Dean was gone. He was gone and today she was going to let his body rot in the ground like she had done for so many others. Sam had tried to bring him back, he summoned every crossroads demon he could find but no one would deal. Bobby looked through every book he had but there was nothing to bring a soul back from hell.
Anna was the last to accept that Dean was really dead. She was at a loss for what to do, Sam refused to let her try and bargain her soul. Every time she started the process of summoning a crossroads demon for herself he would show up and smash through her hard work, and tear her away kicking and screaming. Each time tears would roll down her cheeks and she would yell at him about how selfish he was being, how he didn't want Dean to come back. She would beat on his chest before beating turned to begging. He wouldn't let her; no matter how much she tried he wouldn't let her.
And then today they would give up after only a month of searching. Anna wanted to keep going but Bobby put an end to it. He refused to keep Dean in the basement freezer anymore. Claiming that it was unhealthy for everyone to keep him there, it was disrespectful to him that he deserved better.
Bobby gunned for a hunter's funeral but Sam looked furious at the suggestion. Anna walked up to Bobby in the kindest way she knew how and slapped him hard across the face.
"You will not burn his body." Her voice was ice cold. "You will not treat him like ever other body you have run across." She didn't say anything else; she just turned around and walked out of the room. Anna heard them fighting about it for a little bit longer but she didn't want to hear it. She sat out on her car and smoked one cigarette after another.
Finally Sam came out and joined her on the hood of her car.
"If he burns that body I'll kill him." She didn't look at him while she said it, choosing instead to look at the dilapidated house. "He's my friend and I'd take a bullet for him, but if he burns that body I'll kill him."
"You could try." Sam tried to laugh. "I might even try and help you, but we won't be able to kill him. He's too good at what he does."
"Sam, I'm serious."
"I know, that's why we aren't going to burn his body." Sam nodded. "We'll salt the ground we burry him in, and we'll engrave the casket with a devil's trap. He won't be like everyone else but he can't be another Henry Cho and we both know that if he comes back as a demon then we both failed him."
"I just - it feels wrong." Anna finally admitted.
"Everything about this is wrong. Look, after we deal with this, I need to go off on my own. I just need some time to think about things." He looked guilty and Anna knew why, she also thought he should feel guilty.
"That wasn't exactly what we agreed to with Dean was it?" She glared at the kitchen window where she could see Bobby making a mess of the room she had just cleaned.
"Anna, Dean is dead! He's gone and he's not coming back and I can't be around you right now, I can't be around anyone!" Sam argued.
"Fine. But only if you promise to check in with me once a week. And you call me if you need backup and we still see each other even if we aren't on a job." She was hurt that he didn't want to spend time with her but she was mostly angry that he would break his promise to Dean so soon after his death. Then underneath all of that was the acceptance, the understanding that he just needed time to be alone. That was what she had needed and they had given her three years, they would have given her more if she wanted it. So she would let him do this, but that didn't mean she had to be happy about it.
"Anna, you can't keep parenting me." Sam gave an annoyed huff.
"Sam, I don't want to be your mother, I want to be your friend and as your friend I am allowed to say that what you are doing won't solve anything, what you are doing is stupid, and that I know that you sneak out at night to do something that is probably stupid." Anna lectured for a minute. "I promised Dean I would be there for you, so here I am, where the fuck have you been?"
"You did the same thing as me when your sisters died." Sam's words became bitter and Anna had to force herself off the car and several steps away from him before she did something stupid. "And you did it worse than I did. You were an incompetent drunk that couldn't stop killing even when you knew you should have." Anna flashed him a murderous look but he kept talking. "And then you ran away like a child."
"You don't know what you're talking about." Anna whispered as she looked at Sam.
"Yeah sure, just be fucking honest for once in your life and admit that you made a mistake, that you shouldn't have left, that if you hadn't left Dean would probably still be alive right now."
"Dean would've -" She paused to choke back a laugh. "He would've been alive? That's fucking rich." She was seconds from outright laughing. "I was two months pregnant with his bastard child when I left you. If I had stayed he would have shepherded me off like a wounded lamb and he would have died either way. You forget, Sam, I loved him, not the other fucking way around!" She walked away from him and stormed into the room she had claimed as her own.
