#I only stocked and didn't organize the cooler. I felt a little bad after my manager said she was sorry that happened and that she was

[house-in-the-backyard-trees]

So my coworker said she was going to go do landscaping in the last hour before I left for the day which was fine. It was getting to be around 12:45 and she wasn't back in so I went to check the garbages and see where she was. I got to the last garbage can on pump 7/8 and she got out of her car. I don't know if she was in it the entire time bc she likes to do the garbage behind the dumpster. But it's really frustrating being the one stuck on register doing all the work while she goes outside and sits in her car and does whatever. I feel like we shouldn't have to babysit her. I got so mad at her I started shaking and I slammed the money counter down on the counter and counted my drawer in like 2 minutes and we didn't say a word to each other and I went and stood in the office and sent a message to my manager about her. Like when will anything she do be enough to upper management for her to get fired? or is she just gonna be here forever, just letting her get away with anything and everything?

[bigmouthlass]

Title:  Full Of Broken Thoughts

Series: Supernatural B-Sides

Author:  BJ

Fandom:  Supernatural

Warning: Major Character Death

Rating:  Teen

Synopsis: Takes place shortly after S9E14, 'Captives' What if Dean had decided to try a different solution to killing Abadon?

Tags:  Dean Winchester, Sam Winchester, Jody Mills, Death, Metatron, Castiel, Garth Fitzgerald IV, Crowley, Angst, Songfic, Canon Divergence,

AN: Song is "Hurt," written by Trent Reznor. Either the Nine Inch Nails original or the Johnny Cash cover are brilliant-- variations on a theme and a real illustration of how alternate interpretations can bring something new to an established work. All recognizable intellectual properties are owned by their respective creators and holders of any copyrights or trademarks. This is a not-for-profit work of fan art and protected by Fair Use.

---

The note was on the kitchen’s prep counter, weighted down with a sturdy drip coffeemaker new in the box.

Got a lead on First Blade. Might be a while. Calls going straight to your phone. -D

Sam sighed. "That's . . . that's great Dean, very vivid. Paints quite the word picture," he muttered, crumpling up the note and tossing it into the swill can. At least Dean had remembered to stock up the cooler before he took the car and Sam set to work making himself some breakfast. Peace and quiet for a few days, good food and his own company for a few days, no black cloud of guilt in the shape of his brother for a few days. If Sam was honest, it sounded lovely. Maybe they’d tried to reestablish the business prematurely. The way he felt right now he’d just as soon keep working alone. For now.

A few days turned into a few more days. Then a few more days. Sam kept busy. He found himself a scrappy little Jeep Cherokee that fit him like a glove and had a radio that didn't play cock rock 24/7. He ate at nice places where he didn't have to writhe through Dean's heavy drinking and complete inability to behave around any woman between twenty and fifty. He came home to a full shampoo bottle and an undefiled toothbrush and all the peace and quiet a guy could want.

It was all very serene, very soothing. Until Sam felt himself thoroughly soothed. --- I hurt myself today, to see if I still feel. I focus on the pain, the only thing that's real. --- "So I can't help but notice your shadow's missing," Jody finally spat it out as the movie on Jody's TV finished. Rashamon, all rain and leafy shades and everyone the hero of their own life story. Jody grunted as she adjusted her bad leg on the recliner's leg rest. "Is everything okay?"

"Sure, Dean's fine. How's Alex settling in?" Sam said. --- The needle tears a hole, the old familiar sting. Try to kill it all away, but I remember every thing. --- It got exasperating.

It got so Sam started conversations with, "Dean's working a case solo. He's fine." Each and every person would start a little, give him that so-so-concerned look, and say, "Okay." It only confirmed that anybody who knew them didn't think of Sam as a person in his own right. Only something that existed in relation to his needy fucking idiot of a brother. --- What have I become, my sweetest friend? Everyone I know, goes away in the end. --- It wasn't until Sam was cleaning out the cooler and found that experiment with garlic and Velveeta that he realized Dean had been gone for a while. An icepick stabbed through his guts as Sam started counting days.

