there's a grief that can't be spoken - a 14.08 coda
Title: there's a grief that can't be spoken
Rating: Teen and up
Pairings: Gen
Word count: 437
Warnings: Spoilers for 14.08, grief
Summary: Jack died with a smile on his face
Sam was there at the end. It was quiet, peaceful, and nothing like he'd been expecting. Sam might have had a lot of experience with Death, but all of that was always violent, too raw and bloody and real to think that it was anything but death.
This was different. Sam thinks it might have actually been worse.
Jack didn't die clawing for breath, his eyes latching fearfully onto Sam's as blood dripped onto his shirt. Jack died with a smile on his face, eyes closed, dreaming.
Sam almost didn't realise at first. He'd had his eyes trained on Jack's face, so lost in thought that he barely noticed the stilling of his chest, or the last puff of breath escaping his lips. Or perhaps he did notice them, but he just hadn't wanted to believe it, because death - this kind of death, anyway - looked so much like sleep and it was easier to pretend, if only for a few moments.
Slowly, though, as the seconds ticked on and Jack refused to breathe, reality began to make itself known. Sam swallowed once, twice. It was the quiet more than anything, the lack of noise where once Jack's raspy breathing had been. It made Sam's own breathing sound almost obscenely loud, and he instinctively tried to quiet it as much as he could.
He tried to look away from the body, at the ceiling, the floor, burying his face in his hands. None of it worked. He looked at Jack's face, hair falling over his shut eyes, that goddamn smile fixed in place, and he remembered.
Sam remembered a boy, crouched in the corner of a nursery, eyes burning bright gold as he said, 'Father'.
Sam remembered him in his room, looking at him with hope as Sam told him he wasn't the only one who'd ever been scared of what they were.
Sam remembered a church, and a knife, and a whispered 'I love you'.
Sam remembered a boy who loved Star Wars and nougat, a boy who held onto hope despite everything that had happened in the year and a half he had spent on Earth, a boy who was so irrevocably good that he couldn't possibly be lying dead in front of him.
But.
Soon, Dean and Cas would come back, and Sam would have to tell them. Soon, they would talk about funeral arrangements and everything Jack would have wanted. Soon, they would burn the body and let Jack's ashes scatter across the forest, gone forever.
But that was for later. For now, in the quiet, Sam watched over Jack's body, and he mourned.