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The first time your world fell apart, you were 23 years old.
It was as normal as any other day. You got up, you cleaned your room, you and your roommate left for class, you slept during most of it, you got back to the dorm, studied, slept some more. There was nothing wrong. Everything was going as smoothly as it possibly could.
Then again, you didn’t really know if anything was supposed to happen beforehand.
You had been watching a movie with your roommate, some cheesy chick flick she recommended. So far, it was hard to follow, mostly because you found the main character annoying as fuck. Carrie, your roommate, was slurping pot noodles, her flaming red hair a mess around her head.
It was the discolored hair that your eyes fell to first.
It turned a dark shade of gray, which you didn’t notice at first. The room was dark, and you dismissed it as a trick on your eyes. But then, as you looked back to your laptop screen, the moving figures had all turned shades of gray.
You froze, blood going cold as you stared at the screen for a few more moments, trying desperately to find something that would tell you this was a trick.
The colors didn’t come back.
You let out a strange, strangled sound from your throat, stumbling off the bed. You barely registered the protest from Carrie as her noodles spilled in your mad dash to the light switch. The lights came on, but the only thing it did was make the grays brighter. They remained gray. Your eyes traveled frantically over objects around the space, heart beating a mile a minute. There was a pang in your heart then, and you knew at once that this wasn’t a mistake.
Your soulmate had died.
You had collapsed right there, legs giving out as your heart shattered into a million pieces, Carrie jumping towards you in a panic.
………………
It was only about a day later that what you considered was impossible happened.
You had been cooped up in your room all day long, Carrie having told everyone what happened and to not disturb you. The administration in your college was kind enough to give you a few days off, which you accepted. You could barely see straight. It would take a while to get used to your colorless world.
You hadn’t dared look outside the window, unable to stand how gray everything was. Your heart was weighed with loss, a million questions in your head. What had happened? How did he die? Cancer? No, you would have felt him weakening. This was sudden. Car accident? Made sense.
You were looking at the blanket covering your legs, your back against your headboard. A blanket you knew was red.
Red.
You stiffened when you saw the color impinge on your eyes, spilling over the blanket. You heart was beating a mile a minute, mind racing for an explanation as your head shot up.
The colors were back.
A strangled shout left your throat, jumping up from your bed and pressing your back to a wall. Your body was breaking out in sweat, trying to rationalize what was going on. But you couldn’t, you had no explanation.
When Carrie came home that afternoon, you kept your mouth shut. You were sure your mind was playing tricks on you. Maybe a grief management mechanism. It was envisioning colors so you wouldn’t have to deal with your soulmate’s death. Yeah, that was it.
But you were wrong. When you chanced a peek outside that night, you saw the lights. Yellow, red and blue lights. Surrounding the campus, from signs outside restaurants, from cars passing by. This was no trick. Your colors were back.
Which meant your soulmate was alive.
It couldn’t have been possible. The colors were gone for at least 24 hours. You had heard of people who died for like, 6 minutes and then came back when electrically shocked. But this was 24 hours. He came back after 24 hours. His body should have been cold and already rotting by that time.
How was that possible?
Something changed in you that day. Maybe it was the trauma of your supposed loss. But from that day, you became obsessed with finding the truth. You scoured the internet for weeks, going deeper and deeper in hopes of an explanation. Was your soulmate actually alive? Or was it some medical condition that allowed you to see colors despite his death? You had to know. Your heart ached to know.
Carrie noticed the change, of course. At first, she wrote it off as a grieving mechanism, exactly what you had labeled it at the beginning. But as days went by and your search became obsessive, she began to question your sanity.
“You sure you’re okay?” She asked one morning as she got ready for class. You had to leave too, but hadn’t even bothered dressing yet. You wouldn’t lie, your studies had kind of taken a corner at that time. Carrie had picked up on that too.
“Fine.” You mumbled, reading through an article that sounded hopeful. Towards the end of it though, you deflated. Nothing about colors coming back.
From there, your mind wandered from recoloring to the concept of resurrection. Was it possible? Was that how your colors were back? Was your soulmate, in fact, alive?
From the internet, you resorted to old, forgotten books in public libraries. When science failed you, you turned to the arts. Spirituality, religion, legends. You have never believed in the authenticity of these mediums, but your case wasn’t exactly cut and dry anymore. It was as abstract as these arts suggested.
Resurrection was something that old lore talked about very often, but as far as you could tell, most of these sources were unreliable. You should have stopped there. You should have called it a day and went back to college, finished your degree, gotten a job. Maybe even had a family.
And what? Spend your entire life wondering what the hell had happened to you? Spend your days loving someone only to have them die when you were old and having your colors still intact? Find out they are not your soulmate? Live a life so unreliable, with the possibility that your partner was not your soulmate hanging over you?
No.
Lore led you down a rabbit hole, and before you knew it, the world of the supernatural was laid out before you.
