"I just don't understand why you have the warm fuzzies towards her."
Castiel was pouring alcohol into a small bowl and gathering up bandages, ready to clean up Meg's wounds.
Crowleys witchcraft had kept her bound and weak during her time with him, she'd been unable to heal her vessel, and so he'd thought it necessary to at least administer a little rudimentary first aid.
He shrugged, to Deans annoyance, and opened up a bag of cotton balls.
"She's been helpful in the past."
"Yeah? Well she's also spent a lot of her time being major pain in our asses, not to mention hurting those close to us."
"She didn't kill Jo and Ellen." Said Cas simply.
"She didn't exactly part the sea of hell hounds and point them in the direction of home either." He spat.
"I don't know Dean. Maybe I just have a soft spot for hunters."
"…And what about Bobby? It was her fault he nearly ended up…." He stopped and turned to face Cas. "I'm sorry what?"
"Dean?"
"A soft spot for hunters?"
"Yes."
He laughed and wiped at his mouth with the back of his hand. "Are you implying that Meg is a hunter?"
"No not at all." Said Cas, picking up the bowl and making to walk towards the door. "I'm saying she used to be a hunter."
He grabbed at the angels arm. "No…. Uh… Cas….. She's a demon. You know? Bad guy? Hell spawn? Abomination?"
Cas looked down at his arm and frowned until Dean let him go, then looked up at him, studying his face. "Dean. Did you think you were the only hunter to ever make a deal with a cross roads demon?"
Once she was human.
And not just human.
But hunter.
Like her Father and her uncles, and their Fathers before them.
He'd had no sons and so, despite what his brothers had said, he'd trained his only daughter until she was better than any of them.
By 10 she'd killed her first shifter, by 12 she'd single headedly defeated a wendigo, by 14 she'd exorcised more demons than her Father and by 15, her whole family was dead.
When the tracker had found her, half crazed with cold, the smouldering cabins she'd called home, still burning bright enough to be seen this far up the mountain, he had been amazed that this child had managed to escape the nest of vampires that had attacked them.
Hunted the hunters.
But she had.
She'd sliced her way through half a dozen before fleeing into the snow, barefooted, covered in blood and ash.
For a night and day the tracker had held her in a sweat lodge while his people sang outside.
Sang for the little hunter to walk back from the shadow lands.
But when she did, she woke up with a thirst for vengeance.
A fire in her belly that would not be quashed.
And so she collected the ingredients and bundled herself up in skins and furs and walked to the nearest cross roads, five days away.
"What do you wish to trade your soul for child?"
"I want his head on a plate. I want the nest leader and all his children as dead as my family."
She got her wish.
Little girl, eye's aflame, she took his head then tossed it back into the barn they'd called home, locked the doors and set it ablaze.
Standing close enough to melt the snow fully ten feet behind her.
She didn't want to miss the screams.
The tracker had eyed her warily, then laid a hand on her shoulder.
"What will you do now?"
She'd only smiled and laughed. "Kill as many as I can in ten years."
She did.
The people she saved from monsters and demons, numbered in the thousands, and when her ten years were up, she returned to the tracker and his people, and they lit a fire for her and sang while she sat calmly inside a circle of stone and waited for the hounds to find her.
"She was famous. At least for a while. Time does move on though." Sighed Cas, standing to go. "Tell me Dean. If heaven hadn't wanted you out of Hell. Do you think you would have turned out so differently?"
He let the angel go to her.
Watched for a moment as she smiled and then winced at the stinging alcohol against her skin.
Meg glanced up and saw Dean watching.
"What?"
He shrugged and left them to it.