Inertia
By Alone Dreaming
Rating and Disclaimer: See the next chapter.
Warnings: General Anguish
Dedication: To Steph, as always, for giving me a smile and a pat on the head.
Author's Note: Five of twenty. Again, unbetad but it's not horrid! Enjoy.
He liked where he was in life and had no inclination to change it.
It wasn't as though he'd always loved it. In fact, he had hated it at first. Overnight, he had gone from playing baseball, baking cookies and reading bedtime stories to caring for Sammy, learning to fight and researching demons that his mother had sworn didn't exist. He'd been so furious and sad that he didn't speak to his father for months. And those emotions hadn't gone away. They festered and grew until one day he discovered, at the tender age of five, that he had to either bury the feelings and go on or explode from all the pain.
The first seemed like a better option. He didn't like change but he realized he didn't have a choice.
So he settled into his new life like a rock in the water. He gave his whole heart to Sammy, his whole body to training and his whole mind to learning everything he could about the supernatural. He imbedded himself into the life, forced himself to love it and focused completely on forgetting what he used to have. It was the only way he'd survive. He had to get to the point where he couldn't be moved or the slightest reminder of his old life would throw him into a tailspin. So, he was in a state of inertia; a state of balance.
And then his brother left him, tearing away one of his three pillars. He found himself teetering on the edge, unable to balance on the two things that were left. For a long time, he'd thought his three strong places in life had been equal. But Sam made him realize abruptly that his family, especially Sam, had always been his main support. Hunting and learning new things were just small, insignificant crutches. His inertia was set in those he loved not the things he loved.
He again found himself in a position where he could save himself or go insane. This time, his decision wasn't as wise. He let the fear, the hurt, and the anger, take over for a bit. He followed his father on crazy missions, each time pushing himself to the point where he almost broke physically. It took a trip to see Sam to shake him out of the behavior and afterwards, he found that he was broken. He curled up in a hotel room until his father found him, sick, tired, wounded beyond repair.
And as his father nursed him back to health physically, he came to the decision that the only way he could avoid change, the only way he could keep his inertia, was to depend on one person and one person only.
Himself.