Here's Part 2 of this story-within-a-story. Please enjoy!

Every temper-driven instinct inside Dean Winchester told him to go after his little sister, to catch her before she'd managed more than a few feet of her melodramatic exit and give her a John Winchester-style reality check. Instead he stood clutching the remote control she had hurled at him and listening as her footsteps thundered up the stairs and on the ceiling over his head, then wincing as her door slammed hard enough to rattle a framed picture on the wall.

He clenched his teeth so hard his jaw began to ache. He wanted to punch something. Well, not something, exactly, more like someone. The one who was to blame for everything they were going through right now, the one who had chosen a life of normal, as if he had a right to do that, as if normal was even an option for the likes of them, and no matter how you sliced it, what he'd done was spit in their faces. In his face and Dad's face and in the face of everything they stood for. Their very lives. Their very purpose.

He could hate him for it, Dean thought, if he didn't miss him so goddamn much.

And then there was Callie. Callie, who was heartbroken and hurting so bad you could actually feel it when you got near her, a palpable storm of desperation and anger and fear and ache. His inability to do anything about it was what caused him to distance himself from her. Dean Winchester was a fixer, and if he couldn't stitch it up or tune it up or burn it away, he was at a loss. And that failure cut deep. His mission, far more important than killing evil sons of bitches and not dying while he was at it, was simple, clear, and irrefutable: Take care of Sammy. Take care of Callie. Instead, he'd lost Sam and he was losing Callie. Day by day she was coming to understand what Dean himself had known almost his whole life but which he had thus far been able to keep from the little girl who looked at him and saw a hero: He was a failure. He was powerless. He had one job and he'd fucked it up so bad that Sam had abandoned them and Callie wished she could.

Family was his number one, hands down, always would be. But what no one really seemed to understand is that loyalty at its extreme is a fucking curse.

Callie was packing her duffel bag. She hadn't thought much beyond that, only that she intended to get out of here, where she wasn't wanted, where she served as nothing but an anchor weighing Dean down and keeping everyone from doing what they wanted to be doing. If she were out of the picture, Dean could go back on the road with Daddy. Sam could have his new life. If Callie disappeared, they could all be happy.

She wasn't so unaware that she didn't realize they would raise hell at first to try to find her. Out of knee-jerk worry, guilt, a sense of duty and hunterly obligation. They would go at each other, throw around blame and recrimination like it was their job. But then. Then when she didn't turn up and didn't turn up, they would accept it. Eventually they would go about their day-to-day lives and one day they might even be able to erase her from their past. Like she'd never existed.

That sounded kind of stupid, now that she thought about it.

She knew they loved her.

Daddy, who was cold and untouchable ninety-nine times out of a hundred but who would once in a blue moon sit next to her as she fell asleep and brush her hair out of her face and tell her he was proud of her for little things. For behaving while they trained. Or for keeping quiet on their 10-hour road trip that day. For not blowing their cover at school or for listening to her brothers when he wasn't around. Whatever it was, those moments were burned into her memory as points of pride, bright spots in a long stretch of gray and darker than gray.

Dean, whose grouchy exterior belied a tenderness that she was exclusively privy to when he was in the mood to show it. He was a teaser and a tummy tickler, a forehead-kisser and an eraser of bad moods with lighthearted words and bad jokes and horseplay. He could scold her one moment and the next ruffle her hair and let her know that all was forgiven and the slate was clean and she was always his girl. And no matter which of his polarized moods he was in, he was always, always her hero.

And Sam. Sam, her friend and confidante. The one who could hear the meaning in her words even if she wasn't able to convey it very well. He could see her worries and predict her reactions and counter them with logic and understanding beyond what she could've hoped to expect. He would go to bat for her when she was in trouble and comfort her when he couldn't get her out of it. He was a hugger and a grinner and a drier of tears. A milkshake purveyor. A shelter in the storm, this rock of hers, this gentle giant with the strong arms and the soft, soft heart.

And he was gone.

And Daddy was gone.

And Dean might as well be.

She would be next.

