Chapter 56: A Light In The Dark

When Sophie opened her eyes the next morning, she blinked at all of the light hitting her in the face. Why on earth was it so bright? She didn't have any windows in her room in the bunker.

She blinked again, and then in a flash, she remembered where she was.

She sat up quickly, rubbing her eyes. Why was it so damn bright? She never slept late enough for it to be this bright when she woke up. Her eyes scanned the room, and she was surprised to see that Remy was nowhere to be found. She hadn't imagined that he'd been with her, right? This wasn't all just some crazy, anger-induced dream? Her gaze moved to the clock, and when she saw the time, she jumped out of bed.

Ten in the morning? She hadn't slept till ten since…ever.

And where the hell was Remy?

Eventually deciding that she should just take advantage of her alone time, she quickly grabbed her backpack and went into the bathroom, grabbing her toiletries out of the bag and the outfit she would be changing into, and then she quickly stepped into the shower.

The hot water pounding onto her skin was the most refreshing thing she had felt in what seemed like years. She wished there was a soap that could wash away her anger, and her sadness, and her fear. But since there wasn't, she was going to have to let the calming rhythm of the shower slowly wind her down.

After about fifteen minutes, she finally turned off the water and hopped out, drying herself off and throwing on her clothes, a pair of jeans, a black tank top, and a red and white plaid shirt thrown over the top of it, unbuttoned. She pulled on the dirty old white Converse she'd been wearing when she left the bunker, and then shoved the rest of her stuff back in her backpack and walked out of the bathroom.

She was in the middle of throwing her half-dried hair up into a ponytail when she saw that Remy had returned. He was looking aimlessly out the window, his back to her when she walked out. "Hey," she said, and he turned as she pulled her hair tie off her wrist. "How come you didn't wake me up? I told you I wanted to get up early."

He looked at her carefully, and she was surprised to see a searching look on his face. "You didn't sleep very well," he noted. "I figured you needed a few extra hours."

She finished her ponytail and raised an eyebrow. "I didn't sleep well? What do you mean? I slept like a rock."

"You talked a bit," he said slowly. "You were sort of…yelling. I had to calm you down or else you'd have woken up the whole city."

She just stared at him. "I was yelling?" she asked. "I don't remember any of this."

"Don't worry about it," Remy said, waving her concerns away. "I took care of it."

The unsaid words hung between them. I took care of you. She continued to stare at him. "How?" she asked, unwilling to let the subject go.

"It's a guardian angel thing. I can sort of absorb your nightmares if I'm close by to you." He shrugged. "It's really not a big deal. Coffee?"

Sophie just looked at him, mouth partially hung open in shock, as he gestured to the two cups of coffee sitting on top of the boxy TV that the motel had provided for them. Wordlessly, she walked over and grabbed one, tasting it and finding it to have the perfect sugar to cream to coffee ratio, which was really hard to achieve for someone who more often than not preferred her coffee black. She just looked up at Remy over the top of the cup. "You kind of scare me, Remy," she said honestly.

He cracked a grin. "You kind of scare me, too, Ace."

With a shake of her head, she made her way over to her phone, which was still plugged into the wall. She picked it up and gave the screen one look before groaning.

"What?" Remy asked.

"I have about ten missed calls from my dad," she replied. "And even more from Sam." She didn't include the five missed calls and half dozen texts from Jack, asking her why she wasn't at school and if she was okay. She sent a quick text that simply stated I'm fine before shoving the phone in her pocket.

"Well," Remy started in the kind of voice that immediately promised a lecture, "obviously they're worried. You've been gone for twenty-four hours, with no contact whatsoever. They're likely to assume the worst."

"They know I'm fine," she snapped. "If something had happened to me, you would've gone and told them."

"Still. If my child had been gone for a day after an angry falling out, I'm sure I'd still be concerned even if I knew she was physically fine."

"Yeah, well, you don't have children, so this isn't your problem," Sophie dismissed him. He rolled his eyes, and she unplugged her phone and grabbed her keys. "Are you ready to go?"

"I'm assuming you won't tell me where we're going?" Remy asked sardonically.

"Where's the fun in that?"

He gave her a quick half smile. "Just give me one second." And then, before Sophie could protest, he peeled off the Henley he'd been wearing and tossed it into the corner of the room. Sophie lowered her eyes away from his body, but she hadn't missed how muscled his torso was and how toned his biceps were. She thought about Jack, and how he would be livid standing in this room with her, and she quickly tried to think of something else, anything else besides how ridiculously hot Remy looked shirtless.

