When it comes upon her she's not sure what to do. All around her there is sorrow and melancholy and all those things she knows Dean would have hated to see. All the times he called her weak and sissy and too much of a girl for this hunt and this job and this life. And she wants to cry, wants to weep until her tears blur the road more than the rain does, wants to scream and shout and shoot something. Because she did what she told him she would do and it was the worst mistake of her entire life.
She sat on his bed, brushed a cool hand over his forehead, watched the eyes behind closed lids flicker back and forth drowsily. She pressed an unasked for kiss to his fingers and to his palm and let one tear fall onto his clean white shirt.
"You don't have to leave," Sam told her, leaning against the doorframe. When she turned, her blue eyes were broken.
"Yes, I do," she whispered. "I told him I would." And then, with a half-smile and a long hug, she was out the door, bags into the Miata and course set for some house in Texas where a great big cowboy cousin would tell her she was beautiful and had grown up fine, like some filly.
She makes it so sadly to that house in Texas, spends six months living right next door in one of the great big trailers her cousin owns. Ropes and rides with the big boys until they invite her for a drink and fight for her honor when some jackass questions it. She tries not to think of Dean or Sam or their stupid, archaic, unwarranted ways of stepping in front of anything thrown at her. Manages that six months without scrying him, without pulling that bloodstained shirt out of the back of her closet and holding it so tight it's like she's there with him. She's just so sure he's woken up, moved on, started up his hunts again because what else does he have to do? And maybe Sam and Sarah are settling, wondering when Dean will come home, worrying the way Sam and Sarah do. Nobody calls, so everything must be all right.
Hot spring turns into hotter summer, fades into warm fall. It's raining in Texas and pouring in Kansas, and she tries to believe she's not working the weather so it's the same wherever she and he are – or where he last was, where she last saw him. But six months after she left she can't hold on any more and looks into a silver bowl filled with clear water hoping all she'll see is her reflection.
He's still asleep.
She packs the same clothes she wore then into the same bags she hunted with, throws them into the trunk of her car loudly enough that her cowboy cousin comes barreling out of his house to see what the matter is. She hugs him, kisses him, cries on him and says "I've got to, it's for love," and drives away headed east towards Oklahoma City on I-40 and north on I-35 with her heart set on Wichita and her boot glued to the gas pedal. She doesn't stop for the whole six hours, just changes the music in her tape player over and over and over until it's blasting miserable instrumentals and she feels just like she did leaving him six months ago.
"Jesus, Marie," Sam says as he opens the door but she just blasts through and up the stairs.
"You should have called," she shouts before disappearing into Dean's room. She locks the door and looks at him with tears in her eyes.
"You bastard," she whispers to him, ignoring the chair next to his bed as she sits next to him. Places his hand on her lap, covers his big fingers with her slender ones, fiddles with his ring and shakes her head through the tears. "I did what I was supposed to do. I left after the job was done, after you'd been fixed by my hands. After I burned ten pounds of body fat reworking your fucking insides. But you couldn't wake up, you couldn't do the one thing to help yourself. I went to Texas, Dean, to Amarillo where I was so close but so far away and I thought you'd be done and off with another damn job. I spent six months keeping you out of my head but I can't now because I love you, Dean, I love you and I won't let you sleep forever. I'll give my life for you to finish yours, don't you think I won't." The tears come fresh, come free as he breathes in and out, soft and slow. "I'm so sorry, Dean," she whispers to him, face lifting to the sky. "I shouldn't have left until you woke. I'm sorry, it was a mistake, I won't do it again. I'm not leaving until you're awake, Dean. I won't leave until you're completely better. And if you want me to, I'll go, and I won't come back, but Dean, I love you now and forever and if ever you want me to stay you're going to have to tell me that because I've been listening to your silence forever and forever is too long." She kisses his forehead gently, warmly, perpetually. "Forever is too long."
His eyes flutter open.