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.
Chapter Text
“You don’t have to hide from me anymore,” Tom insists vehemently. He’s five, he’s almost as tall as Harry’s hip, and he’s angry. He’s just about had it with Harry vanishing as soon as others are present. “I’m old enough to know not to act like you’re there. They won’t find out. I’ll be as normal as—” Tom pauses. “As normal as I can be.”
Harry’s brows knit in concern. “You don’t think you’re normal.”
“Normal people don’t have guardian angels, Harry.”
“What makes you so sure of that? What if Ben has a guardian angel, too, and you just can’t see it?”
“I’d feel it,” Tom says confidently. “Like I feel so many things. Like I can tell when someone’s lying. Like I can tell you’re around even when you’re invisible. I’m not ‘normal,’ Harry, and I don’t want to be.”
“It’s…” Harry trails off. “It’s actually quite normal for some folks—magical folks—to have the senses you have. Not at such a young age, of course, and not to such a degree, but…”
“Basically, I’m not normal for wizards, either. Admit it, Harry.” Tom juts his chin out mulishly. “I’m better than normal.”
Harry’s lips twitch. “Oh, Tom. You’ve perfected hubris into an art form.”
“Thank you.”
“It wasn’t a compliment.” Harry ruffles Tom’s hair fondly, and Tom ducks away, irritated. He doesn’t need Harry condescending to him—and yes, he knows what ‘condescending’ means. As well as ‘hubris’. Because he’s smarter than his peers. And because he’s read the Oxford Children’s Dictionary cover-to-cover, tattered and worn though the orphanage’s copy of it is. “Are you done with your sulking, then?”
“I’m not sulking.”
“Yes, you are. Your mouth’s got that little pout on it.”
Tom immediately flattens his mouth. “No, it hasn’t.”
“Not anymore.” Harry sighs, like he misses it. Like he finds Tom’s pouting cute. It is as infuriating as it is warming, and Tom is blushing all of a sudden. He hates blushing. It makes him feel vulnerable. And weird. And transparent. As if his skin has suddenly become see-through.
“So,” Tom says with authority, manfully ignoring his blush in the hopes that it will go away. “You’ll be making yourself visible to me all the time.”
Harry’s smile is sharp and amused. “And you would command me? A mortal hatchling of five years old, commanding an angel who has lived for centuries?”
“Yes.” Tom looks Harry dead in the eye. “I can. And I will.”
Harry stares at him. In wonder, perhaps, or incredulity. And then he laughs. He laughs, and laughs, and laughs.
***
Ada gets adopted at the age of four. Christopher at five. Wentworth at seven. Eloise at six.
But here Tom is, at eight, and he still hasn’t been adopted. The older a child gets, Tom knows, the lower the chances of adoption are. Tom finds that statistic hateful—as though prospective parents want a canvas as blank as possible, so that they may paint it in their own colours. Clay as unformed as possible, so that they may twist it to their liking. A tabula rasa, theirs to mark, theirs to shape. Malleable. Easy to manipulate.
It only exposes adults for the devious predators that they are. Harry doesn’t count as an adult, and not just because he’s an angel who isn’t subject to human ageing, or because his face and form are perennially adolescent—he never looks a day over seventeen. No, he’s just too… well, innocent. Harry may claim to be centuries old, but he’s too pure, too untouched by human sin to have anything in common with the adults Tom encounters in everyday life.
Like the heaving, sweating matron, who canes miscreants and smiles while doing it. Or the timid nursemaid who steals from the medicine cabinet, furtive as a mouse. Or the bald, oily-pated salesman with greedy eyes who recently adopted Wentworth, for reasons that Tom had instantly intuited were less than altruistic, and had more to do with Wentworth’s pretty rosebud mouth.
They’re all scum, the adults Tom has met, and Tom shudders at the mere thought of them. Harry is nothing like that.
Or maybe Harry is a teenager in angel terms, and the only reason Tom hasn’t seen him age is because angels have longer lifespans. Do angels age? Tom makes a mental note to ask Harry about that, one day, when the context is ripe for it.
Nevertheless, not having been adopted niggles at Tom.
When Eloise gets adopted, despite being relatively plain (Tom is conscious that he is a handsome child) and lacking in charm (Tom could talk thorns off roses), Tom begins to worry whether his unadopted status may be a symptom of some fundamental deficiency. Of some innate flaw that is deeply off-putting to others, and that may have led to his abandonment at Wool’s in the first place. If so, Tom has to identify that flaw, and quickly, before it interferes with his future plans.
It isn’t so much that Tom needs to be adopted, or even yearns for it; he has Harry, after all, who loves him more profoundly and unconditionally than human parents can.
But being liberated from the miserable cage of the orphanage and being allowed to be out and about in London, attending an ordinary school, would be pleasant. As would having his own toys, his own clothes, and his own food that nobody could snatch from under his nose. Having a conventional education and the chance to forge connections in broader society would also be to Tom’s benefit. It would ease Tom’s path to greatness, and Tom has always wanted to be great.