An angel, she reminded herself. He is an angel. He is creepily older than you. That is not even his own actual body.

Once she had collected her wits, she lifted her head back up to see that he had pulled on a white T-shirt that fit him perfectly and was in the process of zipping up a grey hoodie. Once he was done, he turned back towards her, and even though he wasn't acknowledging her intentional silence, the smile in his eyes told her that he'd known she had looked at him.

"Now I'm ready. Let's go."


Driving through Asheville after not being there for years was the strangest experience for Sophie.

The city was just as familiar to her now as it was foreign. She'd drive down a street that she and her mom had gone down every single day back when Sophie was little, and she'd see so many of the same places that she'd seen as a child, but they were all a little bit different. Buildings had been updated, or new businesses had come in and taken over the old ones. Nothing was significantly different, but nothing was quite the same either.

It shouldn't have really surprised her. After all, she hadn't been in Asheville since she was probably about ten, around the time her mom had met Steve. A lot could change in six years. But still, the odd combination of foreign and familiar was jarring to her, and she was silent as she drove herself through winding streets of the city that used to be her home.

For the first time since she had met him, Remy was utterly silent. He seemed to realize that this trip meant something to her, and she didn't want to waste it with idle chatter. So they drove in a strangely comfortable silence until finally, they ended up at a storage unit center.

When she parked, Remy looked at her in confusion. "Why are we here?"

She didn't say anything at first, leaning over and grabbing her backpack out of the back of the car, searching around for her wallet. She opened it up and searched in it for a moment before pulling out a key. "I've carried this around with me for years," she said, staring at it in the palm of her hand. "When my mom died, she left it to me in her will. When we moved to Apex to live with Steve, she couldn't bring a lot of the things we'd collected over the years with us, but she was such a hoarder that she didn't really want to throw any of it away or give it to someone else. So she put it all in a storage unit here. Unit 8B."

Remy nodded, eyeing her closely. "Do you want me to stay here?" he asked seriously.

Sophie looked up at him in surprise. The fact that he offered to stay behind both shocked her and touched her. It was the first time since being bonded to her that he had asked her if she wanted some privacy. "No," she said, almost surprising herself, too. "No, you can come."

He nodded, and they both stepped out of the car, making their way towards the long rows of storage units. She found row B and walked down silently until she found unit 8B. She stood in front of it, staring at it like it could explode at any moment.

"Do you think this is stupid?" she asked suddenly, turning to Remy.

He ran a hand through his golden hair, his eyes narrowed as he stared at the storage unit. She watched him carefully, analyzing his every movement, trying to gauge his reaction. "I think this will dredge up unnecessary pain for you," he admitted honestly. "I think it will remind you of a time long in your past that you can never have again. But I also think it is special to have something so close to your heart, and I think it would be stupid to let yourself forget it."

The words sunk into her mind, and then with a burst of resolution, she stepped forward and unlocked the unit, pulling the door upward and looking inside.

The first thing that she noticed was all the dust. It was settled on every surface in the small dark storage unit, and immediately she sneezed. Remy gave her a sideways glance, but said nothing.

She took two steps into the unit, which held some boxes and a few pieces of furniture. The first thing her eyes were drawn to was an old recliner. She knew that recliner very well. It had been her mom's bed for about five months, when they'd shared a one bedroom apartment with her mom's high school best friend when Sophie had been about five. Her mom had absolutely refused to let Sophie go without a bed, so she'd made her daughter take the tiny pull out couch in the living room while she spent every night in the armchair. Her friend took the tiny bedroom in the apartment because she was paying two thirds of the rent.

They'd gotten their own apartment after that, once Sophie's mom had gotten a job as a paralegal at a local law firm, a job that could pay for a decent two-bedroom apartment in a safe neighborhood. But they'd kept that armchair. Sophie's mom always called it her old friend.

Sophie made her way farther into the unit, and the next thing she saw was a tiny rocking chair, meant for a small child. She walked over to it, running her fingers gently over the top of it. The white paint on it was starting to come off, and her named had been painted in fading pink cursive at the top of the chair. Sophia Marybeth.

Sophie looked back at Remy, who was still standing at the entrance to the unit, watching her. She offered him a small grin. "My mom's dad made this for me when I was born," she said quietly. "He died pretty soon after that. Cancer. I was always so sad that I never got to know him."

Remy's eyes never left her, but he said nothing. She moved on to one of the boxes stacked against the wall, and she grabbed the first one she could get her hands on and opened it up. When she looked inside, an unexpected laugh found its way out of her mouth.

