Yay for a one-shot! I've been so busy, and I almost lost this file, but luckily I was able to keep most of it and only had to add in a few scenes. I got this idea while it was a few days after Dean's birthday, so think of it as a late birthday present haha! The quote, obviously, is from 2x22, when Dean's speaking to Sam's corpse.

On another note, I started a Facebook page once I noticed that disabled links for however long, so I could post things like photos and others so everyone can see :). Please 'LIKE' the page (remove the spaces): www . facebook . com / pages / XS-I-L-E-N-T-Harmony / 288164814581492 thanks!

"I guess that's what I do. I let down the people I love…"

"Happy birthday," Sam says.

I stare up at him. As much as it pains me to think, I hate my birthday. Yet another year has passed, and yet another reminder of that day years ago. Sure, Sammy's birthday is an even worse day to remember, but the truth is, I'd never even told him about this. He'd been away at Stanford, so why bother him with this?

At the time, it seemed Sammy had just gone off to college. Dad had let me take this case alone. It was supposed to be a simple ghost problem.

In a detached voice, I say, "Thanks, Sam."

Sammy immediately shoots a worried look toward me. He shifts forward and asks immediately, "What's wrong?"

Shaking my head, I look toward the decrepit television. What was wrong? Telling that would be a hell of a lot harder than normal. My thoughts instead turn to my true wondering. How long had it been? Five, six years at least.

"Dean!" Sam exclaims. My trance is shaken and I look up at him.

I say nothing.

"What's up?" Sam asks.

"Reminiscing," I reply simply. I shrug my shoulder and reach to grab a beer.

"You look like you want to give up or something."

Did I? Knowing this doesn't bother me as much as it should have. Maybe it's because today is my day to mourn. Maybe I truly am ready to give up. I honestly have no clue anymore.

In a fit of sudden boldness, I say, "Her name was Zoey."

"Zoey?" Sam asks. A confused look settles on his face.

Bitterly, I smile. Eyes shift to the floor before looking back up at Sammy. "You were away at Stanford. This was even before the thing with Lisa… You'd left a few months before. I got a solo hunt. Typical ghost problem."

"Okay," Sam whispers. He held that damned puppy dog look that made me regret saying anything.

I shake my head and murmur, "Forget it." I move to lie down in bed, but Sam grasps my arm and stops me.

"You can't just not tell me a story once you've started it." He takes a breath. "What happened?"

"Bitch," I say.

"Jerk," Sam automatically replies. A somber moment passes before he says softly, "Just tell me."

Mentally, I shrug. Why not? I'd already started the story.

"The ghost turned out to be a pissed off ex-boyfriend of a girl. Zoey. She knew the moment I showed up that I was there to get rid of her problem. We were going to do the usual drill, but he'd been cremated. So, we looked around for something keeping the spirit there. Burnt his house down even, but it didn't work."

I begin choking up. This is so unlike me; I must be thinking too much about this.

Sam gasps to himself. "Did the ghost kill her?"

An even bitterer look than before settles on my face. "If it were that easy. No, we found the thing that needed destroyed in the nick of time. By the end of the hunt, I'd started feeling something for her. For some reason, I decided to stay."

"Then when…"

I snap, "I'm getting to that!" A sigh, then, "Within a week of getting to know one another, I walked in to find her collapsed on the floor. I called 911, and when the doctors got done checking up on her, they told me about her advanced stage in her cancer or something like that. It'd spread throughout her body. When I asked Zoey why she didn't say a damn thing, she merely replied that she figured I'd be gone soon and that se really couldn't bring herself to tell me.

"I stayed with her and watched her get worse and worse. She ended up in the hospital soon after her collapsing and being let out. It was a few days before my birthday and she suddenly looked fine. She said she felt fine and the doctors just let her walk out of the hospital. My birthday…"

I can't bring myself to do this. It doesn't matter anymore. I can push the memories to the back of my mind for another year.

Sam shakes me from my thoughts.

"I walked in and found her in the same exact spot as the first time. When I checked her pulse, it was faint, but there. The paramedics worked heavily at my begging, but she didn't come back." I look directly into Sam's eyes. I need his complete attention for this. "She flat lined and it was called right at the time I was born, on my birthday. At least, that's what Dad told me."

Sam's eyes widen drastically. He takes a deep breath and sighs.

"You don't think…"

I laugh with little humor. "I don't know what to think anymore." My right hand brushes through my hair in a fit of agitation. "Nothing's simple anymore."

Sam sits in silence for a prolonged silence. I almost worry he's snapped into another reality when he sits up and asks, "Do you think we could… pay our respects?"

"You mean visit her grave?" I ask. Sam nods in response, leading me to sit back and think over this. We are only a few towns away, a mere hour's drive. It would be the first time in years if we decide to go.