It was a slow transition. A hunt here, a monster there. It wasn’t until two years later that you could honestly say that you were a hunter. Your eyes were opened to a whole new realm of possibility. The medium was endless, and you even started to play with the idea that your soulmate was a hunter. It would explain the resurrection.
Life on the road was a tough one, considering you dropped everything and ran. Only a few people looked for you, you had seen some posters online. Most of them believed you were still healing from your ‘loss’ and had let you be. But mostly, it was the loneliness that made it difficult. Often times, you’d go days without uttering a word, and you’d even resorted to singing loudly in your car, anything to fill the space.
When you were 26, the unthinkable happened again. The colors disappeared.
You had actually been on a ghoul hunt when it happened, and the adrenaline had made the loss barely noticeable. It was only when you had fallen back into your car covered in ghoul guts that you noticed the lack of yellow headlights illuminating the road before you. The light was a bright grey.
No.
You turned on your flashlight, going through everything you had in the car, things you knew were colored, finding them all in shades of grey. Tears coated your eyes and you shuddered, trying to process what had happened.
Don’t worry. It’s okay. This is probably like last time.
It wasn’t like last time.
……………..
For the next year and a half, you saw only grey.
It was a few weeks after you lost the colors that you resigned all hope. This was it. He was really, truly dead. For two months afterwards, you had cried and mourned, trying to deal with the loss of the unknown love of your life. How was it possible to love someone so much, yet not even know who they were? You wanted nothing more than to have him alive and happy with you. The hunting life was a lonely life, and you craved to feel him next to you, by your side through all of it.
And now he was gone.
…………
It started with little objects.
A ball kicked around by a kid, a bright blue. The rest of its surroundings, still black and white. A cup of coffee labeled a vibrant green, standing out in the gray. Your own skin in the mirror, clad by gray clothes.
You were sure you were losing your mind.
There was no lore book, no type of witchcraft, nothing you could find that could explain this. It was one thing getting your colors back, but certain colored objects at a time? It made no sense.
Then one day, all the colors came back.
It was at that point that you lost it, screaming and tossing things around in your motel room. You cried and shrieked when motel management forced your door open and tried to restrain you. These last few years had been so alone and so difficult, you had reached your breaking point. This was too much, even for you.
When you gained consciousness, you were lying in a hospital bed. A kind man in a lab coat was standing over you, saying something about getting you a psych evaluation. You wanted to kill him. You wished you had your gun on you.
You couldn’t escape them very easily though, not when you still had a limp. Apparently, you had sprained your ankle during your struggle with the motel people. Had even punched one of them in the face. All in all, things weren’t looking good.
As you sat in what looked like a nurse’s office, clad in all white clothes, you looked at the room around you. You could see the colors; some blue utensils, your own skin, the color of the couch you sat on. You were so drained, you didn’t even want to question it anymore.
They led you to a temporary room to stay in until your ankle healed. You highly doubted that was the reason they detained you, considering they put you on the same floor as a bunch of crazy patients. You knew they thought you were unstable, and not just physically. You had to find a way to get out of here.
The halls were narrow but clean. Most patients stayed in their rooms, some you saw wandering around. As you passed by the rooms, you caught glimpses of the people inside; a middle aged man mumbling to himself, a girl walking around and around her room, a man who was crying in a corner, another one-
You stopped at the latest sight. The man in the room was laying on the bed, still, eyes looking straight up to the ceiling. He was huge, almost not being able to fit the bed, his hair was long and his face was stubbled. His eyes were haunted and empty, dark circles prominent. His entire cheeks seem to sink into his face, mouth slightly open. It didn’t take rocket science to figure out he hadn’t slept in a very long time.
You moved on down the hall, not being able to shake a weird feeling from your body. Something about that man had unsettled you, but you couldn’t pinpoint it.
………….
It was when you saw a ghost go up in flames in his room while him and a girl stood in a salt circle that you realized the tall, sleep deprived man wasn’t just a normal person. He was a hunter.
When the girl had left, you slowly appeared in his doorway, watching the muscles in his back shift as he sat down on the bed, running a hand through his hair and yawning. Hesitantly, you knocked on the doorframe, making him jump and turn to look at you.
When his eyes met yours, your breath caught.
“Sorry for disturbing you.” You kept your voice low and took a step inside. You heart was beating a mile a minute. What was happening? “The salt circle for the ghost… you’re a hunter?”
The sentence made him straighten and turn in his spot so he was facing you, a sceptical look on his face. His eyes kept darting over you, as if shaken by your presence the same way you were shaken by his.
“I- yeah. You too?” You nodded.
He smiled a bit, as much as his tired face could muster, but it still made your insides twist. This man….
“I’m Y/N.” You took a few more steps forward, making him smile a bit more and gesture to the bed to take a seat, which you did.
“Sam.” He replied. Sam. It sounded so right. “What are you in for?”
You let out a bitter laugh. “You wouldn’t believe me.”
Sam raised an eyebrow, hands in his lap playing with each other. His entire figure was hunched with tiredness, but he didn’t seem disinterested. On the contrary, he was looking at you like you held all the answers.
