Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

While most people go through life oblivious about the world that lurks beneath their own, Annie had been aware of it as long as she can remember. 

It had all started when she was just a kid and she noticed things around her that her family wasn’t able to see: how some people had these glowing auras around them, while others wee others were shrouded in darkness. At first, it were ‘blink-or-you’ll-miss-it’ moments that Annie wrote off as her imagination running wild. But as she grew older, her visions grew stronger and more vivid. Like that time Annie noticed that her math teacher suddenly grew a third eye, which started glowing red as he bored every student in class with his algebra theories. Or that time when the school nurse suddenly made the pain go away by barely even touching her scraped knee. 

Her parents didn’t exactly believe her when she tried to tell them. They told Annie that she was just trying to get their attention and that she should act normal. Annie tried her best to obey their wishes and ignore the things she saw, but it became harder each day.

Annie’s parents only started to believe that something was seriously wrong when it was already too late.

It was Annie’s senior year of high school and Annie had worked her ass off trying to become valedictorian - something her mother had bugged her about since she started high school. Living on black coffee and a little too much Adderall, Annie pulled all-nighters every night while trying to ignore the ever-growing visions during the day. 

Things came to a boil at a pre-graduation party. Her classmates were drunk, the music was louder and Annie could physically feel how loud her surroundings were - it was as if tiny needles were continuously stabbing her skin. This, in combination with her sleep deprived state, made Annie’s head feel like it could burst at any given moment. She wasn’t even sure why she was at this party anyway, it wasn’t like she actually liked partying and in a few months she would start her new life at Princeton University.  

Annie was just about to go home to get some rest when she saw it: the clouds of darkness which surrounded the two football players who were helping the star quarterback, Troy, do a kegstand. Their eyes flicked red for just a second and Annie felt this overwhelming sense of dread bubbling up her throat. She had to do something, help Troy before something bad happened to him, so she screamed. 

She screamed so loud that the entire room fell quiet. So loud that the two football players were startled enough to let go of Troy’s limbs, causing him to topple over. Annie’s screamed died out as Troy fell onto the wooden floor and the silence that followed was defeaning. Troy just lied there, his eyes closed and his body unable to move. 

As someone called an ambulance, it didn’t take long for her classmates to suddenly turn their attention towards Annie. She was the one that screamed for no reason, so she was the one to blame. If she hadn’t screamed, Troy could’ve done the kegstand and he would’ve been fine. At least, that’s what her classmates yelled at her. Their words hit harder than knives and they kept coming at her until she couldn’t take it anymore. Another scream bubbled up her throat and she only saw one way out: the glass door leading into the garden.

Her memory went black afterwards. One moment she was in a hospital bed, her limbs restrained as she watched nurses removing glass splinters from her skin, and the next moment she was being taken away from her house by two strange man and put in a van, all the while her parents watched her go.

While she was in the van, Annie quickly assumed that her parents must’ve sent her to some sort of asylum. She was too tired to feel angry about the situation. In fact, she quite understood why her parents sent her away - she had been seeing things since she was a kid and now her delusions hadn’t only hurt herself, but also one of her classmates. She needed help, and maybe the people at this asylum could give her the help she need.

The van stopped and the van doors flew open. The building they had stopped in front of didn’t look anything like the local rehabilitation center. Then again, Annie still had pain killers in her system and slept for most of the ride there. For all she knew, she could be in another state and not even know it. Though, she knew of very little asylums that looked like a giant mansion that were named Seraph Academy.

The two men accompanied her inside and it was there that her suspicious grew stronger. The interior was a fancy as the exterior, with cherry wooden walls and a ceiling that seemed to be straight out of a baroque church - little cherubs and all. There were a lot of people bustling about but no one was wearing scrubs, and all of them seemed to have that glow that Annie had grown so familiar with over the years.

