This is yet no relief in the darkness of the night
No liberation yet of our souls and minds
So let us keep marching, my tiring friends
We have yet to find our elusive dawn – Faiz Ahmed Faiz, "An Elusive Dawn"

In the glove box of the Impala there is a collection of cell phones piled up in a battered shoe box. Sam and Dean kept them charged in case anyone tried to call the numbers. One of those phones is a black 2006 LG Chocolate, buried so far down that it would take a bit of digging to find. If the 'Enter' button was pressed, the screen would light up, displaying wallpaper of a young woman. She's attempting a sexy pose, but her mouth is pulled up in a smile suggesting that she just can't take the picture seriously. That phone hasn't rung in years.

Adiana pulled a brush through her hair. It was no longer long and blonde, but cropped short and almost completely white. She would recognize the woman's picture on the phone, but it was no longer that woman who stared back at her in the mirror. That had been a very long time ago.

She had never told anyone what had happened all those months that she had been missing, not the police or the doctors or the psychiatrists or the press or even her family. She knew that people would think that she was crazy if she told the truth. If Sam and Dean had never believed her, why would anyone who had never even seen anything remotely fantastical? Instead, she lied and told everyone that she couldn't remember what had happened. The most widely believed theory was that she had suffered something so horrible that her brain repressed it. A team of psychiatrists had argued between that and some form of amnesia. Adiana let them think what they wanted. The media tailed her around for awhile, but then they were chasing after the next exciting story. Eventually she was left alone with only the occasional prompting from family and friends as to what happened. After some time, even they gave up.

She never found out what happened to Sam or Dean after she left. There were many times, more so in those first few months, where she would pull up an episode on tv or Google 'Supernatural' on her laptop, but she never could bring herself to watch it. She'd gaze at the screen for a few minutes, sometimes up to an hour, but in the end, she'd always shut the devices off. She couldn't stare at them through a screen and see them hurt, knowing that their pain was real. She wouldn't be able to watch without wondering how things might be different if she were still there. Most of all, she was afraid to count the seasons, to know that when the show ended, at least one of them would likely be dead. She wanted to just cut herself off.

The first week, she threw out everything that reminded her of them. A poster, the First Season DVD set, a tote bag with quotes printed on one side, the clothes she had worn the day she came back and her cell phone all went into the trash. The next day she had a change of heart about the cell phone, but the trash had already been collected. She ran back inside of her parents' house where she was staying and found her mom. When her mom tried to calm her down, Adiana started screaming at her. That's when she realized how crazy she sounded and fled to cry in her room. There had been a lot of tears then.

For around a month, she allowed herself to wallow, but then she pushed herself to move on. She went back to college, got a job, got married, had kids and grandkids. She lived the normal life. She couldn't forget, of course, but with each year the memories hurt less. Now her memories were nothing more than just that, a faint smell of aftershave while she was baking a pie or the sound of laughter while she waited in line with her kids at Disney. And she was content.

Adiana set down the brush and slowly got up out of the chair, wincing. Her joints pained her these days, although the real problem was her breathing. The doctors never could figure out what had happened to her blood or how to fix it, not even with progressive medical technology, so Adiana had simply learned to adapt. However, with old age and an even slower heart rate came the need for an oxygen tank. She tugged at the tank, and it moved smoothly along behind her, blinking with all its readings and safeties, while she moved over to her bed.

"Night, Luke," she said to the picture of her husband on the bedside table. She turned off the light and lay back against the bed. It was mere seconds before she fell asleep.

And it felt like only seconds until she woke up again. She coughed and shifted. What was it? She was usually a sound sleeper, so something must have happened. Maybe it was her oxygen tank. Her grandkids tried to convince her that technology was changing for the better, but she wasn't always so sure. The damn tank knew more about her body than she did. She sat up in bed and peered at the tank in the moonlight. Nope, she couldn't see a thing. She needed her glasses. She reached for the lamp, but instead of touching it, her hand passed straight through. She froze and then tried the lamp again, but her fingers couldn't hold the switch. Fairly certain of what she was about to see, she turned her head.

There she was, lying on the bed. She looked asleep, but Adiana knew better than that. So, her time had come. She wasn't exactly surprised. The doctors had hinted in a roundabout way that they weren't sure with her breathing condition that she could live much longer. Still, there were things she would like to have seen. Max was going to her senior prom next month. Jimmy was graduating from college. She could try to wake herself. Just one try. However, as with the lamp, she was unable to touch her body.

"Adiana."

Adiana jumped. There was a man in a fitted suit waiting at the end of her bed. He appeared to be middle aged, but a still handsome in those years. However, she was fairly certain that he was much older than he looked. She got to her feet, a task that was much easier than it had been in a decade.

"You're a reaper?" she asked. The man nodded.

"I've come to bring you over. It's your time."

"So we have reapers here, but not anything else?"

"Death crosses all universes, Adiana."

"Right." Adiana nodded. She glanced back at her body. At least she looked peaceful. Hopefully that would give her family some comfort. "Okay. Let's go."

The reaper gestured to the door of her bedroom. The cracks around it began to glow with a white light. Apparently going into the light was a real thing after all. One last crossing. She walked towards the door. Her hand hesitated above the knob, but this time she was able to grip it tightly. It turned with only a little pressure. She took a deep breath and pulled the door open. White light filled her vision. There was a tug all over her body, but it lasted for no more than a second.

When the light faded, she found herself on the edge of a vaguely familiar field, sloping down to a paved road. She surveyed the area around her, and as she moved something swung against her face. She reached down and touched a strand of long, blonde hair. She stared at it, and her hands, which were no longer covered with liver spots. She looked young again. Not only that, but she felt young again. Heaven. She spun around in a circle, sucking air into her lungs until they were full and then hollering up to brilliant sky, lit with a red dawn. Filled with energy, she raced down the slope, sprinting across the road and laughing. She could run and run and run forever. Only she didn't because her ears caught a sound. Her eyes widened, and, with a grin, she turned and waved. A familiar rumbling was coming up the road.