The Runt of the Litter

Fix Us

Note: Hey, Beauties! Thanks for being so incredibly kind this week (and every week)! I can't count the number of times I read and reread comments and sat there grinning like an idiot. I genuinely appreciate all of you so much ❤️

I had this one ready ahead of time and was planning to post at a normal time of day, but I happened to be up past midnight... so I guess I just figured why not post now?

This week's chapter was a request from Cookiemonstar1912 who wanted to see Sam (after being resouled) finding out that he left Anna alone when she was sick. I tried doing this from Sam's POV (though still written in the 3rd person personal) because that made the most sense to me for tackling this prompt. I hope you all enjoy, and I hope I didn't butcher Sam's perspective.

I low key took the long way around with this one. What I expected to be a 2000 word chapter turned into almost 7000 words. But I think it turned out pretty well, so I'm not mad about it. Happy reading!

As in Grit Your Teeth, Pull Your Hair, Anna is twelve years old.

Fix Us

Sam knew his sister well enough to recognize the signs that she was coming down with something, even if she was too stubborn to admit to it... and she certainly was that. He woke up well before she did most mornings, but this morning he woke up to see her curled up on the couch watching some old western on the tiny, crappy TV in their motel room. That was sign number one, but he nearly let it slide. It wasn't quite right, after all.

Normally, if Anna felt sick enough that she couldn't sleep well and preferred to get up and sit on the couch watching TV, she woke up either him or Dean first so she could have some company. It was one of many things that still set her apart as the baby of the family, not that Sam considered that a bad thing. He wished more than anything that she would keep counting on him and Dean forever in all those little ways that she did. He would gladly get up at midnight to let her curl under his arm and watch Bonanza reruns. It was a lot easier than taking her to the basement of the local morgue and teaching her what the markings on a dead body meant.

Maybe she'd gotten up by herself because she was getting older and felt embarrassed about waking up her brother in the middle of the night. He didn't know, but he couldn't help but wonder if it was because she only had him right now.

Dean was off helping a couple of hunting buddies wipe out a nest, and he'd left Sam and Anna in Bridgeport where they'd been planning to stay a few more days anyway to make sure that the vengeful spirit they'd just laid to rest was really gone for good.

Sam's relationship with Anna was a lot different than Dean's, and he was fully aware of that. They had a more classic sibling relationship, though he acted every bit like a much older sibling and she every bit like a much younger one. Dean could be a lot like a father where Anna was concerned, and even where Sam was concerned at times but not to the same extent. Sam knew their sister didn't think of him as an authority figure the way she did their brother. He also knew that she respected him a lot more than he deserved given his history. But it was in Anna's nature to believe the best about people she was close to, so it was all he could do to live up to what she needed him to be. He suspected that respect she had for him was the only reason she'd been so agreeable and obedient the last couple days as they waited around without much to do.

Now, he sat in his bed and puzzled over the scene before him. Things had been a little weird all around since he'd woken up not so long ago with over a year of his life completely absent from his memory, a year in which his body had apparently been walking around doing unspeakable things while his soul cooked in hell. It seemed like the hits just kept coming as far as that year was concerned. He was retaining new horrific memories on a regular basis whether from cases coming back to haunt him, Cas spilling too much, or his own scratching at the wall in his head earning him a dribble of a memory leaking over the top of the wall. Things had been weird.