The Runt of the Litter

Grit Your Teeth, Pull Your Hair

Note: Hey Beauties! It's midterms and I'm exhausted...But I'm still feeling very motivated to write thanks to all your incredibly kind comments, votes, and reads! Writing has always been enjoyable and cathartic for me, but it's made even better by all your feedback. Thanks so much for all the responses to the last (and every) chapter!

This chapter is another request, this one from the incredibly kind (and funny) 1ipod2, who wanted to see Soulless Sam. What came to mind when I thought of this prompt was negligence and a little comedy. I kinda dove into the negligence side of things... and I set it early in season six, before it was actually known that Sam was out a soul.You'll see what I mean about all of this, though. Hope you like it!

The title is a line from the song Missing You by All Time Low (which I highly recommend if you haven't heard it because it's SO good).

In this chapter, Anna is twelve.

Grit Your Teeth, Pull Your Hair

She woke up late and was groggy. She felt like there was a film over her eyes, making it harder to interact with the world. Looking around her, she saw that the boys had already gone. There was a note on the table, so she crawled out of bed, shivering in the cold of their motel room. The thermostat was probably broken-- they usually were in these places-- and it was below freezing outside. She shivered and ran across the dirty and frigid motel room floor in her bare feet to get to the table.

The note said simply: Working the case. Eat breakfast and stay put.

Anna sighed and looked at the takeout container that had been on the table next to the note. She wasn't hungry. She hadn't really had much of an appetite since Sam's descent, and even before that there'd been times when she had to be coaxed into eating, namely during the time Dean spent in Hell and the subsequent unrestful months in which Sam conspired with Ruby and Dean with the angels. She set the note down and flipped the container open. French toast, a couple sausage links, and a small container of syrup. Normally, it would have been an enticing breakfast, but this morning, it only turned her stomach. She sighed, knowing she would have to eat or face an interrogation and subsequent lecture from her brother later. But she could put it off for a little while.

Skin coated in goosebumps, Anna hurried into the bathroom. There were four nearly threadbare towels there, and she turned the water nearly as hot as it would go, which was surprisingly hot for a rundown motel like this one, and got in the shower. She stayed there for nearly twenty minutes, relishing in the warmth before the hot water abruptly ran out. She wrapped herself hastily in a towel and practically ran to her duffel bag, throwing a long-sleeved shirt and sweatpants onto her bed to change into along with a pair of cotton socks.

Once she'd dressed in those clothes, she found that she was still shivering with cold, teeth chattering audibly. She hated the shaky feeling she had from the inside out, her skin prickling sensitively in the freezing room's air. And she was still exhausted despite having just woken up, her eyes feeling glazed over with fatigue. All this wasn't to mention the headache building behind her eyes.

Anna sat on her feet on the floor in front of Sam's duffel, digging through until she found a hoodie in the bottom of the bag. She'd rarely seen him wear his sweaters since his return from Hell. It was one of the many things that had changed about her brother. In fact, enough had changed in Sam that Anna sometimes still felt like she was mourning the loss of her big brother. As she slipped into a huge Stanford University hoodie and let the sleeves cover her hands and the hood swallow her head, Anna felt a little closer to the version of Sam that still seemed lost to them. She glanced at the breakfast on the table, but she felt nauseous at the thought of eating and decided to just go back to bed where she buried herself in blankets.