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Lark

I can't say I knew what to think when I got that call…

Sam Winchester was on the other end of my phone that night as I pulled my 1985 Chevy Scottsdale into a rather unpleasant motel. There are places a hunter must stay to remain off the radar of local law enforcement. It's also effective to drive a Series Ten, one ton metal monster that fits in around rural America as much as a cowboy hat and a pair of mud boots. Police don't look twice.

"Lark," Sam said and the tone in his voice made my heart sink. "I'm sorry," he said.

Now, I've always been used to the Winchesters apologizing. If it wasn't "Sorry, Lark, I borrowed your revolver without your blessing and then lost it," then it was, "Sorry Lark, we borrowed your truck because mine was smashed by an eighteen wheeler." Sons of bitches… This time, however, I wasn't so sure it was something I was going to be able to quickly get over.

"It's Gabriel," he said.

I chuckled. I don't know why. Usually, if it involved Gabriel, it was going to be a bad day anyway. I had had plenty of bad days since I had met that troublesome angel. That only made it worse.

"What about him?" I asked as I pulled into a parking spot and made sure to set the emergency brake. I left it in first gear, in case my brake failed me. I didn't want to be chasing my truck into oncoming traffic like I had the week before.

"He's dead."

I laughed. "What?"

"Lucifer killed him, Lark. I'm sorry."

I couldn't move.

"Lark?"

Taking a slow breath, I sat up straight in my seat and said, "Okay," as calmly as I could. "Thanks for letting me know, Sam. You two be safe out there. Let me know if there's anything I can do to help. You know… with Lucifer and all."

Dean's voice came through, he was shouting through the phone and I had to pull it away from my ear. "We're going after the other Horsemen!" he said with all the bravery of a mad man.

"I'll keep an eye out," I replied.

"We're pretty sure we might be looking at an outbreak of the Croatoan virus in the near future," Sam said quickly.

"I'm settling in soon," I told him. "You two worry about yourselves."

"See you soon, Lark," Sam said.

"See you soon, Sam," I said and then added lightheartedly, "And tell Dean to find my damn revolver."

"I have it!" Dean called out through the phone. "And you can have it back. It's a piece of junk anyway!"

I sighed. "You tried to shoot the Devil with it, didn't you?"

"How'd you know?" Dean asked.

"It's my gun, genius," I replied. "I know what it can and can't kill. And if you'd asked me before you went all that way, I could've told you that. It probably works on everything except God and the Devil themselves!"

"Well how were we supposed to know?" Dean griped.

"By asking the owner of the damn gun!" I grumbled back.

"Your uncle never knew anything," Dean muttered.

"Dean Winchester," I said hotly, "you think you're so funny!"

"See you later, Lark," he said and I could hear his smile in his words.

"See you, Dean," I chuckled.

It had always been like that. Almost as long as I had known them. I was a kid again around them. They brought out the best in me, the part of me that wanted to trust and love. They were my brothers. I wasn't trying to replace the blood ones I had lost, that was the last thing I wanted, but there was a camaraderie there that I had with few others. Especially bloodthirsty hunters…

After I hung up, I dropped the phone on the seat beside me. Sam and Dean were the only two that knew about my secret affair with an angel. Mostly because they were the only ones that knew he was an angel. I didn't want them to know how much I actually cared. I could never really cry about anything, and I didn't want them to hear me sobbing at the end of the line. That was why Dean and I had laughed it off. End happy before I was left to myself.

I wanted to cry. I wanted to scream and pound on the horn of my truck and road-rage my way to the next town with my foot mashed down on the accelerator. Even if it only topped out at eighty, if I was lucky. I had been meaning to fix that but I hadn't gotten around to ordering the parts. Not to mention I didn't see it as being necessary anymore with the coming apocalypse.

I hit the steering wheel once and the pain rattled up through my arm. I couldn't afford to break anything, not myself, nor my truck, so I grabbed my phone and stuffed it into my pocket as I got out. In the passenger seat was my carry case, a duffel bag with necessities like shotguns, ammunition for a small army, my rifle, and my trusty semiautomatic that my father had given me when I was finally allowed to go on hunts. I had six generic grenades left and seven salt-incendiaries that my grandmother had taught me to make. Granted, she used black powder, and I used C4. How the times had changed…

Inside my hotel room, I took in the drab carpeting that was discolored in some places. Someone had tried to clean up spills on the repulsive red shag with commercial cleaners and botched it. Every bottle says to test a small area first. Apparently they couldn't read.

