Hey all! I've decided to begin a new SN story, a much darker one then my last venture (which I will also be working on updating), this story will have a lot of dark themes and deal with some heavy subjects. This is your TW for abuse, non-consensual SA, depression, demons, violence, and overall dark tones. The Winchester's are canon personalities in this novel, so please don't review calling me out about how they'd never act like that on the show. I LOVE reviews though, so do please give me those! Thanks for reading and I hope you enjoy.
"Repeat it."
She was tired, so very tired.
Her body was heavy, her bones ached like that of someone much older than she was, and her brain felt hazy as if there was smoke swirling around her, making her drowsy and weak So weak. She wasn't sure she'd even understood what the man in front of her had said, except she'd been here many times before, the lesson always the same, the words always the same.
"Mistakes are failure. Failure is death." The woman, if you could even call her a woman, so young she was for what the world had turned into, answered him hollowly, her voice cracking on the last word, hanging in the air between them like a thick curtain. Death. Death. Death. So much death. The destruction and chaos they'd left behind was just a dent in the war they fought daily now, casualties haunted them as frequently as the actual ghosts they'd once hunted for sport. A reminder to what they were, a reminder to why they fought. Those that could be saved had been ushered to the nearby church, where they themselves would come to terms with what they had been subjected too, what horrors they'd lived, what atrocities they'd committed under Lucifer's command. But they couldn't save everyone, they never saved everyone, and for that she would suffer personally, for that she would be punished.
CRACK!
The slap across her cheek landed right as he intended, yet she barely reacted to it, head merely snapping sideways with the force, blonde, blood-soaked hair covering the spot as if it instinctively knew to hide the shame of his action. In the beginning, when he had found her and forced her into this fight with him and his brother, she had been shocked by the violence he would inflict after failed missions. She'd cry, scream, hit him back even, so unused to the viciousness of the code they lived by. Quickly though she learned what that got her was more pain and more heartache, and so she stopped. She learned what his reactions were and where she was permitted response. Crying was never acceptable. Strength, brutality, violence. That was their cypher.
"Again." His voice was gravel, his green eyes bright and fixed on her intensely, as if he was bearing into her very soul to make sure it still existed. Her head raised, blue eyes meeting green, and when she spoke again the weight of exhaustion in her voice cracked to the surface and softened him, only slightly.
"Mistakes are failure. Failure is death."
Tired. She was just so tired.
She couldn't remember anymore what normal life felt like, what it had been like before the Winchesters, before demons, before hell had come to earth. Every day was a battle, even when they weren't physically fighting. Breaks didn't exist. The mental toll had made her silent, bitter, hard to the outside world. Inside, though, she was broken. A shell. She had never meant to be in this life, to enter the world of hunters, to know that monsters were real and existed both in the world and in the very men who picked her up that fateful evening. But here she was, existing with them, fighting with them, failing with them. It never mattered who was at fault, who was to blame, who had failed that mission, the outcome was always the same; anger, white hot and aimed at her. A slap was the lesser of what she'd endured in even the last week, so she didn't react, didn't respond.
"How many did we lose, Sam?" His eyes left hers and her shoulders slumped instinctively, she was dismissed for now. She didn't know how she'd made it into the backseat of the black Impala, she wasn't even sure if she remembered putting the weapons back into the trunk, or if she'd even brought them with her at all. All she knew was that one moment they were there, in front of the church, and the next she was waking up with a rough shake of her shoulder and the familiar view of their bunker in front of her.
