Summary: AU No Zombies - Beth was trapped inside of her car after the crash, upside down, windows shattered, and metal pieces everywhere from the impact. Disoriented, she couldn't escape. That is, until a man with an angel winged vest came to save her life. And from there on out, both of their lives were changed by each other.

Beth drove down the empty and dark paved road in her car with the soft sound of a piano tone and soft spoken lyrics playing on the radio after abruptly leaving a party early, one that her friends dragged her out to for the Friday night, and one she hadn't wanted to go to from the start. Her old boyfriend, Jimmy, had been there and picked a fight with her, sounding off nasty comments to her because he was drunk past recognition. Rude comments along with pleas for her to take him back that were all jumbled together into broken sentences and slurred words.

She left, got out of that place, angered that he was not taking the break up nicely. He ruined her already not so great night and the lame first party she had ever went to.

She broke up with him months ago because he changed. Turned into someone entirely different than the sweet boy she once knew. He never used to drink alcohol before or go to parties, but then he started to. He was different after that, wasn't the same. She hated the change in him. Beth had ended things a month and a half before they graduated from high school, the promise of a new life at college in Atlanta not far off.

It would not have worked between the anyways. Beth would be in Atlanta at school and Jimmy would be in Miami, Florida at the university he had chosen to go to. Long distance never worked out well, especially when the people were young. Beth had just turned eighteen and Jimmy had been nineteen. She wanted to explore the world, explore her options. And not with him in the picture. Their relationship hadn't felt right anymore, hadn't for a while. So she had taken the plunge and ended it.

Beth decided to stop thinking about her old relationship. It wasn't worth it, not really. That was done and over with, and Beth had moved on. There was not much to get over in the first place. Honestly, it was a high school romance that had lasted a total of six months. And Beth had never formed a strong emotional attachment to Jimmy. Maybe that was why the relationship was easy to get over.

She shook it out of her head and listened to the music.

Beth drove through the small town to get to get to the other side so she could get to the dirt road that would take her home. All she wanted to do was take a hot shower and go to sleep by this point.

She approached the one intersection in the entire town, the bright green light telling her that she could keep on going because there was no one else around at eleven thirty at night in this sleepy town. Everything was quiet and dark, businesses shut down for the night.

And in that second, everything changed.

Apparently that saying that life can change in an instant was correct.

Beth was in the middle of the intersection when she turned her head to the right to see two headlights inches from the other side of the car. Another vehicle slammed into her passenger side door. It jolted her to the side instantly, the impact hard. Beth did not have any time to brace herself before glass from the windows shattered and was thrown at her, attaching to her blonde hair. Her car skidded across the pavement, tires squealing as the smell of rubber burning invaded the air. The car rolled to its side, tumbling over twice before the weight of it rocked back and the top of the car settled on the ground.

In the process, Beth had smacked her head on something, probably the window that was by her head, rendering her incapable to logical thought momentarily, her arms dangling down so her wrists hit what was below her. Her damaged and cracked phone clunked down onto the floor, it having become like a projectile missile during the crash, and luckily it never hit her as the car was thrown.

It took her several seconds to understand what had happened, almost losing consciousness twice.

Beth's vision was blurry. She blinked her eyes and a piece of small glass fell from an eyelash. She considered herself to be lucky that it didn't enter her eye during the impact. She blinked some more until her light blue eyes adjusted the best that they could to the new surroundings, the wetness drying up for her to see a little bit better. Her head pounded, skull feeling like it was going to pierce right through her scalp at any moment. Only then did she realize that she was upside down.

That's right, she remembered the car had flipped on its side a couple of times before it came to a halt with the roof on the ground and the tires going skyward.

For a brief second, everything was still.

Calm.

Motionless.

Beth breathed in the hot and humid first day of August air to make sure that, in fact, she was alive.

And she could not be in a worse position.

She swallowed hard, preparing for the task she was going to need to complete. Beth's hand found its way to her chest, where her seat belt strapped her in tight, locking her in place. She felt the seat belt with her fingers as they absently ran over the thick gray material, and followed it down to where it was secured. She tried to press the button to release her, but it didn't work. She tried again and again. Nothing happened.

Beth lifted her head up to see what was going on, only to find that the middle compartment that was used as an arm rest had been shifted during the crash and the plastic material was now pressed into the buckle where the strap was securing her in place. It was not going to budge.

She felt faint all of a sudden when she realized that.

Beth could not keep her head up to figure a way out of the mess she was in. Her mind clouded over, and Beth felt like she was going to doze off, her head slowly drifting back down. She snapped it back up, forcing her eyes to stay open.

Don't fall asleep.

She needed to get out of here.

Beth quickly wiggled her toes to make sure that she wasn't paralyzed as the thought entered her mind, and she was not. Only her body felt limp and a bit numb in various places. She messed with the belt again, tears pushing out of her eyes as she blinked. She was frustrated and scared, and not to mention feeling very, very tired at the moment. Through her blurry vision from the tears, she saw a red color stained to her hands.

Blood was on her. Beth's own blood.

Not a lot, but enough.

She then tasted some blood that had inched its way to up her neck and to her mouth from a cut on her chest where glass must have opened up a wound on her skin.

