For Want of Love

Note: if i told you i'm sleep deprived and depressed, would you forgive the impromptu hiatus? 

fr you guys, im sorry. i don't mean to keep disappearing. tbh my brain sucks, and i keep losing all will to write or even exist. i did manage to write this, though, and it got the juices flowing (which sounds so gross, like who made that saying)

hopefully i'll be back with more stories for you sooner than later.

in the meantime, i hope you're all getting enough sleep and being gentle with yourselves. it's fucking rough out there

this one is for @Mmiller13 who i appreciate so much. 

anna is eighteen


For Want of Love

"NYU letters are in today," Kate said nonchalantly over a grilled cheese sandwich.

It was Thursday night and Kate's mom was working late, which meant Kate was allowed to stay the night at the bunker.

Anna's eyebrows went up. "You must be nervous," she said. "Not that you need to be. But, like, you're you. So you're probably nervous."

Kate gave her a faint smile. "I already opened the email," she said and wasted no time building suspense. "I got in. I just wanted to see if you did too."

Anna gave her friend a simple fist bump and grinned. "Who's the smartest bitch?" she goaded, but Kate didn't answer, just smiled sideways. "It's you," Anna clarified and snorted when Kate did. "For real, though, I'm glad you got in. Even if you did go and pick a dream school that's, like, forever away." She picked at the crust on her own sandwich.

She hadn't slept well the previous night and was feeling it throughout her body. Currently, she was nauseous and didn't want to chance eating a buttery grilled cheese.

"So, did you?"

Anna quirked an eyebrow and tilted her head sideways. "Did I what?"

"Get in," Kate finished. "To NYU."

Anna shrugged. "I dunno. I haven't checked."

"Well, check."

The eagerness in Kate's voice made Anna feel wary. They'd talked a couple times about Anna's post-secondary plans, and she was pretty sure Kate was going to respect her choice to pursue hunting instead of higher ed. But sometimes there was this edge of disappointment in her friend's voice when they talked about college. There was a lot Kate wasn't saying to her, things that had really already been said in one way or another.

"I just wanna know," Kate said. "Sorry, I didn't mean to be pushy."

"It's fine," Anna waved her off. She pulled her phone out and put in the passcode. "Ha!" she exclaimed. "Ethan just sent me this meme-"

"Anna, you're stalling."

"I'm not stalling," Anna said indignantly. "I got distracted. There's a major difference. Stalling implies I have a stake in the results of this stupid letter. I have no stake in this."

Kate sighed, and Anna caught a whiff of that familiar disappointment on her breath.

She swallowed, feeling a strange sense of shame well up in her stomach. She opened her school email and scrolled half a page down before she saw something from the NYU Admissions Office. Tapping on it before she had time to start feeling like it mattered, Anna groaned. "It's gonna make me open a link," she complained.

For some reason, that made Kate laugh. "Dude, come on," she snorted.

Anna made a let's get a move on gesture with one hand as the web page loaded very slowly on her phone screen. When it popped up, there was yet another prompt to tap a button in order to see her letter.

"I'm gonna file an official complaint," she threatened absently and tapped the button. A confetti animation appeared on the screen followed by two big words:

You're In!

Anna pursed her lips. "Well, that's annoying."

"Did they waitlist you?" Kate asked urgently. "What happened? You're in, right?"

Anna turned her screen toward Kate and pointed at the words there. "That is not grammatically correct. Why would they capitalize both words? It's not a title, really. It's just an exclamation-"

"Girl!" Kate half-squealed. "We can be roommates. And we can go to parties together and get drunk if we want and study together and be shut-ins and not talk to literally anyone else but each other and-"

Anna's tight silence finally caught up to Kate's intense joy.

"What's wrong?"

"I'm not going," Anna said gently. "I told you I don't want to go to college. It sounds great being able to live with you and party and whatever. But I don't like school and I'm not good at it, Kate. I'm a hunter now. That's what I was always meant to be."

"Anna," Kate said and shook her head minutely. She looked down at her sandwich and then back up at Anna. Her eyes weren't their usual selves. Brown but half-violent, they made Anna realize quickly that she and Kate were about to fight. Again.

"Please don't do the thing again where you try and convince me I'm better than the life I have always led," Anna said, already on edge. She didn't want to fight. She didn't want to talk. She suddenly wanted some space and wished Kate wasn't set to stay the night. "I can't do that fucking talk again."

Kate looked smaller in an instant, and Anna felt like an absolute dick.