I groaned as I closed the door behind me. The cheapest room had two full-sized beds. It felt empty. I threw my bag on one bed and sat on the other. I needed to unpack. I needed to shower and slip my sawed-off under my pillow before I slept. I needed to sleep.

There was no way I was going to sleep.

Lucifer was loose. Who could sleep knowing Lucifer was loose? Gabriel could, if angels slept. I swear he never had a care in the world. Why would he? He could leave back to Heaven whenever he wanted.

I opened my bag and took out a set of slightly worn clothes. The outer clothes never mattered. As long as my underwear was clean, I didn't give a damn. Pistol and sawed-off in hand, I locked the door and went to the bathroom. I locked that door, too. I wasn't about to be caught with my pants down with a bunch of demons entering the room. It had happened once before and it was not on my list of finer moments.

The water was as hot as I could get it, and steam filled the whole room. There are times when a cold shower is necessary, but for some reason, scalding water was something I could think through. Pain was something I could work with, something all hunters worked with, but I am the direct descendent of Samuel Colt. My job was always to grin and bear it, shut up and take it, and hunt the evil in the world. I was raised to be ruthless. I was raised knowing that a little collateral damage was okay if it benefitted the greater good. The greater good. What a load of horse shit.

My father would have been furious if he had seen me playing nice with the Winchesters. He would've blown a gasket when I adopted more of their beliefs than those he had thrust upon me. Every soul was worth something. It had to be. If not… What the hell was I trying to save?

The hot water burned every inch of my skin. I tried not to think about Gabriel, but it was much too difficult. I found myself sitting in the tub with my knees drawn to my chest like a child. My head was quickly filling with memories that I wanted so desperately to go away. I couldn't cry. I am a Colt. And Colts don't sit in the bathtub and cry like a child. We step back into the world and get revenge.

Revenge. On who? Lucifer? That was the quickest way to die. That was dingdong-ditch on Death's doorstep. Unless you were actually ditching the Horseman's doorstep. Close enough.

I closed my eyes and heaved a long sigh. I was numb. I couldn't feel the pain of the hot water any longer. It was always like that. My father had once told me someone could burn my skin off and I wouldn't feel it. I had a scar on my lower back that had proved otherwise.

Shaking off my own unsettled feelings, I rose back to my feet and finished showering. I figured the heat was somehow slowly damaging all the nerve endings in my body and when I couldn't feel it anymore, it was probably safe to get out soon. I never thought to actually change the temperature. Gabriel had always laughed at me about that. Not that that was one particular thing he laughed about. He laughed at me for everything. At first it made me angry. Then I realized the truth. He was just as broken as I was.

I first met him in Oregon. I had been following the tracks of what I had thought was a Trickster. Sam and Dean had warned me about the one they had encountered and efficiently stabbed through the chest. Finding the right wood for the stake was a bitch.

I had tracked the strange occurrences into the woods. I was a smart one, going into the woods alone, but I had never been allowed the luxury of a fellow hunter to protect my back. I was only a little envious of the Winchesters.

It was easy to play stupid. Naivete was always easy to project. When I walked into that forest, I had on a long black skirt with a pistol strapped to my inner thigh. That was the first thing my father had taught me to carry. Under my little jacket, I had my sawed-off packed with salt rounds. I had one of those professional cameras that nature observers used. It was old, but it was probably considered vintage. In my camera bag was my ammunition. I had checked myself in the mirror before I even stepped foot out of my truck. Nothing would have been the wiser.

I was looking through the wide lens of my camera, taking pictures of random things and pretending I was professional about it, when I saw an old wooden building. If I was trying to lay low, I might have considered a place like that. I took a picture of it and then went to the broken windows and looked in. Nothing but shadows and spider webs.

