"Would you like some coffee with that cream, sugar?" asked the waiter with a mischievous gleam in his brown eyes and a flirtatious cock of his hip. He held the coffee pot in his other hand and wiggled it at Dean.

"No, thanks. Gotta leave room for the sugar," Dean said, smiling back.

"Well, if you need anything else sweet you let me know," the waiter said, winking at Dean. "My my, Ana, you need to bring more like him around here."

Ana rolled her eyes as she swatted Stiles' hand away from her coffee. "I'll keep that in mind," Ana slid her mug away from Stiles, who pouted a bit, and she shifted a little nervously in her seat. "Um, Shay, I think I'm going to need to cash in your I.O.U. tonight," she bit her lip and looked down guiltily.

"Oh? Another one so soon?" Shay asked, his eyebrow cocking and his mismatched earrings jingling as he shifted his weight from one hip to the other. Ana nodded. Shay glanced at Dean and Stiles, taking in all their exhausted expressions. "Well, and I.O.U. is an I.O.U. I'm assuming this is pretty important." Stiles grumbled incoherently. "Don't worry about it loves, I gotcha covered. Now," he pulled out a little notebook and a pen with a flourish, "what can I get me hungry pups for breakfast?"

Dean gagged on his first sip of coffee and Shay gave him an 'oh honey' look and took Stiles' obnoxiously long order. Shay wrote it all down quickly. Ana ordered her usual and since Dean was still trying to recover from gagging on his coffee, Shay just said he'd get him something meaty.

"He knows?" Dean said finally.

"Mmhmm," Ana took a sip of her coffee and gave Dean a questioning look. "You couldn't tell? He's got fae blood."

"Awesome guy, makes the best cappuccinos," Stiles sighed with longing.

"He works for Aunt Sonya and teaches a class on modern dance at the studio," Ana said. "And now that he's covering my shift here tonight, and food is coming, we need to focus."

Dean sighed and drained his coffee. "Fine, just let me hit the head first."

"TMI," Ana said, frowning. As Dean headed toward the restroom he heard Stiles beg for caffeine, he'd spent all night in the patrol car shadowing Deputy Parish, he needed it. Ana staunchly said no, he'd never get to sleep. God, Dean thought, it's like she's his mom or something. He didn't get it.

As he pushed open the door to the diner's men's room, he stopped. Underneath the normal scents of a diner, he smelt something awful. He paused and took a whiff, and shoved aside the voice asking him what he was doing. He moved down the small hallway, past the kitchen, around the corner from the closet with all the harsh cleaning chemicals. When he saw the door to the diner's exterior, the scent hit him with a renewed intensity. Sulfur. He slammed the door open and rushed out to the back alley.

"Well, this is an interesting development!" The woman's eyes were black and she sneered at Dean. "A Winchester werewolf! Oh," she just grinned when Dean picked her up by the neck and slammed her against the wall, "my, what big teeth you have!"

The possessed woman kicked out but Dean only tightened his grip. "Awfully rude of you!" she sputtered, "I was right in the middle of a deal you know." The man in question had fainted when Dean had busted into the alley. Dean struggled to maintain control, to keep from hurting the meatbag but still keep the demon pinned. He knew the exorcism right but it was very hard to bring it to the forefront of him mind when he saw his claws extended and threaten to dig into the woman's neck. The demon let out a garbled laugh and when Ana and Stiles rushed out, the demon gave Dean one last wicked grin and escaped its vessel as a cloud of black smoke.

"Oookay, that's a new one to me," Stiles said when the smoke vanished and the woman went limp, unconscious.

"Dean…" Ana said quietly, "I think you can let go of her now."

"Hm, demons," Ana said quietly and took a sip of her coffee.

"Odd as it is, it's kinda nice for someone not to freak out when they see that demons are real," Dean admitted as he finished off the giant breakfast burrito Shay had served him. He glanced at the girl as she nibbled at her omelette. Stiles walked over and told them his dad examined the situation and concluded that it was a mugging gone wrong. Very handy, Dean thought, to have law enforcement in the family. If it wasn't so convenient he might've had a moral objection or slight apprehension that something could be covered up so easily by a bunch of kids, but given the alternative he decided not to dwell on it.

"You should go home with your dad, Stiles," Ana said softly, a worried look in her eyes. "You really should get some sleep." He shook his head. "It's fine. I can handle this for awhile. We can meet up later." Stiles agreed with mild protest and took his food to go.

"Ok, I gotta ask," Dean said after chewing the last bit of burrito, "are you his babysitter or something?"

Ana looked at him like she might take offense but shrugged instead. "I'm not his babysitter. He's perfectly capable of taking care of himself. I just…" she seemed to stare off into space for a moment, thinking. "I feel responsible for him, maybe?"

"Not helping the 'not a babysitter' argument," Dean scoffed.

Ana frowned and ate a few more bites of her breakfast. She spaced out once more, but an idea made her features light up. "Are you Sam's babysitter?"

"No," Dean said.

"Really? Don't you watch out for him? Make sure he's ok? I'm sure you had to watch him as a kid," she put her fork down and propped her elbows on the table and her chin in her hands, watching Dean carefully. "That's what brothers do."