Just when Annie wanted to ask what the hell was going on, a woman appeared. She seemed to glow just a tiny bit more than the others and with her tall figure and stiletto heels, she towered over the other employees. She was dressed sharply in a black and white dress, which matched beautiful with her long grey hair. 

The woman introduced herself as Headmistress Sophie and asked Annie to follow her. Annie was still suspicious, but complied. She followed this headmistress person into an office, where she was asked to sit down on one of the plush seats. 

It was there that Headmistress Sophie explained that Annie wasn’t crazy. That her visions were real and that she was actually a very lucky person. She appeared to be one of the very few people on earth who had seraph blood running through her veins, the blood of angels. 

In that moment, Annie believed that she must’ve hit her head harder that she thought because that couldn’t possibly be true. Angel blood? Running through her veins? Someone must’ve been playing a prank on her, some way to get back at her for ruining Troy’s career. Anything seemed more plausible than this.

Noticing Annie’s disbelief, Headmistress Sophie guided Annie towards the floor-to-ceiling mirror in the corner of the room and asked Annie to really look at herself. 

At first, Annie just saw the girl she always saw, but with a couple of extra scars and dressed in a hospital gown. That is, until she saw a tiny golden spark, just on top of her shoulder. She looked closer, focusing her attention on that spark. The spark grew bigger and bigger, first only covering her shoulder, and then cascading down her arm and towards her chest, until finally, her entire reflection was bathed in a golden glow.

She’d seen other people glowing in a similar way, but no one had ever glowed so bright like Annie did in that moment.

Headmistress Sophie continued to explain that every person with seraph blood glowed like this, while their total opposites - demons - were always shrouded in clouds of darkness. The fact that Annie saw these auras wasn’t strange, but rather a gift that would be helpful to win the celestial war that had been going on for centuries. She could help Annie understand and control her visions and find her way in this new world. 

All Annie had to do was accept.

It didn’t take long to think of an answer. Annie figured quickly that she couldn’t go back to that place she used to call home, the place where no one believed her or called her crazy. She could still try and go to Princeton, but how far would she go if she couldn’t get her vision under control?

And so, Annie accepted.

In the years that followed, she underwent rigorous training. She spent hours with teachers to control her visions and learn about the new world she lived in - about the Celestial Feud and why it was necessary to keep the numbers of demons roaming the earth in check. She spent even more hours in the gymnasium, honing the skills she needed to kill demons.

After two years, on her twentieth birthday, Annie was finally deemed ready to go out into the world and slay her first Demon. Her first task had been an easy one - a low-ranking Demon who had been causing a nuisance cat-calling women on the street. All Annie had to do is lure him into an alleyway, bat her eyelashes a few times and stab him right through where his heart was supposed to be.

The Demon disappeared into a smoke and Annie never felt this alive before. She rushed back to Headquarters and looked at herself in the mirror. Any moment now she could receive her Prophecy Mark - a birthmark that appeared on every Seraph’s body after their first kill and which would determine their life’s mission.

Only Annie’s body remained as bare as it ever was.

Annie figured that it must be a fluke, that the Demon she killed was so low-ranked that it didn’t even count. She just had to try again and again, do everything in her power to make sure that mark would appear on her body. She studied more than she ever had before, stayed in the gymnasium after hours and tried to get as many assignments as possible - anything to get the Prophecy Mark. But no matter how hard Annie tried, no matter how many demons she killed, her body remained blank.

Until one day, it didn’t.

Chapter Text

Tuesday evening starts out as any other. 

Annie clocks in and gets her assignment from Shirley at Task Assignment. At first glance, the assignment looks easy enough: a Demon pretending to be a sleazy lawyer named Alan Connor who was frequently seen creating trouble in Chelsea. She’d be teaming up with Britta again, since his file stated that good-looking women were his weakness - a common weakness among his type of demons. With her assignment in hand, Annie then heads towards the weaponry room to get her standard equipment: a couple of daggers. Those had always been her weapon of choice since they were small but mighty, like herself. 

