Summer. It was already almost summertime. Meg was looking forward to summer, it was probably her favourite season out of them all. The summer's in Lawrence could be quite nice most of the time, they weren't always too hot, they were just nice. But, today it was hot as hell outside, and of course, the air conditioning unit in the school had broke, so that meant it was going to be extremely hot for the next few days. Either until the school got the units fixed, or when the kids were let out for the summer, which was only five short days away.

Meg guessed it were at least eighty degrees on the INSIDE of the school, let alone how hot it could only be on the outside. She remembered how the walk to school was, her clothes were halfway soaked with sweat by the time her and Cas arrived, and having a broken air unit at the school didn't help matters any. Meg could hardly manage to successfully pay attention to what exactly the teacher was trying to lecture the students on, something about not wasting time she thought, but it was simply too warm for her to be able to focus on anything other than how nauseous it was making her feel.

It was kind of ironic how the teacher was giving a speech about not wasting time, yet he's been talking about the same damn thing for the last fifteen minutes. And unfortunately, for today Mr. Burkins was substituting since their regular English teacher Mrs. Manson was out on some trip to take care of some family matters, so of course he would be the one the school would choose to fill in for her. Of course the school would choose a middle aged man with no wife or girlfriend, which was odd considering he still used the 'Mr.', or the fact that he didn't have any children. Couldn't the principal be able to tell that those two things could mean that he wasn't exactly what you would call 'safe' for kids to be around?

Mr. Burkins had found Meg to be an easy target, she wasn't very strong physically, and, she was very pretty, prettier than most of the other female classmates. So it wasn't a very big surprise when he picked Meg to be the student that he set his eye's on, he wanted her from the beginning and he was determined to get her, at least once. And he could tell that Meg hadn't been with many guys, if any at all, except she had been spending a good deal of time with the Winchester kid and Castiel lately, so the fact that he might be the first who gets her would make it even better on his behalf.

None of the class knew what Mr. Burkins first name was, he never bothered to tell them because he had said that that part didn't matter to them, since he was just a 'substitute'. Steve was actually his real first name, he told the principal that his first name was George, George Burkins. He even had a fake birth certificate with that exact name printed in big bold letters, it had been foolproof, nobody suspected a thing.

George, well, Steve was good friends with Meg's parents, he'd known them ever since Meg started attending Lawrence High, and he knew what kind of people that they were, he knew that they abused Meg very, very frequently and very violently too, but of course it didn't bother him one bit, as long as he could get his hands on Meg soon, none of that ever would really matter to him.

The loud school bell then began blaring, which meant that English was now over for the day and the kids could move on to their next class. All the students began exiting the classroom, including Meg. Steve had been wanting to talk to her all day today, so he quickly spoke up.

"Meg, dear, would you mind staying back for a few moments, please?" Meg's already pale face grew even whiter when she heard those words, she looked as if she'd just seen a ghost.

"S-Sure." She replied hesitantly, cautiously walking back into the classroom and standing stiffly in front of the teachers desk, her hands gripping her English book so firmly that it felt like her knuckles might have cracked under the pressure.

"No need to be so nervous sweetie, I don't bite." Steve took in Meg's appearance, she looked horrified, her shoulders were shaking, her knees were bending slightly, and her bottom lip was in between her teeth and she was gnawing on it nervously, not to mention the way her hands were clutching frantically onto her text book.

Meg sucked in a shaky breath before asking "So, w-what d-do you need, s-sir?"

Steve chuckled at her stuttering, moving closer to her quivering form and placing both of his hands on her shoulders, which were shaking under his touch.

"What I need is, just you." He whispered into her ear, causing her to jump back and nearly drop her books as she backed away from him until her back was pressing against the hard wooden classroom door, the knob digging into her lower back painfully.

"Calm down honey, there's no need to be so frightened, alright?" Steve cooed, taking slow steps over to Meg, and running his hand up and down her arm once he'd gotten close enough to do so.

"Get away from me!" Meg exclaimed, dropping her text books and bolted out of the door after a few attempts of getting the knob opened. Meg ran the rest of the way down the hall until she reached Cas, who was standing by his locker getting books out for the next class.

Cas smiled when he saw her and leaned down and softly kissed her on the lips. Meg smiled into the kiss and placed her hand on the back of Cas' neck and pulled him closer.

"Get a room!" Somebody shouted as they walked by, Meg just flipped them off and ignored them.

"So, anyway," Cas started once they broke away, "what did the teacher want?" Meg didn't really know how to answer that, she couldn't exactly say Oh he just tried to make a move on me and shit, you know, no big deal.

