Chapter Text
In this world, silence wasn't absolute. People lived shrouded in invisible rustle of wings and subtle whispers. Guardian Angels weren't just a legend; they were a constant as natural as gravitation.
Someone's angel smelled like ozone and warned them of mistakes; another’s angel was a soft light that warmed them in the cold; and some even endlessly argued with their angel over dinner. Some angels appeared early, almost in childhood, intervening in every dangerous situation; others waited til the last minute, as if testing the strength of their human. Nobody knows by what rules they come. There isn’t a certain age or a date, or even a simple sign—only a moment when someone’s life can end. Then the angel comes out of the shadows… or doesn’t.
Charles Leclerc waited for his Angel with stubbornness that only children are capable of. He counted days, peered into the reflections of showcases, listened carefully to the silence behind his back, hoping that someday he would hear a voice that would say “I’m here.” But years passed, and yet the space next to him was still empty.
When Charles was eleven, Pierre’s life changed forever. They were walking together, laughing, nudging each other’s shoulders, when suddenly—the screech of brakes, the blinding light of headlights, and a moment of sheer fear. But the car didn’t hit Pierre. It should have, but it didn’t. Charles saw how the air seemed to tremble, saw how Pierre suddenly recoiled as if someone had yanked him back. Later Pierre said that he had heard a voice, that for a moment a tall silhouette that looked like it was woven out of fog and sunlight had appeared behind his back. His angel had come. He had been saved.
Charles was genuinely happy for him, but deep down a feeling so embarrassing settled inside him that he couldn’t even bring himself to think about it. Envy. Why not him? Why does someone get protection, and he gets nothing but endless waiting?
Little Charles believed in fairness. He believed that if Angels came only in moments of danger, then he needed to create the danger himself. It was a calculated, childish, and terrifyingly desperate plan.
Charles stepped onto the road almost deliberately, with a childish confidence that if the danger was truly real, his Angel would finally appear. He waited for a miracle. Waited for salvation. Waited for an invisible hand to pull him back
But his Angel never came.
The car couldn’t stop in time. The impact was enough to send his world spinning and pain shooting through his arm. Fracture. White hospital walls. His arm in a cast. Silence where there were no voices or reassurance, only the void and a difficult realization: he had risked, and was left alone.
In the world of karting this was a disaster. Broken arm meant skipping races, losing his rhythm and watching his season fall apart. Charles watched as others came out onto track, while he sat in the stands, clenching his healthy hand into a fist. Fourth place might have been enough for someone else, but not for him. Not after what he had sacrificed.
That’s when, amongst the smell of tires, envy and unfulfilled hopes, something broke in Charles. He stopped waiting. He stopped believing. If he did have a Guardian Angel, then it chose the worst moment to step aside.
‘If you didn’t show up when I was dying in pain’—Charles thought, his grip tightening on the steering wheel—‘then I don’t need you anymore. Never again.’
From that day on, Charles Leclerc despised his angel.
By the age of fourteen, Charles’ hatred had settled into exhausting, dull ache. The karting paddock, once a place of pure speed, had turned, in his eyes, into a parade of miracles, where he was the only spectator without a ticket.
He saw it everywhere. Saw how his rival ,who’d crashed into the barrier, stepped out of the kart five minutes later without a single bruise—his Angel had managed to put his invisible hands in front of him just in time. Saw how other drivers’ injuries healed in mere hours, because behind their backs stood those who could heal not only metal, but flesh. Charles even saw others’ Angels—how they stood behind them and leaned forward to whisper something soothing before the start of the race. They were faster, braver, bolder, because they knew: they had protection. But he was still alone. It was unfair.
But Charles didn’t have any protection. Every bruise stayed with him for weeks. Every mistake resulted in real pain, unsuppressed by any magic.
He was alone in a battle against physics, gravitation and his own despair
One evening, after difficult testing, when the sun had already disappeared behind the horizon, and his side hurt from a recent crash, Leclerc locked himself in an empty motorhome. Strength that he thoroughly saved for races suddenly vanished.
He sat on the cold floor, clutching his knees with trembling hands. The silence in the room seemed to mock him.
“Please…” he whispered, his voice breaking “Please, I can’t take it anymore.”
It was a admission of surrender. His armor, forged from pure hatred, had shattered. He was only fourteen, but he already felt like an old man, who carried an unbearable burden.
“Forgive me” Charles squeezed his eyes shut so hard he saw colored spots in front of his eyes. “Forgive me for that crash when I was eleven. Forgive me for the hatred. I was an idiot. I just… I just wanted to know that I’m not alone. Please, appear. I don’t need you to fix my car, I don’t need you to heal my broken bones. Just… talk to me. Show me a sign. At least something.”
He waited. He tried to catch the slightest change of temperature with his skin, waited for the smell of ozone or the feeling of warmth on his shoulder. He was ready to give up all his trophies for one simple sigh behind his back.
But the air stayed still. Charles begged, whispered apologies until his throat went dry, and tears left traces on his cheeks, dusted from track. He called his Guardian as if he was the only way out of the dark labyrinth.
But his Angel stayed silent.
That night Charles Leclerc understood the most terrible thing in his life: the silence wasn’t a coincidence. The silence was his personal sentence. While other drivers fell asleep under protection of their Guardians, Charles fell asleep in void, hugging himself just to feel some warmth.