"I'm sorry, okay?" she said softly. "You're my best friend in the world, Katie, but I can't- I can't keep listening to you judge me."

"I'm not." Kate seemed offended at the prospect. She looked at Anna painfully. "I'm just scared, okay? I'm scared you're gonna get hurt even more often than you already do. I'm scared you're gonna up and die one day, and I'll be six states away and won't find out for a month. I'm scared you're gonna forget I exist or forget you fucking exist."

When Kate stood up and headed for the counter, Anna panicked a little. But it was the last thing she'd said that hit the hardest. "What does that even mean?" Anna demanded. "I'm not gonna forget you, Kate. You're my best friend!" Which... was a weird thing to shout at someone.

"Am I interrupting something?"

"No," Kate said at the same time Anna snapped, "Yes!"

Dean raised an eyebrow and snorted. "Separate corners," he suggested and pointed to the library with one hand and the kitchen table with the other.

Anna begrudgingly started moving for the library. She grit her teeth and listened to her own jaw click with her frustration.

"Cool off, Anna. Come on," Dean pressed. As she passed by him, his hand landed gently on her head for a second.

()()()

The leather felt familiar against her palms, but it wasn't comforting today.

Anna flipped through her father's journal in search of solidarity. If there was one thing John would have agreed with her on, it was that hunting was the right thing. The noble thing. It was what Winchesters were supposed to do.

But John wasn't here. Hadn't been for a long time.

And so it was nothing but those traces of what he'd wanted for her that Anna had left to hang onto.

He'd only written about her a couple times in the entirety of his journal. Partly, this was because he started the thing long before she was even born. But partly it was for the same reason that Anna wanted to be a hunter.

She wasn't important. She'd never been.

Because hunting things and saving lives... Those were the most important things. And she'd never been good enough or strong enough or even old enough to do that job. The job passed down through her family for longer than even her father would ever know.

And it had been made clear to Anna from the time she was young that the only place anyone had in this family was a hunter's place.

John had barely stopped to talk to her when she was a toddler, too small to even start learning about the hunt yet. He'd kicked Sam out for good when he decided on Stanford. He'd reprimanded Dean for coddling her when she was six and said she was scared of the dark.

Anna loved her father still, after all this time. And she was scared of him still, after all this time. Dead or alive, she wanted him to be proud of her. She wanted him to see her.

And when she thought about college?

Kate would be happy. Sam would be happy. Dean would be happy. Anna might even learn to be happy.

But Dad would look down at her from his spot in heaven and give her that look he used to give her. The one that made her feel small and inconvenient. The one that used to squeeze endless apologies out of her dry little mouth. The one he gave her when the babysitter canceled at the last minute or she suddenly had to pee after they got on the interstate.

The disappointed and half-angry look he used to give her simply for being a fucking kid.

Anna didn't need babysitters anymore. And there was a piece of her that believed she didn't need John anymore. But her stomach twisted so tightly at the thought of disappointing him, it was just like she was three years old again. It was just like he was right in front of her, so tall she could have disappeared inside his shadow. It was just like she didn't know what rhythm was safe to breathe in, how long after he was asleep she had to wait to cry.

And Anna didn't have the heart to be angry about any of it. Because that was her dad. She still wrote him letters every father's day, though they got more complicated and less affectionate with every passing year.

She loved him. And she needed him to love her back. Whatever it took, she was going to get that love.

And hunting didn't just seem like a good place to start. It was the only way to start and the only way to end. It was... Well, hunting was it.

Despite her last name, Anna had a hard time swallowing that pill. Especially with all the voices in her ear saying, Don't. Please, it's not good for you. It's gonna kill you.

()()()

Sam was stirring something at the stove with Dean's supervision. Anna was at the table doing French homework she didn't feel motivated to complete.

"Sammy, what's A-U-T-O-C-H-T-O-N-E mean?"

"Indigenous," he said curtly. "Aut-oh-k-tone," he sounded out for her, then went silent again.

Anna's hand was still where it held her pencil. She looked up and caught Dean's eyes. He was thinking the same thing she was– Sam wasn't happy.

She opened her mouth but Dean shook his head and then nodded toward the hallway.

Anna took the hint, closed her notebook, grabbed her Monster, and went to her room. She stared at the word Sam had explained to her and tried to write the English translation down. But she'd already forgotten it.

"Autochtone," she said aloud and sighed. It wasn't jogging her memory.

Hell, it wasn't even helping her focus. Sam was mad at her, and it was hard to focus on anything beyond that.

