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Chapter 3: This is a chase and where ever it goes, you go

After several hours of skimming through the bible from the hotel's nightstand drawer, watching the brothers clean weapons, flip through an old hand written leather planner and some other books, the men finally moved to get some sleep.

She glanced at the two queen beds and jumped up suddenly from the one she had been sitting on. There was no way she was going to sleep in the same room as these guys, much less share a bed with one of them.

"I can… uh… I can keep watch," she sputtered while moving towards the window. Sam flopped down on the bed she had previously occupied but Dean just stood and stared at her.

She averted her gaze, choosing to look out at the motel parking lot instead of meeting Dean's glare. She was afraid he would be able to read her whole plan on her face if she looked at him.

"Guess you're going to want your weapons back if you're going to keep watch."

"Can't exactly fight off the walkers with my mind," she quipped. Beth was trying to act sassy to cover how nervous she felt.

Her plan wouldn't work without weapons.

And there was no way she would be able to steal them back from these two men who both had at least 100 pounds on her.

"Uh huh," Dean muttered skeptically, with one eyebrow raised. He had an expressive face, but she still didn't have any clue what he was really thinking.

Luckily, before she could start sweating under his scrutiny, he smiled a little and turned to the duffle bag he had shoved most of the weapons in. Dean pulled out her two knives and held them in his left hand while he continued digging in the bag with his other hand. She tried not to look giddy as her plan started to unfold.

Beth turned her eyes to where Sam was sprawled out on the bed face down, fully clothed. He was so tall that his feet, still laced into his boots, were hanging off the edge of the bed. He was already snoring and she felt a jittery giggle rise up in her throat.

"Sammy's never had a problem falling asleep, no matter what else is going on," he smiled fondly at the sight of his gigantic brother taking over the entire queen size bed.

She realized that they never told her which one of the bothers was older but in that moment, she could read it on Dean's face. He was definitely the older brother. The protectiveness and concern she saw in his eyes was a reflection of the expressions she had seen on Maggie and Shawn's faces for years.

"Here," he pressed the knives into her hand and waited while she put one back in her boot and attached the other to her belt.

Dean held out her gun, grip towards her. She reached for it but he pulled it back and grabbed her wrist. He yanked her close to his body, up on her tiptoes and from her angle he seemed as tall as Sam. Beth stared up at the fire raging in his eyes. Her heart sped up and she was suddenly afraid he had realized her plan and would hit her.

"Don't make me regret giving this back to you," his voice was gravel and he was close enough that she could feel his breath when he spoke. "I can see that you don't trust us and I get that. It's smart. I don't trust anyone or anything either. But I am stronger than you, faster than you and I've been doing this a lot longer than you."

She glanced over at Sam where he was sleeping. Beth thought Sam was much more welcoming and found safety in his smile. She wished—stupidly—that Sam would wake up and save her from his own brother.

He chuckled darkly as if he could read her foolish thoughts and her blue eyes darted back to his face, "Sam and I are brothers, blondie. That means that he won't betray me and that I would do absolutely anything it takes to keep him safe."

Dean loosened his grip on her and she tried to step away from him. Before she could pull her wrist out of his hand though, she saw his eyes flick down to her wrist. His fingers slowly opened and he saw the huge, jagged scar that she had cut across her own wrist. Beth yanked her hand away before he could say something about it and turned to the window again.

His hand, holding the barrel of the gun, appeared over her shoulder. Beth took it and shrugged, "Thanks. Not that it'll do me any good, ran out of bullets weeks ago."

"Yeah, I fixed that for you too," he said with a small smirk.

She released the magazine and saw that it was full of bullets. He reached into his jacket pocket, pulled out a handful of rounds and gave them to her.

"Thank you," Beth said astonished, separating the rounds into her jean's pockets since there were too many to fit in one of the tiny pockets alone.

"Don't do anything stupid," Dean said seriously, still staring at her. "And don't say I never gave you anything," he laughed at his own joke as he lay down on the other bed.

She turned back to the window and tried to ignore the feeling of guilt ripping into her stomach.

This doesn't change the plan, Beth thought to herself.

Just because they stitched her up and gave her weapons back, did not mean they could be trusted and didn't change the fact that they had been talking about torturing people.

Only a few more hours, she thought as she waited for Dean's breaths to even out.

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A small draft woke him up with a start and his hand instantly grabbed the gun under his pillow.

He sat straight up and his eyes didn't need to adjust to the darkness before he realized there was no threat. Dean could hear Sam's quiet snoring on the next bed and knew he was still safely asleep. Sam never woke up at strange noises, probably because he had always had Dean there to watch his back. But the room was otherwise empty and for just a moment, he couldn't figure out what was wrong with this picture. It was always just Dean and Sam, alone in motel rooms.

But then his waking thoughts caught up with his sleepy brain and he realized that the blonde girl was missing.