Finding the front door, I pulled it open. The hinges still worked. Everything looked exactly how I expected it to until I stepped across the threshold. Then it turned into Barnum and Bailey's and I couldn't help but stare. Being strictly raised as a hunter doesn't prepare a person for an empty house turning literally into a big-tent circus. The kid in me that never got to be a kid was suddenly screaming "Circus!" in my head and I had to rein in my excitement at the sight of elephants and tigers. The more logical part of my head then beat my inner child into submission. This wasn't real, whatever it was, but I didn't let my surprise and my smile falter. Someone knew I was there. It was best to keep them from feeling threatened. I could play dumb.

I was wandering around the empty seats, my eyes fixed on the people and animals below. Someone could have killed me the moment I stepped through the door, when I was completely confused. But they didn't. I was trying to watch my back and look completely preoccupied at the same time. It worked. Until a man appeared beside me. I reacted before I could think and I jumped away from him. I let myself trip over my own feet and fall to the seat beside me.

"I'm sorry I startled you," he laughed and offered me his hand.

He had a kind face, one that looked like he enjoyed laughing. I wondered if his laughter was often directed at the misfortune of others. I took his hand in mine and he pulled me to my feet. It was a warm hand.

"I'm sorry," I said sheepishly. "I'm probably not supposed to be here, am I?"

"I can look the other way," he told me with one of those much-too-charming smiles. It was almost disarming.

Dumb people just accept everything at face value. There was no way I was ever going to ask how a circus showed up in an old shack in the Oregon woods. I was just accepting it.

"Would you like to go down there?" he asked me.

I blurted, "Would I!"

He held his hand out to me and I took it with all the outward trust of someone that was trying to get herself killed. I simply wasn't sure how people could do that. Take someone's hand and expect them to play nice. I wasn't raised that way.

Stepping up to the outside of the ring, I asked myself if this man beside me was the Trickster. He didn't seem like any Trickster I had come across before. The silver ring I wore, spray-painted gold, had no effect on him either. I had the thought to test the stake I had hidden up my jacket sleeve, but thought better of it. I could play along a little longer. I wasn't in a hurry to blow my cover.

"Most people would ask a lot of questions," he said and I turned to him grinning.

"I'm not most people," I told him. I let a little too much of my own personality slip through the character I was playing. I turned my own mischievous smirk into a flirty grin that I had copied from young lovers.

For nearly an hour, I was petting tigers and elephants and this fun little capuchin monkey that sat on my shoulder and mimicked almost every movement I made. With approval, I took pictures. I really wondered if I would have pictures of the circus, or just pictures of the inside of a dilapidated wooden shack.

He was watching me the whole time. As much as I was trying to figure him out, I was certain he was trying to do the same with me.

Everything felt real. That was what I didn't understand. My encounter with a true Trickster was easy to leave. It was mind over matter. An angry dog had just been a table. One thing was always something else. But the tigers felt real. The monkey on my shoulder had weight. A Trickster would have just been in my head. This was no Trickster.

The sudden thought that I had been playing with real tigers like they were kittens settled in my mind like a weight. I had been much too careless.

Something must have shown on my face as I stared across that active circus, because the man then said, "Who are you?"

All eyes were on me. The tigers were growling at my back. The monkey had abandoned me. The tent was at a standstill and I was stuck in the middle. I turned to him and sighed, "The question isn't who am I. It's what are you?"

"You're a hunter?" he almost seemed to laugh.

I wondered why it was so hard to believe. No one else had laughed at me like that before. I had my sawed-off aimed at his face and he only laughed harder.

"That won't kill me," he said. "Man, you really walked in here with no idea of what you're up against."

"Should I have brought holy-fire?" I asked.

He wasn't smiling anymore. He didn't look happy at all.

The circus disappeared. We were suddenly standing high on a cliff, just the two of us. My back was to a long drop and a messy end.

"Guess I won't need this," I muttered and pulled the stake from my sleeve. I then dropped it off the side of the cliff and whistled as gravity took it to the ground.

He only stared at me, his eyes narrowed. This was the first time I had seen an angel in person. There had been stories passed down through generations of my family. And there could only be one thing that made illusion a reality like the circus. Tricksters just weren't strong enough to alter reality like that.

"I know when I'm outclassed, Angel," I told him, my voice even. Every flirty aspect of me was gone. Now I was just a hunter in a bad disguise and he was looking right through me.

