Chapter Text
Tom is a newborn when he first meets his angel, although he is too young to remember this meeting later. He is a mewling, pathetic mess, pulled from his dead mother’s cooling breast and swaddled with ruthless efficiency by the matron of Wool’s Orphanage. The homespun cloth is rough against his tender skin, and he cries even harder.
When he suddenly quiets, staring at a point above the matron’s shoulder, the other humans present in the room blink at him in surprise. What they do not know—what they cannot see—is the pair of luminous green eyes hovering behind the matron, set in a delicate, radiant face, which wears a smile so sweet and wondrous that it startles Tom out of his misery.
This will, in the years that follow, become a pattern—Harry startling Tom out of his misery, out of his hatred, out of his rage.
When Tom is set down on a filthy mattress in a cracked wooden crib and is left frighteningly alone, the invisible-to-everyone-else shape drifts closer, and Tom thinks he hears a rustle. Something soft touches his cheek, not a hand but something else, downy and fluffy and comforting.
A low, masculine voice says, “Hello, Tom. I’m Harry, and I’m here to watch over you. I’m told you’ll be a challenge, but, well, I’ve never been scared of challenges, have I?”
Tom grabs at the soft thing with all the instincts of a greedy infant, only to hear an indulgent chuckle. The room is cold—too cold for a child his age—but that soft, downy stuff covers him like a blanket, enveloping him in warmth. It even rocks him a little, back and forth, until Tom falls asleep.
In the morning, the matron will return to the room and will be mystified by the sight of the baby clutching a single white feather.
***
Tom is two when he first speaks to his angel, although he is, again, too young to remember it. He is sat atop a grassy knoll on the outskirts of the orphanage, where an older bully—a four-year-old named Ben—has exiled him out of simple spite. Children, Tom is finding, can be exceedingly spiteful. Including himself. He is seriously contemplating biting Ben, maybe on that stupid button nose of his that the matron says is so adorable. Tom wants to be adorable. He wants to be adored.
Thankfully, he has Harry to adore him. Tom has always been aware of the phantom, half-visible shape of Harry in the background, with huge, arching wings that glimmer in and out of sight, like sparkles on sunlit water. Tom is still too innocent to know that he should pretend Harry isn’t there; his tendency to stare at the unseen, and to babble at it, has some of the caretakers concerned. At these displays of concern, Harry has taken to making himself invisible even to Tom, and Tom resents it without comprehending it, without comprehending that Harry is protecting him.
“I’m sorry,” says that unmistakable voice, and Tom glances up to see Harry sitting next to him on the grass, looking troubled and beautiful. “I… wish you could see me all the time. But if you keep looking at me, sweetheart, other people will think you are strange. And that is an outcome I must avoid at all costs if I am to keep you safe. Do you understand?”
“Har,” says Tom, accusingly. And turns his face away. The word sweetheart snags at his heart in some way he cannot fathom, and makes him shy as well as angry, which is a peculiar mixture of emotions even for a child.
“I’m sorry,” Harry repeats, and it is only the genuine sorrow in his voice that mollifies Tom. He’d be even more mollified if Harry said sweetheart again, but he doesn’t quite know how to ask for that.
So he accepts it when Harry crowds against him, as near as possible. Tom may be a toddler, but he understands an apology when he sees it.
Harry lifts a wing and tucks it around Tom, tilting Tom close to him in the midst of that now-familiar downy softness.
Tom shuts his eyes. Harry is always warm, perhaps even too warm, and leaning against his skinny body is like cupping a flame in one’s hand. Tom has the distinct sense that he would burn to ashes if Harry was not somehow preventing it.
“Go to sleep, Tom,” Harry murmurs. “I’ll wake you when it’s time for dinner.”
“Har,” mumbles Tom, sleepily. “St-ay.”
Harry stays.