I cannot even count how many times I re-wrote this chapter and couldn't find the right way to go about it. I had a pretty good chapter but then my laptop charger stopped working and so until my new charger comes in everything I've written ahead is unreachable. I hope this chapter is halfway decent and you enjoy! :)

Also, when I wrote these in Microsoft Word I put breaks in for time lapses not marked by dates, and somewhere between the copy and paste and publishing they were lost. So I apologize, and please just do your best at identifying time lapses.

August 2, 2000

Hunting isn't a type of lifestyle you can just get away from. Once you're in, you're in for life, no matter how badly you may want to get out. Very few hunters successfully got out of the job, and even fewer went on to maintain a "normal life."

And yet that was what John and Dean expected me to do.

If I looked back, I should have seen it coming. Dean had been strange towards for months, ever since I nearly got hurt with the incubus, but in January it really became more noticable. Now that he was twenty-one it was easier for him to get away from the motel room, and he spent more and more time drinking and sleeping around. Our former friendship became tensed by the fact that we weren't together constantly anymore, and when he forgot me eighteenth birthday that was the last straw.

So, due to my newfound free time, the youngest Winchester and I grew closer. Sam gradually talked with me more and more about how he was applying to colleges and, following his last year of high school coming up, he was considering getting away. I often encouraged him to do what he wanted, and I think that made Dean begin to loathe me.

But yet he continued to do the absolute dumbest things on hunts any time there was even a smidge of danger so I wouldn't get hurt. It was infuriating that he thought I wasn't capable. He'd never treated me like any less of a hunter due to my gender, but after that incubus case suddenly it was like he was sure I needed protected.

And following our most recent hunt, he seemed to think the only way to keep me safe was to get me away from hunting completely.

We'd been hunting a werewolf in Chicago whose targets seemed to be young women. It took long enough for Dean to talk him into letting me be bait. He kept bringing up the near-disaster with the incubus, even though there were plenty of times he'd come out of being bait with much more serious injuries. But eventually John got him to allow it.

Everything had been going according to plan. I was walking through the wolf's hunting grounds on the night of a full moon, and it'd walked right into our trap. The boys, watching from afar, were supposed to wait for John's signal. But evidently the werewolf got too close to me for Dean's liking, and he took a shot before John gave him the go-ahead. The pissed werewolf swiped at me once before it forgot about me and charged them. John was able to get a knife to its heart before it got any worse, but it was already pretty bad.

Dean ended up with two fractured ribs, while Sam's collarbone was snapped in half. After taking care of the werewolf, John had to help Sam to the car and sent Dean to get me. I had no long-term injuries - just three long gashes across my hipbones that would fade into some nasty scars. John's least favorite way to end a hunt was at the hospital, but all three of us needed it.

Dean ended up with a brace for his torso that would keep his ribs still until they healed, while Sam got his left arm in a sling to immobilize his collarbone. After a blood transfusion and sixty-four stitches for me, we were ready to go, all of us with our strong pain medication in tow.

The ride back to the motel was torture. Both Dean and Sam grunted at each bump we hit. I was still too loopy from my different medication to feel much, but I hated the drugged-up feeling and couldn't wait to get back and relax.

John gave us a week-long break in which we stayed at the motel and he went off on a couple simple cases around Chicago. Dean and Sam both mostly lounged around. As long as I remembered to take my medicine I felt fine. Although I'd had to take to wearing the boys' shirts and my underwear around to avoid anything rubbing against the tender healing gashes, due to their location across my hipbones, the stitches were already beginning to dissolve. They were healing pretty rapidly and nicely.

The night before we were supposed to go anywhere, Dean told John he wanted to talk to him and they went out to the parking lot. They were out there for awhile, so I stopped waiting up on them.

"Need anything before I jump in the shower, Sam?" I asked him.

"If you could take my socks off that'd be great," he mumbled. Even though he and Dean were polar opposites, they both hated the weakness of needing to ask for help for simple things.

