This chapter is for my sister, who birthday is today. Though she doesn't read fan fiction, she does love Supernatural and is my well, everything.

The cold hard fact is that we need people to live. As much as people get on our nerves or as much as they bother us, the simple light or dark matter of fact is that we need people to survive – some people more than others. Some people we could certainly do without. Sweets would be fine if the world existed without people like Wallace or any of the guards for that matter. But without the dark it's hard to appreciate the light.

Sweets feelings towards Dean were nothing of the homosexual nature. Fact was that if the other person were a woman, it still wouldn't be romantic. Fact is there are just some people in the world who are your other half, everything to you. You may not live and breathe with or without that person, but they add a color to your world that would be drab and desolate without that person. Sweets didn't have a lot of people that he felt that way about. There weren't a lot of people who didn't immediately find him annoying and push him away, find him too smart, too geeky to make fun of or too young to not smack around. Truth was there weren't a lot of people who immediately took to him and that he had a bond with. Sweets had always accepted that was part of life, not everyone had that person in their life, a life-long friend or a sibling who just made that bad day bearable, that terrible song on the radio better just because you sang along with it together. Sweets wondered if Kale Mallory ever had a friend like that, but he assumed not, for he wouldn't have ended up in this life, like Sweets was now. It confused the thoughts of why bad things happen to good people. Maybe I'm not really good people.

Together. Yeah Sweets was having a hard time keeping it together but not in a way that anyone would notice. Sweets fell inward on himself, didn't speak to words to anyone and moved about like a zombie that next day. Life in this hell was hard enough, life alone in it was worse. The clock was ticking before his 'transfer' and his options had run low. Sweets figured if Dean were here, well he wouldn't have said much but it would have been enough, enough to keep him going but instead all he saw around him was darkness closing in.

Sweets would have gladly found a way to get himself out of this jam, but his thoughts weren't as fluid as they were a month ago when he first came in. Funny thing about hope is that it generally isn't flushed out in an instant. Humans are funny creatures that latch onto hope with such a strong reverence it takes a lot of chipping away at until they finally let go. Sweets had long since seen the worst of humanity and moved on. First he had lived it, then profiled it, on the last case he was in the same head as it and now he was alone with it, the last shred of hope he held in his hands like a tattered security blanket, the threads of one that was left, the threads quickly disappearing in the wind.

So it was with little surprise that the next day when Sweets got in the truck, his ears deaf to the growing volume of the voices of the other prisoners angry over the even small portions of breakfast on an even hotter day than before. The words faded in and out like a cheap soundtrack on an early talking picture, 'hungry' and 'damn hot' followed by 'worst ever' penetrated his hearing though his quickly blocked out. Silence prevailed like the sound at the bottom of the unmarked grave he had dug into, home sweet home. Perhaps though had Sweets not been so lost in thought and so deeply without hope that he may have seen a rental car pull in as they left, a couple get out and head into the office, not stopping when the guards asked them to.

Sweets didn't do much thinking either when they got off the truck and lined up to work. He took his shovel and headed to a spot in line and began to work. The men asked for water some time later but were told they were out. Sweets dug the shovel in the ground, hearing nothing, caring for nothing, working. His highly toned body moved with great fluidity now though his physique would do him little good he feared where he was ultimately going. The voice grew louder as Sweets continued to work.

"Hey stop!" One of the prisoners said, a rise his voice. Sweets continued to shovel the earth, dig deep and find more dirt. Six feet Sweets said to himself, at least it's cool there, and quiet it's so noisy here.

"Hey someone help!" Another man shouted and Sweets continued to work until a body rushed past him jarring him from his mind's time away, turning to see Chet on the ground. Sweets shovel dropped to the ground and with a clang all the noise he had blocked out came back.

"I said get back!" The guard with the gun said and the on looking prisoners did as they were instructed. Sweets though walked past him and they did little as he approached Chet.

"Help me." Chet wheezed. Sweets lips were unparted but his eyes asked the question and Chet answered. "I couldn't keep up with the longer days, I went back to it."

Sweets nodded and felt the man's quick pulse but as Chet seized up it abruptly stopped. Sweets held Chet's wrist in his hand, motionless. The air was filled with only the rustle of the few trees around, not another sound was made and in that second all was still.

"He's dead?" One of the convicts asked breaking the near silence.

Sweets nodded, he doubted much CPR would help Chet this time, a second overdose had put a great deal of strain on his already fractured body.

"You did this!" The prisoner shouted to the guard. "You've worked us and starved us! It's no wonder it's come to this!"

The other prisoners began to shout, their hands raised in a fisted rage – the anger had so long gone unrequited that it had boiled, fueled by starvation and mistreatment.

It was then a guard, Lee, raised his rifle with a warning to get back but the shouting prisoner stepped forward, only to be intercepted by a bullet. The man fell to the ground, the guard stood shaking slightly at how the moment had transpired. The men looked to their fallen fellow man and suddenly with a rush of rage and math they came to a conclusion, the guards were heavily outnumbered. The guards looked at the prisoners and their math and fired a few shots and soon all was quiet.

Sweets opened his eyes after a moment of hoping the noise would stop. He opened his eyes, Chet's blank stare still looking up at him, he hadn't moved since he stooped next to Chet. Now he stood up and looked around. The trees still provided the only soundtrack, the trees going back to what they did, their light sounds in the tree above. Around Sweets were bodies, three prisoners and three guards, all dead, the rest had fled.

Sweets looked around and did math of his own, he could stay and face the warden or flee with that one shred of hope he held with him still. All it takes is one foot in front of the other.

Sorry this is short but it's something. Back to Dean perhaps tomorrow. Perhaps I can wind this whole story up by the 28th. Why? Because that would be one year from when I first published my first, "Mist in the Box."