#and tyyyyyyy!!! the past few weeks and yeah year have been. bananas. so far lmao but i'm hangin in there!

[queenofbaws]

Happy (not quite) SSS, the year has been hectic as I’m sure you’ll agree! May I please request our favourite old men - just kickin it back, enjoying a lunch, maybe a few mimosas? Whatever tickles your fancy. Hope the week has been kind to you and that you’ve made time for yourself :)

(not quite) six sentence weekend

(i try not to throw too many author’s notes into these, but this time i just HAD to point out that after @fudgeroach mentioned the guardian angel au - that i def don’t think i currently have a tag for whoops - earlier this week, i just. i haven’t been able to stop myself from thinking about it SO. until i have fewer wips...here’s something to perhaps wet the whistle ;P)

Alan’s relief was palpable each time a new face wandered up the spiraling path towards the lodge unaccompanied. The fact that they were alone meant little in the grand scheme, but despite the things he’d seen and experienced in his time, he still liked to err on the side of optimism – no otherworldly chaperones simply meant there was no uncertainty about what would come next, and it was simply easier to assume that meant long, healthy lives. Part of that was, of course, that he wanted to believe it true, if only for Josh’s sake. He’d been through so much, was doing so much better than he had been, and if anyone deserved an uneventful night, it was him…

But then Ashley had arrived and all of that hope withered and died like an insect under a magnifying glass.

Theirs was a post made more of ability than character, and even so the mismatch between them was jarring to say the least. Ashley was a slip of a girl, cobbled together as if by some eccentric dollmaker…perhaps one who prioritized eyes over all else, giving her the air of someone perpetually frightened or constantly on the verge of tears; the figure behind her, though, was tall and solid, his smile and his stride deliberate almost to the point of conceit, and if there was anything at all in those chalk-dust eyes of his, it wasn’t fear.

Ashley and Josh said their hellos, the interaction made awkward and stilted by what Alan knew was a complicated knot of resentment and guilt, the core of their friendship struggling madly to rise to the surface of the murky anger harbored between them. All the while, he and the other said nothing, well beyond the point of needing to acknowledge one another; they had crossed paths too many times for that. It was hard not to look at him, though, to tamp down the bloom of dread slowly spreading inside of him at the sight of his smug smile, his feigned disinterest as he swept the snowy clearing from under the brim of his bowler.

It became slightly easier to ignore him as Chris arrived. Worse in its own way, too – already he could tell the kind of night they were preparing to have – though if nothing else, the haggard figure ambling along beside him oozed none of the malice the other did. Little consolation, that, very little indeed when one took everything into account.

Of the group Josh had invited up to the mountain tonight, two had turned up with shadows like him, perhaps not angels, per se, but guardians of a sort, the mere presence of whom suggested something cataclysmic, something with the potential to be life-altering (or ending, as it were) was fast approaching. All the others had been unaccompanied, their fates sealed in definite fact, unknown to him but past the point of intervention. How he’d clung to that optimism of his, allowed himself that sliver of hope that this would be where Josh’s luck began to turn around…

“Well this don’t exactly seem like the most reassuring guest list,” said the newcomer next to Chris, keeping his one unclouded eye on the boy as he and Josh and Ashley went about talking, the lot of them milling around with their other friends perfectly unaware of the three older men standing in their midst. “Don’t get me wrong, I’m pretty new at all this mess, so I s’pose I could be reading this all the wrong way, but uh,” he looked to each of them in turn, his eyes lingering just over Ashley’s shoulder.

Alan hoped that, new or not, this one knew enough not to bring attention to what he saw. Mentioning another’s wings was bad manners on the best of days – bringing attention to his was something else completely.

He seemed to get the message. “There bein’ more than one of us here isn’t exactly a great sign, is it?”

“Oh, I don’t know that I’d say that.” His voice matched his eyes, the one standing behind Ashley; flinty and cold, polite only in theory. “Personally, my hopes for tonight are quite high.” For the first time since arriving, his gaze slid to Alan, punctuated in a slow, self-assured blink. “Ever the optimist am I.”

