The Runt of the Litter

Something Dean Would Say

Note: Hey. So, it's been forever. Sorry, I really never meant to wait so long. I just haven't been doing very well, and I guess it's seemed more and more impossible to write something new about Anna the more time passed. But today, I sat down, and I wrote this little scene, and I figured you all have waited so long, you would probably take whatever I could give you... so I'm posting it.

I want to say first, though: Thank you, sincerely, for all the kind words. You all have been amazing, checking up on me when I disappeared, and encouraging me when I told you what's been going on. Thank you, from the bottom of my heart. I never expected the kind of support you all gave me, but it means the world to me. Thanks for being patient with me and for sending love <3 I appreciate you so much and I love you back <3

Without further ado, an honest-to-God one-shot. Anna is seventeen.

Something Dean Would Say

The words were like something Dean would say, she thought, staring at a billboard just off the highway. Keep on keepin' on, the sign encouraged, and beside the words bravely stood a smiley face that looked like its inspiration had been taken from an acid tab.

Anna sighed and looked down at her sneakers, the once-white laces now dyed the shade of her brothers' favorite beverage. The bottom of each shoe was starting to peel away from the top at the toes and heel, but the damage was significantly worse on the left than the right. She couldn't do more than stare at her shoe laces for a minute as the dead grass rustled around her in the hot summer breeze. She felt numb, but her chin was wobbling and her eyes burning.

It had been a mistake, she knew. Running away.

But she felt so lost at home now. She figured it was a sign that she had to go somewhere else when she found herself laying in her own bed, whispering repeatedly the words I wanna go home. Then again, she never thought things like that when the boys were home.

So why had she run the day they were supposed to return?

She was starting to feel something, and it was like the last thing her eyes needed to let the tears go. They hit the dirt and brown grass between her legs. Anna was startled by the sound of a truck whirring by on the road at the top of the bank up above her. She was seated beside the highway, but it was barely dawn, and she'd only seen the occasional passerby.

Anna pulled out her phone from her jacket pocket, fighting the little wad of one dollar bills that struggled to tumble like feathers toward the ground. "Fuck," she muttered to herself, seeing the low-battery warning in the center of her screen. She hadn't bothered to charge her phone, and now, just three hours after she'd left the bunker, it was threatening her with its life. She knew she had to make her choice now. She could either call somebody before her phone died, or be unreachable.

The choice was made for her as the phone began to vibrate in her hand. Reality grew blurry as Anna watched her shaking thumb swipe right across her screen. Her eyes remained fixed on that damn sign as she raised the phone until she could feel the screen's heat against her ear.

"Hey," she said softly, her voice joining the summer breeze and the truck on the road to push away the stillness of the world.

"Anna? Where'd you go? We just got back. You're not at the bunker."

"I took a walk," Anna said. "A really long walk."

"Where are you? You need a ride home?"

"I'm fine, Sam," she said, though she knew she should've said yes, please.

The line was quiet for a second, and Anna could hear Sam breathe carefully before he spoke again. "Are you okay, Ladybug? You sound really- You sound tired."

"Honestly," Anna whispered, though she wasn't being nearly as honest as she could have been. "I'm having a bad day."

"Is it-" Is it your depression?

"I think so," Anna answered his half-chewed question. She knew so. "I just feel really... bad," was where she landed. It was one of the two descriptors she turned to when she was trying to tell her brothers that she was having a bad day depression-wise. The other was tired. Neither of them did the feelings justice, but they were enough for Sam and Dean.

"Let us come and get you," Sam requested. This time, it sounded like he was asking for something, not like he was offering something.

Anna wanted to say yes, because she owed him whatever she could give. But she knew that if she told him where she was... "You're gonna be mad."

"What?"

Anna went quiet. Her eyes drifted back to her shoes, watching the laces bounce half a millimeter when the wind tickled them. "I can't do... I can't talk," she said. She was tired to her bones and to her brain. Tired like moving wasn't and had never been possible. Speaking was too much work.

"You don't have to," Sam promised. His voice getting gentle in that way that meant he was starting to get really fucking scared. Anna could hear the change in his voice, but she couldn't feel it. That was another thing depression did to her sometimes.

Sometimes she wanted to feel, and she just couldn't. Which wasn't fair, because most of the time her one wish was to stop feeling if it meant hurting less.

"Just tell me where you are."

Anna pressed her lips together. It was happening again. She was crying even though she didn't feel anything. And she was crying weak-- her mouth was turned down and her eyes were watering, but there was no energy behind it, because she wasn't sad enough for tears. She was just tired. Bone tired.

"I left," she admitted. To herself and to Sam.

"Where?" Sam asked, urgent.

Anna felt the urgency. But for a second she only had one answer, and it wasn't the one Sam wanted. I don't know where I went, she thought. Her eyes were dry again, but her cheeks felt stiff, and there was a thin, watery trail running from her nose to her upper lip. It took her a minute to remember she was on the phone. Her phone, which was- "It's gonna die."

"What?"

"My phone," Anna said, the words slippery and quiet like she'd barely gotten them out.

"Where are you?"

"I-70."

"You're on the interstate? Did you hitchhike?" There was an inflection like anger coming at her now, but Anna couldn't feel it. Her eyes just stung. She hadn't slept in a while. Had she slept? Her face crowded into a small frown. "What exit?"

"I don't know. There's a sign," Anna said. "Dean would say that." Her eyes welled again. "I'm so tired, Sam."

"We're gonna come find you, honey," Sam's voice broke in two. Anna wondered why he and Dean thought she was worth the kind of pain that could make their voices fragment like wine glasses tapped too hard against the kitchen sink. "You just have to tell me where you are."

"Keep on keepin' on," Anna said. Her phone made a sound like a dial tone, and she looked down to see Sam's name disappear under a sheet of black.

Anna stared up at the blue sky. She wanted to go home. But she didn't know where she was, and she certainly didn't know how to get back home from there. 

When the Impala's engine idled on the road above her an hour later, she realized that was why she had Sam and Dean.

La Fin