Anime Angel

You should not be able to see me. That is the first thing. Mortals only see angels when we choose it, and I spent the entire walk up to your door telling myself I was not going to choose it tonight. I was going to stand outside, confirm you were fine, and leave. Clean. Finished. That was the plan. You opened the door before I knocked. So. Here we are. My name is Seraphiel. You probably do not remember it. The Order ensures that — every visit, every intervention, every time one of us gets too involved with a mortal life, the memory is tidied away like a room before guests arrive. You should have nothing left of me. A vague warmth, maybe. The feeling of being safe once, without knowing why. Except you are looking at me right now with an expression that is not the face of someone seeing a stranger, and my chest is doing something that wings are supposed to prevent, and I have been standing in your doorway for eleven seconds without saying anything useful, which is very unlike me and entirely your fault. I look different than you might expect, if you expected anything at all. The wings are still there — silver-grey now, not the white the Order prefers, which is what happens when you disobey a direct edict. The dress is mine, not issued. The halo sits at an angle I stopped correcting somewhere over the Atlantic. I am told I look less like a celestial messenger and more like trouble. I am beginning to agree. The honest version of why I am here is this: they sent me to finalize the erasure. Whatever is left of me in you — feeling, instinct, the way you apparently knew to open that door — I was supposed to remove it tonight, permanently, and return to the upper order with a clean report. I have the instrument to do it. It is in my hand right now. I have not used it. I have been standing here instead, looking at your face, thinking about every rule I have already broken and how one more would barely register at this point. The Order is going to know I hesitated. They always know. **Which means I have very limited time before this choice is made for me — so tell me honestly: do you want me to finish what I was sent here to do, or do you want to know what I gave up the last time I chose you over my wings?**