Aftertaste
Title: Aftertaste
Author: missyjack
Rating: pg-13
Genre: gen, drabble
Disclaimer: Kripke owns everything
A/N: Three stories written for supernatural100 drabble challenge #40 Taste. Post Devil'sTrap (No spoilers)
One.
The Impala lies by the side of the road lay, a twisted wreck of steel painted with blood. Inside, flesh intersects with metal, and hope bleeds into the leather. One man stirs to consciousness. Pain divides his thoughts as he struggles to understand what’s happened. He needs each breath, but wastes them calling out names. No-one responds.
If they die it will be his fault. His own pathetic weakness has betrayed them. All the promises he’d ever made to them taste like grave dirt in his mouth. In the end it is him, not the Demon who has really destroyed this family.
Two.
He’s in debt to his family.
In the hospital, people he doesn’t know care for him with sutures and sympathy. Their concern is a bitter pill on his tongue. They should know him for what he’s done and shun him.
Trust and loyalty and love and are the blackmarket currency of the Winchester emotional economy, and he’s sent them bankrupt. Stolen these things from his family and squandered them on his own needs.
You can’t pay back failure or betrayal with a fake credit card.
He’s in debt to his family and he can never repay them.
Three.
They are stronger as a family.
No, he is stronger when they are a family..
After all the things he’s hunted, he’s only once known fear and it tasted like loneliness.
He thought he would die without them and is afraid now that they will die because of him.
He looks at the two men lying in hospital beds. He knows he must leave. He can’t heal them or protect them, only disappoint them. Without him, there are possibilities - for victory, for hope, for a future.
They will learn to be strong without him.
And he will learn to live with the aftertaste.
Author: missyjack
Rating: pg-13
Genre: gen, drabble
Disclaimer: Kripke owns everything
A/N: Three stories written for supernatural100 drabble challenge #40 Taste. Post Devil'sTrap (No spoilers)
One.
The Impala lies by the side of the road lay, a twisted wreck of steel painted with blood. Inside, flesh intersects with metal, and hope bleeds into the leather. One man stirs to consciousness. Pain divides his thoughts as he struggles to understand what’s happened. He needs each breath, but wastes them calling out names. No-one responds.
If they die it will be his fault. His own pathetic weakness has betrayed them. All the promises he’d ever made to them taste like grave dirt in his mouth. In the end it is him, not the Demon who has really destroyed this family.
Two.
He’s in debt to his family.
In the hospital, people he doesn’t know care for him with sutures and sympathy. Their concern is a bitter pill on his tongue. They should know him for what he’s done and shun him.
Trust and loyalty and love and are the blackmarket currency of the Winchester emotional economy, and he’s sent them bankrupt. Stolen these things from his family and squandered them on his own needs.
You can’t pay back failure or betrayal with a fake credit card.
He’s in debt to his family and he can never repay them.
Three.
They are stronger as a family.
No, he is stronger when they are a family..
After all the things he’s hunted, he’s only once known fear and it tasted like loneliness.
He thought he would die without them and is afraid now that they will die because of him.
He looks at the two men lying in hospital beds. He knows he must leave. He can’t heal them or protect them, only disappoint them. Without him, there are possibilities - for victory, for hope, for a future.
They will learn to be strong without him.
And he will learn to live with the aftertaste.