The wind hustled through my hair as I stood above the grave of Angela Cauldwell. In the dead of night, I was the only soul left in the cemetery, which was of course a good thing. Grave desecration was a crime, a serious disgrace to the dead and also a very usual occurrence in the life of a hunter. It was best done in solitude. I watched the flames engulf her bones. "Rest in peace," I whispered to no one in particular. I mean it wasn't like anyone could hear me. The cemetery was deserted and Angela was already long gone.

The thickening silence was suddenly disrupted with the shrill sound of my ringtone. I had half the mind to ignore it. I'd been doing that a lot lately. All I wanted was to be left to my own devices. I hunted on my own and all I had to deal with was my lonely self. That was just how I had come to like it. This had not always been the case though. There was a time when I had a home – the closest to a home a hunter could come to have in our line of work – in a 'hole' somewhere in Kansas. There was a time when I never had to worry about backup because I had the two best hunters on this side of the ocean by my side. There was a time when I never had to be alone because I always woke up to the warmth of a gorgeous green eyed man every single morning. Not anymore.

I willfully broke off that painful train of thought and fished out the phone from my jean pocket. I stared at the name on my screen for a while, debating whether or not to pick up. I didn't need this. I didn't need him to remind me over and over. This was like salt in an open wound that I've come to think would never heal. It's been months and I still couldn't wrap my head around to be okay about any of it.

With a sense of foreboding and resignation, I answered his call. "Hello, Sam."

"Hey, Y/N. You know I never would have called unless I had an alternative," he told me. I knew he was right. When I left the bunker with him weeping for his dead brother, I had told him to lose my number. Evidently, he hadn't.

"Yeah, I know, Sam. So why did you call?"

"It's about Dean."

My heart felt like it stopped.

[Flashback]

"Dean! DEAN!" I screamed clutching his worn plaid shirt. His worn, bloodstained plaid shirt. Oh, God! There was so much blood. His blood.

"He's gone, Y/N," Sam uttered solemnly.

"No!" I yelled, glaring at him. "Don't you dare say that!"

I turned back to Dean, wiping away some dried up blood on his cheek. "Wake up, damn it," I whispered. The tears were streaming down my face. I could feel their wetness on my cheeks, but I didn't care. All of a sudden, I didn't feel like I could care about anything in the world. He wasn't moving. He wasn't breathing. He was gone.

Dean Winchester was dead.

[End of Flashback]

"Y/N, you there?" Sam's voice brought me back from the unwanted trip down memory lane. Just the mentioning of his name was enough to trigger the flashbacks.

"Yeah, I'm here," I reassured him. "What about Dean?"

"I found him."

"What do you mean you found him?"

"He's alive, Y/N."

"Samuel Winchester! Don't you mess with me," I yelled, my voice ringing louder in the silence. "I don't know what kind of cruel game you're playing but I'm hanging up."

"Would I ever joke about this?" He asked. He was right. I knew that he wouldn't but I couldn't understand for the life of me what he was getting at. I had held Dean's dead lifeless body in my very hands. I had felt his unmoving chest, and listened to his heart that didn't make a beat. "He's not dead. Not exactly," Sam continued. "He's a demon, Y/N."

My grip on the cell phone tightened involuntarily. "Come again?"

"Just come to the bunker ASAP. I'll explain everything," he sighed. He sounded so very tired. "I need your help, Y/N. You know I wouldn't ask if I really didn't need it."

I nodded, and then realizing he couldn't exactly see it through the phone, I said, "Yeah, I'll be there."

[Lapse in time]

"You need to brace yourself for what you're about to see," Sam told me before the entrance to the bunker's very own dungeon. "It is Dean, but it's not him."

I nodded. Sam had explained everything. He told me about how the Mark had brought Dean back to life as a demon. He told me of Crowley's role in all of it. He told me that there was a chance for us to cure him and maybe, just maybe to bring him back.

"Are you ready?" he asked me. Could you ever be ready for something like this? Could you be ready to see the love of your life, whose death you mourned for months and months, brought back to life as a heartless demon? I didn't think so.

I nodded anyway. Here's the thing though. Nothing, and I mean nothing, could have ever prepared me for what awaited in the cold dark dungeon.

"Well, well, look what the cat dragged in," he said with a feral smirk on his beautiful face. It sounded like him but at the same time it didn't. "Are you here to save me, love?" he hurled the endearment like it was an epithet…and his eyes flashed.

His beautiful green eyes I used to drown in, they weren't green anymore. They were as black as sin.