Britta is already waiting outside Headquarters when Annie walks down the steps. She seems to be practicing her sword but with no opponent and the sight of it is enough to make Annie giggle. 

“Don’t laugh at me.” Britta huffs. “I gotta do a warm-up before an assignment or I’ll just freeze up.”

“I’m not laughing at you.” Annie responds. “But you gotta admit, it looks kind of ridiculous. It’s a good thing we’re still hiding behind the Headquarters glamour.”

Things from their world, like the weapons and the building that Headquarters is located in, are hidden away from the human eye. With carefully placed glamours, Seraphs and Demons could co-exists with humans without the human actually knowing they existed. 

“It’s New York City.” Britta shrugs. “In other cities people might call the cops on me, but here they’d see me as just another artist making her way in the world. And I would know, I’ve lived here since—”

“Britta, you’ve lived here exactly one year longer than me.” Annie grins. “We’re both fake New Yorkers.”

“Am not.”

“Are too! And don’t get me started on the way you pronounce bagel.”

“It’s pronounced baggle!”

“It really is not.” Annie sighs. “C’mon, let’s kill some demons.”

As soon as they step through the glamour, the world is loud. The glamour shields off most of the street noise and it always takes Annie a second to regroup. Over the years, she had learned to keep her vision under control but it still took more effort than she likes to admit. It’s especially hard in crowded places, which is extra fun when she got transferred to New York two years ago. If Annie had her way, she’d be living in a quiet seaside town but fate and Sophie - now longer Headmistress but Director of the Seraph Office in New York - had other plans. 

Britta talks Annie’s ear off as they get onto the station - something about not having enough vegetarian options in the cafetaria. She likes Britta, even though Britta has wild and dramatic views on life and she always seems to be protesting something. But at least Britta has a Prophecy Mark and seems to know exactly what she wants after she retires from the field: work at the Headquarter’s psych analysis department and help hunters after a traumatic event. 

Annie, on the other hand, still has no idea what she’s meant for in life. She’s been a hunter for seven years now and her Mark still hasn’t appeared. Not for lack of trying: she has one of the highest kill counts at Headquarters and she has read every book in the Celestial Library, but to no avail. And without a Prophecy Mark, it feels as if she’s doomed to endlessly roam this earth without a purpose. 

They exit at Penn Station and walk a few blocks until they arrive at the bar that was in Alan’s file. The bar itself is like so many others in New York, with wooden panels and leather booths on one side and a bar with an extensive liquor shelf behind it. Still, Annie instantly feels like something is off and one glance at Britta tells her that they both feel it. 

She tries to shake the feeling as best she can and tries to put up her best seductive face as she scans the room. On a hunt, they never get a face, just a name, and it’s up to their instincts to sniff out the Demon themselves. Worst case scenario, they can fall back on their visions but it takes too much energy and there’s always a chance of an accidental kill.

But with the way she looks tonight - a tight navy mini dress that’s just long enough to show off her legs and hide the daggers that are strapped to her thighs - Annie figures that it’s a matter of moments until that sleazy playboy Alan approaches her and falls right into her trap. 

“Why do we still have to diminish ourselves into dressing like this in order to kill?” Britta hisses while she pulls at her t-shirt’s plunging neckline. “It’s the twenty-first century for crying out loud.”

“Because there are still Demons who pray onto innocent souls like this.” Annie says. “Don’t worry, maybe next week you can dress like yourself when you take down some guy who doesn’t believe in climate change. But for now, you gotta suck it up and put out.”

“Fine.” Britta groans. “But I’m not gonna be happy about it.”

In order to have the best overview of the place, they take a seat at the bar. And just as Annie predicted, it doesn’t take long until someone starts up a conversation with them.

“Do my eyes deceive me or are you two gorgeous ladies all alone on a beautiful night like this?” A shorter man with dark hair asks. He seems to tick off all the boxes of a sleazy playboy - sharply dressed, expensive cologne, and a wolfish grin on his face. It might just be him.

