The Runt of the Litter

Whisper Something Sorrowful

Note: Holy crap, you guys, things are crazy right now-- Thanks so much for everybody's support. I really appreciate the comments and the votes and even just that any of you are reading this book. It feels really good to have so many people interested and enjoying this <3

I start classes for Spring semester this week, and I'm up to a grand total of nine requests now, so that's what I'll be posting for a while lol. But thank you to everyone who's given me a prompt, because I genuinely love writing requests, and I'm excited about all of them! I swear to everyone who's requested something that it's on its way. I'm keeping a list, and I won't forget about anyone.

This request came from aisha.yousafff who wanted to see Anna's final moments as she dies. Little dark. Super sad. I really liked writing it. But, yes, be warned that it's really sad. I made myself real sad writing it and I hope I'm able to make someone else feel some feels as well.

Anna is eighteen.

Whisper Something Sorrowful

It was cold. Outside. Inside. Cold. Cold like her fingertips when she got nervous going on her first date. Cold like the lake outside Lebanon when she'd jumped into it last November, trying so hard to be a real, warm-blooded kid. Cold like feel-better ice cream sprinkled through the summers of her early childhood. Cold like her mother's hand under hers when Abaddon put a cold knife through a warm heart that was beating, beating, beating- still.

It was still. The world was still. Still like her mother's heart. Still like her father's corpse. Still like a photograph of a moment you can't get back. Still like the past and the future and everything but right now. But right now... was still... breathless, beatless, unrhythmic... cold.

Cold like her mother's hand. Cold like her mother's heart. Cold like death. Cold like dying.

But she couldn't be dying. Not at eighteen. For so long, she'd believed she would die by twenty-one. But she'd graduated high school, and she'd felt the hesitation every time Dean or Sam put a gun in her hands. She'd seen the fire in their eyes when something evil dared glance her way. She'd done so much good in the last year. She'd breathed smoke and charred skin saving children. She'd spoken words from the heart that turned guns to the ground. She'd grown into her skin, packed punches to fell men twice her size, and tossed a book of matches just in time. She'd done good... and just maybe she'd started to feel invincible.

So just maybe it had been inevitable that she crash, burn, freeze... die. Die young.

She didn't know. She couldn't know. But she did know that it was cold, that she couldn't breathe, that everything about this still, frigid moment was wrong, wrong in a way that meant there was no coming back. It awoke a fear in her, fear that forced a strangled breath into her lungs, fear that made her want to cry like a child and get that adult response she always used to when she was still a little girl, still jumping in puddles after rainstorms, not yet gone still with the force of all the world's pressures.

It made her want Dean. It made her want Sam. It made her want someone to grab her hand tight in theirs and promise her that this moment wasn't what it felt like. That it was cold like ice cream, not like the limbs or the organs of the dead.

But she knew better. Because she wasn't that little girl. Because she was old in her brain, however young she might be in her eyes.

She was old, and she was young, and there was nobody. And she couldn't remember why. She couldn't remember where the boys had gone. She couldn't remember where she was, let alone why. She couldn't remember. She didn't know. She couldn't breathe. She couldn't see. She could only think, and thinking would get her nowhere so long as her body was so numb and her brain was so cold.