This part's mine.

Only Begotten Son

I will weep when you are weeping

When you laugh I'll laugh with you

I will share your joy and sorrow

'Til we've seen this journey through

-Servant Song

Spoilers up to end of season 7

Sam Winchester hadn't given much thought to Gabriel's visit in several years. Quite frankly, he'd had a few other things on his mind. Like Dean being lost in Purgatory, the angel brigade suddenly running on silent, and every single damn person on the face of the planet who'd ever come into contact with him brutally dying. Even Jodie was gone.

It wasn't like the last time Dean had died, when Sam had gone into Robocop mode and taken down demons by the dozen. It was as though he'd lost his headlights. He could only briefly glimpse purpose, a job or a girl, but it was gone before it could fully register. He still hunted, of course, but with far less efficiency and accuracy. God damned, he nearly lost his head to a freaking shape shifter. One shape shifter. He was losing his touch and he couldn't get it back for the life of him.

The first thing he'd done, after praying until his lungs were raw to every angel and deity and variations thereupon, was call Crowley. Well, trap him. He kept him locked up for almost three weeks, throwing every torture he knew at him, trying in agonizing vain to get him to cough up where Purgatory was. But Crowley wouldn't say a word. Sam didn't let him go, either. He fully intended to keep the demon locked up for as long as it took for him to spill the beans. No, the damn demon escaped in his usual clever manner, leaving nothing but a pink lips imprint on the cuff of the chains with which he had been bound.

After that, Sam had begun his aimless wandering, searching for what exactly, he didn't know.

He'd started out in the Impala, but discovered after only a few painful days that it was too chock full of memories to drive. He bought a new car, a black Prius. He drove and drove, stopping randomly, still occasionally seeking out faith healers or Hoodoo men when he had the mental fortitude, which wasn't often. He spent two months with Bobby's staggeringly vast library on the supernatural, reading every page of what felt like hundreds of books, until one day he drove out for dinner and found himself on an airplane with no account of how he'd gotten there, nor any idea of where he was going.

The plane landed several hours later at Dublin airport. He felt like he should have been at least mildly alarmed by this, but he just wasn't. He had no pressing reason to be anywhere else, after all. Maybe he was being guided there for a reason. It would be no harder to believe than anything else in his life.

Almost immediately, his theory was proven correct, although he wouldn't know it for many years. It was the classic movie moment where the guy bumps into the girl and knocks her bag to the ground, and they both reach for it at the same time, and their hands magically touch. The magic ended there, though.

"Goddammit, asshole, watch where you're goin', would you?" snapped a strong Irish accent.

Sam straightened up to find himself looking down at a young woman with hair the color of a fresh carrot, glaring at him with the greenest eyes he'd ever seen, with such intensity that he actually took a step back.

"Sorry," he said. "I didn't see you."

"Course you didn't!" the woman replied. "You're as tall as the Cliffs, how d'you see anything on the ground?"

Sam stared at her. "…what?"

"Never mind, just get out of my way!" The woman shook her head and pushed past him, but he was able to follow her bright orange head all the way to the end of the corridor. Weird.

Sam wandered around the airport like a zombie, unsure of what to do or where to go. He didn't know anyone he could call, he didn't know anything about Dublin. He was pretty much screwed, but he found that he didn't care all that much. He stepped outside and was met with brisk, salty air of a kind he'd never experienced back home. He sucked in a deep breath.

"Goddammit!" The word was immediately followed by a shove that felt like it had come from a linebacker. Sam stumbled away, and found himself looking once more at the red headed woman, who was still scowling.

"What'd I do this time?" said Sam in exasperation.

"Nothing!" cried the woman. "My ride's done a runner and I've got no cash. And I have to be home in thirty minutes or I'm screwed."

Sam shoved his hands unconsciously into his coat pockets in a helpless gesture, and found himself in possession of a thick wad of bills. Not knowing what else to do, he offered them to the woman. She raised her eyebrows at him, and Sam fully expected another verbal beating, but then she smiled.

"Thanks."

The progression of things from there felt rather like that which had led him to the plane. In other words, he remembered very little of it. The woman's name was Mealla, Gaelic for lightning, Sam learned later, and she was from a small town just outside of Dublin. Which somehow became Sam's home for the next two years. That however, was the least of the miracles.

Somehow, Sam wound up with a job at a local bar, and a bunch of Irish friends who could have drunk even Castiel under the table. Sam enjoyed his life there. For the first time since Jessica, on the other side of the world, he was wholly and completely happy.

Mealla was amazing, a miracle unto herself. She was beautiful and kind (when she wasn't snapping impatiently at everyone and everything), and most of all, she trusted Sam, and accepted that he had to keep his secrets. Once, only a week after they'd met, she'd asked Sam what a Midwestern American was doing in Dublin, and he'd answered truthfully that he hadn't intended to go there, which she accepted at face value and didn't pry. She also didn't challenge his unshakeable refusal to talk about his family or his past. He had a lurking suspicion that she may have had slight psychic tendencies, and knew more than she let on, but he didn't care very much.

On a night split by blinding lightning, like his wife's namesake, Mealla told Sam she was pregnant. They weren't married, and she told him her family would be scandalized by such news. They agreed then to move to the U.S. to have the baby, and to be legally married. Mealla had never been off the Island before, anyways, and she wanted to have an adventure. So, a month and half later found them packing up and loading onto a plane to J.F.K. airport in New York.

From there, they drove to a small motel in northern Pennsylvania, at which point the memories began flooding back at a staggering rate. Sam tried to hide his preoccupation from Mealla, and tactfully she did not raise any questions.

Over the next few months, Mealla's belly grew, Sam began working a steady job, they got an apartment, and everything fell into a comfortable, if starkly unfamiliar, rhythm.