You were looking at him the same way.
“I don’t think this life leaves any room for the impossible.” He commented.
You smiled and shrugged. “I guess so.” Taking a deep breath, you continued. “Well, my soulmate keeps dying.”
Sam froze, eyebrows furrowing. His eyes were a dull shade of gray bordered with shades of brown. But this gray didn’t make you want to rip your hair out. It made you feel calm almost, like you were at home. As cheesy as it sounded, you felt like you’d known Sam all your life.
“What do you mean?” He asked.
“Well,” you breathed. “one day, I could see colors, and the next, I couldn’t. I thought my soulmate had died, but about a day later, they were back.”
“When was this?” He asked, voice lower now, staring at you intensely.
“About 6 years ago. A little more.” You said. Sam stayed quiet, frozen in his spot.
“And it happened again?” He enquired, eyes not leaving yours. “About a year and a half ago?”
Your eyes widened, movements seizing. Sam was still looking at you, almost with a guilty look on his face. Despite his large frame, he looked small under your gaze.
“How did you…..?” But you knew, of course. You finally understood. It was him. Him.
“Yeah.” He whispered, voice shaky.
You continued to look at him for what felt like a lifetime. Suddenly, every feeling you had felt from the moment you passed by his door made sense. The rapid heartbeat, the constricting chest, the unprecedented connection.
Sam was your soulmate.
“You died-” Your breath caught as you subconsciously scooted closer to Sam on the bed. He bent forward more, as if welcoming the gesture.
“More than once.” Sam whispered. “I- I always wondered what my soulmate would feel like after it happened. Always. But I never thought I’d send you to a psych ward. God, I’m so sorry.”
“Don’t.” You choked out, hands moving up on instinct. Your palms met his stubble roughened cheeks, making his eyes flutter shut. The contact made your heart slow, your muscles calm. Your thumbs traced his prominent cheekbones, one hand pushing his hair behind his ear.
“We’ll figure it out.” You stated when you realized just how poor Sam’s condition was. You leaned forward, forehead resting against his. Sam let out a breath, and you could feel his muscles practically melt under your touch.
“We’ll figure it out.” He whispered back.
…………….
For the next hour, Sam told you everything about his life. From dying and coming back, Dean going to hell, to Sam’s own trip down there with Lucifer. He talked about being soulless, then getting his soul back but Death making a barrier around his head.
“I think that might be why you only saw a few colors at a time.” He guessed. “I mean, I was there. But not really. Not all of me.”
When Sam was done, silence took over the little space. During the talking, you had moved closer to him, both of you sitting cross-legged right in front of each other. Your hands grasped his tightly, and you saw him fighting to keep his eyes open.
“It’s the memories, right?” You asked, voice barely above a whisper. “Memories of the Cage. Lucifer. They’re keeping you awake.”
Sam nodded jerkily, taking in a shaky breath. His eyes were slightly red, coated with a thin layer of tears with the effort of not closing them. You reached a hand up, running it down the side of his face, pushing his hair back. He was slightly bruised up too. A cut on the corner of his lip, a bump on his cheekbone.
“He won’t let me sleep.” Sam croaked out, almost as if afraid to say it out loud. “All day, he just keeps talking and talking…” He drifted off.
“Sam,” you couldn’t help it, you pressed your forehead to his again. It felt so natural, so right. “You know what I feel? I feel angry.”
Sam looked at you in confusion. You nodded.
“That’s right, I’m fuming. Because you’re so strong. I mean, fuck, you overpowered fucking Satan and spent a whole year in hell with him. You saved the world. You’re a hero. You don’t deserve to have your story turned into a tragedy.”
Sam gave you a sad smile, closing his eyes and nudging your nose. “You’re the only person who’s said that to me besides Dean.”
You smiled too, letting your own eyes fall shut. One of your hands was still on his head, fingers weaving slowly through his hair. The other intertwined with his hands tightly.
“I’m right.” You spoke, making Sam take in a shaky breath. “I know you think it’s okay that you’re not happy, but it’s not. You deserve the world, Sam.”
Sam opened his eyes then, a warm brown meeting your own. He was still smiling.
“Who says I’m not happy?”
You stared at him for a few seconds before he nudged forward, closing the little gap between you two.
Your lips moved with a harmony that shouldn’t have been possible, but it was. It was like you’d done it a million times, yet it felt like nothing you’d ever felt before. Sam clouded your mind and your senses. He was all you could feel, all you could touch, all you could think about. His lips were slightly chapped, but so soft, as they moved slowly, chastly, over your own. His hand came up to cup the back of your neck, fitting his lips more firmly to yours. Your breath caught and for a second, and you were sure you had died and gone to heaven. If this was what kissing your soulmate felt like, you wanted to do it forever.
After what felt like an eternity, Sam pulled away just an inch, his breath still on your lips.
“Yeah, I’m very happy.” He mumbled, smile taking over his lips again.