Offering the stranger a tight-lipped smile, Alan refused to rise to the other’s bait. Experience alone had taught him that much; whatever he had planned, there was no use in fueling the fire, not when he enjoyed the circling around just as much as what came after. “I wouldn’t be overly concerned. I’ve been with Josh for a while now—” The stranger narrowed his eyes at that and Alan quickly elaborated, “—a rough patch, you understand—”

“Some people, you’ll find as time goes on,” interrupted the other, that self-assured smile firmly in place even as he turned around to watch his charge wander off and talk to another girl, “Don’t necessarily want help in staying alive. One might even say they prefer the alternative.”

Alan soldiered on as if he hadn’t heard him, but the newcomer had gone back to examining him very closely, his focus moving between the two of them and back. Comparing, no doubt. Wondering. “—suffice it to say, I’m more than a little familiar with Christopher and Ashley and their personalities. They’re always around, you understand. I’m sure things will be fine in the end, Josh simply has a way of…well, let’s say pulling people into his questionable ideas, from time to time.”

The stranger hummed at that, more to fill the silence, he thought, that to prove understanding. He glanced Chris’s way quickly, another doubtful expression flitting across his face, but all the kids seemed fine for now. “Let’s hope you’re right on that, er…”

“Alan,” he said with a slight nod, glad no handshakes had been initiated.

There was a marked silence before the stranger cleared his throat and the one behind Ashley pretended he’d only just realized what was expected of him. “Edgar.” It was accompanied by that same smile, like he were made of marble and that was where the chisel had first struck.

“That a joke or somethin’?” he snorted. “Edgar and Alan, huh? You go around tellin’ people that because of the, uh…” And then he did a stupid thing, a very stupid thing indeed, because he gestured to Edgar more fully. He seemed to fully be expecting a punch line, maybe even a sheepish smile as he admitted ah yes, yes, it was quite a hilarious little shtick, wasn’t it?

Only Edgar simply continued to smile. If he moved at all, which was questionable at best, it was to cock his head ever so slightly to the side. He was the one waiting for a punch line, that expression said. He was the one waiting for the joke to be told.

The stranger backed off immediately, as though his foot had been stepped on. “I’m, uh, Jack,” he grumbled after a moment, only too glad to glance away and see Chris and Josh slowly but surely parting themselves from the rest of the group, walking towards the back of the lodge. “No rest for the wicked, huh?” he added quickly, turning on his heel to follow after his charge before he could get too far out of eyeshot.

“If only you knew how right you are.” Edgar said it so lowly, so softly, that even Alan only barely heard it. Then he too took his leave, following after Ashley at a leisurely pace as she found a spot on the steps to sit and wait for the boys to return.

This was going to be a difficult night. He could see that now. If they were lucky, though, deeply and profoundly lucky, ‘difficult’ would end somewhere short of ‘deadly.’ Anywhere short of it.

After a beat, he began following after Josh as well, making no immediate effort to match pace with Jack. No, not just yet. Not until he figured out what this meant for them – for all of them. As guardians, their job was obvious: Guarding their charges’ lives no matter what came their way. It was a feat easier said than done, even for the weathered ones such as himself, the ones who’d done this a time or two before. Jack would have his work cut out for him even if this had been a normal night. Which it most certainly wasn’t.

Because he had something of a history with Edgar, Alan did. A storied one, at that. He knew his work, knew how he operated, and none of that could mean anything good for what was about to happen.

Mostly because Edgar wasn’t a guardian. Not in the strictest sense of the word, anyway. He was…he was something else, something sometimes sent out for reasons running perpendicular to their own. Alan had a suspicion Jack had at least questioned his intentions when he’d caught sight of his wings, the awful things, Poe’s haunting raven come to life, all black and slick as the night itself, iridescent and dripping in the way an oil spill seemed right before it clogged your throat. That suspicion was all fine and good, but new as he was, Jack still had no way of understanding the gravity of the situation. Before too long, he knew he’d have to broach the topic with him, warn him, somehow.

For whatever reason, through whatever twist of fate, Ashley Brown had not come to this mountain accompanied by a guardian of her own, but by a harbinger of death.

And one who took his job very, very seriously, at that.