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You know how if you repeat a word often enough in your head, it loses all meaning and starts sounding like nonsense? You know the word has a definition and it should mean something to you but at that moment, there's nothing to it. It's blank and empty and just there.

Sokka is standing in front of a small pyre a mile or two down the road from the farm. He wanted to be away from the main house, for attention and to spare anyone else the smoke and smell. It's been burning most of the night and is in the process of dying down, but even that should take a few more hours. At least until after the sun's come up.

The body resting on the wood base is small and slender and wrapped up in a bed sheet.

He has a feeling he should be feeling something.

But if you get your heart broken enough, it stops making the effort to heal and you stop feeling the effects of it.

He's watching the flames more than the body.

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"Yeah." Dean looks over at the pyre again, amusement leaving his face too.

Family.

"Want me to go get her?"

Sokka shakes his head. "I'll find her. Don't worry about it."

"A'ight. There anything else you need? You got enough salt in that pyre?"

Aaaaaand we're back to blinking.

"What?"

"You salted and burned her?" Dean frowns, and remembers who he's talking to. "Oh, right. Uh, you said she came back, killed folk? You gotta include salt in the pyre, or it - uh, she - might come back again. Just burnin' won't do."

Sokka frowns and looks at the pyre again, the only emotion he's showing now is businesslike. "I thought that was just to keep her out of stuff. But she... I mean, when she was a ghost, she was..."

Fine.

Perfectly fine.

"Salt mixed with fire'll destroy any traces," Dean says, professional in answer to Sokka's tone. "Unless ... you want her back."

Sokka stares at him.

Then he kicks the pyre so it collapses in a cloud of cinders and smoke.

"Fuck you," he informs the other man, matter-of-fact and shaking the pendant out of the handkerchief, "or better yet, go fuck my sister until you figure out how to talk again. I've got plenty to think about without adding sibling resurrection to the list."

Dean lifts one eyebrow.

"So ... I'll get the salt, then."

Sokka shakes his head - not to disagree but out of frustration again. That Dean's expecting him to think seriously about anything right this second.

"Look, you've got to focus." Dean reaches out to put a hand on the other guy's shoulder, intent. "You can fall apart later. You caught the monster, a'ight, now you gotta finish the job or you might as well not've done anything."

John gave him this speech once, he's pretty sure.

Sokka jerks back sharply, slapping the hand away and glaring at Dean with narrowed dark eyes.

"I just tried to knock my sister unconscious, had to have Mel hit her in the back of the head with an axe, and then burned her to death. Then I dug my mother's necklace out of the ashes because this is the second woman in my family that's been burned to death.

"So excuse me if I don't feel like listening to you go on about salt and magic and ghosts and crap, if you want to toss some salt on the ashes and throw a box of matches on top, be my guest."

He shakes his head, looks down as he stuffs the pendant in a pocket and turns away.

The pyre's finished and he doesn't think he's fallen apart. He's sure he's supposed to but he hasn't.

She wasn't a monster.

It wasn't a job.

It was family.

Edited 2009-04-25 13:34 (UTC)

Dean lets him talk.

(He knows about family burning to death, too.)

"Go do what you need," he says, almost gently - if Dean could ever be said to be gentle. "I'll look after it."

"And again," Sokka tosses over his shoulder, still walking away, "fuck you."

There's no heat to it. It's just something to say, something that sounds about right.

That'll do.

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