Parting Ways 1/1
Parting Ways
Pairing: Jensen/other, J2 implied
Rating: R
Words: 1,200
Warnings: implied violence, mentions of spousal abuse, murder, blood, character death (not J2), hurt/comfort,
Disclaimer: I'm the puppet master, but I don't own any puppets. Too bad that...
written for hc_bingo prompt "parting ways"
Summary: Jensen has had enough of the abuse, so he decides it's time to part ways... permanently.
Someone once said that the world couldn't be evil, that it was all just neutral matter and our own interpretation is the only thing making it into what we think it is. I don't remember who said that. I probably heard it on the TV some time. It's a funny concept, something that sounds kind of reasonable... at least until I find myself locked into a closet crying and begging because I am afraid of the dark and he knows. It's probably why he enjoys this punishment so much when he is too lazy to physically punish me.
Be it as it might be: good, evil... neutral matter. In the end it is what I think it is, at least to me, and that's all that matters, right? Maybe it is just matter but it hurts like hell and I am scared as shit that there might be any more matter coming for me soon. It's a little ridiculous really to be actually still worrying about an if when history should have taught me that it is only a question of when. These days all the matter around me seems to be of the evil sort or maybe that's just the way it feels to me.
It makes me wish to be part of the evil, to be able to hurt for once in my life rather than be hurt by him. The thought, that simple idea of hurting him back, seems so foreign, so scary, that for a moment I have to hold my breath looking around with wide eyes as if he could have heard my thoughts. But he didn't, couldn't, and so I repeat that thought over and over in my head until one evening I hurt my own dog just to have an excuse to have it stay with the vet for the night. I repeat the thought until I mix some Methanol I got from a pharmacy on the other end of town into his home brew and plug out the phone so if he might call for help when noticing the blindness setting in, he wouldn't be able to. I repeat that thought until I leave the gas running on the kitchen stove while taking the dog to the vet. There's dust in the electricity box and I know that every time he plugs in the cable to his laptop there are sparks but he's been too lazy to clean it out and he's too intoxicated to recognize the smell of gas.
By the time I return from the vet the tiny shack he called house is on fire and I can't help running inside to check that he is still in there, that he is not getting out. I have to bite my lip to hold in a holler of laughter when I see that the back room has collapsed already, that there is a charred leg peaking out from glowing rubble. I hardly even notice the heat until I stumble back coughing up lungs full of smoke and suddenly there's someone pulling me away and I stare at the fireman who is lugging me further from the burning rubble of my neutral matter life.
I burned my arm. I hadn't even noticed. But it makes people think that I wanted to save him. It shows how little they knew us, how they never cared when my eyes were red or my lip was split, how they all looked away. Nobody had listened when I begged for mercy and nobody hears my relieved laughter over his death.
It's an accident, that's what they say. He poisoned himself with dirty Schnapps and forgot to turn off the stove. All of my “desperate attempts to save him” had been too late. Ridiculous, but who am I to tell them so?
All I had was in that house. Nothing I wanted was in that house. All I hated was in that house. So leaving is easy once he is cremated - because he doesn't deserve some cold, dark hole in the ground simply because it means that he might see the flowers from below. He only deserves fire and I gave it to him and when I hold his ashes in my hands I carry them out like they are the most precious thing in the world before dumping them into the garbage on top of rotten tomatoes. I fill the urn with ash from our house and send it to his parents to dote over the rubble that killed their precious little bastard of a son.
All I keep, all I want, is the dog and once I pick him up at the vet's he is all over me with wagging tail and lolling tongue and I swear to make up to him every bit of hurt I brought over him.
I leave. New city, new job, new apartment... new me. I still dream about it, still feel my heart race whenever I lay in the dark at night. But I am different, less scared, less weak, less of a victim. And when the nice guy from down the block with his two dogs says “Hi!” with a dimpled smile and a blush, I can't help but smile back because he is the opposite of what he was. No cheap suits or fake smile, no dominant behavior. Just a nice guy. I can't remember the last time I met a nice guy.
“I'm Jared.”
For a second I hesitate as if giving up my name would make him see through the new life I was trying to build and find the matter of the past. But I take a deep breath, answering finally. “Jensen.”
We shake hands the way real people do when meeting casually on the side walk and I wonder what happened to me to find that remarkable.
“Are you alright?”
“What? Yes... I was just thinking about something, sorry.”
“No, I mean your arm. You got a bandage there.”
I look down on the white gauze taped to my right arm to cover the still healing burns. They sting but it's a good kind of pain that reminds me that I am alive. It is like this injury channels every hurt I should feel over what happened and what I did into a real physical symptom that can heal and go away with time.
“Yeah. I'm fine. It's just the reminder of what is no longer important,” I say and it surprises me that I am so honest because I came up with a story for this injury just in case I would need one but now I didn't even think of using it.
“Oh? What's that?”
“Just parting ways with someone who didn't deserve me,” I answer and it feels good because I've never dared to say these thoughts out loud, to value myself like that. But now, here - in front of a stranger - I do and it feels good.
I see something flash across Jared's face that makes me wonder if I am going to regret saying anything. The expression taking over his face is something that I know but can't say I am used to: compassion.
“I'm sorry about that.”
“I'm not.”
*