"If you'll excuse me," I said as respectfully as I could. Then I walked past him. It was just a meatsuit with a friendly face. Poor guy probably wouldn't survive if the angel left his body, if he was even still alive. There was no telling what kind of damage that soul had been through with all the stories I had heard about the Trickster I had been hunting.

I was less than four feet behind him when we were no longer on the cliff's edge. Everything was dark. I stood very still and closed my eyes. I couldn't see, so I tried to listen.

"You never answered my question," I heard. It was still the angel's voice.

A light was switched on and I could feel the heat through my eyelids. I brought up my empty left hand and shielded my eyes before I opened them. I couldn't see anything outside of my circle of light. It was blinding. I closed my eyes again and listened. He had put me in the spotlight. I wasn't happy about it, but I wasn't about to rise to his baiting.

"Aren't you supposed to know things, Angel?" I asked calmly. Now I was baiting him. I couldn't help it. From birth, everyone of the Colt line was branded with Enochian. Angels couldn't find us. Demons couldn't find us. We were born invisible, and we would die invisible. It was Samuel Colt's Blessing. That was what the rest of us down the line called it. We didn't know how it happened, but it showed up on the x-rays. It was always fun trying to explain that one to doctors. It was also probably the only thing that made both me and my father laugh together.

I could almost feel the darkness recede. His scare tactic wasn't going to make me confess anything. I was raised in the dark. I was beaten bloody in the dark. It was daylight I feared. The dark was my cave, the place I lived and thrived. Daylight was where normal people carried on without a care. I didn't belong in that world.

Feeling a cool breeze across my face, I opened my eyes to see the forest again. The shack was gone. I wondered if it had ever really been there at all.

He was standing in front of me but I was looking past him, down the path I had walked to arrive in the company of an angel. He was watching me, but I didn't dare look upon his face. He didn't answer me and I knew he was being just as petty as I was. I didn't need an answer from him, though. It wasn't my place to question angels, and I didn't have to answer to them either.

I started walking away, with every intention of leaving when he blocked my way appeared before me with that whoosh of wings that I would one day find incredibly annoying.

"You don't exist," he told me.

"You know, you're not the first to tell me that," I said with a smile.

Being invisible was a blessing and a curse. We Colts have always been unable to hold down a job in civilized society, ever since the first of us. If we walked into a restaurant, we were overlooked. We are never truly seen. It's lonely being an unknown face in the crowd. I believed he could see me because I walked into his reality. He just had no idea who I was. And he wouldn't until I told him.

It had almost been the same with the Winchesters, but they had shown up on a monster hunt that I was already on and it was chaos from the first moment we met. Only now do I dare to say that I consider them my friends.

The angel stared back at me and the look in his face almost made me speak. I knew the trick. He was trying to see into my mind and get my truths that way. It wouldn't work. I smiled back at him with a dare. I could see his frustration. This was my first time pissing off an angel, and I was enjoying it more than I should have.

He seemed to settle down where he stood. He let his annoyance visibly fall away and he only looked back at me with his charming smile. I was skeptical. "Don't you belong in heaven?" I asked. "With the rest of them?"

"Heaven's boring," he told me.

An angel that would rather hang out with humans. I didn't know what to think. I wasn't about to trust a word out of his mouth. I didn't trust anyone, why would an angel of the Lord be any different.

"Who are you?" he asked again, this time softer. "I feel like I should know."

"Don't worry about it," I said as I walked around him. "As soon as I'm out of sight, you'll forget all about me."

The only reason Sam, Dean, and Bobby remembered me was because I had broken the wall. I had offered my name and a line of contact. To everyone else, I was a passing thought.

I was walking back down the path to where I parked my truck when I felt my shoulders tense. I still had my sawed-off in my hand as I spun around and held it up. The angel was there, following me. He stopped in his tracks and said, "It still won't work."

"Might hurt enough to get you to go away," I replied through clenched teeth.

"I don't like puzzles."

"Shouldn't have pretended to be a Trickster," I said. Then I asked, "Why are you following me?"

I wasn't expecting the answer he gave me.

"You're alone," he said. "No one should have to exist alone."

