The Runt of the Litter

don't look

Note: Thank you so so so much for all your lovely comments and votes and for even just reading this story at all. It means a lot to me.

Okay, I know, I'm posting late in the day again AND it's a short chapter again. I'm genuinely sorry. Next week I'll be posting a request chapter, so it'll definitely be longer. I finished classes this week so I had final projects due and now I'm free except for one more exam, so I will have a lot more time to write this week. I'll probably even sound less like a mess of a human being in my note next week (😉).

I briefly want to mention that this chapter is very loosely based off of the season 15 episode Drag Me Away (From You), (SPOILERS AHEAD) not because I used any events or dialogue from the episode or anything like that, but I just found it really interesting that Dean, at 13/14 years old, had discovered those kids' bodies and had such an intense reaction. I wanted to think about how that experience would have translated into Anna's life, because I think he would have tried to prevent her or Sam from seeing anything like that for as long as possible. Hence, this chapter. 

Anna is fifteen.

don't look

There are certain things nobody can be protected from. When her mother was killed, Anna sat just feet away, staring at the blood and watching her eyes glow and then fade. When her father was killed, she stood in the doorway to his hospital room listening to monitors beep, beep, beep, before he flatlined. When Bobby died, she was holding his hand. Three significant figures in her life-- though each for very different reasons and having filled very different roles-- all died while she was close, seeing, watching, building vivid memories that smelled of tangy earth and powerful anesthetic.

()()()

"Don't look," Dean had told her once as he dug a splinter out of her foot. It was deep. There was blood. And she was only four years old, so she was already sobbing. "The more you look, the more it's gonna hurt."

Anna didn't understand what he could possibly mean by that. How would looking make it hurt more? Her eyes weren't the things hurting. Her foot was. Not looking did stop her from fearfully tugging her little foot out of his grasp every time she saw the tweezers in his hand move toward it.

()()()

Never once had she regretted the fact that she'd been present, been watching for each of those deaths. Never once had she been able to think of just why she didn't regret it. Until now.

Fact was, she would never have been able to ignore those deaths. She could never have been protected from them. She could only have felt distant from their actual occurrence. She could only have been kept from watching eyes go gray or blood seep through a blouse or a monitor's jumping vibrant line go still. And that wouldn't have meant a thing. Blood was easy to ignore when you were losing the whole of a person's soul at the same time as you were watching them bleed.

()()()

"Don't look," Sam's actions had screamed when he brought Dean back, a demon. But Anna had refused to be pushed away. She'd seen black eyes, a hammer swinging full force toward Sam's head only to bury itself in the wall, and Dean-- not her Dean-- yelling and thrashing like a wild animal when Castiel showed up and they knew that they had him. She'd regretted looking, but not because she would have changed her actions given the chance-- she would never have chosen to leave Sam alone with that version of Dean. She'd regretted it because she'd learned something and could never put her finger on what.

()()()

There was a certain inevitability to grief that made the physical image imprinted in her memory into the less traumatizing part of her father's, mother's, and surrogate uncle's deaths. The image, after all, would have lost all its power had she not been so badly longing for the blade not to enter her mother's chest, the monitor to keep up its beeping, jumping line, and Bobby's hand to just keep writing numbers on Sam's arm so long as it would keep him alive. The actual seeing would have meant nothing if she hadn't been experiencing emotions powerful enough to knock her off her feet.