The bag was almost full, but she squished in her favorite (only) teddy bear, a cheap purple thing that Dean had won for her at a carnival four or five years ago. It had only one eye and the stuffing was coming out of a rip in its side, but she loved the thing fiercely. She remembered how cocky he had been at first about his ability to toss the rings around the pegs, and how increasingly pissed off he got as he kept missing and shelling out three more bucks for another set of rings. She remembered Sam's merciless teasing, and his know-it-all lecture about rigged carny games and hapless marks. She remembered Dean telling him to shut it, if he had to hop over the table and shove the rings around the game runner's neck he was prepared to do so. She remembered his childlike excitement when he finally ringed all three pegs, how he had swooped her up in his arms and kissed her on the cheek and tossed a few "told-you-so"s Sam's way. She had chosen the purple one because it was pretty, and she slept with it for weeks on end. It smelled like popcorn and fried dough and candy apples and cigarette smoke and she couldn't have been prouder of it.

If she wasn't going to see them again, she wanted this to remember them by. Dean had bought her cotton candy that night, against Sam's protests that it was pure sugar and would rot her teeth and get her all riled up and they'd never get her to sleep, and they had ridden the Ferris wheel even though Dean wasn't a big fan of heights and looked kind of green throughout the ride.

It had been the BEST night.

She was half surprised that Dean hadn't followed her upstairs after she'd thrown the remote at him and stormed out. The other half of her figured he couldn't be bothered. That's kind of how it was with him since Sam left. Like some of what made Dean, well, Dean, had been sucked out of him. Or had been trampled in the wake of the storm. She missed that part of him, even though if he had been one-hundred-percent Dean after that scene downstairs he would've no doubt flipped out and handed her ass to her. She guessed this made it a little easier, at least in practice, to run away.

Who was to say they'd even come looking for her? She might not have to hide out for too long anyway. That thought maybe should have comforted her, but it just hurt her heart.

The duffel bag barely zipped over her purple bear, but she managed, and then she slung the bag over her shoulder and went to the window. It had always been so easy to sneak out this window. She'd done it a million times. The nearly flat patch of roof extended just far enough for her to grab the closest branch of the tree that grew conveniently nearby, and from there it was just a matter of making her way down through the mass of leaves and scratchy limbs until she reached the bottom.

She'd only been caught doing this once, in a fit of pique after she had been ordered to her room for something she felt was utterly unfair and monumentally stupid. Lucky for her, it was Sam who'd spotted her. He'd been sitting on the back steps, flipping through some book of lore or other. He didn't even say anything, just fixed her with a stern gaze, shook his head firmly, and jerked a thumb back up toward her window. She got the hint and climbed back up that tree without a second thought. He never said anything to Dad or Dean, but that night when he'd come to tuck her in he'd leaned in close and said, "Hey. I know it's hard sometimes, Cal. Trust me, I know. But you don't run away just because life sucks every now and then. Do it again and I won't be so understanding, got it?"

What a joke. She laughed bitterly at the memory. "Who ran away, Sammy?" she muttered. "You're such a … a …" The word hypocrite wasn't yet in her nine-year-old vocabulary, but it's what she would fill in later, once she'd gained more worldly and rather jaded insight and thought back on this time.

The duffel bag was stuffed but not heavy, as she'd only packed clothes and a few toiletries. She didn't have much else. So it was okay to just dangle it over the edge of the bit of roof she was standing on and let it go. A couple of seconds later, it made a dull puff sound as it landed in the dust below. She carefully maneuvered down the tree branches until she stepped on solid ground. Then she grabbed the duffel straps, heaved the bag up onto her shoulder, and began walking away from the house.

She didn't think of what would happen when he discovered her missing. She didn't think of the panic and the horror that every hunter knows too well and fears on a daily basis. She only imagined her brother behind the wheel of his beloved Impala, music blaring, windows down so the air blew wildly as the road unwound before him. She was setting him free. He would be free.

Two beers and a lot of deep breaths later, Dean was ready to face his sister without wanting to do any bodily harm. He knew the kid was hurting, and he might not be able to bring Sam or Dad back, but he could do what he could do. What he'd always done. He could be her big brother, he could pretend that he was as strong as she thought he was, and he could tell her pretty lies like It's going to be fine. She was nine years old; don't all nine-year-olds need to hear that sometimes, even if it's not completely true?

Doesn't everyone?

Hey lovely readers! Thank you for answering, in spades, my desperate plea for feedback. I got so many lovely PMs and some reviews that made me smile and brightened my day and my outlook on writing in general. You are all wonderful and I appreciate each and every one of you.

I hope you enjoyed this chapter-within-a-chapter (this is the second part, and I expect there will be one more to wrap up). Please let me know what you think!

Love, love, love my SPN Family.