“Well, yes we are.” Annie flirts back. 

The man’s grin grows wider and his chest puffs up with confidence as he moves to take the empty barstool next to Annie’s. But before he can sit down, someone - or actually two people - pulls him back.

“Back off, Mark. You have a wife at home.” 

“Yeah, leave some for the rest of us will ya?”

Well, it’s a good thing they didn’t pursue this guy because this Mark certainly isn’t the Alan that they’re looking for. But maybe one of his friends is. Annie takes the two others in: one is bald, just a tad taller than Mark and sporting an equally creepy grin, while the other…

Annie feels her heart skip a beat as she lays eyes on Mark’s other friend. He’s taller than his friends and while the other two are also dressed in tailored suits, they don’t fill them out nearly as well as this guy does. His sandy hair and beard have just the tiniest hint of grey in them and his green eyes seem darker underneath the low lights of the bar. All in all, he’s one of the most handsome guys Annie has ever seen, which will make their assignment a whole lot more difficult.

But fortunately (or maybe, unfortunately) for Annie, Handsome Suit Guy seems more interested in Britta than her. She takes a deep breath to get herself together and focuses her attention back to Mark’s bald friend.

“It’s a shame that you have to drink this appletini all by yourself, gorgeous.” He says in a slick voice that makes Annie’s skin crawl, but she has to play along if this really is the Alan she’s looking for.

“It is, isn’t it?” Annie fake-giggles. “It’s an even bigger shame to be drinking alongside someone you don’t know. So, what’s your name, stranger?”

“Alan.”

Bingo.

It’s easy enough to let Alan fall into her trap. Annie has seen dozens of his type before - and not all of them were demons, go figure. All she has to do is bat her eyelashes a few times, laugh at his terribly sexist jokes and direct his attention to the bare skin she’s got on display tonight. 

All of it seems to work like a charm, as Alan has moved in closer - close enough for Annie to smell his cologne. His hand has found its way to Annie’s knee, rubbing slow circles against the skin there. She does her best not to freeze up underneath his touch and hopes that he doesn’t decide to move his hand any higher, or he’ll just might find the daggers that are hidden there. 

“Hey, I feel like it’s about to snow.” Alan says and at first Annie doesn’t understand what he means. It’s the beginning of April and it rarely snows at this time in the year. But then Alan’s eyes grow bigger as he rubs a finger underneath his nose and Annie finally gets the hint. “Are you in?”

After her little Adderall-fueled stint back in high school, Annie had always stayed clear from drugs in any form. But this was the perfect moment to finally get Alan alone and finish him off once and for all.

“Sure.” Annie nods but quickly realizes she needs Britta’s back up if they’re gonna do this now. “Maybe my friend wants to join us too.”

Annie taps Britta’s shoulder and tries to ignore the way Handsome Suit Guy looks at her - now is not the time to start blushing. “Hey, you wanna join Alan and me for some fun?”

“Sure.” Britta replies. Her voice slurs more than usual and Annie fights back the urge to roll her eyes - since when had Britta become such a lightweight.

Alan then looks over at his friend. “You coming with?”

“Nah.” He shakes his head and takes another sip of his whiskey. “I’ll see you guys later.”

Annie takes the lead, just to ensure that Alan doesn’t drag them into a room with very little escape routes. Instead, she leads him to the back alley, where the only light comes from a lonely street lantern near the side walk. 

“I knew you girls were looking for some fun.” Alan grins as his hand searches his inner pocket for the drugs. Once he’s found what he’s looking for, he triumphantly holds a little plastic back with white powder in the air. He rummages around in his pocket until a credit card and a single dollar bill appear in his hand.

As he turns around to set everything up (on a dumpster no less, gross), Annie figures that this is the moment to strike. She doesn’t wait to signal Britta to attack because she’s not sure that they’ll get an opportunity like this again - haven’t Demons learned that they should never turn their back on their enemies?