Resting on my knees at the foot of the bed, making sure Dean's T-shirt didn't pull up to reveal anything, I tugged Sam's socks off. Tossing them into the boys' dirty clothes duffel, I made sure he didn't need anything else before I grabbed a clean pair of underwear and the first T-shirt I found, which happened to be Sam's this time. Luckily all three of the Winchester boys towered over me, so any of their shirts worked.

The doctors gave me a time limit on how long it would be before I could wear anything with a waistband, and thankfully tomorrow was my last day so I could stop walking around half-naked. I don't think it bothered any of them, as I'd been part of the family so long, but it would still be nice.

When I emerged from the bathroom Sam had taken his pills and was out. John and Dean were conversing quietly at the table, but the immediately stopped when they saw me. John sighed and tilted his head towards the table, so I went over and took a seat. Both of them refused to meet my eyes.

"Guys?" I chuckled nervously. "What's wrong?"

"Millie..." John trailed off and finally just pushed a pile of different documents and cards at me. Confused, I began to shuffle through.

A fake ID for me under the name Camille Ramsey. The deed for an apartment here in Chicago. Paperwork and car keys to a silver 1999 Dodge Intrepid. Five thousand dollars cash.

I didn't bother looking through anything else before I looked up, watery eyes flashing back and forth. I understood now. Everything I needed to start a new, "normal" life here in Chicago.

"You're gonna leave me here?" I muttered softly.

"It's not like that," Dean immediately mumbled back. "It's just... I can't focus on the job if I'm focused on keeping you safe. Which I obviously can't do."

"It's not your job to keep me safe!" I stood up and angrily threw the papers down. "God, Dean, how many times do I have to tell you that I can take care of myself?!" I looked over at John. "And you, what do you think of all this? How did he talk you into this?"

"He didn't have to talk me into it," John sighed. "He mentioned it and I knew he was right. For different reasons, but still. Your parents would kill me if you got hurt. This is your best chance at a normal life."

"I don't want a normal life!" After a moment of silence, I shook my head and laughed bitterly. "But Jesus, I sure as hell don't want to stick around with you guys if you don't want me."

"Millie...," Dean began, but I cut him off with a glare.

I angrily bustled around the room, tossing all of my belongings into my duffel as I went. John and Dean watched me carefully. When I finally had everything, I returned to the table and gathered the materials to start a life as Camille Ramsey. "Tell Sam I said bye," I muttered, and headed out.

The car was in the motel lot, and with a little driving I found the apartment. Inside it was already furnished, but despite the furniture it was empty. Small, quiet, and empty.

I spent the next day lazing around, trying to figure out my next step. With dozens of possible paths, I was torn between two. I could get a job, go to school, live the normal life. Or I could go off hunting solo.

My motivation for each was different. I wanted the normal life because I knew it was what my parents would want for me. But I wanted to hunt to show John, and more specifically Dean, that I could do it. That I didn't need them to take down a couple monsters.

In the end, the rational side of me won.

I drove past the motel, and the absence of the Impala made the decision for me. I got a job as a waitress, at a Hooters nonetheless, applied to a couple colleges within walking distance of my apartment, and put out an advertisement for a roommate. I didn't necessarily want to be around anyone, but the apartment had two bedrooms and was so empty, and what better way to get a normal life than get a normal friend?

Zoey Baxter moved in not long later, and luckily she wasn't from Chicago so we went out and met people together. I got accepted to the same college she was going to, and we became good friends.

All in all, achieving the "normal life" was easy. Almost too easy.

But it was on a daily basis that I thought back to the Winchesters. Even though they'd abandoned me, they were my family and I missed them like crazy. But the busier I got, the more hunting, and the Winchesters, fell into the past.

August 17, 2001

"Adios to the best summer yet!" Zoey hollered. I laughed as she tried to clink glass mine, but missed because of how much she'd already drank.

"I'll drink to that," I agreed, taking a swig of the beer in my glass.

