My Dark Angel

POV: Gideon “Give me another,” I growl, the back of my hand nudging the empty glass toward the bartender. The dark-haired angel shoots me a sharp glare over his shoulder as he pours another patron’s drink. “Gideon, don’t you think you’ve had enough?” His tone is heavy with disapproval, and the bartender gives a shake of his head, lips pressing into a thin line of disappointment. He walks over to where I sit at the bar and folds his elbows on the worn wooden surface, his gaze falling to the empty glass that he makes no move to refill. “I know it’s hard with Elise gone. But it’s been three months now and you’ve been here every single night since.” “Not for Dad’s birthday,” I quip through a stiff smirk. I try not to slur my words in hopes Damien will pour me another drink, but I know the bartender is a master when it comes to sensing his customer’s sobriety. He rolls his eyes. “Christmas doesn’t count.” I eye him as he takes my glass. My drunken hopes are dashed when he places it back in front of me, filled with water. “That better be vodka.” “You know it isn’t. Losing your wings didn’t affect your senses. Come on, you need to move on. When I lost Lisa—” Here we f*****g go. “I thought bartenders were supposed to listen,” I snarl, loud enough to draw several eyes to my place at the bar, their looks of pity hot on the back of my skull. I twist around on my stool, blasting the room with an infernal glower. “Mind your own f*****g business you winged t***s,” I snarl with bared teeth. The prying eyes drop to their drinks. Damien’s voice pulls my attention back to him, and I find him wearing a pitying look of his own. “I do listen, Gabriel.” “Pah. You talk about Lisa. Your situation with your ward is nothing like mine and Elise’s.” I’m being cruel. A drunk, embarrassment. But I don't care, don't care about anything anymore.  By the fall of Damien’s shoulders and the pinch of his dark brows, I’ve hurt his feelings. I know the fallen angel is trying to help, but all I really want is to drown myself in a good bottle of whiskey. So far that venture’s been difficult, seeing as my bartender is also my best friend and self-appointed therapist. It makes the whole ‘drowning my sorrow at the bottom of a bottle’ thing pretty damn difficult. I could go to other bars, human bars; there are hundreds in Seattle. Even though I’m not a guardian angel anymore, I’ve been a patron of this run-down watering hole since I was first assigned to Seattle. To an outsider, it just looks like your run-of-the-mill dive bar. But to my kind, it’s a sanctuary where all the angels of the city came to forget their wards for a while. Despite the bar being named The Guardian, the majority of its patrons are fallen angels. Most guardians, at least good ones, are too busy watching their wards to indulge in a drink. Wings or no, it’s the closest thing I have to a home. The Guardian’s owner, Damien, is a fallen, the lowest class of angel a citizen of Paradise can sink. He wears the title better than me, but he’s had several years to adjust to the role. Opening the bar for other lost angels keeps him busy. Damien is a strong and swarthy man, with dark hair and eyes the color of a raven’s back. He’s one of those dashing exotic types that drive all the guardian class females wild, which is a testament to his charisma since the pitch-black eyes of the fallen usually put off most women. Lucky bastard. Most women, angels and otherwise, only seem to be frightened of me. Imagine, a guardian angel with the strength and power of a valkyrie, afraid of me. Admittedly, I’m the sort of guy that’s a bit rough around the edges, and my rugged appearance and sharp mannerisms haven’t improved much after my ward’s death. “We’re both fallen, Gid,” Damien grumbles in a tone that invites a swell of guilt to unfurl inside me. I swear, this guy has the patience of a saint. “Lisa died of cancer, Dame.” I use my best friend’s nickname, hoping it softens the whole drunken asshole exterior I can’t seem to shed these days. “Elise died because she committed suicide. You lost your wings because Paradise hasn’t revised their prehistoric rule about wards dying on a guardian’s watch since the Earth first took light. I lost my wings due to the f****d fact that I was too much of a selfish bastard to pay attention to my human when she needed me most.” I clench my fists, knuckles cracking as I grip the water glass tight. “You got a s**t hand because of a technicality on an archaic rule. I got what I f*****g