Then again, perhaps the path to greatness can never be easy. Tom cannot recall a single biography of a great leader in which they did not, in some capacity, suffer for their accomplishments. Heavy lies the head, et cetera. Best be prepared to bear the weight of the crown if one deigns to wear it. Not that Tom is aiming to be a monarch, precisely. Something close, though. Something incontestable. Something absolute. The term ‘dictator’ comes to mind, but is too unflattering to use openly. ‘Benevolent overseer,’ perhaps. Minus the benevolence, but the public won’t know that. It’s a good term. Non-threatening. Half-true. (If only the second half.)
Tom does not envy his future minions the job of manufacturing propaganda on his behalf. Because Tom will have bigger things to do, by then. World-shaping, world-shattering things.
But for now, Tom is eight, and hungry in more ways than one—for food, because his breakfast was nothing but a cup of watery gruel—and for power, because he currently has none over his environment. He will soon, however. He will. In a year, the older children will compete to give him their gruel. They will compete for his favour, or even his indifference. Anything that will keep them out of the range of his ire, of his magic, of his ability to cause pain.
“Do you think the families don’t want me because I’m a wizard?” Tom asks Harry, when they are by themselves behind the giant oak tree at the edge of the playground. “Because the children and the caretakers call me a freak? Or is it just because I’m…” Cold? Apathetic? Callous? Tom casts about for a descriptor that doesn’t seem self-critical, because Tom does like himself, thank you very much, even if none of his fellow orphans do. “Reserved?”
“Tom, no.” Harry says it emphatically, regarding Tom with all the earnestness in the world. It’s sweet, as so much about Harry is. “You’re not—that’s not why you haven’t been adopted. There’s nothing wrong with you. You’re not unwanted.”
“Then what am I?” Tom asks, very reasonably. “I’m intimidating, aren’t I? You can say it. I am better than them, so why shouldn’t I frighten them? Unnerve them?” He huffs. “I only wish I knew how to switch it off, sometimes. Being unnerving. I won’t be able to rule the masses if I unnerve them. I have to strike a balance between being approachable and being intimidating. How exactly does one do that?”
Harry leans back on his hands, his folded wings brushing the damp morning grass. “You’d have to ask Michael.”
Tom’s internal processes grind to a halt. “You mean Archangel Michael?”
Harry looks at Tom quizzically. “Who else?”
“You know him?”
“Who doesn’t?” Harry shrugs. “And why is it that every conversation we have winds up focusing on you ‘ruling the masses’?”
“Because it is my destiny. You know that, Harry. You get this incredibly uncomfortable look on your face whenever I mention it. And people are only ever that uncomfortable with the truth.”
Harry is wearing that expression right now. “You’re growing up so quickly, Tom.” Too quickly is left unsaid.
Speaking of the unsaid… “Can you read my thoughts?” Tom asks. He’s often wondered.
“No,” Harry answers sincerely. “But I can sense your emotions. Especially if they’re intense.”
“Being around me must feel like living with a battering ram, then.” Really, it’s remarkable that the other children describe Tom as unfeeling when Tom is in fact a constant, volcanic eruption of emotion.
Harry coughs out a chuckle. “Maybe.”
“But a very charming battering ram.”
“If not the most humble one.” Harry rolls his eyes. “Or even the least humble. I’m not sure you have humility in you of any quantity, Tom. You’re probably not even on the scale.”
Tom resists the urge to stick out his tongue. That would be juvenile. He isn’t like the grassy-kneed, perpetually tumbling, dirty-faced, ratty-haired children who are always playing in the orphanage yard. He’s different. He’s a mastermind in the making. “Measuring scales are for those who are measurable,” he declares. “And I am immeasurable.”
Harry blinks, for a moment, then doubles over laughing. He laughs so hard he actually wheezes, as though even his immortal lungs are running out of air. His wings pick up stray twigs as they convulse along with him.
That is not the reaction Tom was hoping for.
He frowns. Why does it always amuse Harry so, whenever Tom says something impressive? A human would be impressed. Humans have been impressed—even if they stay away from Tom afterwards, because they’re intimidated. Just like Tom had said.
Ah, Tom realises. So that’s why. Harry isn’t intimidated by Tom. He’s not like the children, or the caretakers, or the matron, or the parents. He’s not like the people who turn away from Tom. Harry shines brightly enough on his own to not be intimidated by Tom’s burning light. He’s powerful enough to not be frightened of Tom’s power.
Harry is Tom’s perfect companion. Tom doesn’t need to be adopted. In fact, it’ll be more preferable if he isn’t; he won’t be able to stand dimming his light for an inferior, mediocre family. No, let Harry be his only family. Let Tom be Harry’s just as Harry is Tom’s—completely. They are well-matched in all things.
Even if Harry laughs at him a bit too much. Tom would usually be insulted by it, but Harry’s laughs are never harsh, never cold. They’re warm, instead, just like his feathers. Warm and sheltering. They make Tom happy. They make Tom feel loved.
And most important of all, they make Tom feel known. Tom, who is already becoming an accomplished deceiver, a walking illusion, a chimera beyond the ken of mere mortals. Tom has already stopped being known by anyone else.
Harry, alone, knows him.
And one day—one day—Harry will be known to him, as well.