I was alone. It really hadn't sunk in until an angel told me. I knew I was by myself, and perhaps that was the same thing as being alone, but truly alone was another story. He was right. I existed alone in my invisible world. Had he seen that in me when he had turned out the lights? How comfortable I was in the dark, by myself. Most hunters were, but I was not most hunters.

"What do you want?" I asked, lowering my shotgun.

"I want to know who you are," he said. "I should know who you are."

"You stop to think maybe God wanted me like this for a reason?" I asked him. "Because I have. And I think there's a reason I shouldn't answer that question."

He looked back at me with this terrible sadness. He was laughing at me only moments ago for threatening him. Now he pitied me. I shot him.

He looked down at the buckshot that riddled his stomach and said, "You're buying me a new shirt."

My shoulders dropped and I bowed my head. I couldn't keep my shoulders from shaking.

"Are you laughing at me?" he asked

I couldn't stop from laughing in his face. He had to ask and I couldn't help myself.

"You don't get to laugh very often, do you?" he asked and I could hear his pitying tone.

I wanted to shoot him again, but it wouldn't do anything. He'd still be patronizing. I turned my back on him and began walking away. I didn't feel him behind me, but I was sure he wasn't about to leave me alone just yet. When I reached my truck, I went to the bed and put my camera and ammo-pack into the toolbox. The moment I opened the driver's side door, I jumped back.

"So where are we going?" the angel asked as he looked back at me from the passenger side of the bench seat.

"We," I said as I got into the truck, "are not going anywhere together. Get out."

"You can't make me," he said.

"You are such a child!" I shouted back.

He was grinning at me. I had taken the bait and let him get under my skin. At that moment, I understood it didn't matter if I yelled at him or shot him in the face. He was going to still be sitting in my truck laughing at me. He was going to make my life more difficult than it already was, and I was perfectly willing to reciprocate.

"Shut up," I said as closed my door and put my key into the ignition. The pistol strapped to my thigh was making sitting uncomfortable. I reached up my skirt to pull it loose without a second thought to my company and then I set it and the sawed-off between us.

"So that's how guns are made," he said and I stared at him.

I turned the key in the ignition and threw it into reverse, peeling out and throwing him into the dash. Angels were not meant to ride in vehicles. "Put your seatbelt on," I said as I spun the wheel and put it into first gear.

That was how we had met. Dysfunctional. He was talkative and enjoyed my company. I was silent and despised him. I couldn't get rid of the angel in my truck. People saw him. He wanted people to see him, and it drew attention to me. I realized what was happening when I was pulled over for speeding. I had never been pulled over for speeding. I didn't know what to do. No one ever paid attention to my truck, ever. They couldn't see me.

"Get out and scream about bees," the angel told me.

"What?" I asked.

"Do it! Before he gets over here."

Never trust an angel…

I did as he said. I jumped out of my truck and ran around swatting at the air shouting "Bees! Bees!" and then for extra measure, I jumped into the ditch. I wasn't counting on the fact that it had recently rained and it was filled with a foot and a half of mud.

Everything was quiet until I heard, "Ma'am? Are you here? I think the bees are gone!"

I pulled my head out of the mud and the poor officer screamed.

"I'm sorry," he said, "I would have tried to help, but I'm highly allergic."

"Me too," I said as I tried to climb out of the ditch. The officer offered his hand to help pull me out and I took it. I glanced back to my truck then and saw no one else in it. "Think they're gone?" I asked.

"Hopefully," he said to me. "You have a better day, Ma'am. I apologize for the inconvenience."

I looked myself over and said, "What inconvenience?" and the two of us had an amicable chuckle.

I went back to my truck and when I opened the door, the angel was there again. I didn't look at him, but I could tell he was smiling again. I climbed inside and after I shut the door, he said, "How's that non-existence going for you?"

I said nothing but put the truck into gear and maintained the speed limit to a gas station that had a shower area for the truckers. The angel came inside the store with me and I was noticed immediately and met with giggles and stares. I had to get rid of him.

After I showered and cleaned up, I went outside to my truck and he was sitting in the truck bed staring up at the stars like he had never seen them before. "You've gotta go," I told him, breaking into his serenity like a wrecking ball.

