Drawing Yellow
By Dartigen
A/N: This has nothing to do with The Village, got it? It actually has to do with a weird childhood thing of mine. I used to be a bit obsessive-compulsive about numbers, and I always did things in fours, because four was a lucky number to me (I'm an Aquarian). If I did something in a three, a five, or any number that didn't divide perfectly into four, it was bad luck. So I was digging through some old AoE files I discovered, and I remembered my weird habit (continued up until I was about nine or ten), and I decided to write this.
I hope someone around here still remembers those Faber-Castell textas. They're hard to describe.
Disclaimer: Do I look like Eric Kripke? No. So I'm obviously not him. Supernatural, all recognisable characters, elements, and miscellania, are the property of the respective owners. Faber-Castell...don't own it.
When Sam was little, he drew a lot. Everyone said it was normal, and Dean accepted this. But oddly enough, Sam never used yellow.
One day, as teacher asked him why. Sam wouldn't talk to anyone, just Dean, (stupid kid with his stupid phases) so Dean had to ask Sam.
"Sammy, why aren't you using yellow?"
Sam stood on tiptoe and whispered into Dean's ear. Dean then straightened up and said, "He says he doesn't draw yellow because yellow is a bad colour."
"Can you ask him why yellow is a bad colour?"
Dean leant down to hear Sam, and spoke again.
"He says yellow killed mom, and he's scared of it, so he doesn't draw it because if he does it'll come back."
The teacher shrugged it off. Kid lost his mom in a fire, of course he's scared of it.
When Sam lost Jess, he had a childish thought.
I drew yellow and I brought it back.
Why didn't I think?
It had been a total accident. He had to colour a diagram, and he only had a black pen – which was what the diagram was drawn in. And Sam was too impatient and too perfectionist to just use pattern. No. It had to be colour.
Searching the apartment, all he found was a cylinder of textas, the eternal Faber-Castell ones with the lids that snapped together. Grabbing a random one he started to colour, and childhood fear suddenly stopped his hand.
He had grabbed the yellow texta.
Staring at the paper in horror, he suddenly shook his head and thought, I'm being stupid. It's just a texta.
Nevertheless, he coloured over the tiny yellow patch with bright green. Green was better.
But a little voice in his head said, too late, too late, too late.
You drew yellow and it's going to come back.
So when Jess died, Sam knew it was his fault, and he said so. But Dean didn't remember that day when Sam had warned him not to draw yellow. Even so, Sam remembered that Dean hated the colour with a passion. It wasn't odd - a demon with yellow eyes had killed their mother, of course they hated the colour. But Dean didn't remember, so he would never really understand why it was his fault that Jess died.
Staring morosely out of the Impala's window, the wind in his hair and the sun on his face, Sam though, I drew yellow. I killed Jess because I drew yellow.