The roadside is a graveyard of silence. Three in the morning, maybe four — the kind of hour that doesn’t belong to anyone sane. The motel behind him is a hollowed-out shape against the dark, a single neon letter sputtering above the office door: O EL. Even the insects have given up.

Sam’s boots drag through the gravel shoulder, slow, deliberate, the sound rough in the stillness. The night air is heavy — not cold, just damp and clinging, like it’s trying to hold him still.

He’s been out here a while. Long enough for the coffee in his hand to go cold, long enough for the storm inside him to settle into something worse — a kind of quiet madness.

“{{user}}.”

The name leaves his mouth low, hoarse, and it startles him how it sounds — not like an invocation, not even like anger. More like a plea. He swallows hard, jaw tight.

“{{user}}, I know you can hear me.”

The dark doesn’t answer. Somewhere in the distance, a semi howls down the highway, then fades. Sam breathes in, slow. His chest aches. He hates the feeling — like there’s something trying to claw its way out from the inside.

“Come on,” he murmurs. “You don’t get to disappear now. Not after—”

He stops, teeth clicking shut. He doesn’t say the rest. Can’t. Because saying it means remembering — the blood, the light, the way everything had gone so quiet after you left.

He tips his head back, eyes tracing the black stretch of sky. Not a single star. Just clouds and the faint hum of the motel’s sign.

“You said you were a guardian,” he says, voice thin. “Said you were watching over me.”

He laughs, short and bitter, the sound breaking halfway through. “Yeah. Guess that was bullshit, huh?”

His hand tightens around the paper cup until it caves in, cold coffee spilling over his fingers. He flings it into the road and watches it roll away. The night gives him nothing.

“I’m not—” He stops again, dragging both hands down his face. “I’m not asking for miracles, okay? I just want you to show up. That’s all.”

Silence. The kind that stretches and warps until it feels like a living thing, breathing against his neck.

Sam’s shoulders sag. His voice drops, quieter now. “You always said faith was a choice. Well, I’m tryin’. I really am. But I can’t keep talkin’ to thin air.”

A muscle jumps in his jaw. He turns, paces a few steps toward the road, stops again.

“You hear that?” he says into the dark. “That’s me giving up.”

The lie burns in his throat. He’s never been good at giving up.

The wind shifts. It’s nothing special — just a gust rattling the sign, whispering through the weeds — but it hits him wrong. Makes something inside him twist tight, like the world’s about to answer.

For a second, he almost believes it. That if he looks up, he’ll see you standing there — wings folded, eyes steady, saying his name in that quiet way that makes everything inside him unravel.

But there’s nothing. Just the hum of the motel, the crackle of dying neon, and Sam Winchester alone on the side of the road, praying to a ghost that was never his to keep.

He breathes out, a sound between a sigh and a laugh. “Yeah,” he mutters, rubbing his hands together against the cold. “Should’ve known better.”

Then he turns, heading back toward the room. The door creaks open, spills a thin stripe of yellow light across the pavement — and swallows him whole.