Ooopsie Daisy

Skipped Death With A Side Salad

Throughout all of the eons I've been alive, I'd always pitied humans for their painfully large range of emotions. As celestial beings, we only felt two emotions: mercy and wrath. Or nothing. For ages, I felt nothing. I watched the Tower of Babylon fall. I felt nothing. I watched the Ancient Egyptians put the final capstone on the Great Pyramid. I felt nothing. I watched Julius Caesar get brutally stabbed in the Senate. I felt nothing. I watched Michelangelo paint "The Creation of Adam". I felt nothing. Not even awe. I saw Adam get created. There was nothing to be in awe of.

    In fact, the only time I'd ever felt awe was the first time I laid my eyes on Dean Winchester. He was this modern American dirty cowboy, and he was supposed to be the vessel for Micheal himself. Even I couldn't have an honor that large bestowed upon me. But with all his grunginess and credit card fraud, they picked him. And he picked me. That was the highest honor I'd ever received.
   
    I was always in awe of Dean. Every second I spent with him, the more human I felt. I tried to stay away at first. I liked being an angel. It was the only thing I knew. But Dean needed my help, and it was my duty to help him. He taught me anger, but human anger, anger that comes from caring so deeply about something that you can't bear to see it wronged. That's not wrath. It's so much more complex. He taught me sadness, that comes from watching something that you care about get hurt. He taught me happiness, and laughter, that come from feeling so comfortable with the people around you that you can be your complete authentic self. He taught me empathy. Hope. Grief. Fear. Courage.

    Today, he taught me one last emotion, one that I had never felt before. Pain. I had abandoned centuries of loyalty to Heaven for this wonderful feeling of being alive, of being human, but I had forgotten that being human was only temporary. Human life is short, and my human was dead.

    I felt Dean's pulse again and again and again, but every time I checked the only thing that I felt was the sterile touch of rapidly cooling human skin. Dean, my Dean, was gone. This was nothing but a shell on the pavement. Wherever Dean's soul was now, what he left here in my arms was no more than the body that I was wearing.

    This wasn't him. I didn't know this person. I didn't know the person kneeling next to me. It was Dean's brother, but where was Dean? Dean wasn't here. I don't know these people. I don't know this place. I don't know anything. I don't know anyone.

    I don't know where to go.

    I have to leave.

***

    I found myself sitting at a stone picnic table outside of a hamburger stand. "Just Jeff's," the sign read. Jeff? Who was Jeff? That wasn't Dean. I was still lost.

    The afternoon sun was hot as it beat down on me through intermittent clouds. I was almost glad I had abandoned my trenchcoat, but then I remembered why I left it. I wanted it back, just to have something of Dean's on it, even if it was his blood. But that blood wasn't Dean's anymore. It was just blood.

    My vision was suddenly blurry. The orange on the sign and the bright red of the ketchup bottles were all that I could see. Two people walked up to the service window. One of them a petite blonde woman with long, straight hair, the other a man in a graphic t-shirt with short brown hair and some form of wide earrings. They looked upset. I think.

    "I'll take a mushroom and swiss burger with a side salad," said the blonde woman. She smiled, but it was hesitant. "And whatever he's getting." She motioned to the man with the wide ears.

    "I'll get a chili and cheese burger. Also with a side salad."

    Good. They were good people.

    "Can I get a name for the order?" The cashier rested their elbow against the ledge at the bottom of the window. The siding was beige and the roof was brown. Gross.