Legacy (Supernatural) [Rogue Trilogy] {3}

6. "I'm Not Okay."

6. "I'm Not Okay."

Cas doesn't leave the bunker, just like I don't. I keep my distance from him, not wanting to burden him with my emotional, post-cure baggage that's dragging me down. I know he's concerned about me, but he doesn't know how to approach the matter. The best thing right now is for me to handle my emotions on my own.

Yeah, okay, because when has that ever worked for anyone?

I find myself a mute zombie around the bunker. Robotically, I eat, not much. I wonder where Sam and Dean are. What they're chasing after this time. I know I've missed a bit of time away from here. There aren't any Styne bodies when I enter the library. It looks as it did before, before the Stynes tried to burn all the "invaluable" research into ash. It feels hollow, just like I do inside.

You let them get away with this, Franco's voice croons in my head. Yes, that bastard's voice has been consuming my thoughts. Now look at you. Back to square one. A fragile little human. How can you call yourself a hunter? I grab at my hair, threatening to rip it out. The voice is part of the reason why I can't sleep. Why I shuffle so zombie-like when my legs move.

When I get a shower, I let the water run as I sit. I let it bead down my tattooed body. Ugh, I'm disgusted with myself. How I let myself change so much. How I became the very thing someone like me hunts. But Cas fixed you. He cured you. You're human again. Yeah, "fixed". He only cured me physically.

Mentally, I should belong in a psych ward.

The running water helps my thoughts consume me. How I became colder as a demon, less attached. How I cared less about saving people and more about hunting things and slaughtering them like cattle. How I had tricked the people I cared about into believing I had control over something that really had control over me all along.

I start rocking back and forth. The path led to so much destruction, so much death. The comradery between my brothers and I didn't seem as strong as it had before I'd died. It'd seemed rifted, stretched too thin. Like it was on the thinnest of ice that was bound to shatter at the smallest feather-light touch.

I think back to the murders at my hand. Those men who were monsters. How easily I had killed them. How easily I let my demon side rule over my actions. I had almost killed Sam. He should have killed me. He should have cured me when we'd had our interrogation in the dungeon. A wasted opportunity.

Claire's mother died. I felt no remorse. Charlie died. I felt nothing. I had been the perfect ammo for that Styne bastard, trying to put her death on me. In a way, it was on me, Charlie's death. The time I used to pick myself up off the floor could have been used to help save her life. Instead, her blood had covered the bathroom walls, her body the sole occupant in that bathtub.

I had turned into a monster, something my brothers should have put down from the moment they knew. But they didn't. They trusted me, and I broke that trust as a result.

You aren't worth saving, Franco's voice hisses over the shower water. Castiel is a fool. You were never worthy of a second chance. You were never the daughter your father wanted you to be. You were never the sister you should have been. You're a failure, Josette. Just a miserable failure, a waste of space that's breathing air.

I want to ignore the words. I don't want to believe them. But I can't help that some part of me believes.

I decide enough is enough, and I cut off the water and grab a towel. I pull it tight around me. I look into the fogged mirror in the bathroom, seeing the murky mirror image of me. I wipe some of the fog away, revealing my old looks. The blonde hair, the naturally kind face. Dad's brown eyes. Her eyes are hardened, pissed.