So she settled on "Just wanted to tell me about my grades and stuff, nothing really special."

Cas nodded.

"Oh by the way, I have to tell you something," Cas said, almost nervously, Meg looked at him questioningly.

"Well, my parents are going to be back home this weekend, and, uh, they don't really know that you've been staying with us, I mean, not like they'll mind, but uh, they're gonna want to meet you."

Meg nearly laughed at how tense Cas was being telling her all of this, he looked like he was expecting her to be mad and explode or something.

"Cas, man, I know that, god, don't be so stiff." Meg joked, reaching down and grasping ahold of his hand, interlocking their fingers. Cas relaxed under her touch, and gently squeezed her hand.

"So, you're not...I don't know, mad, or anything?" Cas asked, Meg snorted.

"Clarence, of course I'm not, I'm glad you told me." Meg assured, giving him a smile just to convince him.

"Clarence?" Cas asked, wondering where the new nickname had come from.

"Do you not remember? It's A Wonderful Life? The first movie you watched with me." Cas replied with an 'oh', which only caused Meg to roll her eye's.

The two then began walking in the direction of their next class, Science. Meg didn't really enjoy Science all that much, she was not very good at it to begin with, and it was probably one of the longest classes of the day, it normally lasted about an hour and fifteen minutes on average, and, it was one of the other classes that she had with Lydia.

Lydia. Meg hadn't seen her or heard anything about her since the night of the dance, except she knew that her and Anna weren't friends anymore, but as far as Meg knew, Lydia disappeared.

But, Meg got a rude awakening when she entered the math room and Lydia was sitting in her usual seat and was smirking up at Meg when she took her seat which was located right next to Lydia's, not that Meg chose to sit there, but in the beginning of the year she didn't really know Lydia that well, so of course she didn't know how much of a bitch she was, and plus, the teacher was the one who gave them assigned seats.

Meg tried her best to ignore Lydia, but that was becoming a pretty complicated task with how Lydia kept staring in her direction and sending those fucking devious smirks of hers at Meg.

Luckily, the science teacher had arrived and started giving out the normal afternoon assignments, and what page to flip to in the text books.

But the teacher also did something different today, apparently the students were going to have a final project for the year, and they were all going to be getting paired up with each other. Meg hated these kinds of assignments because she always got paired up with somebody who didn't like her, somebody who was lazy and made her do all of the work, she even once got paired up with one of her bullies.

And she sure as hell did not want to end up with Lydia as a partner.

"Okay, so Castiel, you'll be paired with Jo," The teacher started calling out all of the other names and pairs, and Meg didn't hear Lydia's name get called yet, so she was starting to get pretty worried that the teacher would suddenly decide to pair her with Meg.

"And Meg, you'll be paired with Lydia." Meg's heart sank, of course she'd be paired with the one person who she absolutely did not want to be paired with at all, just her luck that would happen.

Lydia snickered, looking over at Meg and smirking. Meg internally groaned, it was definitely going to be a long week, a very, very long week.

The rest of the day went by quite slowly, and Meg was actually kind of thankful for that, because the slower the day went by, the more time she'd have until her and Lydia would have to start working on the dreaded project.

The teacher had decided to make the kids start the project that exact same day too. Which was slightly odd, normally whenever any of the teacher give the kids a project or assignment of any kind, they never did have to begin it on the day it was given to them, although it did make sense why, summer was only five days away. That's where it got complicated for Meg, five days was never nearly enough time to be able to fully complete a school project, hell, even if she was the smartest kid in the whole class she still wouldn't be able to finish a project by then.

And it will be especially difficult when she has Lydia as her partner. At least Cas got paired up with somebody who's nice and is patient, not somebody who threw fruit punch on you during a school dance, and not somebody who treats you like shit overall.

Meg could make do of it though, it is just one project after all, and hopefully the teacher won't pair them up again for something next year.

Tonight Lydia would be coming over to Cas' house to begin the project with Meg, it was apparently going to be something on the solar system and how it worked.

Meg's average grade for science was normally a B or a C, but since she didn't have much knowledge about the solar system, hopefully it wouldn't bring her grade down by too much, she really did not want to get held back when after all these years she's passed up each grade successfully.

In fact, she was kind of surprised that she'd been able to complete each grade without getting held back, when she still lived back with her parents she never really had that much of a chance to study very often, considering the circumstances of how she was living at that point in time didn't exactly offer much spare time to study and do homework.

Just another reason Meg was so glad that she was out of that life, for now at least.

