Chapter Two #2
The smart choice crystallizes—put him out. Let him heal somewhere else, let his people find him, let this complication become someone else’s problem. I didn’t ask for this. Didn’t invite impossibility into my carefully constructed isolation.
But the oath I swore doesn’t include exemptions for non-human patients. Doesn’t say ‘first do no harm, unless the patient defies natural law.’
And there’s something else, something I don’t want to examine too closely.
When those blue eyes found mine, when that voice asked, ‘please don’t,’ I felt something shift inside the walls I’ve built.
Recognition or connection. The kind that forms between people who’ve both fallen from places they belonged and understand what it means to lose everything and start over in the cold.
“You can stay.” The words commit me before reason can intervene. “Until you heal. Until you remember. Until...” I gesture helplessly at the impossibility of the situation. “Until whatever comes next.”
Relief washes across his face, so human despite the inhuman light in his eyes. “Thank you.”
“Don’t thank me yet.” I pull a blanket from my sleeping area and drape it over him. “This might be the stupidest decision I’ve made in five years. Probably is. No, definitely is. But I’m not leaving someone to freeze, human or otherwise.”
His hand catches mine before I can withdraw. The touch sends electricity up my arm, not painful or threatening, just... charged. Alive. “I won’t hurt you. Whatever I am, whoever I was, I know that much. I won’t hurt you.”
“You don’t remember who you were. How can you promise what you’ll do?”
“Because some things run deeper than memory.” His grip tightens briefly, then releases. “Some things are written into the core of what we are. And whatever else I’ve lost, I know I don’t harm those who show me mercy.”
The conviction in his voice carries weight beyond words. I want to believe him and trust that whatever fell from the sky won’t turn dangerous once it’s healed. To believe I haven’t invited a predator into my home.
But wanting doesn’t equal wisdom. And trust doesn’t come easily to someone who’s spent five years running from betrayal.
“Get some rest.” I pull away to create distance and establish boundaries.
“I’ll bring water. Food, if you can keep it down.
But the talking stops now. You need to heal, and I need to...
” To what? To process? To plan? To figure out how to handle the impossibility currently occupying my floor? “I need to think.”
I move to the kitchen area, which is barely more than a counter with a camp stove and water filtration system, and fill a metal cup from my supply.
The water comes from snowmelt I collect and purify, one of hundreds of small tasks that constitute survival out here.
Usually, the routine soothes me. Tonight, my hands shake, water sloshing against metal sides.
When I return to Prophet’s side, he’s watching me through half-open eyes. Luminous blue eyes track my movement, calculating or observing, I can’t tell. The light has dimmed further, suggesting exhaustion, healing taking its toll, or both.
“Can you sit up enough to drink?” I keep my voice clinical and professional. It’s easier to keep my walls up when I’m operating in surgeon mode.
He tries to prop himself on one elbow before his muscles give out. The effort leaves him panting, that too-warm skin flushed with exertion. “Sorry. Weaker than I thought.”
“Hold on.” I grab my sleeping pad, a thin foam that provides minimal cushioning against the cabin’s wood floor, and position it behind him. “Try again. Slowly.”
This time, he makes it to a semi-reclined position, back against the pad, breath coming faster than it should. I hold the cup to his lips, tilt it carefully. He drinks in small sips, throat working, eyes closing briefly in what might be relief or a response to a basic need being met.
When he’s had enough, he pushes the cup away gently. “Thank you.”
I withdraw, but not before noticing the burns on his hands have faded to nothing, completely gone, as if they never existed. The lacerations across his torso show the same impossible progress. What were deep wounds an hour ago now appear as thin pink lines, barely raised above surrounding skin.
“How fast do you heal?” The question emerges before I can stop it. Curiosity wars with caution, and curiosity wins.
He examines his hands with the same fascination I feel. “I don’t know. This is... I think this is faster than normal. Than my normal.” His fingers flex, testing. “The fall damaged more than my body. Something broke inside. Whatever kept me... whatever I was... it’s gone.”
“The wings.”
“Yes.” Pain flickers across his features. “I can feel their absence. Weight that should exist but doesn’t. Balance that’s wrong, as if someone amputated limbs I can’t remember having.”
Phantom limb syndrome, but for appendages no human possesses.
The medical parallel should comfort me, proof that some aspects of treatment remain universal.
Instead, it highlights how far outside normal parameters I’m operating.
There’s no protocol for treating fallen angels.
No textbook chapter on supernatural physiology.
“Will they grow back?” I don’t know why I ask. Don’t know if the answer matters. But something about his loss resonates with my experiences of amputation, not physical, but the cutting away of who I used to be, leaving phantom pains where purpose and trust once lived.
“No.” Certainty fills that single syllable. “Whatever sent me falling made sure of that. This...” He gestures at himself, at his healing body, at the situation. “This is permanent. Punishment and exile combined.”
“Exile for what?”
“I don’t remember.” Frustration edges his voice. “But it must have been significant. They don’t cast angels down for minor infractions. Whatever I did, whatever choice I made, it was enough to warrant this.”
We’re both exiles then. Both fallen. Both paying prices for choices we made or didn’t make, bearing consequences that follow regardless of distance or time. The parallel unsettles me, creating a connection I don’t want to acknowledge.