He made himself stop. Dean wanted to sulk some more, he was within his rights. Sam was tired of being his older brother's therapist. They were both grown men for God's sake. The stinking mass of cheeselike foodstuff went into the trash and Sam went to work scrubbing the remains out of the cooler. --- And you could have it all, my empire of dirt. I will let you down. I will make you hurt. --- "Moose! Long time."

"What do you want Crowley?" Sam asked, sighing at the state of his shirt. That ecto stain hadn't come out. How did Dean do it, lemon juice or club soda or something else--

"Got a lead on the First Blade, finally. An associate of mine--"

Sam dropped the shirt. "What do you mean, finally? Dean went with you to chase the First Blade ages ago."

"No he has not my dear Moosie. In fact, that's why I'm wasting my breath on you and not on your better half. I've been trying to get through to Squirrel for several days, and the bloody tease will not answer his phone. I know I'm not exactly his favorite person in the world but it does make a girl feel a bit unloved."

Sam didn't answer. The arithmetic was running, absolute and merciless, and this time his brain ignored the hard stop he'd put on any thoughts that might lead to worrying about Dean.

"Pass the message along if you would. My followers are holding the line against Abbadon but that won't last indefinitely. Ta."

Sam stared at the laundry room wall for a long moment, his phone in his hand. Peace, quiet, emptiness, solitude.

He hated it. --- I wear this crown of thorns, upon my liar's chair. Full of broken thoughts, I cannot repair. --- "This is Dean's other, other cell. Please call my brother Sam at 214-555-1212."

"Dean call me. Right now. This dropping off the grid shit's not funny." --- Beneath the stains of time, the feelings disappear. You are someone else, I am still right here. --- "Sure I'll put out some feelers," Garth said. "How long has he been in the wind?"

However long seven weeks, two days, and eighteen-odd hours is. "Long enough I'm getting worried," Sam said. "You haven't heard of him needing backup on a case or anything?"

"Naw man. Not that he'd call for backup. You know Dean. I love y'all like family but there're times he'd cross the street to step in dog doo. Could be he just needed some Me Time and he's holed up somewhere with a couple strippers and a case of Jack Daniels."

"If that were the case he'd be calling every hour to rub my nose in it," Sam said dryly.

Garth laughed. "The cringe is strong with that one. Try not to worry too much. It's Dean. He's hard to hurt. Experts have tried."

That wasn’t true, and Sam knew it. Anyone who really knew him practically had to take a second job handling his oh-so-tender feelings--

Not ‘anyone,’ Sam. You. --- What have I become, my sweetest friend? Every one I know goes away in the end. --- Sam was in the bunker when it happened-- the alarm klaxon went off and the map table lit up like Vegas. It took him most of a day to reverse the lockdown and turn off the alarms, and when he went outside he ran straight into Castiel.

"Something's different," was the best Cas could do, with that maximum-strength frown of his. As they went downstairs, Cas asked, "Where's Dean?"

"I don't know. He left a while ago saying he was on a case and he--" Sam turned when he realized Cas wasn't in line with him anymore. The angel was standing on the upper deck stairs with the most profound look of horror Sam had ever seen on his face, including the time he'd taken Lucifer out of Sam's head.

"Oh no," Cas said. "Oh please, no. Not this. Please. Not this." --- And you could have it all, my empire of dirt. --- "I was one of Abbadon's personal guard," the elderly woman on the bed said, her hands held in place by padded cuffs. "Winchester trapped me inside the old convent and started shooting me up with needles full of his own blood. The last thing I remember was . . ." she started to cry, "he just . . . gleamed. The Righteous Man, in the flesh. It was beautiful."

Yeah, Sam remembered. The cold annihilating light that had singed every cell in his body, making him a burnt offering for sacrifice--

But they'd found no body. The Impala outside, Dean's jacket with the car keys in the pocket, Dean's footprints on the convent's filthy floor, Dean's fingerprints on the bloody needles, but no Dean. No Dean, alive or dead. No one matching Dean’s description had turned up as a John Doe anywhere and Sam had every Hunter and Hunter-adjacent person he’d ever met looking. Dean was just . . . gone.

The woman suddenly squinted in Sam's direction. "I'm sorry. Are you Sam?" He nodded. "He wanted me to give you a message. He said, 'It's okay. It should have been me the whole time.' He wanted to tell you he was sorry."

