After Sam had left Alex stood awkwardly in the room, shuffling on her feet as John Winchester stared her down. Even laid up in a hospital bed with his arm in a sling he was an overbearing father and she could feel her resolve crumbling under his stare. But oddly enough she didn't feel completely alone with him. It was like there was something she couldn't see in the corner of her eye. "Where's Dean?" she finally asked to break the tense silence. It had been bugging her since she came in here that Dean was nowhere in sight.

"Help me up," he ordered her instead of answering her, and she immediately went over to his side and held onto his arm as he swung his legs around and carefully placed his feet on the floor. She was concerned that he hadn't responded or even started yelling at her like she had thought he was going to.

When he tried standing and she saw how unstable he was on his feet she gently pushed him back down while shaking her head. "I'll find a wheelchair," she told him, moving to take a step back but stopping abruptly when he caught her left arm.

He twisted it around gently, his eyes narrowing as he stared at her wrist. Her breath caught in her throat as he silently took in everything he could about it. And then he let it go, silently motioning for her to give him her right wrist as well. She grimaced but did as he requested and the process repeated, just as silently as before. It was unnerving her, making her fidget, but that was maybe his point. "What are these?" he finally asked her, letting go of her wrist and looking up at her.

"Burdens," she replied honestly, holding her arms up to look at both of her wrists herself. "Black, ugly curses that I don't want to bother you with."

"Witch?" John asked her instead, his eyebrows furrowed as he tried to figure out her words. "Alex, look, I'm your dad. Like it or not. I know I've been focused on the Demon and I still am, but something is going on with you and you're gonna tell me what."

Her eyes snapped to his, both of their brown orbs locked in a contest of wills as they silently fought over it. "So, what?" she demanded, her arms dropping back down to her sides. "You suddenly care about my life? Dad, do you not realize that for my entire life I've been sidelined? I've always dealt with my own problems. Did you even know that I almost died when I was fifteen? A werewolf practically tore me in two."

John exhaled a tight-lipped sigh, his face scrunching up as his anger grew. She wasn't sure if that meant he did know or if he was only just learning about that. "Alex, I know you're mad at me for keeping you and your brothers separated. I know you're mad that I was hardly around. But that's in the past, Alex. We're all together now, and we're family. We help each other."

"That's a nice sentiment," she frowned at him, crossing her arms. "But I'm not dragging any of you into my problems. You've got enough on your plate. I can only assume that Dean isn't in here because he's in bad shape."

"Damn it, Alex," John rubbed over the rough stubble on his chin, closing his eyes in exasperation. "Yes. It's not looking good for Dean right now. But you were dead, Alex. People don't just die and come back without something weird going on. Did you make a deal? Is that it?"

She raised an eyebrow in response, thinking back to the deal she had made. It had nothing to do with her whole dying thing. "Once," she decided on telling him, holding back a grin when he gave her a sharp look. "That's not the problem, though. Crowley's not so bad once you get to know him; we called the deal off in order for a more preferable arrangement."

The way John was looking at her after she finished her sentence did make her grin, though. If she had heard herself saying it just a few months ago she'd have called herself insane. "Who the hell is Crowley? Is that a demon? You're on first name basis with a demon and you haven't exorcized it?"

She shrugged as she tried to contain her amusement, still smiling a little. "He's a demon, yeah. King of the Crossroads Demons apparently. A bit pretentious, but handsome in that bad boy kind of way. He's helped me out; I've got to repay the debt and help him out sometime. No deals. He's a useful contact. And what little soul I apparently do have is mine to keep."

"What does that mean?" John asked, a frown on his face and confusion in his voice. "Alex, what's going on? Demons? Going off on your own? I thought I raised you better."

"You hardly raised me at all," she reminded him, noting with pride that her statement apparently stung him. Good. She had hurt him. No wait. That's not good. Is it? She paused, blinking several times as she suddenly found herself unsure of the morality of this situation. She had never had a problem with that before. "I'm sorry. Dad, I…"

He shook his head, silencing her. "No. You're right. I wasn't there for you as much as I should have been. But I'm here now. So tell me what's going on, Alex."

