Supernatural in its entirety © Eric Kripke

A/N1: I began watching Supernatural on a Netflix suggestion during the long pandemic hours at home. I particularly enjoyed season 4. :3

I wasn't going to write another fanfic, especially since I'm so terrible at finishing those I start. Also, I haven't finished watching the TV series (at the time of writing this, I am in the midst of season 10). But then I started hearing about angels in my music. Like, all the time. Then I got a fortune in a fortune cookie. Angels are among us. I couldn't ignore the idea any longer.

"Among Us" takes place sometime after S04 E10 "Heaven and Hell" and sometime before S04 E15 "Death Takes a Holiday." It's my first time writing this type of story, one based on real actors rather than video game characters or cartoons. Kinda mystery, kinda grown-up. It's all new to me, but I hope you enjoy it. :3

Aya cracked open her cookie, and then pulled the fortune free.

"Angels are among us;" she read, "when you find them, cherish their presence every day."

Smiling to herself, Aya crumpled the slip of paper in one hand and popped a cookie piece into her mouth with the other. She brushed crumbs off her top. Typical trite nonsense, fortune cookie fortunes, although this particular one didn't go well with the obligatory phrase you were supposed to add at the end, "between the sheets." Too bad. Angels among them? Probably not. But souls? Well. She didn't need a fortune cookie to tell her about those.

"Time for a refill, Latte," she said, reaching for her glass. She munched the rest of the cookie as she got off the couch she and Lemara had salvaged from beside the dumpster out back. Nobody cared that it was a castoff, and it had cleaned up nice. Every struggling college student not privileged enough to live in the dorms went dumpster diving, often in broad daylight. They completed most of their homework on their apartment floor.

Latte mewed, tail straight up in the air. As she had in life, the little three-legged cat, coffee and cream-colored, of which Aya had been sure was part Singapura, hobbled along at Aya's heels.

"Talking to your dead kitty again? You're like a kid with an imaginary friend. What are you, four?"

Aya's roommate threw a ball of dirty laundry right in front of her, causing Aya to pull up short or risk getting an infection from whatever that smell was. "Aren't pets supposed to cross the Rainbow Bridge or something? You know, all – cats – go to Heaven?"

Aya frowned at the laundry, less than half of which had made it into the round plastic basket. Coral pink. In the middle of the dining room, which had yet to gain a table or chairs. "She's a cat, Marr. It doesn't seem to bother her that she hasn't moved on. I doubt she realizes she's dead. Besides, housecats don't have that much to be mad about. They rarely turn into vengeful spirits."

Onryo, her grandmother called them. Which Aya had once had a nasty encounter with, a twisted man who hadn't let death stop him from stalking the young and pretty. Lacking a body had enabled him to get into places he wouldn't have been able to while alive. That soul, she'd lost to the dark in the end, but she couldn't bring herself to regret his passing. She still had the scars.

"Whatever," Lemara, who hadn't heard about Rapist Randy, said, grinning. She pitched a wad of panties overhand. She didn't believe in Latte any more than she believed in the tooth fairy – which she totally should, since those bitches liked to bite and the baby teeth they collected were sharp – but she was a good friend. She teased Aya about her cat, and Aya never tried to enlighten her about things that went bump in the night.

It hadn't been easy, growing up with what Aya's grandmother called reikan, uninspiringly translated as Sight, but she'd adapted. The less she said about it, the better off everyone was.

When the bundle of crumpled thongs passed right through Latte, however, Aya couldn't help making a face. Though, honestly, Latte didn't seem to care much about that, either. She meowed, her big green eyes as bright as ever, as though asking what they were going to do next. Aya smiled at her. Loving animal. Better than any human relationship any day.

"Okay, tiny Asian chick is smiling at nothing. That's creepy, Aya." Lemara gave her an affectionate bump toward the kitchen.

"Tiny Asian chick washes her gym socks from time to time, unlike giant Ugandan chick." Gingerly, Aya hooked a few pieces of clothing with her toes into the basket. She hopped over the rest.

After a moment of checking her balance, Latte copied her. She mewed again, probably wondering why Aya wouldn't scratch her ears.