deserved because I was a terrible guardian.” “Bullshit. You’re spiraling, and I’m afraid I won’t be able to pull you from this darkness you’ve exiled yourself to. It’s normal to feel guilty but—” I cut the bartender short with a growl, eyes flashing in the bar’s neon murk. “You were with Lisa in her final moments, holding her hand in that hospital bed. Elise died in an alley…” Bitter tears sting my eyes. I drop my head in shame and glare hard at my water which I desperately wish was vodka. “And I was here…sitting in this very spot at the bar when she bled to death alone, next to a dumpster.” I know what Damien’s about to say by his weighted sigh. I’ve heard it all before, but I need to hear it again. Maybe this time my f****d up brain will believe what he has to say. “Elise took her own life. You didn’t put that gun to her head. She had drug problems, mental health issues, and she made it clear she wasn’t interested in having you in her life. Sometimes, a person doesn’t want to be saved. It wasn’t your fault.“ He’s wrong, my inner protector grates inside my mind. It was your fault, because you weren’t there by her side, where her guardian angel should have been. Shut up, shut up, shut up. I squeeze my eyes shut and clench my fists tight against my temples. My inner protector, the part of me that’s still an angel, never keeps quiet anymore. My true self is always on edge since Paradise took away my ability to shift. Now that part of me is trapped inside this mortal body until I wither and die like a common human. How did things get this f****d? When I’d had been a new recruit to the guardian class, I was a different person then, excited and full of hope. Now those words feel so foreign in my mind I can barely fathom their meaning. Back then I thought being a guardian angel meant protecting your ward from kidnappings, muggings, assaults. I didn’t know I was supposed to make Elise feel wanted, needed, and safe. I failed. Because of that failure, my wings were ripped from me, demoted to the lowest class of angel a poor bastard can sink. An angel’s wings are everything. Now, I’m nothing. I have nothing. All that’s left to do is wait for this mortal body to age and die and whatever’s left of my soul will be sent straight to the pit where Lucifer will revel in it. Might as well be drunk when I get there. The tricky part is dealing with this smothering darkness inside I can’t seem to shake. It’s what humans call depression. Damien’s talked my ear off about their pills and their therapy. It’s a joke to think those things would work for me. In place of my wings, I have a new weight on my shoulders. Shame. At this point, it would take a miracle to purge such a black, ugly emotion. And you deserve to wallow in your guilt forever. Elise and I might not have clicked personality-wise, but she didn’t deserve what happened to her. Regardless of whatever was going on in her life, the fact that she felt the gun was a better solution than finding solace in her own guardian only drives the knife of guilt deeper into my gut. Poor Elise. She’d struggled with her mental health, and her drug addiction hadn’t made things any better for her. Her situation had been dire enough to be noticed by the archangel, but life had dealt her another s**t card when her only savior was me. From day one, we never meshed. She wasn’t interested in the help of a stranger, nor was she interested in ever letting our relationship grow from anything beyond a struggling junkie and a strange man whose forced devotion never seemed to settle right. So she shut me out. A better guardian would have made her listen, would have been more stern. He would have watched her, even if it’d been from afar. Our relationship had been a tricky one, namely because wards aren’t allowed to know what their guardians are. It’s up to the angel to establish a bond, a connection, a reason to always be around. A romantic relationship would have been the easiest avenue. We might not have clicked romantically, but I probably could have seduced her. But no. That was another rule, guardians can under no circumstance bed a human, and most certainly not their ward. So, I’d tried my best to be Elise’s friend. That sure as f**k didn’t work. We didn’t even like each other. A cleverer man would have made it work. “Shut up,” I say to my inner protector, this time out loud. I can’t make out the fine details of Damien’s face, but I know he’s looking at me with concern. I ignore the incredulous stares. “I’d give anything to