Who: Sam Winchester What: Veronica disappears. When: Tuesday night Where:their his apartment Warnings: full of sad feels.
Many of the worst events in Sam’s life happened in the blink of an eye.
One minute Veronica was in the apartment with him. Then Titan had barked at her, in a way that Sam had never heard before, genuinely menacingly-- or was it fearfully? The muscles of his face were pulled tightly back, his hackles raised, his weight shifted backwards even as his tail lifted straight up, as if he were deciding between fight or flight. Then there was a blue flash of light around her, and Veronica was gone.
It took Sam a few seconds to process what he had just seen, as the dog sniffed at the ground and air where Veronica had been only moments before. Sam felt frozen in place, or maybe just too weak to move-- it was probably just as well he’d been sitting down, or his legs might have given out under him. Numb shock slowly wore off, making each second feel like a full minute and each minute like a full hour, and he finally regained control over his limbs enough to look down at his watch and confirm what he’d already known.
The hand labeled Veronica had moved down into the grey zone. She no longer existed in this universe.
Sam told himself to get up, to do something-- do what, he didn’t know, but he would figure that out once he had overcome the obstacle of making himself move-- but all the will seemed to have gone out of him. What was the point? Getting up wasn’t going to bring her back. Nothing but the tesseract could do that, and even if it did, she wouldn’t remember him. Just like everyone else he’d lost and then regained this way.
It was the dog that finally got through to him. Titan’s nudged at his hands with his snout, and then his whole head, and then he was up on the couch, leaning the whole weight of his body against Sam, nosing underneath his arm to encourage Sam to touch him. The instant that Sam moved to accommodate him, to stroke the dog’s back, was the moment that shock wore off and emotions rushed to the surface. They hurt, but he was grateful for them too, as if it were the pain of a limb returning to life after being numb. Being hollow was a far more awful feeling than being heartbroken.
He managed a sad smile for Titan, and kissed the top of the dog’s head. “Just you and me now, big guy,” he said quietly, and saying it aloud felt surreal and strange. Moving past it immediately, he added, “Why don’t we get you a treat?”
All of a sudden the pitbull was all excitement and wiggles and a wagging tail, and Sam watched him fondly for a moment before getting to his feet. If only it were that easy for-- no, he didn’t want it to be that easy. He’d gone to great lengths to ensure that he would never compartmentalize or tune out his feelings for Veronica, even when he’d been devastated by everything else. Now everything hurt, and it was everywhere in his being-- under his skin, in his heart, intangibly and inextricably mixed up in his soul, hovering at the edges of his thoughts-- but he clung to it, pulling the emotions tightly around him as if they were a blanket or a cloak.
She had been real. She had been here. Even if she had forgotten, he was still the person who had loved her-- who still loved her-- and that was the only version of himself he wanted to be, even now that she wasn’t here. He liked the person she’d helped him become, and that, at least, could stay the same. Even if everything else was going to change.
He allowed himself a few moments to second-guess himself, to allow the doubts to enter his head: was it somehow his fault that she was gone? Could he have stopped her from disappearing? What if he had understood Titan’s warning for what it was, and reached forward to grab hold of her? Could he have kept her here, or would she still have disappeared from his grasp-- or would he have been sucked back through the tesseract with her? To her world, or to his?
Try as he might to find another reason to blame himself, he came up with nothing else. He had no mistakes to kick himself over, no regrets. Although he had never wanted either of them to have a future without the other in it, he knew that her future was a decent one. She would be alive, she would have her father and her friends… and Logan, though he didn’t want to think about that. It wasn’t the future she’d chosen, though. She hadn’t wanted to forget.
He didn’t want to forget, either. Thankfully there were still reminders here. Having given Titan his treat, Sam simply stood over him and looked around. Everywhere he looked, there was evidence of Veronica’s presence. Her shoes and her jacket near the door, her movies next to the television, her choices in pillows and other decor. He could remember her moving through the room, touching the light switch, sitting on the couch, coming in or going out through the door. The evidence was on him, too-- her scent on his shirt, the rings on his finger, the tattoo on his wrist, the memory from less than an hour ago, when she’d been in his arms, when her lips had brushed against his cheek. Standing still, threading his hands through his hair, Sam closed his eyes and let it all overwhelm him-- how much he loved her, how much he already missed her. A few moments later, when he could breathe again, he opened his eyes again. A part of him hoped that she’d be standing there, that he’d imagined or dreamed the whole thing.