She turned to Remy, who was looking at her with a bemused expression. She pulled the first item out of the box, a tiny pink onesie with a bunch of ridiculous lace on it. "My baby clothes," she laughed. A grin touched Remy's face as he watched her sift through her old clothes. "God, Mom, I can't believe you kept all this," she whispered under her breath, a telltale lump beginning to form in her throat.

Over the course of the next hour, she looked through boxes and took a long, painful, funny, joyful, and melancholy trip down memory lane. She unearthed all sorts of strange items from her childhood—her baby blanket, the stuffed kitty named Lion that she hadn't been able to part with until they moved in with Steve, her first report card. She found the ticket stubs from that time her mom had taken her to a Braves game, the tiny soccer jersey from the one year she'd decided to play a sport, the mix CD of popular 90's songs her mom had listened to a million times over in her car.

Seeing all of this now was so strange for Sophie, like looking into another life. And maybe she sort of was. After all, her life now was so drastically separated from the life she'd lived with her mom that they weren't even comparable. She loved both of the lives with all she had, but deep down, she knew they couldn't coexist.

It was the last box, the smallest one shoved in the farthest corner, that hit Sophie the hardest. She opened it up, wondering what on earth could be inside, and when she saw what it was, she froze.

Pictures. They were pictures. Her mom had been crazy about pictures, always wanting to document every second of Sophie's life. The box was filled with them, some loosely lying in piles in the box, others organized into little albums. She couldn't even look at all of them because tears were already pooling in her eyes.

The only one she could focus on was the one sitting right on top. Sophie remembered the day it was taken. She had been eight, about to go away to summer camp for a week, and she'd been wearing her camp T-shirt and a pair of jean shorts with pink flowers stitched onto them. Her hair had been more blonde than red then, and in the picture it was braided into pigtails. Sophie was sitting on top of her giant suitcase, and her mom was hugging her from behind, her beautiful red hair falling down around her face in soft curls as she looked down at Sophie's smiling face, the latter of whom was staring directly at the camera. She couldn't remember who her mom had gotten to take the picture, but that didn't matter. All she could think about was that one, tiny moment of pure bliss, captured in the photo. A little forever locked into a polaroid.

Sophie sniffed, putting the top back on the box, forcing her tears back. She couldn't cry in front of Remy. She cleared her throat and took a deep breath, tucking the small box of photos under her arm. "Okay," she said, turning around and looking back at Remy. His eyes were filled with a sadness, like he knew the emotions she was feeling and wished he could do something about it. "I'm ready to go now."

He nodded, and she walked back to the entrance of the storage unit. As she did, she passed by Lion, her stuffed kitty, sitting forlornly on the top of a pile of boxes. On instinct, she reached up and grabbed him, shoving him under her arm on top of the box with the pictures. "Okay, now I'm ready to go," she said when she finally made it back to Remy, looking up at him.

"Okay," he said, grinning at her. It was a warm smile, softer than any of the smirks and half-grins he usually threw her way. "Off we go."


There was only one more stop on Sophie's list. And when she told Remy what it was, he even let her drive there by herself.

She was going to go visit her mom.

Caroline Gardner's funeral had not been a good experience for Sophie. And how could it have been? Her mother had just been ripped away from life, and Sophie had been there in the car to witness it. Up until that point, it had been the very worst thing that had ever happened to her.

But it was still Sophie's biggest regret that she had treated her mother's funeral more as an event to wallow in grief than an opportunity to say goodbye to her mother. There had never been a sense of closure, a sense of finality and ending.

After the funeral, she'd never gone back to her mother's grave. She hadn't wanted to face that reality again. So she'd hopped into Steve's car and never looked back.

And now she had driven sixteen hours in a haze of anger just to be sitting here, in front of her mother's grave, with an opportunity to talk.

But she didn't know what to say.

She looked at the headstone. Caroline Elizabeth Gardner. A mother and a daughter. A light in the dark. Sophie thought about that. A light in the dark. That had been her mom, that's for sure. A safe, warm home in a cold, uncertain world.

She sat down in front of the headstone, staring at the headstone. "Hey Mom," she said softly. "I'm sorry this is the first time I've visited you. It's been a weird couple of years."

She paused, almost expecting there to be some sort of reply. Only silence greeted her, along with the cool brush of wind on her face.

