To know loss [1/1, Gen]
Title: To know loss
Summary: Sam Winchester knows loss, and he knows that there are some things a person can’t survive losing.
Disclaimer: I don’t own anything. Supernatural and the Winchesters belong to Kripke and the CW.
AN: Well this was supposed to be 100 words, but I got a little carried away. And I wasn't even going to post this, but hey shrugs Here it is...
It's also unbeta’d, so all mistakes are my own.
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He tried not to think about it. Tried not to think about the list that had steadily grown over the years.
It wasn’t something new. It wasn’t even something he didn’t understand. He understood far better than he would ever dream to.
For as long as he could remember it was what had driven the crusade his family had been on for over twenty years. The loss of his mother had set it all in motion. And through the dangerous lives they led, they had lost many people along the way: other hunters, friends, Jessica, their father.
No, loss wasn’t anything new, but it never got any easier. He had learned the hard way. Seen and heard of too many people he cared about dying. Even felt responsible for a good portion of those deaths.
If only he had never been born.
The thought haunted him, and there were days he wished it were true.
Other days it felt as if they were the only two people left. An isolated pair in a world of death and darkness.
How could he be expected to be the last man standing? Who was he without the other half to their whole?
He knew loss. About as well as he knew grief, and pain, and fear. He knew it, and despised it no less than he did the demon responsible for it all.
Loss was every bit a part of their lives as hunting was. There was no choosing it, no escaping it, and in the end they were forced to endure and move forward. Survive, even when it felt as if it were too hard to actually live.
The dark clouds of his thoughts hovered over his emotions, a war raging within. He could hear the clock ticking in his head. Loud and clear, the noise echoed as if he were an empty room just staring at the seconds hand. Watching it as it counted down to the very moment in time that he would lose his big brother.
The thought hurt. The idea made him angry, furious. It made him want to hate his brother. Hate him and not feel it like a physical blow. It would be so easy. Blame him for his pain, for the likelihood that he could be forced to do this job without him. Forced to carry on with only half of himself still intact.
It was something his brother didn’t quite seem to understand; that the feelings went both ways.
He didn’t know what made his brother think that he could live without him. What made him think that they were so different that he could move past the death of the person he cherished most and still be able to live his life.
How his brother could still think so little of himself after all the times he had tried to drill it into his head that he mattered, that to him he mattered more than he would ever know. It was only one of many things that he wished could have been different.
Sam Winchester knew loss; knew it like the back of his right hand. The hand that had held guns, and knives, and crossbows since he had been nine years old and afraid of the thing in his closet.
Sam Winchester knew what it was like to never get the chance to know his mother. Knew what it felt like to lose friends, to watch the woman that he loved burn above him. He knew what it was like to walk into a silent hospital room and find his father lifeless on the cold tile floor.
Sam Winchester knew loss, and he knew that he could never survive losing Dean.
end