Annie’s hand reaches underneath her dress and sneakily pulls a dagger from its holster. Its blade glistens in the light of the street lantern as Annie holds the dagger above her head, ready to strike.

But just as she’s about to lower her hand and stab Alan with everything in her power, another hand grabs her wrist and pulls her back. At first she thinks it’s Britta but as she turns around, she sees it’s someone else entirely. 

“I don’t think so.” Handsome Suit Guy growls, though he no longer looks like he did back inside the bar. All the color has drained out of his skin, leaving it grey and covered in scraggly patterns. His hair is darker, his irises a glowing red and the whites of his eyes black as the night itself. 

Great, now they have to deal with two demons.

Annie tries to snag her arm back but the Demon’s grip is too strong and he seems to enjoy her squirming a little too much. His face spreads out into a grin, his sharp teeth on full display as his grip on her wrist tightens, causing the dagger to fall onto the ground. 

The clinking sound of the dagger bouncing on the concrete ground snaps Alan back to earth as he finally seems to notice that his friend has joined them. But as soon as his eyes land on his friends demonic form and the grip on Annie’s wrist, his human glamour disappears and Annie is faced with his true self - grey skin and horns and all. 

“Seraph scum!” Alan spits. “I knew it was too good to be true!”

“Please, no one in their right mind would fall for you.” Annie bites back as she somehow manages to snatch her arm back from the other Demon. 

She rushes forward in Alan’s direction, a brand new dagger at the ready, but he’s surprisingly quick for his form. It doesn’t help that the other Demon blocks her way, yelling for Alan to run and so Alan does - disappearing into the night.

It’s then that Annie wonders where Britta in all this. She whirls around, only to find Britta slumped against the dumpster with her eyes closed. Panic fills Annie’s body as she surges towards her partner, only to find her unresponsive but breathing. 

She’s so wrapped up in her panic, that she barely registers the Demon snickering at the two of them.

“You really thought this was gonna work, huh?” He asks rhetorically. “I sniffed you Seraphs out the second you stepped into the bar.”

“You.” Annie growls. “You did this.” 

The Demon shrugs and continues like he didn’t hear a word that Annie said. 

“Alan, on the other hand, isn’t as smart as I am and he gets distracted easily. So, props to you for distracting him, it really worked. But y’know, I had to level out the playing field. The two of you against one dumbass like Alan? That’s just not fair.”

“Shut up.” 

“Make me.” The Demon smirks.

It’s then that Annie’s hunter instinct takes over. 

Her brain always becomes a bit blurry when she fights - it’s the one thing that actually shuts her loud brain up and the one moment that her body goes on auto-pilot. This time is no different, except that she’s even more enraged than she usually is. Hot flashes of anger are coursing through her veins as she throws one punch after the other, only for the Demon to dodge them every single time.

This fight isn’t going to be easy.

That realization, combined with her partner being down and her target escaping, fuel Annie’s anger even more. Her footwork gets more precise, her punches get more powerful, her dagger flies from one hand to the other faster than before. 

But it’s not as if she’s getting away scot-free. Not when the Demon throws her against the wall like it’s nothing, not when he almost tackles her onto the ground, not when he actually fights back. 

Her body aches and her knees are weak as she gets back up again and it seems that the Demon is in a similar state. His breathing is louder than it was before and his stance a little shakier. And that’s all Annie needs to catch him off guard and pin him against the wall. It takes all of the power inside her tiny frame, but then she finally has him right where she wants him: a knife to his throat and no way to escape.

For the first time that night, the Demon isn’t looking all that confident anymore. His face scrunches up in discomfort as Annie pushes the knife harder against his throat. A single drop of black blood drips down his neck, yet Annie still feels hesitant to slice his neck open.

“Do it.” The Demon grunts.

“What?”

“Just get it over with it.”

“Oh, I’m gonna.” Annie bites back

“What are you waiting for then?”

