Reckless [Dean Winchester]

19. Sleep Deprived

19. Sleep Deprived

There's something...different about you. I don't know what it is, but...I'm getting this strange vibe. If I were you, I'd tell the Winchesters. If it's something up their alley, they're the best people to go to. Don't waste your time around them.

These are the words that are stuck in my head as I wake this morning.

I have my hands in my lap, my eyes are on the ceiling. We'd just gotten back from another case, this one in St. Louis, involving witches and their companions called familiars. It was the familiar, a woman named Portia, who had given me the parting advice once the case was done. She's given me odd looks from the moment we met. I had almost confessed to the brothers on the drive back, but I hadn't. Hell, I had almost confessed to Portia that I had seen a Hellhound when I wasn't supposed to with the naked eye.

Even though I'm nowhere around the Winchesters right now, the atmosphere in the bunker is thick with tension and worry. We're on a recovering streak since the witch/familiar case, with Dean and I worrying about Sam. We'd seen the after effects of the first trial. There's still two left to tackle. What if this is too much for Sam to handle? What if the second trial, whatever it is, kills him before he makes it to the third?

That will only, probably, fire up Dean's motivation to seek out another Hellhound and do the trials on his own. It's bad enough one Winchester is going through with the insane idea to close Hell. I knew Dean cared about his little brother a lot, but it seemed like I was doing all the hawk-watching. But I never asked Sam if he was okay, because I knew he wouldn't tell me the truth. If the brothers couldn't tell each other the truth, why would they be honest with me?

Since my Hellhound sighting at the Cassity farm, I've begun to wonder if there's something wrong with me. Portia could sense something was up. What if I'm something I never thought I was before? What if my family is like me, and they've kept it hidden from me for all these years? Oh, stop going insane, I chastise. There is no way that any of us Bartons are anything but human. We're not invincible, we're not immortal.

I pull myself up, yawning mutely. I can feel the heaviness under my eyes. The bags are imprinted into my skin now. Lately, between the Cassity farm case and the St. Louis case, I haven't been sleeping a lot. I'll wake up even more exhausted than I had felt going into sleep the previous night. This pattern needs to stop. Maybe we've got sleeping pills lying around the bunker.

I get my shank (Dean had given it back to me after we got back from the Cassity farm) out of habit and tuck it away. My stomach yells at me. I can't even get to the bathroom and it goes off. I focus long enough to pick my direction to the nearest bathroom. I have to use anything my hands can grip for support. Everything feels like lead.

I decide to opt for a bath this morning instead of a shower. I almost sleep sitting on the toilet as I wait for the water to fill the tub. I wouldn't mind a nap in the water provided I don't drown myself in the process.

I make sure the door is shut before I strip. As I keep track of the water, I take time to notice my slight change. I look a little skeletal still, but the bones aren't as prominent as they used to be. I sniff. Though I don't bear a lot of scars on the outside, there are a lot on the inside. And I don't mean broken ribs or anything. I feel the scars on the inside, in my head. Awful reminders of my failures.

This will take away all that. I shut the water off and shudder once my foot comes into contact with warmth. I slip in, careful to not slosh water on the floor—I don't want the brothers yelling at me (more so Dean than Sam) about the mess nor do I want to clean up a big, slippery hazard.

I take my time running the shampoo through my hair. I think back to what I had before this: I was lucky if I got something of soap to wash myself with. The rain was my shampoo, conditioner, and water. When you're not clever enough to break into places to steal hot water and the basic bath items, you have to resort to the very bare minimums. I'd desperately wanted to break into a place. We'd all needed it then.