The Pairing was the end of one phase of Alex's life, and the beginning of another, but practically, there was still a sliver of twilight before the dawn. When he came back from that particular disaster, he came back to his dormitory, sleeping across from Maxwell one last time.
Of course, two close friends with racing hearts were less inclined to sleep, and more inclined to talk. Both of them were apprehensive about their Pairings, and neither was willing to fully articulate why. Alex accepted that Max had his reasons, and Max did the same for him. At least they could clearly talk about their emotions – not so much about their Pairs, but about the future – and they did, deep into the night, until Alex left a sentence unfinished, dozing off, and Maxwell followed him a minute and a worry later.
The next morning, Maxwell was vibrating with anxiety, and not just in spirit – his spoon clattered against the edge of his cereal bowl – but Alex projected confidence and security. He was feeling none of it, but for Maxwell, and any others around who were feeling like him, it was worth keeping his own feelings obscured to give them some slight assurance that things would be okay. They didn't talk much as they packed up their things, nor did they have much to pack. Their new uniforms would be waiting for them, and their desk Interfaces were to be replaced by new ones – already, their wrist Interface systems wouldn't connect to the desk units, which were waiting for whoever was moving in behind them. The only things they had were the contents of their desks – Their journals, their artbooks, and any personal keepsakes – books borrowed from the Libraries, gifts from teachers, things made with their magic – and those were thrown into leather satchels. It seemed odd how easily their room returned to being a blank slate, once they were removed from it.
From their rooms, to the tram that ran to the north side of campus and the Pair apartments, and even to the front door of the apartment for Year 103 of Arcadia's students, neither could find the right words to say, though they held each other's hand tightly. They split, finally, when they came to the front desk, and got the keys to their rooms.
“Good luck,” Maxwell told him.
Alex smiled, a bit more genuinely than he was used to. “Thanks. Meet you for lunch?”
“'Course,” Max said. And then, he was gone. Alex stood there for a minute, trying to game out the various scenarios he could be walking in to, but as more students began filtering in to the lobby, Alex felt a flush of embarrassment, and took the stairwell up to the fourth floor, not wanting to look aimless. When he reached the door to his apartment – A408, for the record – Alex thought of knocking, but after briefly running through possibilities in his head, he couldn't think of a single way in which knocking would make the situation better in any way.
In the end, his deliberation was meaningless. He was the first person there, the only noise the sound of neighbors fussing with their furniture. So, he took the opportunity to look around. The front door opened into a hallway that formed the spine of the apartment. On the left side of this hallway were three bedrooms – one larger than the other two, clearly meant for their Guardian, and on the right, there was the bathroom – while it was fairly simple, with a glass-enclosed shower, toilet, and sink, it would be nice only sharing it with three people, instead of the communal restrooms he'd grown up with. On the other end of the apartment, to the left of the front door, was a personal kitchen, which faded naturally into a living room. The living room was a relaxing-looking space – a low, heated table complete with integrated blanket, and a deep couch that could comfortably seat four or five people, with a full-sized standing Church radio against one of the walls. The far side was a sliding glass door that opened up onto a porch – As Alex poked around, he found that this porch, maybe a meter and a half wide, ran the whole length of the apartment, past small sliding glass doors to each of the bedrooms, serving both as secondary exits and as windows.
Between the general design, the linoleum floors and plaster walls, the comfortable furniture and multiple exits, Alex was quite satisfied with the space. Practical and, in a pinch, tactical. Though, that kitchen… Alex knew, in a mostly theoretical sense, about cooking – enough to get by in the wilderness, or on a battlefield, but during the few classes on it, Alex had been daydreaming about glorious battles of the past, and maybe, hopefully, his future. He quickly pieced together how the stove and cooler functioned – both temperature stores, objects of high thermal mass, in them, charged to a certain state and then radiated out via conductive fins. The cooler was already active, while the stove, thankfully, was not. Cabinets lined the walls, full of utensils and cups and plates and one was clearly designed to be a pantry and -
This all needed to be put in order. Alex pulled out a pad of adhesive note-paper from his satchel and a pen, and started jotting down labels for everything. It'd do no good to have all this storage room without a sorting system. He had the cooler open, pondering what to label each shelf, when the front door swung open, violently slamming against the wall.