"Shut up, ladies don't stink," Lemara said. Ignoring Aya's shout of laughter, she scooped up the socks in question. "Hey, don't you have class tonight?"

Aya leaned around the refrigerator door, peering past the old woman patiently waiting for Aya to write down her peanut butter cup banana bread recipe to send to her budding baker of a grandson, which Aya would do as soon as she was alone, and checked the clock. She poured herself another glass of iced green tea. "Yeah, in about an hour. Last one this semester. I doubt Landeskog is going to keep us late."

"Well, I have a date," Lemara said, snapping her tongue on the t. She wiggled her caterpillar eyebrows, perfectly suited to her large, dark eyes.

"With who?" Aya tried to keep her voice light.

Lemara saw right through her. "Desmond Varley. He's on the okay list. You said so."

"Mmm." Aya sucked on her straw, not meeting Lemara's patented Hairy Eyeball.

"Hey." Lemara put a long, muscled arm across Aya's shoulders and briefly squeezed. "I appreciate you looking out for me, girlfriend."

"Thanks, Marr." Aya looked up at her roommate. Not long ago, she'd begged Lemara not to go to The Church, a local nightclub, with goth-throwback Markis Rantanen, who Aya was positive was an actual vampire. Her reikan revealed everything, souls and monsters and places of magic. What made the situation worse was that she couldn't just tell Lemara, "Hey, Markis is going to drink your blood, and it won't be sexy because vampires have way more than two socially-acceptable fangs – they're more like piranha fangs, and they're retractable, trust me, it's gross – and he may even let his brothers do it to you too before they leave you dead in the alley." Her reasons for trying to prevent the date had been lame, but her panic had been real. Lemara had given in at the last minute, though she'd been angry with Aya for weeks, and Aya hadn't slept much until Markis and his weird family had moved on. "I just want you to be safe, okay?"

"Safe and laid. You should try it sometime. Make you less tense if you know what I mean," Lemara said, wiggling the caterpillars again.

Aya choked on her tea. "No thanks." She coughed. "Ace, remember? I tried once. I didn't get what the big deal was."

She'd failed to be overcome by passion the way actors always seemed to be in the movies. Like, her brain had never shut up and gone to a happy place, so she had merely waited for the ordeal to end. Too much work for very few rewards, in her opinion. Yes, she'd orgasmed. No, she hadn't felt the need to repeat the experience. She preferred food. It made her feel about the same but was much more varied and enjoyable.

Laughing, Lemara danced away. "Yes, yes. Someday, ace, you're gonna meet that someone special and feel the spark. Mark my words!" She snagged a fortune cookie out of the nearly empty delivery bag for herself, ripping open the wrapper. "A'ight, I gotta shower. If I don't see you before you go, drink lots of water and get to bed on time! I say this with love!"

"Have fun." Aya waved her off. The way she saw it, sex influenced everything the sexually-oriented did and said. Everything. Lemara meant well, but to Aya, who identified as asexual, the world was full of adorable, non-sexually-attractive otter-people, and that was just fine with her.

Latte twined around her ankles, flooding her with simple emotions like love and mischief.

"Right," Aya said to her. The sound of the shower issued from the thin wall separating the bathroom from the kitchen. She turned to the old woman and smiled. "Shall we?"

"Thank you, dear," the dame said in a lovely Southern accent. She was one of the more polite souls who had invaded Aya's home over the years. She dictated, slowly and clearly, and Aya wrote the recipe on a dandelion-yellow index card.

When they finished, she put the card in an envelope with a note that read, "Your mee-maw wanted you to have this in time to win the blue ribbon at the fair next week. Good luck." Then she addressed the envelope to a little town she'd never heard of in Alabama, leaving the sender section blank, stuck a stamp on it, and slipped it into her messenger bag.

"Good food solves every problem, doesn't it?" she said happily. She'd have to try this recipe sometime. Her dream, after all, was to bake the kind of goodies a mom-and-pop coffee shop would sell for a living, and design cute takeout boxes for them. She tilted her head at her guest. "Is there anything else I can do for you, ma'am?"

Because that was what she did – help souls finish their unfinished business, so they could release their earthly chains and move on into whatever afterlife awaited them. Obaa-chan had felt it a duty, and had taught her, Aya, all she knew. To be gifted with reikan was to shoulder great responsibility, she'd said. A responsibility that, generally, Aya enjoyed. Not every soul was a Rapist Randy.