When he'd fallen asleep, she had been standing by the window. She wanted to take guard and Dean didn't care. Sam and him never kept someone on guard. These days, it was mostly just croats and people they had to worry about—and those were nothing compared to monsters he'd spent the first 30 years of his life facing.

Now the girl was gone. The door closing behind her must have been what woke him up.

He could go after her; she couldn't have been more than 50 feet outside the front door yet. But he stayed put. Dean had been the one who spotted her and stopped the car to save her but that didn't mean he wanted her around. He'd learned too many times what happened whenever anyone tried to tag along with the Winchesters. At some point, it always came down to life and death and Dean would always protect Sam over anyone else. The blonde was still a young girl and he didn't want her death on his conscious.

So he wished he could just go back to sleep and pretend he never heard her go.

If she wants to run away so damn bad, just let her, he thought to himself.

Instead of lying back down, he remained seated and strained to listen for any noises outside. There was a faint sound of glass breaking and he tried not to move—tried to not care, tried to stay sitting on the musty bedding—but he couldn't. He found his feet were running without his consent.

Dean moved silently, closing the door tightly as he scanned the parking lot under the light of the moon.

He kept his gun gripped in his hand but he didn't hear anything yet. Walking out of the hotel parking lot, he saw a flash of blonde several yards up the street. There was no immediate threat so he tucked his gun back into his waistband and just watched her for a minute. Her head kept popping up over the steering wheel of a little blue Honda.

There were little grumbles of irritation from the kid. He heard one loud, "Shit!" and almost laughed. Dean definitely did not think that this girl was the cursing type.

Unfortunately, he wasn't the only one who heard her outburst. Several croats that had been shuffling aimlessly in the diner parking lot up the street stumbled in her direction. There were only three at first, but their renewed growling attracted a few others. The girl's head was still tucked under the steering wheel, her legs dangling out of the open driver's side door. She hadn't noticed the monsters coming her way.

"Dammit," he muttered as he pulled the angel blade out of his hip sheath. He hadn't seen an angel in years and only ran into demons every once in a while, but the angel blade worked on everything, including the croats, so he always keep it around.

He plunged the blade into two skulls on his way to the car, the croats' attention was all on the blonde so they hadn't even heard him coming. There were four more but only one was close to the blonde and the car. He sprinted past three of them to get to the croat as it just reached the girl, who had heard the creature but was still bent over and didn't have a weapon in her hand to stop it. Dean stabbed it in the head but didn't bother moving it, so the corpse fell on top of her legs as she was stretching out to grab her knife off of the passenger seat.

Two more croats were right in front of him when he turned around, his back to the girl in the car. They lunged and caught him off balance, pushing him to the asphalt and knocking the wind out of him. The second one piled on top of him next. Both of them had been big, heavy men while they had been alive and now Dean had about 450 pounds of hungry, dead weight on top of him. He kept thinking that the third one would come up on the dog pile any second so he tried to hurry and finish these two off. He held the bottom one by the neck, careful to keep its teeth away from his face, and jabbed the blade up under the jaw. The one on top continued to claw at Dean for a moment, but then it suddenly went slack too. The blonde was standing over him, wiping blood from her knife onto her dirty yellow shirt.

She stood there over him, moonlight making her blonde hair shine bright white. She looked as if she was deciding something. Dean was still under the dead weight of the corpses, and was just about to make a joke about threesomes when she suddenly bent over and grabbed the feet of one of the croats and dragged it off of him.

"Thought you were gonna wait for an invitation first," he joked as he heaved the second croat off to one side. Dean stood up and brushed some dirt off his jeans but the small blonde had already moved back to the blue Honda. She kicked the twice-dead croat out of the way and leaned down on the driver's seat again.

He walked over to the car, peering in through the windshield to see what she was fiddling with.

"Are you even going to thank me for saving your ass, again?" he pressed, just to push her buttons.

"Thanks," she mumbled from beneath the steering wheel.

"Well that's three times I've saved your life from those croats now… I think that entitles me to some pie or a medal or something," Dean said not bothering to keep his voice low.

"Well that's twice I decided not to shoot you, so why don't we just call it even?" she hissed, glaring up through the windshield at him. Her eyes darted away shamefully after just a second, back on the work in the car.

He wasn't scared of this girl.

In fact, the thought of this blonde, little human girl killing him after everything he'd been through was actually comical.

"Nah, I think you'd still have to try to shoot me at least three times before we're even, Barbie," he laughed.

She ignored this comment, pulling her knife off the seat and fiddling around with it under the dash. Dean leaned on the hood, spent a few minutes enjoying the cool Tennessee air and wishing badly that the old diner was still open so he could grab a burger. He instinctively checked the hotel door where Sam was still asleep. It was still closed and the only croats in sight were now unmoving on the sidewalk.

"Shit," she cried again, quieter this time. Dean looked over to see the blonde sitting up in the car sucking on her left thumb.

