The day after the angels fell, it snows. Dean watches from the hospital window as it pelts the ground, glowing in the light of the parking lot lamps. His trained hunter eyes pick out a falsity in the pattern, an anomaly in the flakes. A single, white downy feather flicks past the smooth glass, and Dean rubs his bleary eyes, but then another swirls by, and another. This is not regular snow.
Dean grabs his jacket from the green plastic hospital chair. "Be right back Sammy."
Once outside, the incredibly icy wind steals his breath away, but a feather settles in the hollow between his collar and neck, and he's dizzy with wonder like an asthmatic after a track meet.
"What do you know?" he chuckles to himself. His boots crunch over a puffy mix of snow and feathers and ice, and he stops and scoops up a handful of the softer stuff to toss into the air. The flakes in his lashes glint like stars.
He can't help thinking of Sammy, of Cas, of Kevin, can't help remembering all the people who are dead because of him, but he doesn't feel the guilt as heavily as he normally does. Maybe, there's an element of magic in the angel feathers littered at his feet, suspending the hurt for a little while. He grins like an idiot, and makes snow angels right there in the empty hospital parking lot. They say time is fluid, but for awhile, time froze.
Dean only tromps back inside when his nose begins to run, a single feather tucked away in his wallet. Sam would never believe him otherwise.
Maybe Dean's imagining it, but as Sam lies in the hospital bed, he looks a little better, healthier, the color coming back to his skin and the luster returning to his hair. Sammy would be okay. There might not be any angels watching over Sam anymore, but frankly angels are dicks, and watchfulness is what big brothers are for anyway.
