A/N - I hope you guys like this :) Please R&R.

Disclaimer - I very obviously don't own Supernatural. This is the only chapter this is going on though, since I'm posting this to I'm pretty sure that's self-explanatory.


Okay. Now I'm frustrated. I had been in this house for twenty minutes already and there was NOTHING. I groaned, knowing I'd wasted hours of prep time on an empty house. My stuff clinked as I threw most of it into the leather bag strapped around my hips. The only thing I kept out was my staff. The thing was a masterpiece if I do say so myself. It was carved with hundreds of runes and symbols. There wasn't a square-inch of it that wasn't carved up. After I'd carved it, I cured it in a salt solution and painted it with black, iron-based paint. After that was done, I painted and sealed it with dead-man's blood. It was the ultimate in non-lethal supernatural fighting equipment. Of course, I had a knife with all the same bells and whistles in its sheath at my hip, but I preferred fighting with my staff.

I started making my way toward the entrance, ever watchful. Just because I hadn't found anything yet, didn't mean I was safe. Turns out, I wasn't being as careful as I thought I was. I heard the click of a gun's safety being turned off, and froze. At first, my brain told me it must be the ghost I'd been looking for. Then I mentally face-palmed.

Ghosts don't carry guns.

"Who are you?" A gruff voice asked behind me, and I felt the barrel of a pistol press against the back of my head.

"Annie," I answered, careful to keep my voice steady. If there was one thing I'd learned in my time as a hunter, it was that names are powerful, so I gave them my go-to alias. I started calculating. Judging by the amount of force with which the man was holding the gun, this guy was strong. His head was about five inches away from my left ear. If I shifted my weight just right I could probably hit him hard enough with my staff to give me time to run.

"Dean, she's just a kid. I doubt she knows anything," another voice behind me, this one a little farther away. Crap. If there's another one then things are more complicated. I could go with my original plan and hope that he would be too busy helping his partner to stop me from running, but hunters are rarely so caring. Even so, it was my best shot. I shifted my weight subtly, hoping the one next to me wouldn't notice.

"Me too, Sammy, but we have to be careful. We can't afford to underestimate anyone," The one called Dean replied.

I would have swung my staff into his head by then if something hadn't stopped me. Their names. There was no doubt about it. They were the Winchesters. They had to be.

That made this a HELL of a lot more fun. I shifted, throwing my weight into my swing. By the time either of the brothers knew what happened, I was back in a defensive stance watching Dean clutching his head in pain.

"Ugghh. What the Hell!" He groaned. Sam was staring at me, stunned, and I found myself slightly taken aback by how tall he was. He towered over my 5 feet 6 inches, looking, for all intents and purposes, like a kicked puppy. He blinked before kneeling to help his injured brother.

"You're the Winchesters," I tightened my grip on my staff, "What the Hell are you doing back in this town?"

At this, Sam looked up, his eyebrows knitting in confusion, "We were here for a couple months in High School, but how did you know that? You couldn't have been more than two then."

I paused for a moment, weighing my options. I could tell them the truth, or a I could make up some half-baked story they'd probably see right through.

Truth it is then.

"My mother knew Dean very well," I glared at the man in question.

He looked up, his face losing what little color it had left. I would bet you good money that that man had faced unspeakable horrors in his lifetime, but the look on his face made it seem like this was far more terrifying a prospect. My glare hardened. Sam was stunned, frozen in a half crouch.

"...what?"

"You know what I mean. Work it out, Dean."

"I can't be. She would have told me. I was there long enough for her to know. She would have told me."

I heard a low growl escape my throat. I had imagined this moment for years. Telling Dean, watching him work out what I said. I would be smug, and he would be devastated. But for some reason, when push came to shove and I was face to face with the man who left my mother pregnant at 16, I was angrier than I'd ever been in my entire life. And he didn't look satisfyingly devastated.

So I decided to make him suffer.

"Why don't you ask her yourself?" I put on my best innocent facade.

He looked up then, hopeful, "Can I? Please."

I was torn. Half of me relished in the pain I was about to cause him. The other half was wallowing in self-hatred for how much I was enjoying his pain. But I pushed it away. He caused it. It's his fault. He deserved it.

"Oh wait, that's right. You can't. You know why?" My glare hardened as it all rushed back. The pools of blood. The screams. The relentless guilt.

"No..." I could see the pain in his eyes as realization hit him.

"That's right. She's dead," I narrowed my eyes and growled, "And it's your fault."

I spun on my heel and stalked out the front door, reveling in the feeling of sweet, sweet closure.

I took an inordinately long bath that night. My head had been spinning since meeting the Winchesters and metaphorically ripping the rug out from under their feet. Part of me loved how hurt Dean looked when I told him Mom was dead. Part of me was hating myself for that part. And still another part hated myself for hating that I left without telling him how she died. If he knew... I don't know what he would have done. It would have left us both wallowing in guilt.

I choked out a sob. Meeting Dean had ripped the scabs off of some old wounds. Mom not coming home for days at a time, not because of a hunt, but because she was at a bar, trying to forget the boy who left her alone with an unwanted daughter. Mom crying herself to sleep because she hated her life. Me at age ten taking a bus into the city and subsequently getting lost for 2 days, and her being so drunk she didn't notice I was gone.

It was my 17th birthday when she died. We celebrated by hunting a nest of vamps. Together we decapitated them, splitting up to cover more ground. For a good ten minutes, I could neither see nor hear my mother. Then came the screaming. I ran toward it, blood rushing in my ears. When I finally reached her, it was too late. She'd been turned, the bloodsucker who'd done it decapitated next to her.

She begged me to kill her. Begged. Do you have any idea what that's like? Having your own mother beg you to kill her? To decapitate her? Let me tell you, it's not something you should strive to experience. It's like having your heart ripped out, stomped on, then locked up in a cage thats far too small, and left to grow twisted and warped. That's just what her begging does. Actually killing her? That cuts your soul in half, and takes a chunk of it away forever. Something like that never leaves you. It dulls, but the scab is always there, ready to be ripped off.

I stepped out of the bath, drying myself off with a towel and heading into the main room of my tiny apartment. My mother and I had lived there together for as long as I remembered. There was only one bedroom, so my mom took the couch, saying I needed an area of my own. That room became my sanctuary. The walls were bare, except for some newspaper clippings and a couple of pictures. I had a desk, a futon, a dresser and a bookshelf. The books were overflowing and my laptop was balanced precariously on top of a pile of papers. The futon functioned as my bed, and the dresser held the few clothes I had. All in all, I didn't have much.

It didn't really matter though. I had no friends to speak of, and the little family I had was dead, so no one ever came over. That's why, when I heard a knock on the door, I didn't answer it. I had thought it was the neighbors across the hall. Then the knock became a pounding and I opened the door a crack, keeping the chain latched. Who I saw made my blood freeze.

Dean Winchester was outside my door.


A/N - So, what'd ya think? If you have any criticism please let me know. I've been wanting to do this story for a while so I'm super excited about this.

EDIT - I went back and edited a whole bunch of stuff in here. I had posted this without really doing any editing because I was so excited to get it posted. Read again if you wanna read it edited. Thanks again for reading! Reviews are greatly appreciated.