Words by You

What's Left Standing

Not-Paul, or Jeff , had taken a massive shit on our sense of reality, then flipped it on its head. Monsters and mythical creatures didn't sit behind the line of fiction and reason and safety like they were supposed to, but to actually accept that, to live with that... well, it meant to be like Dean. To just never see the line again. To always be aware of the possibility. Even if they could guarantee I'd never see a monster again, it was a terrifying prospect.

"Iris?" Sunnie spoke, pulling me out of my thoughts.

I heaved a breath. "Still here. Help me up?"

She rounded the bed. "Of course."

It took a while to get upright and downstairs. Unsurprisingly, the place still looked like shit. Splintered pieces of the bookshelf littered the floor along with glass from the bad half of the coffee table. A Dean-sized crater curved into a stretch of the wall, and the bottom end of the staircase railing was gone. It was like a tornado had blown over.

We gingerly toed our way to the kitchen, getting the coffee maker going. Then, it was time to start clearing the evidence of our would-be murderer. The effort quickly turned into Sunnie cleaning and me going at a snail's pace to help. I was probably setting my recovery time back weeks by refusing to sit, but I couldn't look at the mess without my brain going into overdrive with play-by-plays about how it happened. The painkillers worked well enough to let me think I wasn't so hurt to try, so I kept going, even if Sunnie gave me a stink eye every time I froze.

"Seriously?" she rounded the staircase, hands on her hips. I stopped mid sweep, a tall stack of debris and shards at the end of my broom.

"What?"

"You look like you're constipated."

"I was trying to pick up the pan," I glowered disdainfully at the red plastic just a foot away, already piled to the brim. My ability to help was severely restricted to tasks that did not involve bending farther than a 45° angle. She sighed, coming over to grab the pan.

"You could just let me do it."

"Shut up. And be careful, there's a lot of tiny shards," I warned.

"Yeah yeah, I got protection." She wiggled her thick gloved fingers for emphasis, then dumped the pan's contents in a trash bag next to the door.

Just then, a dull roar rose from outside. A car engine. Sunnie went toward the front windows, glancing through the blinds. What she saw made her lips curve. "Maybe they'll have better luck talking sense into you."

She didn't bother to say his name, but my heart fumbled on its beat. "Once again. Shut. Up."

She winked as she went to move the plyboard. Dean and Sam were walking up a couple minutes later, a literal door balanced between their hands. They set it down just outside before stepping in.

"Wow, you guys actually found a place that opens this early," Sunnie commented.

"We had to try a couple spots first," Sam explained, a grin on his face. "Then Dean took his time picking one out."

"I wanted to be sure it matched," Dean defended, stepping in behind his brother. He'd changed his shirt and swapped his flannel for a navy overcoat. The stitches and bandages were hidden beneath the new layers. It was nearly enough to trick my mind into thinking they weren't there.

Those hazel eyes trailed up to mine, softening a touch. "You're up."

My chest tightened, that muddled mix of feelings rising in a wave. "I am."

He pointed a finger back to the door. "We couldn't find one with the same colour, but we got it as close as we could."

I nodded. "It looks great."