The rope was all set, the chair under it ready to be kicked out, and Angelina Border couldn't have been happier about it. She stood on the old plastic folding chair with the noose wrapped around her neck, and prepared for the end.
She took two deep breaths to steady herself before kicking out at the chair. There was a brief moment of time where she felt as if she were floating before the rope tightened, cutting off all oxygen to her brain. Her world, hopeless and tormented for so long now, finally went black just as Dean Winchester burst through the door that led to the basement she'd decided to end her life in.
"Crap," he sighed, running a hand over his face and slowly lowering the dead girl to the floor. He stood over the body, taking in the sight. Her short brown hair fanned out around her as she lay there, her bright blue eyes staring unblinkingly up at the ceiling. He crossed her small hands over her chest and carefully closed her eyes before pulling out his cell to call 911 and report the suicide.
His back was only turned for a second, just enough time to get the first digit punched in, but it was long enough for the corpse to rise into a sitting position, open its eyes, and start gasping for breath.
Dean started and turned, shoving his phone back into his pocket. The girl was pulling the rope from its place around her neck, coughing and gasping and shooting him a look of pure anger. "What the hell did you do that for?" she demanded as the color returned to her pale face.
"I, uh," Dean stammered, "thought…"
"You thought wrong. Now I've gotta do this all over again," she muttered, grabbing the rope and the chair and starting to set the whole thing up for the second time, "lend a hand?"
"I'm sorry," Dean said, watching her closely as she struggled to hang the rope from the rafters again, "I think I'm missing something."
The girl turned, obviously annoyed. "I'm trying to kill myself," she clarified, "got it?"
"Well, yeah, I figured that out, but-"
"Why am I trying to kill myself?"
"That's what I'm stuck on."
She sighed, jumping down from the chair and appraising the angel. "I want to die. That's all there is to it. I'm tired of this. Tired of the responsibility, and the guilt, and that annoying little voice." Dean just stared at her. "Sorry," she grinned, "where are my manners? I'm Angelina, and I think I owe you an explanation."
"That would be nice, Angie, yeah."
Her smile widened. "I want to kill myself," she explained sadly, eyeing his wings, "because I'm just like you. Or, at least, I was."
o0o0o0o
He sat on the bed, eyes roaming over the cool steel of the gun in his hands, his mind going into overdrive for the first time in years. It was all starting to make sense, all of the pieces were falling into place.
He'd had a plan, of course. He'd realized his mistake just a bit too late to take it back, and so Dean had gone looking for the Colt. Maybe at first it had just been to get it out of the hands of some greater evil, but that had all changed with time.
Immortality, the brothers had found out, always comes with a price. In most stories told to teach a lesson, that price is the lack of eternal youth, so the immortal is forced to whither away into nothingness without the freedom of death looming ever closer.
Dean's situation was markedly different, and they'd found that out fairly quickly. He'd stopped aging. He was stuck at 27 for the rest of eternity, which wouldn't have been such a problem, had the same thing happened to Sam.
But it hadn't, and it hadn't taken Dean too long to figure out that it wouldn't. So he'd gone after the Colt, the gun that could kill anything, and planned on turning it on himself in the end. It was a perfect plan, one capable of setting both brothers free.
"He couldn't do it," Sam muttered to himself as he stared at the gun, "he couldn't let me go."
And, of course, Sam realized, he should have known that. Should have realized that Dean would fight tooth and nail to keep him around. He'd done the same thing, on more than one occasion. Back in Michigan with Max, in Nebraska and Colorado with the demon. How had he ever expected Dean to make that sacrifice?
Of course, there was always the slight possibility that the angel had just forgotten about the gun. In that case, little brother would just have to remind him, confront him about it when he got home that night. Maybe he could even force the truth out of him.
Yeah, that sounded like a plan.