Anna had never been good at being the object of someone's anger. She'd never been good at being the object of anybody's anything.

She couldn't make people angry, sad, or even guilty. It gnawed at her stomach and it gnawed at her brain.

Fortunately, it was only a few minutes before Dean knocked twice at her door and swung it open.

"Hey," she said eagerly. "Why's he mad at me?"

Dean gave her a half-smile. "So, you got into NYU, huh?"

Anna's face fell. "Yeah," she admitted. "I guess I shoulda told you guys. But I just found out, and then Kate got so frickin' mad. I didn't even wanna know how Sam would react."

"So that's what you two were fightin' about earlier," Dean deduced. "She wants you to go?"

"Yeah," Anna said softly. "Dean, I told her I wasn't going to college. But it's like she's convinced I'm gonna magically change my mind. And when we both got into the same school and I still didn't want to go, she just went off the rails. And I feel bad, but I can't- I can't go to college."

Dean frowned in sympathy. "You can," he told her. "If it's what you want, you can go to school."

"I hate school," Anna countered. "I don't want to go to college, and I definitely don't want to go to New York." She sighed and rubbed her hands over her face. "But I don't want Kate to hate me. Or look down on me. And I feel like Sam is too-"

"Slow down," Dean said calmly. He tapped the bottom of her chin with one knuckle and sat beside her on her bed. "Nobody hates you, nobody's thinkin' less of you. Sam's pissed, but he'll get over it. End of the day, it ain't his call. It's yours."

Anna went quiet and stared down at her notebook again. Autochtone. She still couldn't remember what it meant. But it didn't really matter either way. She was leaving academia behind. She would soon forget this word along with every other one she'd learned in French class.

"What?" Dean asked her with one eyebrow raised.

Anna shook her head, having no idea how to answer that question.

It was so odd, the grief she was suddenly feeling for high school, for friendship, for normalcy. She'd never asked for it, never even wanted it. She'd practically kicked and screamed the day she started high school. And now here she was... scared to leave it behind.

Kate talked sometimes about being nervous to start college. Ethan worried about taking a gap year and falling behind. Alex said she didn't know who she was outside of school.

But Anna? Anna was terrified. The same crisis she'd been haunted by for years was whispering more loudly than ever in her ear.

She was scared to be a hunter. Scared she wasn't cut out for it. Scared she would get more people hurt. Scared she'd see more terrible things. Scared she would have more nightmares and more seizures and more of all the stupid, scary little memories her brain reminded her of all day and night.

But she couldn't be a kid. She couldn't go to college. She couldn't write essays. She couldn't party. She couldn't move in with her best friend. She couldn't be normal. And she didn't know how, or she didn't want to. But above all, she just couldn't.

Her conscience or her inner child or her stupid brain was stopping her. Or all of them were. And she didn't have the strength or the will to fight back. Because in truth... Well, she didn't think she was ready to be truthful.

But Dean had given her an opening to be honest, to say whatever she wasn't telling Sam, Kate, or even herself.

"If I tell you the truth," Anna started, "Can you promise not to push me whatever way you want me to go?"

"Sweetheart, I want you to go where you want to go." At her pleading look, Dean nodded. "Promise," he said and offered her his pinky finger.

Some snippet of a childhood memory had Anna covering his hand with hers. "Put the pinky away, Dean, I believe you," she said in her best gruff voice. She suddenly let out a shuddering breath. What she wouldn't give to be a kid again. "I don't know what I want," Anna admitted. "I don't think I want anything."

Dean squinted at her, like he knew there were pages upon pages of things she hadn't told him. But he'd known her all her life. He'd been there for just about every formative or traumatizing moment. He understood her mind and her choices better than Anna herself sometimes.

Maybe that was why he just said, "You don't have to do what anyone would want you to do. You just gotta do you, Rugrat. Ignore what everyone's telling you." He poked her in the stomach and gave her a light-hearted smile. "Listen to your gut."

Anna bit her lip and looked down at his hand. She wondered when she'd become an adult. When Dean had gotten so old and wise.

"I can't even hear my gut anymore," she said. She hadn't been able to hear it for years. "My brain is too damn loud."

"Always has been," Dean snorted. "Since you were a little kid."

Anna nodded sullenly. There was nostalgia filling the room, and it hurt like a bitch. Not because the memories were unpleasant, but because they were gone.

Anna was an adult, and she felt like a kid. But her whole life it had been the opposite.

"What's it saying?"

