Chapter Text
Heaven had different ranks. To move through the ranks, angels were given different missions of varying difficulties. The lowest of the ranks were the angels who had yet to earn their wings. To do such a thing though, you needed to go on a mission, that sent you out of heaven with barely any information.
The basic information that he had been given was a list of names and dates. The names were the names of people that he was being sent to protect, and the dates were the days he would be expected to protect them from imminent danger.
Of course, nothing could be quite that simple though. He couldn’t just appear out of the blue on earth one day. No, he would have to go through the human life cycle, from birth all the way until he could complete his mission. Not only that, but he would be unable to communicate with the heavens until his mission was complete.
He also wasn’t given any information on where he was going, or what he would be protecting the people on his list from. He was meant to figure all that out on his own to prove that he was worthy.
Although, all of that was a challenge he was willing to face if it meant he could earn his wings.
It took a while for him to get used to living on earth. It also took him a while to get used to the name Finney. He wasn’t used to having a human name. He in all honesty quite liked it though.
He had a mom and a dad, and by the looks of his mother, he wouldn’t be the only child for much longer. Finney was almost positive the baby was going to be his new sister and not his brother, but he didn’t want to jump to any conclusions.
He wasn’t able to do much as a baby, so infancy was quite boring. He was what he would call an unproblematic child though and didn’t do much whining. He didn’t do much of anything actually. He had no interest in toys or anything else, so unless he was with one of his parents or being fed, he was asleep in hopes that would make time feel like it was going by faster.
Eventually, he wasn’t the only child in the house though, and that's when things really started getting chaotic. His new sister Gwendolyn was not nearly as quiet as he was, and Finney guesses they didn’t expect her to be so different from how he was. To sum it up, they weren’t prepared for the little ball of energy that was Gwendolyn Blake.
Years passed and Finney was finally able to do some basic human things like walk, create short barely understandable sentences that were classified as gibberish, and eat by himself, even if it was an extremely messy process.
Finney was certain that if his undeveloped baby brain was capable of feeling embarrassment, he would’ve turned bright red from the humiliation of most of this. Being stuck in a child’s body was not fun.
What was entertaining though was when he met the first name on his list.
It was his first day of preschool. Finney wore a light blue Nasa tee he had convinced his parents to buy him for his birthday after he found out what Nasa did. He loved the idea that humans were studying the stars and would absolutely need more star-related stuff as he got older.
Finney walked into his classroom for the year and sat down next to a random kid in class. The teacher went on and on about different shapes and colors but Finney wasn’t necessarily paying attention. He already knew far more than he should for someone his age for obvious reasons. In all fairness though, it probably wasn’t all that obvious to the people around him. He did just look like your average three-year-old after all.
Soon enough they were released from the classroom to have free time and eat lunch outside. Most kids rushed to the playground to play before eating, but Finney wasn’t really interested in that.
Finney grabbed a metal lunchbox from his school bag that was decorated with stars and cheesy little cartoon depictions of aliens on it. Finney was about to go find a corner to sit and eat in by himself when he spotted a small child sitting by himself not too far away.
Finney decided he looked lonely and walked up to the boy. He sat down without saying much, and the boy didn't even acknowledge him, although that didn’t really bother Finney.
Finney opened up his lunchbox and took out half of his sandwich and began eating it. Finney noticed that the boy didn't seem to have any lunch on him, so he pulled out the other half of his sandwich and handed it over to the boy. He accepted quietly and they shared Finney’s lunch in silence.
The next week continued on in the same routine. Go to school, eat lunch quietly with the other boy, finish school and go home. Finney hadn’t exchanged a single word with the boy even once.
Except something about today must have been different because the boy finally decided to talk.
“My name’s Robin,” the boy was missing one of his front teeth and it slightly hindered his ability to speak properly. “What’s yours?”
“Finney,” he said as he handed the other half of his sandwich over to Robin. Their hands grazed as he was handing over the sandwich and Finney felt a jolt of electricity run down his spine. This was the Robin Arellano from his list. He had found the first person.
Not everything can go according to plan though and just because Finney was an angel on a mission to earn his wings, he was no god. He couldn’t predict the future even if he wanted to.
It was a week after his seventh birthday when he walked into his parent's room to find his mother bleeding out on his parent’s shared bed; long deep gashes etched into her skin and a knife barely being held between her cold, lifeless fingers.
Finney had screamed and cried non-stop, which had garnered the attention of his father. Not too long after Finney was still crying while holding onto his little sister as the paramedics took away his mother’s corpse.
His father, unable to stay in the house any longer after what he had just witnessed disappeared from the house and left Finney and Gwen there by themselves. Finney with tear tracks still on his cheeks had spent the next hour trying to calm Gwen down enough for her to go to sleep.
After that, Finney himself was unable to sleep and grabbed the cleaning supplies from under the kitchen sink. He began to scrub away at the carpet in his parent's room until there was only a light patch of carpet in place of where the blood had been.
That’s where Finney had been when his father had come home. On his hands and knees scrubbing away at the carpet desperately in an attempt to erase any evidence of the blood that had been there.
It didn't take long for their father to turn to alcohol to drown out his problems. That also meant it didn't take long for Finney to realize then that his father would turn to hitting them in his drunken anger.
Finney was unable to fight back. Angels had rules that must be followed, and one of the most well-known was that you were not allowed to hurt a human in any way unless it had something to do with your mission. Unless Finney was defending someone on his list from the imminent danger he was supposed to be protecting them from, then he had no right to hurt a human.
What the rules didn’t say was intervention though. His dad seemed to take a liking to hitting Gwen the most because she had the same dreams that their mom used to have, but Finney decided to do whatever he could to intervene in those situations.
He couldn’t fight back, but he could become a protective barrier in front of Gwen. He would draw the attention away from Gwen and toward himself in an attempt to keep her safe. She was only five after all. She really didn’t deserve the beatings and Finney was willing to take it for her.
Being stuck in a human body still meant it hurt, but that was something Finney was willing to deal with in the long run. And if his new friend from preschool ever noticed the bruises and cuts Finney would just excuse them as him being a clutz.
Finney was sure the excuse would start to lose its believability as Robin got older and started to realize how the world worked, but for now, he was just an innocent child. Finney wouldn’t pretend he knew what Robin had gone through in life, no matter how short it had been so far, but he was sure that he still believed all parents were good like most kids his age did.
And for the time being, that was something Finney was thankful for.