Fragile

Fragile XI

What if it wasn't that I had a problem, but that I was the problem?

"It's all your fault, you know," I murmured, taking a sip of my beer before placing it back on the gravestone I was laying on top of. My vision was blurry, but I could still make out the cursive writing in front of me.

Here lies John Winchester. A husband, a father, and a friend.

I snorted, moving the bottle so it covered the last three words from my line of sight. My father may have been a good husband and father at one point in time, but that all went down hill once my mother died. As for friend? Sam was the one who insisted on that part.

"What a friend you turned out to be," I muttered, pressing my cheek against the smooth granite. "Does a friend hurt the person he cares about? Does a friend abandon you for a quick drink? You're lucky Sam never saw the kind of friend you really were. You're lucky I didn't let him see that." I frowned, placing my hand against his name, my fingertips dipping into the indents. "I wonder if you really can hear me, or if I'm just talking out of my ass. But Sam said this helped him, and Sam never lies." I hiccuped, reaching to take another sip out of my bottle before I tossed it on the grass next to me.

"I hated you, you know. I hated what you became. Hated how you turned my own brother against me. Sam looked up to you, John. He relied on you and, in turn, you blamed every little mistake you caused on me. All because you didn't want your precious little boy to see the empty shell that you had become." Sam reminded him too much of Mary. It was the eyes, my father used to tell me when he was on another one of his drunken babbles, She and him have the exact same eyes. I, on the other hand, had the unfortunate luck of getting most of my genes from my father, and just like how I punished myself for my guilt, so did John.

"Remember the first time you hit me?" I whispered, though no one was around me to hear it. "I didn't even realize what had happened at first. I thought I had just fallen on the floor. It wasn't until I saw the bruises on your knuckles when I realized you were the reason I couldn't see out of my left eye." I chuckled bitterly at the memory. "You told Sam I got into a fight at school. That I was still trying to cope with mom's death, even though we both knew I was handling myself fine. You, on the other hand, couldn't even look Sam in the eyes without wanting to tear up. Yet you could punch me and not even flinch," I said softly, flinching when I felt a drop of rain hit my cheek. I wrinkled my nose, peeking through my lashes to see that the light from the sun had already vanished and was replaced with the dim glow of the moon. Another drop splattered against my cheek.

"If you're trying to get me to leave, it's not going to work, asshole," I hiccuped, shutting my eyes again as the drizzle slowly turned into full on rain. I was only wearing a thin white t-shirt and jeans, a breeze starting to pick up as my clothes quickly became drenched in water. "No. I'm not going anywhere. I don't care if I have to freeze my ass out here. You're going to listen to me, because you're stuck down there and I'm up here." I pushed myself up, my hands framing the granite stone as I glared down at it."I have no one now because of you, did you know that? No one. Sam moved away. Castiel couldn't stand me, and I know that Benny is just waiting for his chance to leave. Everybody I start to care about abandons me, no matter how hard I try to keep them." My eyes watered. "And why? Is this your punishment? Your way of getting back at me for what I did? ...for what I didn't do?"

The images that I had done so well at pushing to the back of my mind started flashing before my eyes.

Blood pouring from his lips. John's pale body convulsing on the floor while his hands clutched the bottle of poison he loved so dearly. The bottle he so carelessly chose over his own two sons.

"It's all your fault," I hissed, banging my hands against the granite. "This is all your fault! Why didn't you listen to me? Why didn't you just stop?"

The bottle shattered in his grip, the glass digging into his palms and staining the carpet around him. And I knew that I had to do something- that I needed to do something, because Sam was going to be home any minute. He didn't need to see John like this. He shouldn't see John like this.

And yet...

The water turned red. The pain barely registering in my hands as I continued to beat against the tombstone. With each hit, came another image.

John's body going still.

His eyes staring lifelessly into my own.

The doorknob turning.

The look on Sam's face when his eyes landed on our father's dead body.

"Dean?"

I blinked, flickering my gaze around the darkness surrounding me when I saw finally him. My brother. My lips twisted into a sardonic smile, Sam's eyes wide with horror. "Just how I remember it," I muttered, then fell forward and bashed my head against the granite, the darkness consuming me instantly.