Sighing heavily, Sam placed the weapon carefully back into the box and exited his brother's room, heading back into the kitchen to finish cleaning up.
o0o0o0o
Dean reached out a tentative hand and drew it carefully down one of the two long scars that marked the girl's otherwise perfect back. "I heard somewhere that cutting them off would make me mortal," she explained sadly, pulling her shirt back down as he drew his hand away.
"Yeah, I heard that somewhere, too," Dean muttered, shuddering at the memory of the look on Sammy's face as the demon told them, "but I'm guessing it doesn't work."
"Not for me, anyway."
"So," he ventured, "why'd you do it? What happened?"
Angelina sighed, taking a seat in the chair she'd set up under the noose while Dean shoved his hands in his pockets. "I guess it started when my parents left. They were both sent to a hospital somewhere in Illinois. My sister and I were left alone, and our folks never came back. We got letters from them once in a while, but mostly they were illegible.
"I was the oldest, about seven years older than Christi, and she was put in my care. Well, technically we were living with our aunt and uncle, but they didn't care much about either of us."
"Sounds tough."
"It got tougher. One day Christi ran away. No one looked for her. She'd been acting kind of weird for a couple of weeks by that point in time, and I was starting to worry about her. I prayed every night that I would be able to find her and bring her home safe and sound, and then…"
"You got what you wanted."
"I was… I dunno. Surprised, to say the least. And then that voice, like some weird whisper in the back of my head… I found Christi right where it told me I would, but she was so different. She was babbling, and she didn't even recognize me. She was living out on the streets, so I took her to a motel, and that night while she was asleep, I just looked her over, and I went to move her hair off her forehead, and…"
"Your hands started glowing," Dean nodded, "and when she woke up the next day, she was sane, right?"
"Yeah. I'd fixed her, but I didn't lose the wings. I told her all about what had happened, and she got kind of scared. Eventually, though, she warmed up to the idea of me being an angel, and we lived happily ever after for a while."
"For a while?"
Angie nodded. "When I realized she was getting older and I wasn't, I kind of started to freak out, you know? She was all I had, and I couldn't imagine life without her. And some weird stuff was starting to go on with her, too, but I didn't think much of it.
"I got called away on, um, business, and when I got back… I mean, I was only gone for a couple of weeks, I didn't think…"
"What happened?"
"They said she was schizophrenic. That she couldn't be cured. There was something else wrong with her, though, something medical. Man, I don't even remember what it was now, it's been so long.
"Long story short, they kept her locked up, and they never let me in to see her. I couldn't help her, and she wound up dying all alone, in some crazy universe she'd invented for herself. I could have saved her, but they wouldn't let me. She was 58. That was over 30 years ago, and I've been living with it ever since."
"When did you-?"
Angie smiled sadly. "A couple of years ago. I tried jumping off a bridge, slitting my wrists-"
"Popular choices," Dean muttered.
"Excuse me?"
"Nothing. Go on."
"I think I've tried everything, but I keep coming back. I can't die, no matter how bad I want to, and it's killing me inside." She grinned, standing up, "but you don't need to hear about this. I'm just bringing you down. You're probably happy as a heavenly clam, huh?"
"You'd be surprised. My, uh, my brother tried to kill himself today. Said he wanted me to let him go."
"That's terrible," the girl commented.
"Yeah. I'm just hoping I can get through to him, you know. Just tell him why I can't let go now."
"You'd better hurry," she sighed, "he might not like having to wait."
Dean nodded. "Probably right. Look, here's my address," he handed her a slip of paper, "just drop by if you want to talk or something."
"Thanks," she smiled, taking the card and looking it over.
"And if some cranky old guy answers the door," Dean added on his way out, "it's just my brother. He's fairly harmless, but if he comes to the door wielding an axe, just stand still. His sight's kinda bad, and he can't see you if you don't move."
"I'll remember that, thanks." She closed the door behind him and watched him fly back towards his house. A sly smile worked its way across Angelina's face as she walked back through the house, her eyes darkening until they turned a deep, pitiless black.