She didn't know what else to do. Nothing she could think of would make the situation better. Instead she striped of her clothes and wrapped herself in Dean's old flannel, the same one she had stolen all of those years ago. His smell had completely vanished from the shirt due to the number of times it had been run through the wash; instead it smelt like her lotion. It smelt like Dean's mother and something about that was comforting to her.
There was silence in the world. Not the everyday kind of silence, not the kind that comes each night as bedroom lights are shut off, or the kind that encompasses a car with a single driver. This silence was absolute, the trees didn't whisper as the wind moved their leaves, water didn't babble in the fountain, cars ran without noise, people passed without even the sound of their breathing to listen to. Anna looked around for a minute before she remembered where she was. It was a park, one that her aunt would occasionally bring them to while they lived in Michigan. She could remember spending countless hours sitting by the fountain, tossing in penny after penny, praying to bring her mother back. Suddenly Anna was watching a younger version of herself sitting alone on the cold cement bench while her aunt pushed Cassie on the swings.
It was like someone had flipped a switch and suddenly there was sound everywhere. So much that it hurt her ears, causing her to stumble back and hold her head.
Looking over her shoulder for her aunt's attention the eleven year old pulled out a slim carton of cigarettes and lit one, taking a drag as if she had been doing it all her life.
Anna remembered that day with shocking clarity; this was the first day she had ever admitted to herself that when she died she would be going to hell.
Anna took a seat on one of the metal benches and watched her younger self attempt to numb the pain that would never go away.
"Isn't it curious?" A voice behind her stated. She turned to see who was talking to her. Human would have been the wrong word for what she was looking at. It wasn't grotesque like the monster she hunted, it just, simply put, wasn't human. He was beautiful, and he was most certainly male, but she didn't know that because of some pronounced Adam's apple or slightly scruffy chin, it was a certainty that didn't need visual evidence to support it.
"What is?" Anna asked. Deciding that this was her dream and he was clearly some perversion of her subconscious.
A light seemed to emanate from him as he spoke to her, a sort of other worldly glow that had a slightly over stimulating effect on her brain.
"How so often human memories become bastardized dreams." The being responded without emotion, he was like a researcher, mildly intrigued with something foreign to him.
"I can't really imagine it another way, I suppose." Anna turned back to look at herself because the longer she looked at the creature the more overwhelmed she became by his ambiguous nature.
"No I suppose you wouldn't, you are one of them. Or at least that's what you believe." The voice spoke again and this time she could hear the judgment in his tone, he thought she was an idiot.
"It's a fact." Anna couldn't help but argue at the implication that she was something other than human. She could not, would not allow herself to, be anything other than human.
"No, the fact is, you are not like anything seen for thousands of years. You will change everything. That is a fact."
"What does that mean?"
"It means both sides will have a bounty on your head." The words were delivered without emotion.
Anna should have panicked, she should have freaked out and run away. But she didn't, instead she was intrigued, and under the thin veil of nonchalance there was a feeling of relief that washed through her. At least soon this would be explained to her, at least she would die with some answers.
"What about you?" She asked finally.
"I am going to save Dean Winchester." Anna turned sharply to look at him but by the time her head had rotated far enough he was gone.
"Dean Winchester is dead." She told the now empty space next to her.
She was jolted from her dream with a start and looked up at Sam.
"What is it? What's wrong?" Anna asked as she grabbed for the knife she kept under her pillow.
"Nothing, it's just, it's time." Sam looked apologetic as he took in her messed hair and clothing choice.
"Oh, okay, let me just get some pants on." She rummaged around for a minute before she found a pair that didn't smell too awful.
They drove together with Bobby following behind with Dean in Anna's truck. They kept going further and further out of town, twenty miles, thirty miles, finally eighty miles out of town and easily four counties over they stopped in a field.
"Why are we doing this so far out?" Anna asked as she was handed a shovel. "And in the middle of the night?"
"You want to get caught digging a grave?" Bobby asked with a grunt. "You're just as much an idjit as this one." He shook his head before spearing the earth with his own shovel.
They worked for hours. Digging and digging until Anna's palms cracked and started to bleed. When she showed them to Bobby he simply spat in the dirt before coating her hands with the mud he had made.
"We got more work to do." He demanded.