The amount of effort he was putting into finding out what was happening with her, the care in his voice… it scared her. It was so unlike her father she almost thought he was possessed again. "Dad, is everything okay?"

John shrugged in response, rubbing some of his short brown hair away from his forehead. "My oldest son is laying in a bed dying. My daughter has apparently died three times now. Could be better. But I can only help one of those things right now, Alex. And that's you. So tell me what's going on."

She frowned, her dark eyes softening at his words. Was he acting this way because he was scared that Dean was going to die? That it had scared him to find out that she was dead? Maybe. She never thought much about it, but the prospect of her dying didn't scare her anymore. She almost expected it to happen at any time. But her family wasn't as used to it as she was. And they hadn't been to Hell or been trapped in a torture session in their own mind. She was certain that he couldn't help her. He wouldn't even believe her if she told him angels were real. And definitely not if she said that the Devil himself is the reason she even exists. Her dad was trying, though. He wanted to help her even without knowing what it was, and the fact that Dean, his poster boy, was dying made her pity their dad even more.

So with a sigh she gave in, at least a little, and sat beside of him. She laid her head on his shoulder as his arm moved to wrap around her back, holding her against his side. It was familiar; he smelled like he had when she was little and she got the same exact feeling of safety she had back then. It was almost like she was a little girl again, afraid of the imaginary creatures in the dark of the motel room, and her dad was there telling her to shoot first and ask questions later. She wasn't sure if he was like this with the boys. She didn't know if they ever got hugs from him; they were all male, after all, and didn't seem like the touchy-feely type. But she appreciated it. She always had. Even more now than ever. She felt safer in this moment than she had in the past few months. Even if she still felt like there was a third person in the room with them.

"Okay," she finally spoke quietly into his shoulder, closing her eyes as she decided on what to tell him. "Okay. So not long after I did that hunt with the boys, the lady in white in Jericho. On the bus ride back to Tennessee, my car was at Bobby's, I fell asleep. When I woke there was a strange man beside of me, watching me. I was going for my gun, 'cause he was freaking me out, and then I just couldn't move anymore. Turns out it was this um…," she paused, briefly considering saying warped son of a bitch angel who was also her mother, "this demon. Had solid green eyes. He was the first one to mark me. The one on my left wrist." She didn't open her eyes but she knew he was looking at her wrists which were laid in her lap. "It was… excruciating, to say the least. Felt like I was on fire. Then he just disappeared, and suddenly I could see the bus and all of the other people riding in it had been massacred. So I walked the rest of the way into Nashville, back to my place. But everything was on fire." She paused again, taking a deep breath as she contemplated her story so far. "And then I saw this… this other demon. I had seen him before, in Jericho. I meant to tell Dean but we were caught up in the hunt.

"I knew it was the same one because of its blue eyes. And it was smiling. I knew it had to be behind the fires. So… I chased it into an alley. And then it marked my other wrist. The… uh, the combined trauma caused by the marks sort of… I died for the first time in that alley." She sighed. It actually felt okay telling him this. It's not like she was actually telling him anything too important. "And it's been a wild ride since then. Died in Sioux City. Died here…"

John had been silent as she spoke, listening to her words carefully. She had been fairly detailed up until the end. "That's it, then? They did that to your wrists and you just don't die anymore?" Alex had been hoping he wouldn't have caught her discrepancy between what was important and not. "What happened in between the times you… died?"

"Nothing important," she covered up, hoping she wouldn't be caught in her lie. "I still don't even really know what the marks are for." That was at least a half-truth. She sat back up and away from John, watching him as he digested what she had told him. It hadn't actually been everything… but she hoped it was enough for him to stop asking.

Apparently it was enough for him because he had stopped talking, his eyes downcast as he thought over what she said. He looked like he was trying to figure out some sort of game plan to deal with it when Alex sat up and away from his shoulder. "I'm gonna have someone bring you a wheelchair," she told him with a light smile, standing up and moving a little towards the door. "And don't worry; I'm not going anywhere. I just need to go ask some questions around the morgue. On my way up here I had a pretty intense cold chill. Might be a haunting."