Elza, he thought, and he caught her, wide-eyed, staring at him.
“Hey,” he said. “I haven't figured out which bedroom I'm taking, but-”
She looked down the hallway, at the cracked-open doors to their individual rooms. After a heartbeat of contemplation, she took off towards the furthest door, crimson hair streaming out behind her. A moment later, the door to what was now, apparently, her room, slammed shut. Alex shrugged, and turned back to the task at hand. After sorting out just which racks in the cooler door would be for protein-based, vegetable-based, fruit-based, and steeped liquids, Alex was ready to tackle the next problem. He walked up to Elza's bedroom door, and knocked.
“Are you okay?”
No response. He knocked again.
“Go away.”
“Uh, where? I live here too,” Alex said.
He heard Elza's footsteps, and the door cracked open just enough to reveal a pair of angry, green eyes and a scowl. “You know what I mean.” When Alex didn't move, or even change his expression, the anger dropped out of her face, replaced with confused concern. “You do know what I mean, right?”
Alex cracked a smile. “Uh, yes. I think.”
"Good." Elza pulled the door shut, and Alex decided that now was a good time to tend to his own room.
It was a simple space – A desk and Interface panel on the left, a bed on the right, and a closet full of identical uniforms, along with some variations for weather and formalities. He took the opportunity to get changed. The new uniforms were a bit sleeker in their cut, a bit more complex in their styling, than what he'd been used to. Relatively simple white slacks, to be tucked into white, well above the ankle rugged boots, also white, with red stitching and laces, were complicated by the arrangement of the top. It consisted of a white shirt with hidden buttons and a standing collar, to be worn under a red vest, to in turn be worn under a sort of morning coat – like the jacket of a suit, but never meant nor able to be closed, that cut off sharply at the waist. It didn't look like something one could go to battle in, but in the armpits and other key locations, the fabric had a stretchy quality facilitating free movement.
Looking at himself in the mirror, Alex felt strange. He'd seen this uniform countless times on older students, but wearing it, he felt like an impostor. He shouldn't, of course. This was his right. He couldn't put his finger on what felt so wrong about it, but eventually, he'd feel comfortable in this. At least, he hoped so.
After a few minutes of contemplation and prayer, he decided to leave, and in that moment, three doors of the apartment opened at once. Alex froze, but Elza went right past him, nearly walking straight into Julian, who now stood in the front doorway.
Julian cut an imposing figure, paradoxically both being thinner than and taking up more space than the average man, as if some part of him demanded that you minimize your chances of touching him. He didn't look right, at least by Alex's reckoning. Despite the fact that Angels were allotted as much food as they needed, he was underweight. His dark hair, swept behind his ears, hung low on his back, and it shone just a little too much – either Julian had a love of conditioner and elaborate hair-care, or it had the greasy sheen of being unwashed for a few days. Alex wasn't quite sure. He wore his uniform well, at least: the modern duty uniform of an Angel was similar to the asymmetric cassock of a priest, but cut off at the hip - curving down to a trailing tail behind the left leg, recalling the sort of flowing cloth of the tabard of a crusader, over pleated white slacks tucked into tall boots. It was the part of him that looked most right - Alex couldn't parse quite why he looked threatening in it, but he did, sharp chin contrasting with the standing collar of the jacket.
Elza skidded to a halt.
Julian looked down at her, then across the hall at Alex, and smiled, carefully making sure that both of them saw his ostensibly pleasant expression. “I believe we've all been introduced, but the Ceremony isn't very personal.” He held out his right hand. “Julian Pahaliah V, at your service.”
Elza stared at his hand, and in turn, Alex stared at her.
She wasn't moving. That wouldn't do.
