AN: Guys, just FYI, I'm pretty frustrated with linear so I'm just going to freewheel all over this verse and post shit from all over the timeline. Stuff will get finished - Pas De Trois, for example - but I'm pretty much just going to spit stuff out as it occurs to be. I'll list it all in chronological order in my profile for you as its written. Think of it this way; more Peg for you, and quicker. And most probably of better quality, actually. Sound good? Awesome. Here's some season 4 - about a week, maybe, after Dean rises.

Also, you should be getting ready to put on 'Heavy In Your Arms' by Florence + The Machine, because that song brought about this fic like whoa.

And thanks to Sir-Mercutio who read this and flailed at me from Sydney and said POST IT.

Heavy In Your Arms

This will be my last confession
I love you never felt like any blessing
Whispering like it's a secret
Only to condemn the one who hears it
With a heavy heart

The sun is rising over the Salvage Yard when Peggy finds him.

He's sitting on the dry grass growing out from under one of the junkers, rusted beyond saving, leaning against back against its front passenger door. His head is back, throat exposed, and the sunlight catches like dustmotes on the red-brown of his stubble. He looks half asleep, eyes barely visible under the fringe of his lashes.

She sits next to him, quiet as she can, as only she can be, and leans back against the rear passenger door.

It's still for a moment, just them and the sunrise. Peggy watches the steam curl up from her mug, breathes the scent of Earl Grey and dew.

"He was so angry with me when he found out."

Peggy reflects that she was angry with everyone when she found out. Neither the Winchesters, nor Bobby, nor Jo, damn her, had told her about Dean's deal. She'd been the last to know; Sam crashed at her apartment after they buried Dean, weeping and wrecked and wracked with guilt. She almost punched him when he finally did tell her, and there was still a scar on her left knee where she lost it and kicked the crap out her glass coffee table.

Now, after all this time, after all of this, she gets it. It still makes her furious sometimes, but she gets it. And she knows how to tell Dean that she understands him. She needs him to know.

"I'm going to tell you a story," she says quietly. Out of the corner of her eye she sees his head roll against the door to look at her, eyes bloodshot and narrowed against the burgeoning sunlight, but she doesn't meet them. She can't look at him right now, or she'll break.

"When I was, god, only just eighteen, I did the stupidest fucking thing I ever done in my life. It might not sound like it, okay, but…I dated this guy called Liam Marsters. Which was fine, really, I mean he was kind of a dick, but I was reasonably sure I'd dated worse.

"For some reason I didn't tell my family we were going out. I don't know why. I just didn't.

"Anyway, we, y'know we hung out, went to parties together, fooled around and…"

She closes her eyes. Gathers herself. "Of all my brothers, I'm closest with the younger ones. Growing up it always seemed like it was me and Si and Eric and Morgan.

"When I found out I was pregnant, I told Eric first."

She hears Dean's heavy inhale, can almost feel his mind turning over what this means – feel him wonder what this implies about her. She still can't look at him.

"Liam…Liam changed after he found out." Found out, wasn't told. Why had she kept so many secrets back then? "He got controlling. I was still being stupid, you know, I thought he was just being protective. Like he cared. He was a proprietary arsehole. Took me a while to get it. I got it pretty unavoidably when I was just about four months along.

"I could feel the kicks pretty well by then. Knew it was a girl, was thinking about names. My parents knew, since I couldn't hide it anymore. Mum cried, dad…dad didn't say much, but I think he might have cried later, when I couldn't see. I lied and said I didn't know who the father was, said I'd got drunk at a party, which was mostly true, but that I didn't remember who I'd sleep with." She gasps and tries to reel back the tears, but her throat is burning. "God. They were so disappointed in me. They were so sad.

"I…I was home sick from school one day about then, and I think Liam thought I was home alone. But that house is never really empty. Someone's always there. Anyway, he wagged school and came over, started yelling at me; he always wanted to know where I was, who I was with, what I was doing… I was just so angry with him all of a sudden and I yelled back and then he just laid into me. It felt like it came out of nowhere, and he just kept hitting..."

She feels Dean's hand slip into hers, and the tears fall in silent lines down her cheeks.

"He hit me too hard, and I lost my balance. Caught my heel on the banister and went backwards down the stairs." Dean's hand tightens fiercely on hers. She tries to catch her breath. "Eric had been outside, checking on the dogs, and he heard the yelling and me hitting the floor at the bottom of the stairs. Liam left through an open window, but Eric stayed with me. He called the police and the ambulance and rode with me all the way to Whangarei. He donated blood when they said they'd run out of AB positive and held me when…"

"Peggy…" Dean's voice is a hoarse plea.

She shakes her head. Eyes forward, full of the rising sun. Unseeing. "He stayed with me when they told me she'd died. I'd miscarried, and they took her out of me while they were stitching up the internal bleeding. They told me if Eric hadn't been there I would have haemorrhaged and bled out there on the floor of the hallway. My baby brother saved my life. But I couldn't save his."

She turned to Dean and spoke softly through her tears. "You know how he died. There was never anything anyone could have done…but if there had've been… So I know, Dean." She smiles a little, reaches up to touch his face, his very dear face. "I know. I know why you did it. If it had been me…"

He shakes his head slowly. "You wouldn't, you're too smart for that, Peggy. You're stronger than I am. You lived through losing your brother and I couldn't –" He takes a shaking breath. "I couldn't."

"Maybe," she says. "Or maybe I just wasn't brave enough to go in his place."

She leaves the mug of tea by his knee and walks back to the house.

She doesn't look back.

And is it worth the wait
All this killing time?
Are you strong enough to stand
Protecting both your heart and mine?

AN2: Yeah. So. What'd you guys think?