John nodded dismissively at her statement, watching her with an unreadable expression. "Yeah. Keep on the down-low, kiddo. People around here might realize you're a corpse walking."

"This isn't my first dance," she reminded him, her smile growing wider when he chuckled at her joke. It didn't take long once she left his room to find a random person to have a nurse take her dad a wheelchair (obviously she couldn't, considering she was in scrubs and not a part of the staff).

She paused beside of a window she was walking by on her way to the stairwell she had used previously, frowning when she recognized who was in the bed in the room. It was Dean. And he looked really rough. On life support rough. It was too much for her to just stand there and stare at her dying brother so with a heavy sigh she moved on, trying her best to forget what she had seen. No wonder Sam had been so torn up. He was losing his brother. If she knew anything about her two brothers it was that they were close. Really close. Take a bullet for each other close.

When another cold chill ran through her she stopped walking, tensely looking around her. There was definitely something going on here. There was no way she would just randomly feel that twice in the same building…

"Hey! I need some help in here!" a voice called out from around the corner down the hall, making Alex's breath catch in her throat. That sounded like… she glanced back at the room she had been looking to, her eyes growing wide as confusion washed over her.

"Dean!" she called out in response, rushing forward and sliding around the corner with her bare feet. The sight she was met with wasn't the one she had been expecting at all. There was a woman dying in the floor, choking on something. But her brother was nowhere to be seen. Alex gritted her teeth together, rushing forward and dropping onto her knees by the woman. She wasn't sure what she could do except attempt a Heimlich maneuver to try and force the offending piece of food out of the woman's esophagus but it was no use. It wouldn't budge. So she moved on to her next mode of action, calling out for more help. She wasn't a medical professional, but she was in a hospital. Someone had to be around to help, and soon enough she heard the padding of feet run over as she was tugged away from the nurse.

She watched on helplessly, taking several steps back. It was too late for the woman, she knew. That young nurse had probably died in her arms as Alex tried to stop her choking. Which meant she would be questioned about what had happened and she couldn't have that, so she quickly turned and scurried away, disappearing into a stairwell. She sighed and leaned her forehead against the cool cement in the dimly lit staircase, wondering what had just happened. She had heard Dean… hadn't she? "Maybe the torture really did make me crazy," she laughed darkly to herself, closing her eyes.

"What the hell do you mean "torture"?" a masculine voice snapped behind her in a growl, causing her to whip around and stare at the man behind her in awe.

"Dean?" she asked quietly, staring in shock at him standing there. He looked absolutely fine, no cuts or bruises… and he was in the same clothes he had on in his hospital bed, the white t-shirt and light blue scrub bottoms.

"You can see me?" he seemed equally as shocked as she was, his green eyes narrowed under his scrunched eyebrows as he stared at her.

Instead of replying she reached forward, her hand outstretched to grab his bicep… but it just fell through him and made her shiver violently at the sudden coldness that enveloped her. "Jesus, Dean, you're a friggin' spirit." She spoke barely above a whisper, her wide brown eyes still staring at him incredulously. Dean was returning her stare in spades, both of them unsure of how to proceed.

"This is almost too cute to break up." A snide, obnoxious voice piped up from the stairs beside of them. The siblings' attention turned to it immediately, Dean taking a protective stance in front of Alex regardless of his spirit state, but it was Alex who recognized the tall blonde man standing above them. There was only one person she knew that that looked like him, even though his skin was peeling in several places now and angry red sores had sprouted sporadically around his body.

"Astaroth." She spoke up, her voice quieter and less sure than she had wanted to sound. Her mouth had gone dry when she realized it was him. His departing words from the last time she saw him echoed in her mind as they locked eyes: "You'll regret this…"

Hey guys! I hope you liked this. ;) So maybe Dean was hanging around when she was talking to John about what happened... I wonder what he has to say about these things he's only just now learning because he's on the brink of death?

And whoa! Where did Astaroth come from? That annoying git has been M.I.A. for a while now. I wonder why he's here now...

So as always, leave me a lovely review and I'll be sure to respond to it! If you have questions feel free to ask them. The same goes for concerns, comments, ideas, requests... anything you want. Really! :)