That’s a good question - what exactly was she waiting for? She had never hesitated in situations like this. It’s always been easy: stab the demon, watch as their body shatters into tiny pieces and report back to Headquarters. And yet, she’s hesitating. What was holding her back from killing this particular Demon?

“Are you scared, angel?”

That word catches Annie off guard. She has never heard Demons say that word before. It's was a well-known fact, documented in every celestial history book: it was physically impossible for a demon to say it. So to hear this Demon say it is surprising to say the least. So surprising that Annie loses the tight grip she has on her dagger, which the Demon uses to his advantage.

With only a sliver of room, he escapes from Annie’s grip. Before she even has time to collect herself and go after him, she watches how the demon disappears into a cloud of smoke, leaving no trace behind that he ever was there. 

Annie’s head spins, thoughts whirling through her brain as she tries to figure out what had just happened. One moment she was this close to killing this Demon and the next moment he was slipping through her fingers and escaping into the night. She had never let a Demon get away - it’s one of the reasons her kill count was that high. And yet, this Demon had been different, if only Annie could understand why.

She only snaps out of it when she hears a groan behind her. 

“What happened?” Britta mutters confused and Annie instantly kneels beside her.

“They got away.” Annie sighs. She helps Britta sit upright against the brick wall and checks for any further injuries. 

“They?”

“That’s a story for another time.” Annie says. “We gotta get you back to HQ.”

Annie sighs loudly when she finally returns to her quarters and lets herself fall onto her bed. The baby pink ruffled bedsheets are in stark contrast to the blank concrete walls, but she wants her room to feel like home so pink it is. 

It’s been a long night. She had waited outside of Britta’s room until Doctor Rich finally told her the good news that Britta would make a full recovery. That had been a relief, Annie would’ve blamed herself for all eternity if Britta hadn’t made it out of there.

Rich also insisted that he’d check Annie for injuries too, but Annie had refused. The few bruises she’d gotten during the fight would heal in a couple of days and she was too tired to deal with the inherent awkwardness that was getting checked out by your ex-boyfriend. 

She and Rich had dated for almost a year before finally calling it quits a few months ago. He had technically ticked off every box in Annie’s long list of what to look for in a man. He was smart, handsome, funny and cared deeply for others. Plus, he was one hell of a cook, which came in handy whenever the cafetaria employees decided to serve something that looked like expired military food. 

But while their relationship was great on every front, Annie had felt like something was missing. Some people would call it a spark, Annie just called it excitement. Rich just got too boring and predictable after a while and he didn’t challenge her enough. They parted amicably, but Annie doesn’t have the energy to deal with uncomfortable small talk while Rich examined her.

Besides, she’s sure that the burning sensation that she’s been feeling in her back is just muscle pain that’ll go away after a good night’s sleep. 

Just before she dozes off, Annie jumps back up, grabs her shower caddy and pajamas and heads towards the communal showers. She can’t sleep with Demon gunk still all over her and if she doesn’t shower now, she’ll regret it in the morning.

The showers are quiet, which a good thing because that means Annie has all the hot water to herself. She strips out of her tight clothes and lets out a sigh of relief when she steps under the warm shower stream. The water washes away the bits of dirt that are left on her skin from the fight The dirt pools down at her feet, before finally disappearing down the drain, alongside the tension in Annie’s body.

After lathering herself in her favorite shower gel (the one with the cherry blossom scent) and enjoying the warm water for just a few more minutes, Annie dries herself off and wraps her towel around herself. Strangely enough, the pain in her back hadn’t disappeared one bit, so she decides to check if she hadn’t been unwittingly scratched by the Demon’s sharp claws after all.

In front of the mirror, Annie lets out a tiny shriek.

While her back had been spared from any injuries, there is still something different. Something that hadn’t been here before tonight: a long line of words burned into her skin, leading from her neck all the way down her spine. 

Annie has no clue what these words mean, they’re not in any language she recognizes. Still, she knows exactly what this is: her Prophecy Mark.