"I don't know if you've been keeping tabs on me, but I found my dad. Dean. I get it now, why you had a thing with him. He's a pretty cool guy." She shook her head. "No, actually, he's a great person. The best. Except for when he makes horrible decisions. I don't know if you've heard, but he recently signed away his soul to a demon that wants to break the Devil out of his Cage in Hell. You sure knew how to pick 'em." She choked out a humorless laugh. "Bet you never thought you'd hear me say any of that, did you?"

The wind was her only answer yet again. She could hear leaves blowing across the grass, and she frowned. "I miss you, Mom," she said quietly. "I miss you a lot. But I think I'd miss you a lot more if it weren't for Dad. And Sam. He's my uncle. I think you would have liked him." She paused for a moment and sighed. "Not to say I don't miss you so much every day that it physically hurts. Because I do." She cringed. She was so bad at this.

She sat in quiet for a moment, collecting her thoughts. "I just want you to be proud of me, Mom," she whispered. "I can never tell if the person I am is the person you wanted me to be. I'm scared of growing up without you. I'm scared of forgetting you and forgetting who you wanted me to be. I'm scared of becoming someone who you wouldn't want as a daughter. And I know people change and that's life but…I don't know, I feel like more has changed for me than it has for most people."

She let out a long sigh. "I know what you'd say, though," she said with a laugh. "You'd say that I'm stronger than I ever could imagine, and that I can do more than just catch the curveballs, I can knock them out of the park." She stared at the headstone for a few more moments. "And you'd tell me that you will always be proud of me," she said in a choked voice. "And you'd tell me that you love me. And I'd tell you that I love you, too."

And that's when she started crying. Really crying. The choked pains in her chest were dissolving and dissipating in the form of tears, and she sat there, clutching her knees to her chest as if they were her lifeline. A million thoughts were flying through her head, all jumbled together nonsensically. Being tied up by the vampire Sebastian and learning about the existence of the supernatural world, going off to summer camp when she was eight, looking up after Cas had healed her in the motel in Lincoln to see her dad clutching her after thinking she was dead, driving down a long highway in the back of the Impala with Sam and Dean as they listened to some old Creedence Clearwater Revival track, driving down a slick road in the rain with her mom and screaming as a car came hurtling at them without showing any signs of slowing down—

Suddenly, there was an arm around her, and she didn't have to look up to know that it was Remy. He was silent, and he just sat by her and held her with one arm as she cried. She didn't even care that she was crying loudly and with abandon, as if she'd never cried before. Everything was hitting her at once, and even though Remy's presence helped her keep some of her mind together, she felt like she was losing it.

Remy's arm tightened as her cries grew louder, and he pulled her gently into him, her head falling on his shoulder. His hand rubbed gentle circles on her shoulder as she cried her heart out, letting the sobs run their course.

After a length of time Sophie had no way of being able to determine, she finally had cried all her tears. She lifted her head up from Remy's shoulder, turning her watery eyes to him. "I didn't mean to—"

"Don't," he said in a soft voice. "Never apologize for grief."

She just nodded, sniffling and wiping her face. Shakily, she stood up from the ground and wiped a few stray pieces of grass off of her body. Remy followed her up to his feet, looking at her closely. "I could leave again, if you want," he said quietly.

She shook her head. "No, that's fine. I'm ready to go."

With that, she pulled her flannel shirt tighter around her body, even though it was fairly warm for a November day in North Carolina, and made her way back to the car.


Sophie and Remy went back to the motel, where Sophie quickly packed up all of her stuff and decided that it was time to go home.

"Are you sure?" Remy asked her as she flitted around the room like a madwoman, throwing her clothes into her backpack and tidying up the place. "Even if we leave now, we won't get back to the bunker until five in the morning."

"I'm sure," she said, zipping up her backpack. "I got what I came here for. And it doesn't matter how long I stay gone, I'm still going to be mad at my dad. Might as well be mad at him while I'm in a position to try to save his ass from eternal damnation."

Remy grinned. "That's the spirit."

"Besides," she said, tossing him the keys to her car and smirking at him, "you've got the first driving shift."

He chuckled. "Sure thing, milady."

Sophie opened the door to the room, looking back at Remy over her shoulder. "I am not your lady."

"Nope," he said as he adjusted the jacket he was wearing. "Just my human."

She turned back around to leave, but not before a smile crept onto her face.


They checked out of the motel and hopped into the car, Sophie leaning back in the passenger seat and playing with the radio until she found a today's hits station. Remy scoffed as he pulled out of the parking lot, listening to some new pop-rap remix that had become really popular. "No wonder your father thinks so little of your musical taste. This is terrible."

"Oh, please, says the angel who likes country music."