She looked sharply up at her brother. He looked gentle. Like an experienced father. Like the dentist she'd seen three weeks ago who'd said, You remind me of my daughter. She's twenty.

Since when did Anna seem twenty?

"It's saying I have to be a hunter. It's saying I have to go to college. It's saying that isn't fair. It's saying there are a million things people do when they graduate high school, but that I'm only fit for one thing. I know it's wrong, but it's saying I should just give up. Quit trying to be the good kid or the right person and just... I don't know."

"What's so wrong about that?" Dean asked her earnestly.

Anna fidgeted and noticed for the first time how still her brother was whenever they talked. It was maturity and certainty. She wanted those things. She tried to hold herself still. "I don't know," she confessed. "But if I don't try and be whoever I'm supposed to be, I guess I have to figure out who I actually am. Or who I want to be. And I don't want to do that."

"Why not?" Dean pushed.

"Cause I don't..."

I don't like myself, she didn't say. I don't like what I've done or what I look like or how I talk or move or think. I don't like being me. I'm scared to be me.

"It sounds like a lot of work," she finally said, and smirked in time with her brother.

"I know," Dean said. "But you gotta start somewhere, kid."

Anna's mind was quiet for the first time in a long time as she took that in. But there was one thing still eating at her. "You remember that night Dad kicked Sam out?"

Dean's tension built up quickly. "Course I remember. Question is, how the hell do you remember? You were, like, two."

"I don't remember it well," Anna admitted. "I just think it's funny. I mean, they wanted to change each other so bad that they started wanting to hurt each other. And they could've just... they could've just talked."

Dean was quiet, and Anna was afraid to look at him. She could practically feel his own aching memory. The Stanford fight was a wound that would probably never close. And here he'd apparently thought Anna didn't have the wound at all, or at least didn't remember receiving it.

"But I kinda get it," Anna continued, picking absently at a loose thread on her bed sheets. "Cause it's really hard to understand people, especially when they keep hurting you. And it's really hard to ask them to listen to you when you don't know if they know how. Or if they want to. Or if you have anything to say that's worth hearing. Or when they're gone, and they're never gonna hear all the things you need them to know."

She did look at her brother this time, and she could see regret in his green eyes. He looked away from her in a way that made Anna feel young. He was hiding from her like his face was something to shield her from. But she'd put that look there, and she needed to see it.

"I wish you weren't so damn smart," Dean told her.

What he'd meant was broken. He wished she wasn't so damn broken. But Anna didn't correct him.

"What do you think Dad would want?" she asked. "What do you think my mom would want?"

Dean shook his head slowly. "I don't know," he told her. "But I don't think it matters. Anna, whoever you want to be or whoever you think you should be, you're a good kid. You're smart and tough and a helluva lot braver 'an I was at your age." He looked seriously at her, his voice more firm and less pained. "I don't want you to ever compromise that to make someone else happy."

Anna nodded slowly. The pressure was still there, but she saw it a little differently now. None of those shouting voices in her head were correct. None of them spoke for fate.

It didn't make them quiet down, but it did make them easier to ignore.

"Thank you, Dean," she said sincerely. At his raised eyebrow, she added, "For not telling me what to do. Or even what I should do."

Dean nodded, a proud little smile growing on his face. "You're welcome, Runt."

()()()

Sat at the kitchen table later that night, Anna had her phone in her hand and a search browser pulled up.

autochtone in english, was written in the search bar. But she had yet to press the go button when Sam walked in.

His feet were quiet like he didn't know if he was welcome.

"Still doing homework?" Sam asked and stepped into view.

He was wearing an old gray t-shirt and a pair of plaid pajama pants Jody had given him once upon a time. It gave Anna a sort of cozy feeling. That was what made the bunker feel so much like home, she supposed. Her brothers dressed down there. They felt safe there.

"Yeah," she answered quietly and ran a hand through her tangled curls. "Still French."

"Encore?" Sam asked with a smirk and a way-too-good French accent.

"Encore," Anna confirmed with a clumsy accent and even clumsier smile.

Sam sat down across from her and looked at his hands.

Anna glanced at him but defaulted back to her phone screen. She didn't know what he was going to say, but he was definitely going to say something. Even if he didn't, she would. She could feel it growing in her chest, swelling like a balloon getting its first taste of helium.

"I'm sorry," she blurted just as Sam's mouth opened.

He swallowed. "No, Ladybug, I'm sorry," he said regretfully.

"I should've told you."