Maybe I should visit…

"Alright," I say. "Let's go. This case is finished anyway."

The drive to her grave is riddled with silence. My thoughts are on Zoey the entire time. Her tanned skin flashes through my mind, along with her dark, long locks. I refuse to think of Zoey when she got sicker.

"So, tell me more about Zoey," Sam says, breaking the silence.

I look over at him. He stares right back at me. Sighing, I say, "She was like my own personal angel… before I found out they were pompous dicks. No matter her condition, she found some way to help out others. Her little brother was sick a lot. I remember wheeling her down to his room almost everyday to visit him." I close my mouth. I don't want to say anything else.

Sam asks, "If she were alive when all the stuff with Lucifer went down… do you think you would've gone back to her?"

"I honestly have no clue. Hell, I might not have even been hunting then. You probably would've been with Jess, and Dad would, probably, still be around." I sigh. "It's in the past though. No reason to think on it now."

I pull off onto a gravel road. Beside the gravel lie tombstones. I stop the car a walking distance from where Zoey's grave is at and turn the car off. A look is shot at Sammy, and I'm hopping out of the car. I honestly have no clue what to expect. It's been years.

"I never visited once she died, Sam," I murmur. "Do you think she's pissed at me for that?"

Sam walks around the car. He stops before me and forces me to look him in the eyes. He shakes his head. "No, Dean. She'd be proud of you."

I look away. "I started the apocalypse. It's kinda hard to be forgiving about that."

"No, I started the apocalypse, Dean." Sam shakes his head. "Let's just go." Sam walks toward a tombstone, stops and turns around. "Where's she at?"

I don't reply. I head for the tombstone that's been engraved in my mind for a long time. When I'm almost there, I stop immediately. Sam goes to take a step forward, but I grab his shoulder before he can.

"What?" Sam asks.

"There's someone at her grave," I reply. From this distance, it looks like a boy. Probably in his mid-teens. He's slightly pale, and dark, unruly locks cover his head. He stands at a normal height for teens—definitely not the way my brother grew when he was halfway through his teens. I have a sneaking suspicion I know who it is.

I take a step forward. Another. And another. When I'm right behind the boy I speak.

"Gabe, what are you doing here?"

The boy turns around. I'm shocked by how grown up he's become. From the sickly boy in the hospital, he's grown into a teen who looks healthy. I can see muscles on him, and I know it's been some time since he got out of there.

"It's you…" Gabe murmurs. His eyes harden instantly, but I push the image from my mind when it vanishes just as fast.

I smile slightly. Something comes into my vision, and I'm taken aback when Gabe's fist hits my jaw. I stumble back a few feet before I can right myself.

"It's been over six years!" he yells. "You just now show up? Where the hell have you been?"

I groan and rub my jaw. The kid could hit, I had to give him that. I breathe deeply. "I had to get out of here, Gabe. This town would've suffocated me. I couldn't deal with losing Zoey."

"I don't care," Gabe says. "You have no right to be at my sister's grave. Go away! Never come back here." Gabe turns back around to the grave. I watch him slip down to his knees and say something under his breath to the grave. I want nothing more than to stay here, but Gabe had given me no choice. I want nothing more than to tell him how his sister looked out for him, even when she was worse off than he was. I'm defeated enough as it is. This is just a killing blow to my already-vanished ego.

I turn to walk away.

Before I make it far, I turn to the sky. "I guess that's what I do. I let down the people I love." A tear escapes my eye as memories assault me.

"You're strange," Zoey said. She settled onto the couch next to me. I looked into her hazel eyes and smiled. My hand reached to play with her dark locks.

"Comes with the job description," I replied softly. I leaned forward and whispered, "It's why I'm here to protect you."

She smiled. She leaned even closer. Her hands rested on my thighs. She was a breath away from me when she said, "Normality's overrated."

"My brother's sick," she said. Zoey tugged on a shirt and pulled shoes on. She turned to look back at me as I reclined lazily on the bed. "Well, aren't you getting ready?"

I leaned up. My eyes locked with hers and I said, "Sorry, darling, but little brats aren't my forte."

"Don't you have a little brother?" she asked.

I stopped. I looked at the wall of her bedroom. It was littered with photos of her with various people. Friends. Family. Zoey had stability. As much as I loved traveling and hunting down the sons of bitches that haunted innocent people, I couldn't help but wish I had some stability like this. I wished I had the stability Sammy had now.

I sighed and said, "In my dad's eyes that's debatable. He got into Stanford. Pre-law or something like that." I shrugged. "I hate that he left us like he did, but I have to feel proud that he was able to beat the odds and get in there."

Zoey smiled. She walked forward and grasped my hand. My calloused hands rubbed against her soft hands. "If he's anything like you, then he must have a heart of gold."