"It was just a little mud," he replied. "You humans are so sensitive."

"You don't understand," I told him. "I am invisible for a reason. You draw attention to me and put my life in danger. I won't have that."

He didn't understand. I had yelled at him before but he wasn't smiling back at me anymore. We had spent nearly two weeks together on the road and I had called him every name in the book, and he had only smiled. Everything was a joke to him. I slept in my truck and ate in my truck, and for two weeks I hadn't found a single thing to hunt. It wasn't normal. I could sneak up on anything and now it was like demons smelled their blood on my hands and took off running. It was an awful lot of blood.

I knew the only way I would get rid of him. I trusted him enough to have him in my passenger seat. There was nothing he could do to me. Even if I left him at that truck stop, he would remember me, but he wouldn't be able to find me.

"What's your name, Angel?" I asked.

He smoothly leapt out of the back of my truck like he knew what was coming. He was going to cooperate. "I am Gabriel," he said.

I stepped away from him. "Oh holy shit…" was all I could say. It wasn't okay to yell at lower level angels, and it definitely wasn't okay to yell at the archangel Gabriel. My blood froze in my veins. I was speechless. All of my bravado was gone. I was suddenly afraid. I hadn't been acquainted with fear since I was a child. It was not a familiar feeling.

"They were right," I said softly, "We all go to Hell…"

He stared back at me with a question on his face that I didn't want to answer.

Trying to maintain some semblance of control in the situation I said, "I need a minute…"

I got into the truck and turned the key. When it roared to life I looked to the passenger side window and found him standing there, just looking back at me, waiting.

"Are you coming?" I asked and he got into the cab.

Before he could even close the door, I was leaving the parking lot. I was trying to keep my foot off the accelerator. I couldn't be caught speeding again, I didn't think the bees excuse was going to work twice.

I had to get away from the town, on a back road where it was quiet and dark. I needed somewhere I could think. I found a bridge and parked my truck on the side of the road. Then I got out and started running. I ran down to the river below the bridge and stopped.

I stood there listening to the water and slowly I could breathe again. Who the hell was I to open my mouth against an archangel?

There was a Heaven. There were angels. There were demons. There was a Hell. These were things I had always known. But there was a difference between knowing and truly seeing. I was just a hunter thrown in the middle of everything. I had to get my head straight again… I wasn't crazy after all.

I heard footsteps and I glanced back to see the archangel Gabriel approaching me in his human meatsuit. Poor handsome meatsuit. He stopped at a distance from me. No pressure.

I inhaled so deep that my chest hurt and then I turned to him. The dark was comforting. The stars were all the light I needed. I could see fine without fluorescents.

"I apologize," I tried to say amicably. "My name is Laura Skylark Colt. I am a descendent of Samuel Colt. Everyone… just calls me Lark."

He stared back at me with an expression that betrayed his thoughts. "For the love of Dad…" he sighed heavily.

"What...?" I asked.

"I can't kill you after all."

"W-what?" I was starting to think not setting him on fire in the first place was a bad idea.

"You are the only person on the planet that knows I am here," he said and shrugged. "You destroyed my very own witness protection program."

"I… what?" was all I managed to say before I got angry. "You made people see me!" I shouted.

"You're only human," he said, "You'll live."

Looking back on this conversation, I know now what he was doing. But at that time, I was furious. "You're not even supposed to be here! This is my world. If you have no respect for my life, you have no business being here. Not to mention setting your ridiculous reality traps for idiots."

"I caught you in it, didn't I?"

I didn't know what to say. All that came out was, "Asshole."

He smiled again. He had a strange way of breaking the ice.

"I have to get going," I told him, a finality to my words.

"You're just leaving me here?" he asked, offended.

"You're going to get me killed," I said. "And I have no business hanging around with an angel pretending to be a Trickster. That's painting a target on my back and I can't have that."

"You're the last Colt of reproductive soundness. You can't die until after you have a child," he said plainly.

I couldn't stop the words from coming out of my mouth. "And you can go screw yourself, because that is not happening." Then I blurted, "Reproductive soundness? What the hell am I? A cow?" I glared back at him and then had to look away. I was getting angry. To some angels, I was sure all humans were cattle, just a lower being.