start over, Dame. Anything.” “I know.” The bartender’s sympathy is appreciated but all together, useless. Slowly, the alcohol fades and the blur of Damien’s muscular frame starts to come back into focus. “Why was my only punishment losing my wings? Why couldn’t they have sent me straight to the Pit? Must we suffer here among the mortals?” I hear scoffs behind me at my question, like it’s a stupid one. Maybe it is. Maybe there’s some secret to a happy life without wings and I’m the only bastard that hasn’t been let in on it. “They took more than your wings, Gid. They took your pride. They also cut your stipend in half. Didn’t you have to move out of that posh condo on Capitol Hill?” I snort. “I don’t give a s**t about money. I could live in a mansion and I’d still be miserable.” “A mortal life can be a blessing, one you never knew you wanted.” I grunt my objection. “I mean it,” Damien’s voice is stern and slices through my pity party. But I don’t care what my friend has to say at this moment. I firmly believe it would have been easier if they had just sent me to the Pit. At least there my torment would have been nicely scheduled for me. Downstairs, they were pros in pain and torture. There, I could have left my suffering to the professionals, and I could just lay back and enjoy the ride. Here, time is the enemy. When I was immortal, a human lifespan never seemed long, but the last three months of mortality have dragged on. I can’t imagine another five months, let alone another fifty to sixty years of this s**t. “What do I do with all this…time?” I ask Damien in earnest. The angel shrugs. “Get a job? Start a podcast? Take up quilting?” “You’re joking.” “I don’t know. Why not find a girl to f**k? You’re a fallen now. You don’t have to be celibate anymore. If that’s not a blessing in disguise, I don’t know what is.” Now that I’m no longer a guardian, I’ve considered finding a human girl to warm my bed, drown my sorrows in her sweet mound instead of at the bottom of a bottle. At least I would be out of Damien’s hair. But no, I don’t think drowning myself in pleasure will do much to numb that stab of guilt still seated deep in my core. As if sensing my conundrum, Damien’s attention briefly flicks to me and then back to his task of wiping the bar. “If whoring around isn’t your bag, maybe what you need is a second chance of guarding someone; might make you feel better.” I scoff, giving a flick of my wrist in dismissal. “They took my wings. It’s over.” Damien looks around the bar, as if checking to make sure everyone’s lost their interest in or conversation. He props his elbows on the bar and leans close. “I’ve heard of the archangel granting wings back to fallen who’ve proven themselves worthy again.” I lift my head, frowning at my friend with a furrowed brow. “When was the last time that happened?” With a sigh, he throws the bar rag over his shoulder and turns towards me with arms crossed. “I don’t know, Gideon, you just need to find a new purpose. You can’t keep drinking like this. It's pointless” “Not if it sends me to the Pit faster.” “So that’s your plan? Go out the way Elise did? Real f*****g mature. How about you man up and deal with what’s happened like the Gideon I know would.” The alcohol tells me to hit him, to make him stop speaking such unbearable truths. I’m stronger than him, I could take him. No, what am I saying? Damien is my best friend. He’s my only friend. He’s just trying to help. I force myself to relax, scrubbing my hands over my face. “So, what am I supposed to do? What did you do when you lost Lisa?"  “I bought a bar and turned it into a place where sorry assholes like you can whine to me all night. It’s my purpose. You need to find yours.” I choke out a bark of a laugh, spitting out a bit of water mid-sip. I wipe my mouth with the back of my hand, glaring daggers at the bartender. “What purpose could I possibly have now?” He shrugged. “Become a garbage man for all I care. You’ll need to wake up early, it will keep you out of the bar at night.” “So, that’s it.” I flash him a half-c****d grin. “You’re just trying to get rid of me.” Despite my joke, Damian glances up from the bar, his eyes void of all humor which was a rarity for the angel. “Yes. I want to get rid of you, because it’ll mean that you would have found something better.“ “Alright, alright. One last drink, and I promise I won’t be here tomorrow, okay?” The fallen regards me with a sharp, side-eyed glance and then concedes with a sigh of defeat. “Fine. Whiskey?”