"I should've made you feel like you could," Sam countered. He frowned thoughtfully at the tabletop. But Sam was brave like Anna couldn't be. Before he started talking, he made sure he was looking her in the eye again. "I told you I would let you make your own choice, and I meant that, Anna. But I'm sorry I didn't prove it to you. You've been pretty clear what your choice is. I guess it's time for me to accept that."

In theory, Sam was saying all the right things. In theory, she was being let off the hook. In theory, she should have been relieved.

In practice, Anna felt gut-wrenchingly guilty and sad. Sam was disappointed. She could feel it coming off his body in waves. He was sad, and she'd done that to him. And there wasn't really anything she could do to make his eyes brighter.

She could try to help him understand her side, though. "Can I tell you something?" she asked softly. "Something you're gonna hate?"

"You can tell me anything," Sam promised, rubbing once at his eyes. It was late, and he never slept well. He looked exhausted.

Anna chewed on her bottom lip for a moment, trying to fit her feelings inside of the right words. But there were no right words, so she stumbled through the closest ones she could find. "When I was little, I remember Dad used to call Dean to talk about hunting. And I would stand there with my hands on Dean's leg, like, dancing with excitement. And Dad never wanted to talk to me. Not unless I asked first."

Sam looked so pained by this that Anna had to look away from him.

She could feel the sting of tears at the memory, but she hadn't realized there was any emotion attached to it until now. "I used to think, If I was a hunter, Daddy would like me. If I was stronger, he'd want to talk to me. If I was important, he'd care about me. And I get it, you're supposed to pay attention to your kid regardless. I took a psych class. But, like, I don't think I'll ever stop feeling like I'm not strong enough and not smart enough and just... not enough." She sniffled and wiped discreetly at her eyes with one sweater sleeve. She hadn't intended to cry or even to feel. "And I know you never wanted me to feel like that, and neither did Dean. But, like, there's stuff Dad taught me that I can't unlearn. Even if I was a little kid when he died."

Sam gave her space, made sure she was done speaking before he answered. "I'm sorry," he said thickly. "I wish you'd never had to feel that way. You deserve better."

"I don't think it matters," Anna said simply. She took a deep breath and wiped her nose with her sleeve. "Dad was who he was, and that's static now. He's dead. Even with all the shit we know, there isn't any way we can change that."

"Is that why you want to hunt?" Sam asked. "Because of Dad?"

Anna swallowed. "I think so," she said. "But it's not that simple. I know you keep saying I don't have to be a hunter. But I do," she asserted.

Sam looked half-angry. But not with her this time. "No, you don't."

"Sam, I'm fucked in the head."

The shock and sadness registering on her brother's face gave Anna time to keep speaking before he could argue.

"I mean, I have nightmares almost every night. And that's when I manage to sleep. I flinch when someone closes their locker too loud. Every time I get cold, some part of my brain panics thinkin' I'm about to get shanked by a spirit. Sometimes I start crying in the middle of the day, and even I don't know why. Or I'll be sitting in English class, and someone says the wrong word with the wrong tone, and suddenly all I can think about is the day my mom died."

"You have PTSD," Sam explained, as if it would make a difference.

Anna knew that already. She never liked to use the words, but she knew that. The diagnosis, professional or otherwise, didn't change anything. "Yeah," she said. "But it's more than that."

Finally, after such a long and heartfelt confession, the words she'd needed found her.

"Sam, I can live with disappointing you. Because I know you love me." She glanced subconsciously at the ceiling then back to her brother. "But I can't disappoint Dad. Dead or alive. Because I don't know if he would have loved the version of me that memorized the APA citation style, you know?"

Sam's eyes burned visibly with sadness. "I know," he said in a half-whisper. He obviously wished she didn't know the feeling.

"I guess it shouldn't matter," she continued. "But, honestly, I need to believe he's proud of me."

Because sometimes she still wanted to die. And sometimes she still wished she'd never been born. And if she didn't somehow shake this core belief that she didn't matter and wasn't worth a damn... she wasn't sure how much longer she would be able to fight those thoughts.

"Cause the thought that maybe he still can't love me? I don't know why; it just makes me feel so sick." She put a hand against her stomach when it twisted.

"I'm glad you told me," Sam admitted.

"Makes you wish I'd go to college even more, huh?"

Sam snorted, "That obvious?"

"Little bit," Anna admitted. "It's okay," she added. "Sometimes I still wish you were a lawyer. And Dean was a father."

And I was never born. Or I wasn't so screwed up and I could be a doctor or a therapist.

"Yeah," was all Sam said. "I know the feeling."

La Fin

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