"For your information, country music is the most genuine art form on this planet."

Sophie almost choked on her laugh it came out so fast. "Are you serious? All country music is about is God, girls, booze, and trucks."

"Is that not the most accurate representation of the human race?"

Sophie just shook her head. "You look like such a badass and you drive a motorcycle to school every single day, but you like country music. Unbelievable."

"Well, you're the daughter and the niece of the two most famous hunters in the world, and your idea of musical finesse is any kind boy band, so that makes you unbelievable as well."

"Yeah, well I'm a teenage girl and you're an angel, so trust me, you're much more unbelievable."

He just shrugged. "Fine. But we're not listening to this crap. Driver picks the music."

"Shotgun shuts his cakehole," Sophie mumbled under her breath with a tiny smirk, repeating the line she'd heard a million times.

"Sure, whatever," Remy conceded, clueless to the significance of her response. "Either way, you're going to get educated on true music." He quickly flipped it over to a country station, and at Sophie's groan, he gave her a look. "Oh, come on. You do know Taylor Swift was originally country, right? Have some respect."

"She was my one exception," Sophie complained. "Everything else is…bleh."

Remy just shook his head. "You'll learn to love it."

She just rolled her eyes and let him drive. She was hesitant to admit it to herself, but riding with Remy was a little enjoyable. After a few hours, she realized they had more to talk about than she thought they might. They couldn't talk about books like she did with Jack, primarily because Remy didn't have half the passion for them that she and Jack did, but they still could talk about other things. Sophie bombarded him with questions about Heaven and his angel friend Ariel that he always talked so much about, and he asked her about her life with Sam and Dean and how she felt about hunting.

It was strange, the amount that they didn't have in common, but how easy it was to talk about it.

As the sun went down, Remy pulled off the highway and into the parking lot of a small burger joint. "You're hungry," he said.

"What, you're using our weird angel connection to determine my level of hunger now?" Sophie asked, unbuckling her seatbelt as he parked the car.

"No, Ace," Remy said impatiently. "Your stomach is rumbling."

She looked down at her stomach, the perpetrator, patting it softly. "Oh." Then she just shrugged and opened the door to her car, stepping out of it and stretching. "Well, either way, you're right. Let's get me some food and then go back on our way."

They walked into the burger joint. "Sure," Remy said, and then he tossed her the car keys. "But you're driving the next shift."

She caught the keys and nodded. "Fine. Get ready for four plus hours of the best of today's hits, coming your way."

Remy groaned as they made their way to the cash register to order. "Come on, admit my country wasn't that bad."

"No, it was bad," Sophie said, and then she flounced up to the counter and proceeded to order a burger and a Coke. She turned her head. "Want anything?" she asked. Remy looked taken aback. He shook his head, and Sophie turned around. "He'll take a burger and a Coke, too."

The girl at the cash register just rang up her order, let her pay, and then made her way into the kitchen. Remy stood next to Sophie, hands in his pockets. "You know I don't need to eat, don't you?"

"I know," Sophie said. "But I know you can eat. And you can't turn down a burger on a road trip, you just can't."

Remy just let out a long breath. "Fine, Ace. Whatever you say."

"Now that's what I like to hear," Sophie replied victoriously.

"You're insufferable sometimes."

The girl came back with their food and Sophie grabbed it before heading to a table. "Don't pretend that you're better than cheap burgers. Because no one is better than cheap burgers."

"Well actually, I'm an angel," he said, offering her a lopsided grin that reached his eyes. "So yes, I am better than cheap burgers. I'm better than most things on this planet."

"So humble," Sophie laughed, taking a bite of her burger. She chewed thoughtfully. "Your ego is unreal."

"Actually, for an angel, I'm one of the humblest," he argued, taking a bite of his burger and seeming to decide that it was kind of good before taking another.

"Humble people don't call themselves the humblest," she pointed out. "And also, they don't drive motorcycles to school every day. What is even with that anyway? What kind of angel drives a motorcycle?"

"A hot one," Remy replied, a mischievous glint in his eyes, prompting an eye roll from Sophie. "No, actually, I knew I needed a way to get to and from school. And my last charge…you know, the Russian guy who was hellbent on murdering his family…he used to drive a motorcycle and I always saw the appeal in it. So I figured, why not."

Sophie nodded. "So where do you live?" she asked. "Where do you go to and from before and after school?"

"There's a crappy little cabin in the woods a few miles from school," Remy said. "I go there and park the bike and hang out a little bit. Sometimes I'll stay over there, but usually I'll just go back to Heaven, say hi to Ariel, make sure I keep the house in order. You know, behind the scenes angel stuff."