I had a temper, like everyone in my family, but pointless anger had been beaten out of me as a child. It was a useless thing to have. I had never been angry like I was around the archangel. I was not bitter or petty, and here with an angel of the Lord, I could have burned him in holy-fire and been happy to dance on his ashes. I didn't like being angry. It blurred my thoughts.

"I have to go," I said softly. "I have a job to do."

"Let someone else handle it," he shrugged.

"I am the someone else," I replied sharply. "Angels don't take care of us poor humans. We have to do it ourselves."

"What a burden," he sighed.

I couldn't tell if he was being serious or not. I could hardly ever tell.

"So you let yourself be pushed into an outcast society, alone, so you can be the hero?" he asked me.

"I am alone because of the Enochian on my bones; the spell on my family put in place by God or some angel that banished my family to solitude," I spat.

"You blame God?" he asked.

"No," I replied with a shake of my head. "I always figured someone had a plan for me. And this was it. I don't wish my fate on anyone, and that is why I do what I do. Not to be a hero, but it's all I know. And the people in this world would fall to pieces if they knew what blood felt like on their hands. Let them think they can still question the existence of God and demons."

I was going to leave an angel under a bridge in the middle of nowhere. I couldn't have him with me.

"I don't know how to live like a normal person, Gabriel," I said softly. "I was born to be alone. Please don't follow me anymore. I have a job to do."

He watched me go. I left him there standing at a riverbank beneath the stars. He would be fine. He made for a charming human.

On my own again, I reveled in the quiet. It was just my music, that Gabriel had criticized, and the sound of my truck. I could speed and never be noticed. I walked into stores and no one saw me. People forgot me moments after speaking to me, like the cashier. I was very much alone.

Hunting came easy. Every night was another demon. I fell back into my routine of demons, blood, and everything else that was strange in the night. I had existed for only a moment in Gabriel's eyes, and then I was gone. I was numb to the world. I lived in my head. There was no anger or hate. I felt nothing.

It wasn't until I realized I had lost something that I understood I never had anything. I had a name I wasn't allowed to share and a life that wasn't my own. I was a Colt, and I had a legacy to uphold. That was my reason for existence. I wasn't human. I was just a place-marker in history. Gabriel had said I was just alive to reproduce.

I slammed on my brakes in the middle of a deserted highway. That couldn't be it. I had a life for a reason. My destiny was my own… wasn't it?

I was gripping the steering wheel so tight that my knuckles were pale. My hands shook. I was nothing. I had to accept that again. I was a Colt, and we were hunters. That was all.

I had let the Trickster trick me into thinking I was more. I wasn't. I was alone, and that was how it had to be. That was how I needed it to be. That was my normal. The angel could stare at the stars and dream, but I had no dreams. Colts were not allowed to dream. What ifs were never allowed to enter my mind.

Briefly, I wondered if this was an identity crisis. It felt like one. I needed to shut down my brain and let it go. I took human emotions and dropped them off the cliff like I did to the stake that was meant for a false Trickster. If my father had still been alive, he would have done it for me. I was being nice to myself.

I took a deep breath and restarted my truck. It had stalled out when I took it to a complete stop without downshifting. As I headed down the road again, I turned off my phone. God had meant for me to be alone. I didn't need anyone telling me I could live a normal life. I didn't want one.

On a moonless night, as I sat in the bed of my truck and ate a tasteless sandwich from a gas station refrigerator, I found myself staring up at the stars. I wished that night that I had a dog. Sam had Dean, it was the same thing. I chuckled after the thought and shook my head. The poor dog would be a liability. If I happened to be seen by anyone, demons would attack my dog just to get to me.

Maybe a goldfish… I could glue a fishbowl to my dashboard.

When I had left the Winchesters, I had not felt like this. I had been happy to return to my solitude. Perhaps it was because Gabriel had made others see me as well. The Winchesters shared my world, and then they departed. The archangel had pulled me into existence, a place I had never been before. What was it to truly exist?

I grumbled to myself and threw the uneaten half of my sandwich out the back of my truck. I had lost my appetite. Hugging my sawed-off, I climbed into my cab, locked the doors, and slept out in the middle of nowhere.