Just a quick one-shot to try to get the mojo running....my muse is on vacation with no date of return. Please review...maybe it will draw her back. And all reviews are now being answered on my LJ page rather than Xanga...Look for Cerridwen7 on !

"Men occasionally stumble across the truth, but most of them pick themselves up and hurry off as if nothing had happened."

-Winston Churchill

I drifted for near on a year after she died. Did my damndest to stay awake, lived like a vamp on coffee and them pep pills from the gas stations. Sleepin' meant dreamin', and dreamin' meant nightmares. When I couldn't stay awake no longer I fell into a bottle, drank 'til I was seein' sideways and passed clean out. Ya don't dream when you're blitzed like that, I can tell ya. That was the only peace I got. Didn't do no drugs, though. Drugs are for people who are miserable but don't have the balls to off themselves. Jim and Jack were my only friends then.

Don't know that I ever felt so alone in my whole life. Reality had snuck up and screwed me from above, below, and behind. Everything got turned wrong side up; black was white and up was down and the only woman I ever really loved had turned into the scariest monster I had ever thought of. Lookin' back, knowin' what I know now, I don't know if I would have done the same thing. Maybe I'd have let her kill me instead.

But there was no takin' it back, and there was no choice but to go on. Fact was, I needed to know the truth, to find out what had turned my lover into a monster. So when I wasn't up to my armpits in greasy car parts, I read everything I could put my hands on. Spent near every dime we had saved buyin' old books and relics. I needed to know what had happened. Needed to know why.

I drifted along, drinkin', studyin', tryin' my best not to dream. If I went to bed sober, I knew I'd soak that bed with sweat before the sun came up, and that I'd see her face all night. Them dreams were a new hell, and I was right scared that they'd never end. I couldn't stand the thought of livin' the rest of my life tryin' not to think of my poor dead wife.

It wasn't 'til I met John Winchester and his boys that things started fallin' together in my mind. Say what ya want about John, but he knew how to walk that walk. He was a goal-oriented, one-track-minded bastard. Difference between him and me, though, was he was after revenge. All I wanted was to make sure that nobody else had to lose what I lost.

Them boys crawled right up in my soul, too, kinda filled up part of that hole my wife had left behind. Dean was a little hellion, but his heart was right, and he would do near anything to protect his baby brother and his dad. He was brave from the start, too, always jumpin' in any fight he could. Sam was a gangly little thing who hadn't grown into his body yet, walkin' tangle-legged, front teeth so big he could eat pumpkins through a fence. He was so curious, like a sponge soakin' up knowledge. Drove his daddy crazy with his constant questions. Those two boys put a little life back in me, I must admit. Sometimes I imagined them as the kids I could have had with her, if fate hadn't stepped in.

Sometimes I can still feel her. I'll go out to scoop the walk in the dead of winter, and I can hear her laughin' out in the trees. Or I'll be in the kitchen late at night, suckin' at a bottle of whiskey, and suddenly it feels like all I have to do is to turn around, and she'll be standin' in the doorway, callin' me back to bed.

She was the only one ever to love my crusty old ass, and she was as near to perfect as a woman can be. I loved her more than I ever thought I could love anybody. And losin' her hurt worse than anything I ever thought I could feel. But I keep goin' on, because there's not another choice.

But I miss her every day.