Page 92 of All Your Pain

It’s night by the time Dean comes back. There’s fresh streaks of blood on his clothes but he seems calmer than when he left. That’s a good sign.

“Where did you go?” I ask, hoping if we avoid the problem for now he’ll take the cuffs off me before he does anything drastic.

“Disposed of Henry. The fucker’s gone for good and so is your old house by the way I should have mentioned that earlier.”

“What do you mean?”

“Bones and I burnt it down. I did save some things from your old bedroom though.” He holds up a bag on one finger and places it next to me on the bed. I vaguely remember him passingit to me earlier, before everything went down with Henry. I’m pretty sure it’s my bag. One left behind in my old room.

I’ve not had much time to process what went down in the basement. My mind’s been occupied with how to keep my baby alive. Now that I think about it, I realize I don’t feel much at all about it. The man I called Dad lied to me about my entire life but I don’t see the point in caring about it when it’s in the past now. It’s truly dead and buried thanks to Dean.

He unzips the rucksack and pulls out a pile of my old sketch pads. I didn’t realize how much they meant to me until now. I spent hours hunched over them drawing out fantasies and imaginary friends when I was younger. When I left home I only took enough things with me to be able to get by with. So of course that meant things like sketch pads had to be left behind.

“That’s really nice of you, Dean. Thank you. Do you think you could let me out of the cuffs and we can look through them together?” I ask, trying to sound as casual as possible.

“Sorry, baby. Not until the doctor’s been.”

My blood turns to ice in my veins. He's serious about this? I don’t even know how far I am into the pregnancy. Will an abortion be painful? How does it even work? It hurts already with just the thought of losing my baby. If Dean really goes through with this, I don’t know if I’ll be able to survive after.

"When is he coming?"

"Not until morning."

I start to sob again and I notice Dean's knuckles turn white as his fists clench around the sketch pads. “I don’t understand why you don’t want this?” I ask.

“I already told you! I only want you!”

“That doesn’t make any sense! You’ll still have me.”

I pull at the restraints in frustration and Dean stops me. “You’re going to hurt your wrists if you keep doing that,” he scolds me and I laugh.

“You care about my wrists but not about ripping our child from my womb?”

“Willow, don't do this. I’ll make sure it’s as painless as possible then we’ll move on and things will go back to normal.” He gets up and starts pacing beside the bed.

“Nothing’s ever going to be normal! I will hate you forever if you do this, Dean.”

“No, you won’t. We’ll come back from this. I’ll make sure we do.”

I choke on a sob. How can he sound so sure of himself? Then again a part of me questions if I’m just so far gone for him that I’ll still love him no matter how far he takes things. He could be burying me alive and I’d probably be so sickeningly needy for him that I’d thank him for it.

“Then kill me.”

He halts in his pacing to look at me. “What? Don’t say that.”

“It’s what you wanted in the first place. So just do it.”

He holds my stare. The dangerous way he looks at me makes my body heat up in a strange mix of need for him and an instinctive fury to protect our child.

I can see the doubt in Dean’s mind and the way his gaze keeps flicking to my stomach every few seconds.He wants this too.I know he does. I just don’t know why he won’t tell me what’s really going on. There must be someway of getting through to him, of making him listen to me.

“Dean, this isn’t something you can control by hurting or killing it.”

“That’s all I’m good at, Willow! You only love me because I’ve fucked you up so bad with all the pain. How can I know what you feel is even real?” He reaches into his back pocket and pulls out something small and silver. As he holds it in his palm he presses a small button and a sharp, silver blade pops out. “Once this is done we can start over. If you’re going to get so worked up thatyou end up hurting yourself before the doctor gets here then I’ll have to do it myself.”

He stalks towards me and I kick my feet out to keep him away but he pins them down as he straddles my thighs.

“What are you going to do with that?” I say quietly. “Don’t do anything you’ll regret, Dean, please.”