By the time they were done and Dean rested solidly six feet under, the sun was peaking up on the horizon casting everything in a vaguely pink light. Bobby pulled out a bottle of scotch and three glasses. They raised a toast to Dean, and suddenly the weight of it all crashed around her.
Sam took the impala by himself as he drove off leaving her behind with Bobby. She watched as the car sped away from her and all she could think about was the stranger from her dream.
"You ready?" Bobby asked after a minute.
"Yeah, I'm starving." Anna crossed her arms so tightly around her body it looked like she was trying to hold herself together.
"I got some bacon back at the house." Bobby offered as they walked to the car.
"Yeah that's all you got back at the house." Anna snorted a little. "I'll drop you off at home and head out to the market." She offered because going back to that house just to sit around and do nothing made her feel uncomfortable.
"Yeah alright." Bobby agreed because the guys knew what that meant. She needed to be alone; she needed to think about everything.
She was gone for hours. She bought everything in the store twice over and by the time she made it back Bobby looked like he was about to go out of his mind.
"There you are." He gave a gruff nod as a greeting before he picked up an armload of grocery bags and moved them into the house. "What did you do clean out the damn store?" He asked with a roll of his eyes.
"Gotta take care of the people in my life. And that number keeps getting smaller. First I had my sisters, my brother in law, my fiancé, my dad, then I shot my fiancé, my sisters were killed, my brother in law put the moves on me, and my dad became a politician. Then I had Sam and Dean but Dean's dead, and Sam's run off to do something stupid. So now I have you and I'll be damned if you die because you are too stubborn to buy anything but overly processed meat products and Chinese take out." She finished as she pulled a bunch of long steamed carrots from the bag she was holding and slammed them on the counter. "Look, just get out." Anna pointed at the wide sliding doors.
"You kicking me out of my own kitchen?" He looked incredulous.
"I'm going to make breakfast." She countered.
"I already ate." He was just arguing for the sake of an argument at this point.
"Fine then I'm making lunch." She fired back. "Just leave."
He left her alone with another roll of his eyes and she worked around the kitchen in an almost violent manner. After an hour of finagling with the oven she finally brought a meal out to Bobby.
"Jesus H! Did you make roast beef?" He asked although that was a stupid question because the man wasn't blind and obviously he could tell what she had made.
"Yeah, and mashed potatoes with gravy and roasted carrots." She shrugged at his look of disbelief. "What? I spent ten head being a housewife, you don't think I remember a few things?" She frowned as she placed the plate on a large stack of dusty books.
He ignored her comment and looked over her shoulder.
"Did you make a pie?" He asked, his voice raising another octave.
"Uh yeah, I tried my hand at a cherry pie. I think it worked out." She shrugged. "But it's for dessert so don't even think about it."
"Why did you make a pie?"
"Felt right." Anna gave another shrug as if it were just another coincidence. "Anyways, there was something I wanted to talk to you about." Careful not to mess anything up she moved a large stack of papers off of a beaten chair that looked like it had once come from an expensive set. "Go take a bite, it's not poison, I promise."
"What do you want to talk about?" Bobby looked uncomfortable with the concept of talking.
"I want to stay here." She was direct and to the point in her desires. "Not that I want to stop hunting but at the end of each hunt I want to come back here." She paused and looked at him for a second.
"What happened to all that crap about making a home and all the shit that comes with it?" He asked with a small shake of his head.
She didn't have much space to argue, when Dean was alive and it was just them hunting monsters she really didn't feel like she needed a home, part of it was that she was afraid she would sink further in love with Dean and that would only lead to heartbreak for her. She thought she was safe from catching feelings if she kept running from them but that hadn't worked and now she was alone and that terrified her.
"I ran from my problems once before and it didn't work then, it won't work now." Anna shook her head. "I thought if I kept myself on the move I wouldn't make a family to lose. I was wrong. So if I'm going to have a family anyways I might as well have a place to put all my stuff."
They looked at each other for one long awkward moment before he took a bite of the mashed potatoes.
"Needs more salt." He critiqued.
He never directly answered her question but she had never really directly asked. She took his words as an acceptance and smiled with a nod.
"Sorry." She apologized. His words weren't kind or considerate but they were steady. They grounded her, made her realize that the world wasn't over. She was too old to be going catatonic because of a death, even if it was the death of someone she loved. She was sad, she was heartbroken, but she wasn't gone, she wasn't done fighting.