The Runt of the Litter

sink v.

Note: I meant to post more now that I'm home all the time-- by the way, being a senior in high school in 2020 is weird, guys-- but I keep starting stories that are gonna end up excessively long so I haven't finished any more. I did find this one that I wrote a little while ago. Let me know what you think. Anna is thirteen, and kind of having an existential crisis.

I renamed this chapter today, so anybody who got an update, my apologies.

sink v.

One OSIRIS sneaker dug heel-down into sloppy mud, thick brown painting over the shoe's once-clean blue lettering. Two hands gripped a blood-slick shirt and pulled as if willing away the wound the blood flowed from. Blonde hair grew heavy with muddy water and movement slowed. Water the color of sandalwood rippled as Anna Winchester stopped moving and fell limply, exhausted into it. Her eyelids slipped down, covering dulled green.

Gunshots echoed from someplace nearby, and their sound reverberated off the trees as the world struggled to turn beneath the sluggish fog of Anna's mind. Her lips moved, her eyelids fluttered, but life was impossible to summon as it was busy flowing out of three gashes made in her stomach.

It only took one second for those fatal wounds to appear. How could a life as complete, as fully rounded as hers, end in one second? One second was barely long enough for a person to twitch a finger, blink an eye, or smile. One second wasn't even long enough to take a breath in or let one out. Thirteen years of laughing, crying, fearing, hoping, loving, and, occasionally, hating could all be destroyed and disintegrated in less time than it took to inhale one time.

Fear discolored the pain and seized her into a sitting position against all odds. Anna Winchester would not die in the space of a second. But it wasn't determination that pushed her upward from the muddy ground. It was a dead panic. Death was no foreign concept to her. The daughter and sister of the world's best hunters had no choice but to be familiar with endings, with losses, with goodbyes and missed opportunities for them. But being the one on the ground, being the one whose blood diluted the water in the backwoods of some shit-ass town that she couldn't even remember the name of because it was nothing to her... That was so completely different from being the one looking on in horror and wondering whether it could one day be her. Because dying felt so much different than it looked.

Even with her eyes open, the world looked like one disfigured mass of colors and shapes. And the only sense she could trust was touch when the shouting and the fog grew too much and she fell again, her mind no longer willing to focus on anything. Even her approaching demise escaped her realm of thought. But the hands that found her shoulders and then her face, moving cold, wet hair away from her forehead and then tugging her hands away from the pool of her own blood forming on her stomach... Those hands were real. They were trustworthy.

Beyond the chaotic and elusive world of sound that had overwhelmed her moments before, Anna could now detect one sound that was calm and consistent, ever present and stable. It was difficult, but Anna did manage to focus on that continuous drone and make out just what it meant. A voice, sharing words that didn't ring true, but did everything to comfort. A voice that was familiar and low and caring and maybe just a little bit scared. Sammy.

"You're alright, Anna. Slow down a little bit." Was she breathing too quickly? "Can you open your eyes for me?" Were her eyes still closed? "Anna, please. Hey, come on. Can you hear me? Everything's gonna be alright." But was it? If everything was really going to be alright, then why did Sam sound like she was dying? Why did she feel like she was dying?

"Hey, how's she doin'?" The words came out in a rush as knees hit mud on Anna's other side.

"It's pretty bad, Dean." If only speaking words in hushed tones could make them less terrifying.