"Behind the scenes angel stuff. Gotcha," Sophie repeated, taking a long, thoughtful drink of soda. "Hey, Remy."

"What?"

"You should teach me how to drive a motorcycle," Sophie mused.

She expected Remy to call her crazy and immediately shoot down her request. But he just considered it. "Sure. You just can't tell your dad. Because he's promised to do some very creative things to me with his angel blade if I let anything bad happen to you, and this would probably qualify."

"Well, he forgot to tell me about handing his soul over to Beelzebub, so I can forget to tell him that my guardian angel is giving me motorcycle lessons."

"And what about Boyfriend?" Remy asked, eyebrow raised. "How's he going to feel about that?"

Sophie's eyebrows knit themselves together. "Well, he doesn't need to know either. But speaking of him, you're sort of an asshole to him."

"What can I say, the kid rubs me the wrong way."

"Why?" Sophie asked, honestly curious. "Jack's literally the easiest person in the world to get along with. Why are you so determined not to like him?"

Remy just stared at her, his eyes locked onto hers. Finally he just shook his head. "Are you done yet?"

She sighed. "Yeah, fine, let's go."

They tossed out their trash as they left the burger joint, and Sophie took out the car keys and slid into the driver's seat. She turned on the car and immediately started tinkering with the radio stations, searching for a pop station that would annoy Remy. Then she waited for him to get in, smirked at his irritated expression at her music choice, and then pulled out of the parking lot and made her way back to the highway.

They drove in relative silence for a while as Sophie poorly sang along to a few songs, and then out of the blue, Remy said, "I think you need to cut Dean some slack."

She just looked over at him in shock, turning down the volume of the radio. "What?"

He shifted in his seat, looking as uncomfortable as she'd ever seen him. "Look, I'm your guardian angel, not your therapist. I'm not exactly required to give you my two cents when it comes to stuff like this. But…your father is a great man. I've seen what he's done with his life, and he's sacrificed a lot to save a lot of people. And he might not have gone about this whole thing the right way, but it was with the intention of shielding you from pain."

"I can't believe you're even bringing this up," she grumbled. "Here I was, thinking that maybe we were finally getting along—"

"I'm serious, Ace," Remy persisted. "If you go back and give him the cold shoulder for the rest of the time you have with him, you're going to regret it."

She shot him a glare. "You don't get to tell me what I will or won't regret," she snapped. "And who the hell are you to even be lecturing me on this?"

"I'm someone with your best interests at heart," he said.

She was about to yell something back at him, but then something distracted her. It was the soft vibrating of her phone in her pocket, and quickly she fished it out and looked at the screen. When she saw who it was, her eyes narrowed. "Speak of the devil," she muttered, staring at Dean's number, which had popped up onto the screen under the name Dad. She vivdly remembered the day she had changed it from Dean to Dad, a change she'd made with a smile on her face.

Now it just caused her heart to hurt more.

"Answer it," Remy said.

"No."

"Sophie. You don't need to pour out your soul to him and hash it out over the phone. You just need to let him know you're alive."

She waited two more rings, glancing over at Remy and then shaking her head. "No," she said again, declining the call.

Remy looked frustrated. "You're being ridiculous."

Sophie could feel herself growing angrier. "No I'm not! Can't you just let me be mad, Remy? I deserve to be mad! I deserve to be a little bit upset about how things are turning out in my life right now!"

"Keep your eyes on the road, Ace," Remy sighed as a car passed by them, very close to crossing into their lane.

"Then stop lecturing me!" Sophie snapped. "No offense, but you're an angel, and you guys suck at processing emotions. So just let me process my own damn emot—"

"Sophie, watch out!"

Sophie whipped her head over just in time to see a giant truck careening over into her lane, one of its tires blown out. She immediately swerved to avoid colliding head on with it, jerking the car off the road. She tried to hit the breaks to stop her momentum, but it was too late. "Remy!" she screamed as the car lurched into the ditch on the side of the highway, unable to stay on all four wheels as it flipped once, twice, three times, before smashing into a tree on Sophie's side of the car. The moment they made impact with the tree, she felt her body explode in agony, and she screamed as her world was filled broken glass and twisted metal and blood and pain.

The last thing she saw before everything swirled into darkness was a flash of bright white light, and two green-gray eyes, filled with fear.

Much longer chapter than usual today. I hope it didn't disappoint. ~ Lacey :)