"Do I have to save you from yourself and make it an even four favors you owe me?" he chuckled but pushed off the hood and came around to sit in the passenger seat.

Dean reached for the injured hand she was sucking on and she flinched away like he expected him to hit her.

That pissed him off.

This girl didn't even know him but was already terrified of him. He wanted to think that this said something about her—maybe she was just skittish—but he reluctantly admitted that it probably had more to do with him acting like a dick.

He tried to cover his reaction by pretending he had been reaching for the wires under the steering wheel that she had been messing with, "You trying to give this piece of crap a car wash?"

"I'm trying to get back to Georgia," she said as if it was the most obvious thing in the world.

She looked around the car before sighing and ripping the bottom of her shirt, tying the strip of cloth around her cut finger and tightening it with her teeth.

"Well, if you are trying to hot wire this car, you failed miserably. That set of wires goes to the windshield wipers," he laughed again.

"Of course they do. If I had done it right you wouldn't have caught me and I wouldn't be bleeding again," she slumped back against the seat, looking exhausted. "Never done this before. So I took a shot. Guess you're going to drag me back and toss me in your trunk or something now?"

"Nah, already got a redhead stashed in the trunk. No room for you too, Goldilocks."

She stared at him, clearly terrified that he was being serious.

He was serious, of course. Abaddon's head was still locked in an iron box in his trunk.

But he rolled his eyes and laughed so he wouldn't scare her even more.

"So can you at least tell me if I am going to electrocute myself or are you going to be a real gentlemen and teach me how to do this?" the blonde asked him, looking a little more relaxed.

Dean clenched his jaw and contemplated her question. He didn't even know how old she was. Her wide, blue eyes—still full of an innocence he had never seen in his own face or Sam's—made her look like a cartoon deer. The guy she was trying to get back to, Daryl, must have been doing all the heavy lifting. Dean imagined that was probably the only way she managed to stay so unaffected. She wouldn't be able to survive on her own.

However, he wasn't going to trap this human kid against her will.

Demons, vampires, and kids like Lilith who had been possessed were all fair game. But he'd already made Sam dump some holy water and borax on her, touch her skin with silver and all the other tests while she had been passed out. And since she was human, he felt responsible for her safety. He didn't want to be responsible for this girl. He had other more important shit to do, like figure out how to permanently close the gates of hell. Plus, Dean had already failed too many people: Cas, Kevin, Bobby, Ellen, Jo, Lisa, Ben, his dad… He'd promised himself he'd only look after Sam from now on.

But saving people had always been his business.

"Why is it so damn important that you get back to this guy who is probably dead?" he knew his anger was misplaced, but he suddenly wanted to yell at this girl for running out into the road and making him feel responsible for another person after years of avoiding the living.

"He's not dead. Daryl's gonna outlive us all," she said with conviction, unruffled by his anger.

He threw his head back and laughed but stopped when he saw the look on her face. She actually believed it.

"Sorry. I didn't mean to laugh Mary Kate, but what exactly makes you think Ashley is so special?"

She narrowed her eyes in anger and he expected some bitter comment. However, she actually answered his question. "He's impulsive and frustratingly cryptic. But he's smart. He dropped out of high school and everyone called him a redneck his whole life so he doesn't believe it… but he's one of the smartest people I've ever known," she pulled her knees up to her chest and Dean was surprised to see that she fit crumpled up like that with the steering wheel in the way. "Tougher than nails too. And he's the most selfless person I've ever met." She nodded her head absently on her knees and stared out of the front windshield. "Daryl is… He is one of the good ones."

Shit, this kid is in love with the guy. He wondered again how old this girl was and his blood boiled at the thought that some guy might have been using the apocalypse to take advantage of an innocent girl. Dean realized he'd been clenching his fist so hard that his short fingernails made marks in his palm.

It doesn't matter, she's not your damn problem. He lied to himself.

"You're just going to keep trying to run off alone, aren't you?" he asked, although he already knew what her answer would be.

"He's family," the blonde put her legs back down on the floor of the car and turned in the seat to face him with a piercing blue glare. "I'll never give up on family. And so I'm not giving up on him."

He nodded. Dean would do anything for his family, so he knew where this girl was coming from. Family, above all else, was something Dean understood. "Now you're speaking my language Carter," he joked but felt a new found respect for Beth. "All right, so the first thing to know when hot wiring a car is this—"

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A/N:

Sorry that took so long to post, I have been driving across the country, enjoying the holidays and trying to convince my sister to watch SPN. (I already got her addicted to TWD).

PLEASE review/favorite/follow, it makes me happier than drunk Cas!

Do you want more of Dean's POV?

Do you want longer chapters?

Did ANYONE understand the reference from the title?

Let me know!

Next time: Sam and Dean disagree (ha, I know, that never ever ever ever happens in the show, right?!) and Dean drives a hybrid car (gasp! the horror).

Coming soon: TWD Family is introduced into the story—I won't tell you WHO though :P