As easy as it may have been for Meg to get away from her parents, it could be just as easy for them to swoop back into her life and drag her right back to where she came from. It's not like she was very safe from them in the first place, she was now only a mere eight miles away from them at the absoulute most, and the principal at school could very easily make one simple phone call to them about anything in particular, like how she'd punched Alastair the other day and had gotten sent to the office because of it, it shocked her that they did not do just that in the first place.

All it would take is one phone call for her to be forced back into the hell that used to be her every day life, that's all it would take. Meg couldn't let that happen to her again, she wouldn't let that happen to her again.

The final school bell had just rung, all of the students clearing out of the classroom, and Meg and Lydia were both the only two who were left. Meg could feel Lydia's eye's on her as she gathered her books out of her desk and crammed them into her small backpack. Lydia took a step forward towards Meg so that she was now standing right beside her.

"Listen Meg, I just want to say that I'm really, really sorry for how I acted at the dance, it was immature and very uncalled for, I don't know why I acted like that. Is there any way that you can forgive me?" Meg looked at Lydia, clearly shocked at her apology. She sure did not expect Lydia to be apologising this quickly, or at all for that matter.

Meg nodded and smiled. "It's fine, no big deal really."

"So can we, you know, start over?" Lydia asked. Meg smiled once again, and nodded.

Meg couldn't see, but as soon as she turned her back to Lydia, Lydia had a fresh, devious smirk plastered on her face, and the evil glint returned in her green eye's. But her innocent and happy smile returned almost as soon as it appeared once Meg turned back around.

"Is there any specific time you can come over to start on the project?" Meg asked.

"Whenever you like is fine." Lydia simply replied with, and Meg nodded.

"Do you need my number in case you want me to text you when?" Meg asked. Lydia nodded and forced another overly fake smile onto her face, taking out her phone in the process and handed it to Meg, patiently waiting for her to type in her number. Meg handed Lydia back her phone, and Lydia clicked open the contacts list, clicking on Meg's number and quickly memorizing it before shutting out of the phone and stuffing it back into her pocket.

"I'll see you later, Meg." Lydia then exited the classroom, leaving Meg to be the only student left in the now fairly dark room. The sun outside was starting to set, making the clouds that were still present in the sky turn to the colour of a light orange, mixed with darkening purple clouds scattered across the horizon, it looked like a form of art with the way the orange blended perfectly with the purple, a few stray puffy white clouds from the day settling behind the others, giving the sky an even more beautiful aura to it.

The space between afternoon and nightfall had always been Meg's favourite time of the day, the air was cooler and a light breeze always blew along with it, the sky looked lovely as it does now, and it was quieter during dusk hours too, the occasional chirping of a sparrow or crickets sometimes being the only sound filling the air.

Meg finished gathering all of her books and the small instruction booklet the teacher had laid out on each of the desks for the project, and put each of the items in her backpack and zipped it closed. She then made her way out of the classroom, and down the long empty hallway. It felt eerily quiet inside of the school, usually the janitor was at least out and mopping the floors, muttering an irritation such as 'damn kids'.

But the janitor wasn't out tonight, the floors were perfectly shiny and appeared to be freshly mopped, everything looked so...in place. That was a rare occurrence at school, the hallways were almost always scattered with kids at their lockers, texting away on their phones or deep in conversation with one another, and teachers were normally still present at the school after all of the kids had disappeared for the day, just doing check-ups on the classrooms to make sure everyone had left, or one of the teachers usually stays back to lock the doors.

None of them were here though, all of the lights in the halls were all shut off, and the only sound that was audible throughout the first level of the school was the clicking of the bottom of Meg's shoe hitting the tiled flooring.

Meg hated when it was this quiet inside, well, anywhere, it made her feel like something or someone was going to jump out of nowhere and grab her from behind, stiff silence had always been unnerving for Meg.

When Meg reached the entrance doors at the front of the school, they were already closed and locked.

"What the fuck?" She muttered under her breath, pushing slightly harder on the handle of the doors, but it wouldn't budge, so it was definitely locked.

She sighed, and turned on her heel and began making her way down to the principal's office, maybe someone would still be there.

Thankfully someone was still there, sitting in the swivel chair behind the desk facing away from the door.

"E-Excuse me? The doors are locked, and would you mind unlocking them, so I can leave? Please." Meg asked, and her heart jumped in her throat when she saw who exactly was sitting in the chair.

Mr. Burkins face lit up when he saw her, the last remaining student in the entire building, and of course, he just HAD to be the last teacher who decided to stay back, it couldn't have been anyone else, it just had to be him with Meg's shitty luck.

