learning to think without the heart is harder than learning to sleep with wings
[A bit of backstory for the Christine played in the AngelVerse established with my_god_man, among others, though she tends to be quiet about her history.]
April twenty-ninth, nineteen-forty-five.
She'd just written in her journal the night before, by the oil lamp her and the three nurses that shared her room tended to keep on the desk, for whoever wanted to read or write at night. So she knew the date. Knew the location, too, more or less: in the Pacific Ocean, traveling from the Ryukyu Islands to the isle of Guam. And as usual, aboard the USS Comfort, the most appropriately-named hospital ship she'd ever heard of.
The day was like all the others. And then it wasn't.
Panic, sirens, screaming... and that man over there, who needed her. Christine didn't think, that was her problem. She just did. And that was that. The pain of the flames consuming her while she knew she had failed this man who's name she didn't even know - that was a pain that would haunt her well into the afterlife, which began with a flash and a soft landing and smiling face.
On the standard assignment, she learned things, though she apparently never stopped thinking before reacting to emotive situations. Wings needed preening and didn't allow for swearing; angels had to take care of when they were seen and when they weren't all by themselves; Cupid was a handful; you weren't supposed to fall in love with those you were guarding. So the same soul that had been a young, determined American nurse named Christine became the angel Christabella. And the young man on the front lines that she'd sent kiss-sealed letters to became the Charge with the British accent and the typewriter that never came up with what he wanted.
Again, there was a man who needed her and she reacted without thinking. Instead of death, this brought her indefinite time on the guardian team. 'Rehabilitation,' Cupid - no, Leo - would sometimes call it. And slowly, slowly, she was learning to think before her heart could decide what to do for her.
April twenty-ninth, nineteen-forty-five.
She'd just written in her journal the night before, by the oil lamp her and the three nurses that shared her room tended to keep on the desk, for whoever wanted to read or write at night. So she knew the date. Knew the location, too, more or less: in the Pacific Ocean, traveling from the Ryukyu Islands to the isle of Guam. And as usual, aboard the USS Comfort, the most appropriately-named hospital ship she'd ever heard of.
The day was like all the others. And then it wasn't.
Panic, sirens, screaming... and that man over there, who needed her. Christine didn't think, that was her problem. She just did. And that was that. The pain of the flames consuming her while she knew she had failed this man who's name she didn't even know - that was a pain that would haunt her well into the afterlife, which began with a flash and a soft landing and smiling face.
On the standard assignment, she learned things, though she apparently never stopped thinking before reacting to emotive situations. Wings needed preening and didn't allow for swearing; angels had to take care of when they were seen and when they weren't all by themselves; Cupid was a handful; you weren't supposed to fall in love with those you were guarding. So the same soul that had been a young, determined American nurse named Christine became the angel Christabella. And the young man on the front lines that she'd sent kiss-sealed letters to became the Charge with the British accent and the typewriter that never came up with what he wanted.
Again, there was a man who needed her and she reacted without thinking. Instead of death, this brought her indefinite time on the guardian team. 'Rehabilitation,' Cupid - no, Leo - would sometimes call it. And slowly, slowly, she was learning to think before her heart could decide what to do for her.