seraph could manage, but a single ring can rubber-band around a cooperative angel remarkably well, if I say so myself. He keeps a camera on my Heart these days, and I know he's safe here in Heaven, but we both need a moment of reassurance. That the other person is there.
"I didn't use to lose vessels so often." I twist myself free, enough to let him spin his chair and watch me as I maneuver around the room. It's not big enough to pace in properly, not when I'm this wheel of fire, and it's a strange taste to realize I'm more used to my vessels than my true form these days. "I kept my third one for decades. I mean, sure, I'd lose a piece of it to a Shedite with a chainsaw now and then, but I always got those reattached. It's only lately that I've been having so much trouble keeping, uh, corporeally alive."
"You ought to be more careful," Mannie says.
"And you shouldn't worry so much. I'm always fine in the end, right?" He's added another painting to the side of the bookcase, the place where he hangs everything Ling sends him. A deer-form Cherub in flowers, by the looks of it, and nicely done in crayon. I'll have to go see her some time and pick up a few decorations, so long as they insist I have an office. Or maybe just get back to that idea about relievers and finger paints.
"So far." Mannie turns away from me to grab his coffee from the desk, and now I can see that his wings are twitching, trying to spread out around him. Which isn't a good sign at all, and I think he took my two weeks in Trauma harder than my three-day stints. "I stay here and I worry. My worrying seldom does you any good, more often than not it proves a distraction to me, but... I'm not an Elohite, Kai. I can't ignore that or turn it off."
"I'm sorry." I don't want to hurt him.
"It is not your responsibility to, ah, be gentle with me. You have a job to do. But...please. Be more careful."
"I'll try." I flip over onto my side and spin there in mid-air. "I'm not very good at it, but I'll try."
"You could work your way up to it," Mannie says, and the moment's gone. We're back to our usual post-Trauma roles, where he can chide me for being too careless and I can make light of the situation. It's more comfortable than the alternative. "If you can't think about the consequences before you throw yourself into danger, maybe you could start thinking about them while you throw yourself in. It would be an improvement from not considering such aspects of the situation at all."
"Well, I did realize at one point during that last job that what I had just done had been a really bad idea, from a self-preservation standpoint. So that's something!"
"I'm going to have to get you a body bag for Christmas, aren't I. And petition for you to be given a second vessel to stuff in there." Mannie waves his coffee cup at me. "No doubt Theo will help me in this if I ask. We can stow away the body bag in a nice, safe location. Say, the cells beneath Notre Dame."
"Can't give me a Christmas present, it's March."
"Then I'll find a March holiday to justify it. Or call it a birthday present."
"I think birthdays only count for people who are born. I just sorta stuck together at the top of a Tether, back when I was three Forces and fluff."
"Do you remember the date?"
"No?"
"Then we'll call it March. And your birthday. Congratulations, you'll be getting a present as soon as I can call in enough favors to dig up one of those artifacts for you."
"How efficient."
"That's one word for it." Mannie tries to drink from his coffee cup, discovers it's empty. "I need to find another lab assistant," he says, by which he means someone to deliver messages and fetch him coffee. Except--oh.
"Maharang's gone downstairs?" No wonder he's twitchier than usual. Two friends on Earth to fret over, and he thinks of both of us as fragile, no matter that I have more Corporeal Forces than he does, and Maharang has as many as him.
"Yes. A brand new Role to build for someone else. Or possibly for itself, if it proves itself by the time the Role is ready to go." He sets the cup back down. "I told them you wouldn't want the office. But they said that wasn't the point."
"I'll deal. It doesn't mean anything, right? Just a place to stow my stuff when I'm downstairs."
"I even warned them you'd redecorate," Mannie says. "That should have scared them out of the notion, but apparently not."
"I appreciate the effort." I like being around him, but I'll admit I'm getting bored, ready to go flying through the sky at proper speeds. Pity I won't be able to convince him to come along; he's about as comfortable with wings as your average Servitor of Animals is with SUVs. "It's going to be quiet around here with Maharang gone. Want me to see if I can chase up some bored little reliever who needs something to do for you?"
"Please, no. Someone with more experience would be preferable. And, ah, more Ethereal Forces." For a terrible moment I think he's going to talk about those things I'm not thinking about, but he only holds out his cup. "However, if you're in as much a mood to run as I imagine you are, you could get me another cup of coffee."
"I know the place!" I spin around him one more time for good measure, and then it's out the door down the hallway take a left down the hall take a right past the entrance out into the beautiful blue skies of Heaven.
I keep not thinking about things, of late. People who ought to be here who aren't. And some of them, I don't know what I'll say when we next meet.
But it will all turn out well, in the end. I know that this is true. It'll all work out in the end.