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English
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Published:
2021-04-06
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494
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1/1
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8
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114

Wellspring

Summary:

The Winchesters leave New York, and Sarah too. A short episode coda on what's left behind when a case wraps up.

Notes:

A rougher version of this was previously posted to me tumblr @ssarahblake

Work Text:

Sarah starts with the doll.

Dean left it there in the mausoleum, left it lying face down on the split stone floor, its head half burnt off. It's not like plastic crap nowadays, even the clothes are just a bit charred. It's only the hair that's completely burnt off. So she picks up this burnt, bald piece of porcelain and cloth and she stuffs it into her shoulder bag, and she takes it home.

Why did she even go back to the cemetery? There’s no point in it. The case is closed, the ghost of that poor, troubled, sick and twisted little girl went up in righteous flames, and her soul has passed on to what comes after. Sarah feels for the girl and what it probably means. She was evil, even in life, cutting the throats of her blood family for no clear reason, and then doing the same to her adopted one. After they spent money on a doll. After they cut off her hair just to stick it on top of a doll to give back to her, as a gift. There had to be a reason a little girl would kill like that, so brutally.

But the reason didn't matter. Sam and Dean didn't know the why of it all, didn’t need to, just the how of the killing and the where of the remains. Maybe Sarah came back to the graveyard because they didn't. They had left so suddenly after it was all over.

The kiss from Sam had been a welcome and lively surprise. She sunk into it like the deep end of a swimming pool, and then Sam was gone again, with a goodbye that actually meant goodbye, and she didn't have a phone number or his middle name. She got the feeling he didn't do that very often, look back.

The Winchesters did what they came to do and the rest was up to her.

What word did she call Sam? Archaic, that's it. Old fashioned, his need to protect her. Now here she was being old fashioned, cleaning up the mess these men left in their stead, no complaints.

She knew the doll would still be on the floor of the mausoleum. The Winchesters didn't tell her, but she knew. They'd left it behind like they left everything else, a mess on the floor. It's not like anyone else was ever going to enter that crypt, so she could have just left the doll to sit and gather dust and cockroaches and blown-in leaves. But she didn't. She took the doll, still with one good eye and a torn, burnt dress and black-charred head with sharp, crispy pieces of pottery where the hair once was.

Sarah took the doll and held it in her hands like a child, and then shoved it face down into her bag, and threw the bag in the trunk of her car and never went back to that graveyard again.