"No, dear, you've done plenty." The dame smiled, which softened her somewhat faded complexion and brightened her sky-blue eyes. "I'm ready now."

"Do you see a light?" Aya asked, as she had asked many times before. "If you're ready, a gate in the veil opens, and it appears."

Aya couldn't see the gate or the veil, but she could see the light as it reflected off the souls it beckoned.

The old lady lifted her blue eyes, which brightened more as the light of her afterlife fell full on her face. She was staring at the refrigerator. "I see it, child."

"All you have to do is walk into it," Aya urged her.

Entranced, the old woman drifted forward. The light strengthened, bringing a touch of healthy pink to her dead cheeks. Then she hesitated.

Which was all right. Most souls hesitated. Humans did not like walking headlong into the unknown. Everyone carried at least a fanny pack of baggage. And everyone, without exception, expected to be punished for it.

"I've never felt judgment from the light," Aya said quietly, knowing that this was what the soul needed to hear. Besides, it was the truth. It was not her job to judge, but to guide. "I've only felt love and acceptance from it."

"What's in there?" the old woman asked.

Aya shrugged. "I don't know. I've never died."

The dame grinned at that. "Of course not," she said primly. Then she grew serious. "They're real, you know."

Aya blinked, confused. "What are?"

"Angels," the other said. "They walk among us, hidden from sight, doing God's work."

"Oh – sure," Aya said, a little uncomfortable now. Why was she telling her this? For some reason, her fortune cookie fortune popped into her head. "They must work at the Coal Mine Dragon. It's my favorite restaurant. Chinese food. But if angels work there, then it's angel food, right?"

Aya could feel herself blush and forced her mouth closed. She'd never seen an angel, but she didn't want to be rude and say so. However, that didn't mean she should ramble on like an idiot. Besides, she'd seen vampires and carnivorous fairies and vengeful spirits, so who knew what else could be out there, preying upon humanity?

Recognizing the awkward stretch of silence for what it was but unable to dispel it without making a bigger fool of herself, she waited for her dearly departed guest to go.

Which she did, commanding all the etiquette expected of a Southern woman, back straight and head high, a smile of rapture gracing her previously pinched face. As soon as she passed through the veil, the gate closed with an exhalation as pure as Rocky Mountain spring water, which stirred Aya's hair around her shoulders. The light vanished. Aya sighed, feeling its loss the way she did each time a soul moved on and left her behind. The world always seemed a bit darker and colder without the light.

Maybe the old woman was right. Maybe the light was Heaven, and maybe angels lived there. Maybe miracles were real. It was a nice thought. Latte, draped across her foot, started to purr.

This had been an easier task than usual. Aya absently sipped at her straw, thinking about the mail drop box on campus on the way to her class where she could send her message from beyond the grave, and the straw made the obnoxious sucking noise that Lemara hated. She hadn't realized she'd finished her tea.

The clock in the kitchen, ticking faintly, caught her eye.

"Oh, no! Latte, why didn't you tell me I'm going to be late?"

"Brrt," Latte said. She began washing her whiskers.

As expected, Lemara wasn't out of the shower. Aya set the glass on the counter and scrambled around the small apartment, grabbing up a sweatshirt and her messenger bag, her phone and her keys, her Surface tablet and its detachable keyboard and stylus, shoving her feet into her flip-flops. Spring temperatures in Colorado could drop from seventy-five degrees to thirty-five in an afternoon; everyone wore sweatshirts and flip-flops. She barely took the time to lock the apartment door before she flew down the steps in the hall outside, bag banging against her backside, the overhead light flickering spastically.

What didn't occur to her was that, if there were angels, there must be demons also.

A/N2: Of course, what is a Supernatural fanfic without a dedicated playlist? You can listen for yourself by correcting the following link: Ht tp s colon forward slash forward slash tinyurl dot com forward slash amongustunes.

Please leave a review before you go! I would love to hear your thoughts, and if this story is worth continuing. Do you like the characters? Would you like to know what happens next? I would really appreciate it, and thank you so much!

~ Anne