Dean nodded, his expression asking where she was going with this. "Nearly everyone in our pack comes from only child families. Broken families in some way or another. Only Derek and I had siblings," Ana paused, making sure Dean realized the past tense of her statement. She took a deep breath and tried to put her thoughts to words. "I guess I feel responsible for Stiles for a couple reasons. In an indirect way, its my fault he's a werewolf. Its my fault he almost died for simply insisting on being my friend. I know it may look like we've all got this control thing mastered, but you didn't see Stiles at first. I'm sure you've noticed he's a bit… all over the place sometimes?" Dean snorted at the understatement. Ana narrowed her eyes but let it slide. "He's a werewolf with ADHD. He had it before but for some reason turning didn't cure him of it like Erica's epilepsy or Scott's asthma. It made it much worse and meds don't work anymore. It gave him, and still does sometimes, real problems just functioning, and like I said, in a way its my fault." Ana took a drink of her coffee. She didn't like talking about this but she needed to make a point. "Scott and Derek could keep him from hurting others but it was much more difficult to keep him from hurting himself when he shifted. Eventually Derek became his anchor, and that helps him a lot. But," Ana pursed her lips and went quiet again. She hesitated, trying to explain why she felt she had to keep an eye on Stiles. It wasn't something she readily talked about with just anyone. She'd explained it to Jan once, but that was different. She understood even without so many words. Derek noticed it and encouraged her, in his silent sort of way.

"When I was possesed by the spirit of the bitch who turned me, despite all the trouble I'd caused, Stiles risked everything to pull me through. During a headwashing ceremony, he went into my mind and found me again and helped me shed the guilt that Marla used to manipulate me. He helped me let go of the guilt over Josh's death that tainted my memory of him. When a person pulls you out of a private hell, it tends to make a pretty strong bond, you know? So I try to help him when his mind races into a thousand directions, when his wolf freaked out and tried to tear him apart on the inside because it couldn't handle the inability to focus. In a weird way, we know each other better than anyone else and it's like we're each other's back up anchors. He feels like a brother to me."

Dean nodded, looking down at the tabletop in thought. He felt the ghost of warmth on his shoulder, where someone had once pulled him out of Hell. It made more sense now, and despite himself felt a grudging respect and understanding. He'd do the same for Sam without hesitation.

"So, I guess you can count that as an intro to anchors," Ana said, a slight smile on her lips. She leaned back in the booth and pulled out a worn paperback from her bag and plopped it on the table. "An anchor is someone or something that keeps you human and reminds you of your humanity. It's the most effective way to control a shift without the direct help of an alpha."

"How do you know what your anchor is?"

"There's a few ways. Not exactly a hard science. From our experience it's usually someone you're close to. Scott has Allison. Jackson has Lydia. Erica and Boyd are each others, as are Derek and Stiles (I help sometimes)." Dean shifted uncomfortably. "Don't worry, doesn't necessarily have to be a romantic partner. Malia has memories of her step-mom and step-sister. Isaac and Liam seem to be each others but in a more bromance sort of way."

Dean tilted his head slightly in Ana's direction, "what about you?"

Ana sighed, "Don't laugh ok? Mine is music and dancing."

"What?" Dean suspected she might be lying, but she looked him right in the eye.

"Like I said, it's different for everyone. Mine used to be Josh, and then my memories of him, but after the Marla incident I felt it was best to let that go. Music is soothing and its distinctly human. It works for me," she said defensively.

"Fine, sorry. Just doesn't exactly follow the trend you were setting up," Dean said.

"From your incident last night, we can be pretty sure fear is very triggering for you. Which isn't all that surprising, but that's besides the point," she slid the book on the table toward him. "The next step is to figure out what makes you human," she leaned forward for emphasis, "be prepared to do a lot of horribly exhausting thinking and soul searching. Also, you did a decent job earlier with the demon. I thought we'd need to pull you off of her, but you pulled back on your own. Why?"

"Why?" Dean echoed, "I didn't want to kill her, obviously."

"Yeah, but what was going through your head? What kept you from just smelling an enemy and tearing them apart?"

"Is that normal?" Dean asked, disgust clear in his voice.

"Stop dodging the question and think," Ana clipped.

"I don't know," Dean sighed, honestly trying to remember what he'd been thinking. It was a bit of a blur. "I've hunted demons nearly all my life. It's just what I do. I know the person possessed doesn't always survive. I generally try not to rough them up too much."

Ana tilted her head to one side and when it was clear Dean wasn't going to say anything else, she spaced out. It was kind of unnerving to Dean, but he was starting to get used to it. If Stiles were here he'd need to move to get his thoughts in some kind of order, but with her it seemed she just needed to go silent for a bit to do the same.

"I think I have an idea," Ana said finally, startling Dean as he finished off his third coffee. "We'll have to wait until later, but in the mean time," she tapped the cover of the paperback. "I want you to read the marked page."

Dean glanced down and looked back up at the girl waving for the check. It was a well loved copy of Frank Herbert's Dune. He frowned but again reminded himself that she was actually making some sense. He opened up and glanced at a passage lightly circled in pencil:

I must not fear.

Fear is the mind-killer.

Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration.

I will face my fear.

I will permit it to pass over me and through me.

And when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path.

Where the fear has gone there will be nothing...only I will remain.

He finished and looked up to see Ana watching him. "I want you to memorize that, it could be useful," she said.