Right then, Beth saw a figure run across the intersection towards her, avoiding pieces of metal that were in the road from when the two cars collided. All she could do was watch as the person got closer and moved around her upside down car, and then got to their knees to bend over, yanking the driver side door open to get to her.

She didn't know if she was actually going to be able to form words, but she knew she had to try. "I'm stuck," she breathed out, sounding quiet.

It was hard to see, but Beth was sure that the person was a man. The pitch of the voice, low and gruff, then told her that she was right. "Let me get you outta here," he said.

The man evaluated the situation for a moment before he reached over her to try and get the seat belt undone. When it didn't work, she wanted to tell him that she had tried that already, but couldn't find the words to say them.

"I'll be right back. Stay right here. Don't move."

Stay right there?

Was he serious? Where did he think that she would be able to go to? She was stuck inside her vehicle. Not like she could drive off...

She almost laughed.

Almost.

But that would be the wrong thing to do at a time like this.

Beth twisted her head so she could try and see where the man was going to. She noticed at the last second that the man who came and tried to help her wore a vest with faded white angel wings on the back. From her position, she saw that he ran over to something that was parked in a space on the opposite road. It looked like a motorcycle to her, but she could not be sure due to her foggy brain and watery eyes.

While he was gone, Beth's mind traveled over to the car that crashed into her as she had gone through the intersection on the quiet street. Was the driver okay? Were they injured at all? Were there any passengers?

What the hell had happened?

And why was this mysterious man only tending to only her?

Oh, God.

Was the other driver dead? Was that why the guy was only focused on her instead of the other car that was a good sixty yards away from her car?

Her mind swirled with endless questions and zero answers. She knew nothing at all about the situation. All she knew was that her head was really starting to throb and relentlessly thinking about all the possibilities made it pound against her skull even harder.

The man came back fast and aided as a distraction, Beth's focus now adjusting to only him. He bent back over onto the ground with a large knife that looked like it was probably used for hunting. It scared her for second, and she jerked in the seat while she gasped, still upside down, still locked into her place with no escape, and still had all the blood rushing to her head, making her weak.

"Relax," he said calmly. "I ain't gonna hurt you."

The way he said it reassured her that he was only there to help. She did what he said and let her body relax again, though she did not have much of a choice in the matter. Her body had been yanked out of its normal equilibrium status from the impact, and her body told her not to strain her muscles. "M'kay," she weakly managed to get out.

"I'm gonna cut both the straps off of ya, okay?"

That made sense. "Mmhm."

"Don't move at all. Stay as still as possible," he instructed with an even tone.

His balanced voice made her more calm. He seemed like he knew what he was doing, or at least knew what needed to be done to get her out of the smashed up death trap she was in.

The man grabbed ahold of the strap and ran the knife underneath the part of it that went diagonally across her chest. She found it horribly ironic that the thing that saved her life was now trapping her in. The man sliced the belt material off and then reached over further so he could get to the part that was across her hips. He then adjusted himself so that he had one arm around her back, hand resting on her arm that was furthest away from him to hold her as he cut her loose, and so that her head would not smack onto the roof of the car as she fell out of the seat.

The last bit of the seat belt material was cut and Beth felt her body drift towards the ground before the man quickly took her in both arms and pulled her out of the vehicle with a lot of strength to his muscles.

He uprighted her once she was free so Beth's feet were firmly on the ground, her boots finding her footing. Her body still felt like it might falter and fall down, so it was a good thing that the man who saved her had a grasp on both of the sides of her shoulders to continue to hold her in her place before him.

She noticed that he was taller than her, not by too much, but enough to make her have to look up to him. His shoulders were wide, and his muscular arms stood out to her.

"Hey, are you okay?" the man asked. "Is anythin' broken? Anythin' hurtin' ya?"

She must have been in shock because she didn't really feel any type of pain, just dizziness and the faint feeling looming over her, threatening to take control.

His grip on the side of her arms tightened as her body began to give out without her permission. She felt her legs start to lose the ability to hold her weight up, her knees beginning to bend and cave in. Beth weakly grabbed onto his muscular arms for support, trying to get her eyes to focus. When they finally did, she saw the man looking back into her eyes, his deep set blue ones that were hooded by dark hair searching her own for any sign of distress or pain. Their eyes connected, and for some reason she felt safe with him. She got the feeling that everything was going to be alright.

She would be okay.

This man who she didn't know saved her, rescued her after something horrible happened. He saved her life, she definitively knew that. No one else was around and Beth would have eventually passed out in her car. It would have been hours before someone came across the wreck. And by that point, she may have been dead from blood loss or internal bleeding.

An angel wing vest, how appropriate.

That was the last thing she thought before her world turned black and she lost consciousness in the strong arms of a stranger.

A/N: I had a dream about this story a while ago, which is strange because I never dream about bethyl (unfortunately). So I wrote it down after it stuck with me and it has been sitting in my documents for a long time. Hopefully it's interesting. Please, please, please let me know if I should continue! I have a plot in mind of where I could take this but I need to know if it would be worth writing.

Honestly, one of the top reasons why I wrote this was because I thought the whole angel wing vest symbolism was just too good! But I'm still nervous about posting this.