Total lie. This had been, by far, the worst summer of my life. Following our freshman year of college she'd gone back home for the summer, as had most of my other friends. I was alone in the apartment again, and without Zoey around I had no distractions from my thoughts of the Winchesters. In an attempt to keep from thinking, I drowned myself in extra hours at the restaurant.

Still, I thought of them. I never reached out to them, and they returned the favor for the most part. Sam called every so often to talk, and he seemed to be working up the courage to tell John he was going to college. John called once or twice, just on Christmas and my nineteenth birthday to make sure I was doing fine. I never heard from Dean, and I never asked about him.

Thankfully the summer was coming to an end. This was the last Friday night before classes started, so a bunch of us were at a club, one of the most popular in Chicago. A few of our friends were twenty-one, but most of us, like me and Zoey, were only nineteen, so we had fake IDs. It was weird to have a fake ID just to get into clubs when I was living under a completely false identity.

I glanced out at the dance floor, and between the sweaty bodies I swore I saw a familiar flash of green eyes. It was gone in an instant, and I was sure I'd imagined it. But that didn't mean I wouldn't double check.

"I'll be right back!" I yelled at Zoey over the music. I handed her my half-empty glass and set off across the dance floor.

I searched for ten minutes before I decided I'd imagined it, and I turned to go back to Zoey. Halfway there, a large hand caught my bicep and I was yanked out of the throng of people and ended up with my back to the wall, a tall, familiar body blocking me there.

"What the hell are you doing here?" Dean shouted at me angrily.

For a couple moments I just looked up at him in awe. It'd been just over a year since I last saw him. He looked exactly the same, but somehow even more perfect. I'd missed those hazel-green eyes more than I cared to admit, even now, when his eyebrows were slanted over them angrily.

I shook off the initial shock of seeing him and planted my hands on his chest, shoving him back.

"Having a normal life," I spat. I crossed my arms. "What are you doing here?"

"Hunting."

"What?" I looked around immediately. "What is it?"

"Vampire."

I laughed. "Please," I scoffed. "If it's here now, it knows you're a hunter. The jeans are fine, but that utility jacket shouts 'hunter' at anything supernatural."

"Well you fit right in," he jibed. Considering he was trying to insult me, his eyes were certainly straying pretty far down past my face.

Zoey had wanted to wear the matching tops we bought a couple days ago, tight black crop tops with the sleeves of a T-shirt. It wasn't as concealing as half the tops in here as it stopped a few inches above my belly button, which I'd pierced since staring the "normal life." Zoey was more dressy so she'd paired it with a hot pink skirt, while I opted for some high-waisted jean shorts. The nasty scars from that disastrous werewolf hunt last year peeked out of the waistband of everything I wore, so any time I wore a crop top I wore high-waisted shorts. I'd completed the look with a pair of black combat boots and curly hair.

"Just dressing the way a normal college girl would," I told him with a sly grin. I'd spent a good majority of my childhood and teenagehood with a terrible, unreciprocated crush on Dean. I felt way too smug that now he was checking me out and would feel the way I had.

"College girl, huh?" he asked. Returning my mischievous smirk, he leaned against the wall next to me, crossing his arms. He was looking at me the way he looked at all the girls he wrangled into a separate motel room when I was still with them, and it felt odd.

I opened my mouth to reply when I heard somebody calling my name. I glanced over Dean's shoulder to see Zoey, giggling and stumbling around like the silly drunk she was. She reached us and pulled me into a hug, planting a slobbery kiss on my cheek while Dean looked on with his eyebrows raised.

"I missed you," she slurred slowly, and finally saw Dean. "Who's your friend, Mill? I think I like him." She grinned at him and I laughed.

"Not a friend, Zo." I put an arm around her waist to support her. "C'mon, it's late, let's get back." I led her away, but as I went I turned back and mouthed, "Good luck."

He nodded in both thanks and goodbye before turning back.

I was disappointed to once again be saying goodbye to Dean Winchester, but I knew it wasn't the last we'd see of each other. Or at least I hoped.