The next thing Sam remembered, he was outside the room and sitting on the floor. He breathed. His heart beat. He wasn't sure how. Sam wasn't sure of anything any more. Reality was over, and this all had to be a bad dream. Some nightmare Gadreel . . . or Crowley . . . or Lucifer, maybe he really was still in the Cage and Lucifer--

No acceptable version of reality would let the last word on their bond of brotherhood be the sound of a locking door. --- I will let you down. I will make you hurt. --- "No," Sam said. "Dean would never ask you. For anything."

"You're right. He didn't ask. I offered," Metatron said. "A convergence of mutual interests. I get one less enemy to deal with as I work to reunite angelkind," Sam scoffed, "demons go back into Hell for now, and your brother finally gets that martyr's death he's been seeking since . . . always."

"What does that mean, 'for now'?"

"Oh please. You of all people should know that nothing stays locked away forever. Could be next week. Could be in the year 3000. But it'll happen. Though honestly? I don't really see why you're so upset. Normal life awaits! I mean, sure, it doesn't mean anything without Dean providing context. What are you, without him? A college dropout suffering from delusions of heroism? A discarded vessel? Castiel's hired muscle? It's funny really. Out of all the members of the Winchester perpetual disaster machine, Dean was the one you really respected the least, and yet without him--"

"You shut your mouth." He was shaking. Knees, hands, voice. All of it shook.

Metatron did, but he didn't stop smiling. He might've been sipping a beer instead of watching Sam Winchester bear down on him with a blade to hand. "You wanna know the real reason, I put Dean back on the path to completing the Trials?" Through a series of moves Sam couldn't follow, Metatron disarmed him and punched him in the chest so hard Sam felt his ribs crack. Struggling to breathe, Sam collapsed. "I'm bored of your story. God might find humanity's inability to learn amusing, but I'm over it. I'm extremely over it.

"If you think about it," Metatron picked up Sam's angel blade, "it's cruel. Give you just enough awareness to know," Sam groaned as the angel put a hand on Sam's stomach and shook it, like a parent jiggling a chubby baby's tummy, "to really bellyfeel, how wretched you are, but not enough power to really do anything about it."

"Just kill me," Sam said. He felt it again, the relief of the end. "You win. Do it."

Metatron made a considering face. "That would be the merciful thing to do, I guess. I mean, there is always the possibility--" he burst into laughter. "Oh I can't even. It's gonna take a miracle to beat me, and the guy who made you capable of miracles? He's gone.

"And I don't feel like being merciful." He vanished. --- If I could start again, a million miles away, I would keep myself. --- "Oh don't be melodramatic Samuel, it doesn't suit you," Death scoffed. "I offered you the chance to die on your own terms and you rejected it."

"I was tricked!" Sam snapped.

"Yes. By your brother, who was equally ready to die, and whom you convinced otherwise. How did that conversation go again-- 'I want to live, and so should you, you have friends, family,' et cetera. The two things that define the both of you are survivor's guilt and martyr complex. You are not Christ, and no one demanded that you climb up on a cross. You were not in that church for vengeance or the greater good or any higher purpose, at all. You were in that church to atone for a very specific sin, from which your brother absolved you. Well now, it is over. Dean is somewhere you cannot reach and believe me, it is better for all concerned he remain there."

"Then take me too," Sam said.

"No."

Sam felt his soul fail, like an overloaded cable. "TAKE ME TOO!!!" He fell at Death's feet. "Just take me too. You want to."

"What I want is immaterial." Implacable as a Delphic oracle, Death stared down at Sam as Sam sniveled on the ground. "You’re free now, Sam. Though I don't think you'll find liberty comforting, in light of what you spurned to obtain it."

Sam woke up on the exam room table gasping air into his cramped lungs. --- I would find a way. ---

AN2: I got some feelz about the latter half of S9. Sam was angry, and he had every right -- Dean essentially held Sam down while Sam was raped, repeatedly. But basically confirming every bad thing Dean's ever felt about himself, and tying the whole thing off with the idea that not wanting to watch his brother die (again) was a sin and Sam would rather be dead than exist on the same planet was a bit overkill.