"Dean!"

I looked back at Zoey. The different pieces of jewelry I held in my hand were tossed into the fire quickly. I raced for my sawed-off shotgun and held it up. I shot at the ghost. Zoey gasped for breath and raced for me. She opened her arms and, when she reached me, enclosed me in a tight hug. I knew it wasn't over, however I couldn't help but wrap my arms around her and hold tightly. I closed my eyes.

"Shit!" Zoey exclaimed. My eyes snapped open. I pushed her behind me and turned to look at the ghost. I cursed to myself, thinking this ghost wasn't ever going to leave. I shot at the ghost once more before swiveling to Zoey. I looked at her when I noticed something gleaming on her chest. I looked and saw a simple locket situated on her chest. At my inquisitive look, she shrugged and said, "It was a gift from…" She stopped, and I knew.

I reached and ripped it from her neck and threw it in time for the ghost to show up. It was right behind Zoey now. I had to act fast. I heard a clink and looked at the necklace. It was dangling just before the fire. I cursed. Zoey, seeming to understand my frustration, took off in a sprint for the fire. The ghost was right behind her. I aimed and shot right as the ghost shriveled into flames. Turning, I saw her stand from the fire and smirk.

"That was fun."

I came in from getting lunch. I'd made sure to order what Zoey liked. Something about her just made me feel different. I didn't know why I'd decided to stay. Normally I would have hit and run, but something just felt different with her. I didn't know if it was love or what, but I didn't want to let it go just yet either way.

"Zoey, I got you lunch!" I exclaimed. I entered the living room, fully expecting a waiting Zoey to be standing in the middle of the room.

She was nowhere to be seen though.

I started mentally freaking out. I remembered the salt on the windows and most of the doors, and I'd even told her not to forget to fix the salt before I left. We didn't need any more surprises from her past coming again.

My eyes fell to the floor, and my heart soared through the roof. Before me she lay, passed out cold on the floor. From her position, I knew she hadn't just fallen asleep there. I raced for the phone, dialed 911 and picked her up. I checked her pulse. It was there, I realized. I raced to get the door open. I knew the ambulance would take forever. I began taking her out of the house. Something was wrong.

"You have cancer," I said. The doctors had, thinking I was related to Zoey, told me everything. Now I needed to hear from Zoey.

Zoey looked away and toward a white wall. She opened her mouth to speak, but instead I started speaking.

"I just don't understand how you can forget to tell that you're dying," I said.

"I didn't know how to tell you," she whispered. "And to be honest, I figured you'd be one of those hit and run type of guys. You'd already done what you wanted to do here, so I figured you'd be gone soon enough."

"Well, I guess you underestimated me," I replied instantly. "I won't leave you. Not until you're better." I knew saying that was wrong—the doctors had said that the cancer had spread too far to save her—but I had to say something reassuring.

I came in to Zoey reaching blindly for a wheelchair. Instinctively, I pulled the wheelchair over to her. I helped settle her into the chair and led her out of the room. She'd been so cooped up in the hospital since falling that she was doing just about anything to get out of that room. I was leading her blindly, listening to her half-drugged voice carry on different stories that involved her at different points in life.

Suddenly, she yelled, "Turn right here!"

I followed, and she continued telling directions until we made it to a room. Inside lay one lone boy, about the age of ten or twelve. His dark hair contrasted his paste-white skin that showed that he'd hardly been out of this room for years. I wheeled Zoey closer and watched her grasp the boy's hand. She began speaking sporadically with him, and I realized who this was.

It was Zoey's little brother.

My birthday was today. A miracle had happened a few days ago.

Zoey had miraculously healed.

The doctors, albeit reluctantly, let her go home. I wondered what she would do for me today. I hoped she'd bake me some pie—I was really craving some apple pie.

"Zoey, are you home?" I called out. No one answered. I walked into the living room, and a sense of déjà vu came over me. I looked around, and then looked down.

She'd fallen and passed out.

I rushed to her side and held onto her. I checked her pulse, faint but there. I rushed her to the Impala and drove to the hospital.

"Please, be okay," I whispered to myself in the waiting room.

"We now lay to rest a woman who's been taken by God to join his army. An angel among us. Zoey Coleridge was a blessing who touched everyone's lives. From those that knew her to those who barely knew her."

I stood away from the service. I didn't want to be a part of the spectacle. I'd already called Dad. He was waiting on the road behind me, the Impala silently roaring. I could hear the preacher send prayers for Zoey's afterlife. Then, people began parting separate ways. I knew what to do then.

Turning to the car, I hopped in and closed my eyes. I'd gotten too close.

"Dad, is our family cursed?" I asked.

Dad merely gave me a look and started up the Impala. He drove out of the cemetery and towards the next case.

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