"Of course, dear." He said in a tone of voice that made chills run throughout Meg's body. Steve Burkins was no doubt a strange or scary looking man, his slightly greying hair was parted over to the side, his eye's were dark, almost appearing to be a shade of black that could match his pupil's, his face was long, and the stubble of a beard was growing on his chin, he really did look like a typical pedophile. Meg probably could have guessed that even before he started up with everything, it started with the occasional glance here and there in the classroom, which lead to the occasional touch, they were all fairly innocent, but nonetheless freaked Meg out, and today was possibly the farthest he'd ever taken things, and it no doubt made Meg horrified to even so much as go near the English room for a long while, at least until Mrs. Manson returned.

The walk down the hallway felt as if it had taken forever until the two finally reached the entrance doors to the school, and the creeping looks that Mr. Burkins was giving her the whole walk didn't help pass the time either.

Once they'd reached the front doors, Steve slipped one of the silver keys into the lock hole and twisted it until the lock clicked open. Meg muttered a quick 'thanks' before attempting to push the heavy doors open, but Steve stopped her from doing so by loosely gripping her shoulder.

"If there's anything you ever need sweetie, don't hesitate to come to me for help if you need it." Steve said, his grip slightly increasing in pressure.

Meg smiled nervously, wanting nothing more at the moment than to shove his hand away and bolt out of the door.

"Yeah, 'course, um, can you please let go of me?" Steve smiled and removed his hand, keeping his gaze fixed on Meg as she practically ran out of the doors.

"Meg? What took you so long? I've been waiting out here for almost forty-five minutes, I was starting to get worried. Are you okay?" Cas' voice asked, startling Meg once she had stepped outside. Meg looked up, and sure enough Cas was standing there with a very worried look plastered onto his face. Had she really been in there for that long?

She shakily replied with "I'm sorry Cas, I didn't mean to be in there for so long, I'm so sorry, please don't be mad, it was an accident, I'm sorry..." Meg didn't even realize that she was crying until she felt the salty water leak from her eye's and run down each side of her face.

"Hey, hey, it's alright, it's okay, I'm not mad, I'm not mad at all, okay? I was just worried, I'm not mad." Cas soothed, carefully walking over to Meg and gently wrapping his arms around her small frame and pulling her body into his.

Meg felt weak, she hated crying in front of Cas, or anyone for that matter, it made her feel far too vulnerable and breakable. She didn't want to keep being such a fuck-up, she didn't want to keep being this weak girl who felt the need to have to apologize for everything, hell, she'd probably apologize for her very existence if she could, she wished that she could. She was tired of feeling so broken, she just wanted to feel loved and cared about, and she finally had those two thing here and now, and she did not want to lose it all because of how much of a train wreck that she was, she couldn't lose any of it, most importantly, she could not lose Cas.

"I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry..." Meg whispered, clinging onto Cas like her life had depended on it, like he was just some imaginary being that might simply vanish into thin air if she dared to so much as loosen her grip, she didn't want him to disappear, she needed him, she needed him so much it even surprised herself. Nobody had ever cared about Meg as much as Cas does, she couldn't lose him because of how much of a screw up that she is, she wouldn't be able to function without him now that she had gotten a taste of what normality feels like, she never wanted to go back to her suck-ass old lifestyle, she wanted to be normal for the rest of her life, she never wanted it to stop, it felt too good.

"It's okay Meg, I'm here, I'm here, you're okay." Cas whispered, gently running his fingers through her brunette hair. Cas had only seen Meg cry only once in the past, and he hated seeing it, he hated seeing the person he cared about more than anything in the world look so broken and small, it broke his heart in half seeing her like this.

"I'm a fuck-up, I know, I'm sorry, pl-please don't leave me." Meg whimpered, sobs wracking through her body, causing her to shake against Cas.

"No you're not, you're amazing, okay? Don't ever question that." Cas placed a gentle kiss to Meg's forehead, giving her a reassuring squeeze that he was here, and that he wasn't going to be leaving any time soon. Cas would never leave her, not when she needed him so much, not when she could so easily break if he did.

He would find a way to fix her, make her try and forget all of the horrible things that have happened to her throughout basically her whole life, he could fix her.

He would fix her.

TBC

Hey guys! So I moved already, so yeah, extra short hiatus I know. But that's good, right? Yeah, I hope you guys enjoyed this chapter, I have to say it's better than a lot of the others. And yes, Meg is still depressed but don't worry, that'll get dealt with eventually as with everything else. Again, hope you liked the chapter, and I'll see you guys soon.

Bye! ~Kat