Alex elbowed past her, and shook Julian's hand. “Alexander Zadkiel II, glad to meet you.” Alex had found that you could tell quite a bit about someone from their handshake. Julian's was firm yet pliant, in just the right way as to be completely transparent to analysis.
Julian smiled. “If there is anything I can do, for either of you,” he said, briefly focusing on Elza, “all you have to do is ask.”
“Can you annul our Pairing?” Elza asked.
The words hit Alex like a firm punch to the sternum. It was an insult to his honor to think that he couldn't handle her, or this. But, he thought, the choice of words was clever. In marriage theory, annulment meant declaring the act of union itself as invalid, and while a Pairing could not be reversed, as far as Alex knew, declaring it to have never been valid from the start could, maybe, work.
Julian cocked his head. “Why would I do that?”
Even so, Alex couldn't conceive of a situation wherein the True Church was wrong enough for such a thing to happen. And, if the Pairing had been so wrong, why would she have kissed him? That had to count for something. He opened his mouth to begin a counterargument, but the memory of that moment on the dance-floor knocked all thoughts out of his head.
"I just want to know if it's possible," Elza said, and Alex's heart breathed a sigh of relief.
Julian gave a sort of half-laugh, snorting. “No, what's done is done, at least, until one or both of you die. But I believe that you two are meant to be together. I was the one who suggested that you be Paired. And I am confident in my decision.”
Silence hung in the air. Alex hadn't spared any thought to how Pairs were chosen, beyond the black box of "True Church divinely ordained decision-making", and the tiny sliver of seeing how the sausage was made was oddly disturbing. It seemed to have the same effect on Elza, whose mischievous bluster abandoned her.
After a beat, Elza ducked past Julian, and stormed out the door. “She's a bit of a tempest, isn't she?” Julian remarked. He strode forward, opening the door to his room. Alex wanted to reach out and grab him by the sleeve, but even now he couldn't stomach such a breach of decorum.
“Sir-” he started, and Julian whipped around. There was no anger in his eyes, but he looked surprised. “Yes?” Julian said.
Now knowing someone who was involved in the process, Alex had to ask. “Can you explain why you picked us?”
“No,” Julian said. He paused, and looked back at Alex. “You'll understand in due time. Now, if you'll excuse me-”
Now was Alex's time to interrupt. “May I not?”
“What?”
“Excuse you, I mean.”
Julian smiled, and took his hand off the doorknob. He turned to Alex, and bent over slightly. While he was only maybe half-foot taller than Alex, the effect was such that he eclipsed Alex, making him feel much, much smaller. “Of course.”
Alex, despite his curiosity about the Pairing and what the True Church really thought of him,had burning questions of a completely different nature on his mind. Alex absolutely loved the military history of the True Church – the glorious conquests, the exploration of this fallen world, the taming of demonic wilds and the saving of unbelievers from their heathen overlords, just thinking of it filled him with joy at the fact that he, someday, would be a part of that heroic saga. And, having memorized far too many facts, figures, dates, and statistics, he had to ask about that one insignia he'd seen on Julian's uniform at the Pairing.
“Were you really a member of the Second Antarctic Expeditionary Force?”
“Yes,” Julian replied.
“What…” Alex stumbled through his words a little. “Can you tell me about it? What was it like? What stopped you?”
Julian took a deep breath, and sighed. “I don't remember much of the journey to Antarctica. Just salt and sea, Angels and support staff planning, and me figuring out my place in it all. Once we landed, we set up camp. We had no sign of any life nearby, and we our guard down. Demons attacked us. More than we could handle. There was a pitched battle, and I happened to survive.”
Somehow, the answer disappointed Alex. “There's nothing more to it?”
“No. I was stranded far from civilization with few resources, and it took a while to get back. It's as simple as that. Does that answer your question?”
It didn't, but Alex got the sense that he shouldn't bother Julian further. Being one of the few survivors of that expedition would leave anyone somewhat unhinged, Alex thought, and he didn't want to test that theory. “Yes, sir,” he said.
“Good, I'll see you at class,” he said, and entered his room, closing the door behind him.