Chapter Text
Though he was not yet dead, he already saw the light.
Sam Winchester laid bleeding in the vampire nest — there, on the cold concrete floor, though the fight was far from over — and fought he did. But he wasn't against the monsters, not anymore. He was fighting to live.
“Angels are watching over you”, his and Dean's mother apparently used to say. Sam didn't know her long enough to be sure.
He was confused as to why he thought of that sentence in that exact moment. Perhaps as his older brother had been dragged out of hell by an angel, salvation would come to him too.
No, it couldn't be-- he was far too distant from any form of divinity. The first ever thing he had ever heard from an angel was “Sam Winchester, the boy with the demon blood.”. To the heavens he was an abomination. Even dreaming of being saved was a liberty he shouldn't take.
Yet he saw it. The light. But it wasn't the light he expected to see right before death, instead it was a spark of hope. Someone fighting his battles, and once it was all over, that someone turned to his dying body.
The stranger gently rested her hand on his head and for what seemed like the fraction of a second he felt a sharp, burning pain that soon disappeared along with his wounds. The same hands that he saw murdering monsters in cold blood were now soft as snow and it somehow made perfect sense.
Sam looked up at her, unharmed as if nothing ever happened. For a moment, it almost made him think the hunt was just a bad dream. At least this part of it.
“Who...who are you?” was the only thing he managed to ask in the daze of it all.
“A warrior of the Lord,” the woman answered calmly, as if this was just another Tuesday for her, and suddenly the distance between them was truly apparent. Not only physically, but spiritually. Another angel, just like the ones Sam already knew.
“But why? Why do all...this?—" he questioned, but his words were shortly interrupted by her cold, somewhat irritated tone.
“I suppose some things are just meant to happen.”
The second he blinked, she vanished. All that was left of her was the faint flutter of wings and his own confusion as to what really occurred.
He didn't know her, yet for some reason he missed the touch that brought him back to life. The touch of something holy. But at the same time, it felt wrong. Like despite the angel's words, none of this was meant to be.
Before the younger Winchester's mind could wander more, Dean ran into the room.
“Sam! Sammy, what the hell happened?” the older brother exclaimed, more concerned about Sam's well-being than anything else in the world.
“I...don't know. There were too many of them, I couldn't handle them, and then there suddenly this light, and--”
“Hold on, hold on. Slow down for a second. A light?”
“This woman appeared, and killed them all like it was nothing. I'm...I'm pretty sure an angel saved me.”
“Alright, Sammy, maybe you hit your head somewhere or there was something in your coffee--”
“I know what I saw, Dean,” he protested as he stood back up with his brother's help.
“What if you don't? Maybe you were hallucinating. Like, I don't know...vamp magic or something.”
“... Whatever. Let's just go.”
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The ride back to the motel was fairly quiet. No music, no chatter, just the sound of the engine running. Dean focused on the road and nothing else, while Sam stared out the window at the outside blurred due to the car's constant movement. That's how their travels usually looked after a disagreement — it was awkward, with neither of them knowing the right moment to say anything.
Finally, Sam broke the silence.
“How can you be so sure?” he asked, not pulling his gaze away from the window.
“What?” Dean snapped out of his trance, looking at the younger Winchester for a second before switching his focus back to the road.
“How can you be so sure that it wasn't an angel?”
“Name one angel that helped us, Sam,” Dean said before soon adding, “and you can't say Cass.”
“Why not? He saved you,” he pointed out.
“That was a unique case--”
“Well, maybe this is a 'unique case' too, Dean! Look back at everything that's happened recently, with-- with the apocalypse, and everything else, is another angel helping us really that out of the picture?”
“Look, if it was an angel, then great. But I doubt it. 'Cause so far nearly all we met were just winged dicks,” he replied, keeping his eyes on the road. “Besides, I'm pretty sure they're all pissed off about the final seal and Lucifer being out.”
“But I can fix it, I-- I have to,” Sam's tone was unsure, almost desperate in spite of the certainty in his words, “Maybe I was saved to do exactly that. Maybe they know I can undo this.”
“Undo the apocalypse? You heard them, Sam. They don't want the world to be fixed.”
“But what if one of them out there does?”
And in that moment Dean realized that his brother wasn't going to let this go.
“...Just don't get your hopes up too much.”
And the travel was silent once again. When they reached their destination, they parted ways — Dean went to the bar, as he often did, and Sam returned to the room they rented for the duration of the job. Not a word was said about the hunt, as if it never happened. But even then, as he was in bed late at night about to sleep, the memory of what he had witnessed in that fight plagued his mind, playing over and over again like a broken record until he was too exhausted to even think. Only then was he able to finally rest.
Or so he thought.