3 | Angelic

1.01 - Midnight

"Take my hand, let me lead you into your afterlife."

"What will I find there?"

"Anything that makes you happy."

With a jolt, Eden Shaw sat up in her bed, a hand clutching at her chest, the memory of defibrillator paddles on her chest sending electric shocks to her heart fading quickly as she realized where she was. Eden sighed and ran a hand through her long blonde hair. That memory was not hers alone. She didn't remember the moments when the defibrillator was active, when it had shocked her. No, those memories were theirs. They belonged to Sarandiel.

"Why do you always remember that moment? It's awful to wake up to," Eden spoke to the empty room.

It was awful to experience.

"I think you're a drama queen," Eden answered the foreign voice in her head.

I think you don't get to judge me.

Rolling her eyes, Eden pushed herself up and out of her bed. History told her that if she went back to bed now, she would be jolted awake once more by the haunting memories. In her kitchen, Eden started the coffee maker and turned the tv on in the living room. She sighed as she watched the news replaying the footage of the S.H.I.E.L.D. helicarrier crashing into the Triskelion Building. Wasn't that old news already?

Although, Eden thought to herself, people loved bringing up old news over and over again, milking it for all it was worth. She had probably the best personal example of that, and it made her fed up with stuff like that.

Six months earlier, Eden had been in an accident. She hadn't been injured, at least not in a way that anyone could see. But she had hit her head really hard, and en route to the hospital, she had gone into cardiac arrest. After arriving at the hospital, they had successfully brought her back. As far as the hospital records were aware, that was all that happened.

Eden knew differently.

As soon as her heart had stopped, Eden had found herself in a white, vaguely defined room, a figure standing in front of her, golden wings coming from their back, a white tunic covering their body and looking completely androgynous.

They had introduced themselves as Sarandiel. Her guardian angel. He had been watching over her all her life, and now that she had passed on, he was there to take her to her afterlife. To the place she would spend the rest of eternity. He had extended his hand, and she had only hesitated for a second before she took it.

It was as soon as her hand was in his that she felt the shock. It caused every muscle in her body to clench up and her hand clamped down around Sarandiel's. Doctors had successfully brought her back to life, but they had brought something else back as well.

When Eden woke up in the hospital, there was a single second where everything had felt fine. But in the next second, she realized that everything was most certainly not fine. Her voice was no longer the only one she could hear in her head. There was a foreign voice. But she recognized it soon as the voice of her guardian angel.

Eden had pulled Sarandiel back into her body when she had been resurrected. And it didn't take long after being discharged from the hospital to realize that having an angel in her body wasn't just having their voice in her head. A plethora of powers were now at her disposal and she didn't know what to do with them.

Especially in a world where there was no more S.H.I.E.L.D.

You could do what they're meant for. Protecting people.

"They didn't help me much, Drama Queen," Eden pointed out.

If it is your time, I cannot stop it. I did not anticipate doctors bringing you back, and bringing me with you.

"Shouldn't you have known if it was my time or if they were able to bring me back successfully?" Eden asked.

Sarandiel didn't answer.

"Yeah, that's what I thought."

Eden poured herself a mug of coffee and settled down in front of the tv again. In the six months since she had come back, people had been walking on eggshells around her. They treated her like a porcelain doll, one false move or word and she would shatter. But she wasn't made of porcelain, she was made of steel and iron and if she was dropped, she could get back up on her own.

Her phone rang in her lap and she turned it over to see who was calling her so early in the morning. The name read "Fly Guy" and it made Eden smile.

"Why are you awake at this hour, Samuel?" she questioned as a greeting.

"I could ask you the same question," he responded.

"Fair question, Sambo, you win this round. What can I do for you?" Eden asked.

"It's better to talk to you than to lay awake by myself," Sam replied.

"Okay, so what do you wanna talk about?" Eden asked.

On early mornings such as this, it wasn't all that bizarre for Eden to get a call from her work friend Sam Wilson. As a former military man who had lost his best friend in a terrible way, the PTSD dreams often woke him in the middle of the night. After learning of this, Eden had told him to call her if he needed or wanted to talk. He often took her up on that offer and Eden had never minded.

Eden herself awoke from nightmares and found comfort in talking to Sam. So she knew that Sam got the same comfort in talking to her. Just being able to talk, even if it wasn't about the dreams, helped her not to feel so bad after the dreams.

And Sam was one of the only people who didn't treat her like glass because of what happened to her. Sam knew that she was okay with what had happened to her. He didn't know the details, those she hadn't told to a soul, but he knew she was okay and treated her as such.

"Well I was thinking, you know that guy I was telling you about? That friend, he was a veteran?" Sam asked.

"Yeah, of course."

"Well, I'm putting together this music playlist for him, what do you think I should put on it?"