AUTHOR'S NOTE: Hi all! At this point I think I should advise all of you to buy stock in a paper company, since you'll need more tissues to get through this chapter, LOL! More angst and feels ahead-Aly's got a lot to process! Thanks for the reviews, and hope you enjoy! Beta'd by Edge_of_Clairvoyance.

~ ~ spn ~ ~ spn ~ ~

"Alyson." I felt someone touch my shoulder. "Alyson, wake up."

I opened my eyes-Dad was sitting on the edge of the bed. There was an open paperback on the pillow next to me. Dad picked it up and closed it, placing it on the bedside table. "He's re-reading Vonnegut." He said with a little smile.

"Where'd Dean go?" I sat up, rubbing my eye.

"He had to use the restroom, I told him I'd wake you up. We just got back and I figured you'd want to see me, since you were so worried before." He smiled at me. "Calvin picked up some Chinese food for dinner. Are you hungry?"

"Yeah." I scooted over to the side of the bed and Dad stood up and brought the crutches over.

There were several opened containers of Chinese food all over the table as Dad and I came into the kitchen- the smell of soy sauce made my mouth water. Sam, Dean, and Calvin were already sitting down.

Dad pulled a chair out for me and took my crutches as I sat down next to Dean. He pointed at the various boxes. "We got Kung Pao chicken, Beef with broccoli, Sweet and Sour Chicken, General Tso's, Egg Rolls, Mongolian Beef, Mu Shu Pork, Stir-fried veggies and fried dumplings."

"Thanks." I said. I put rice on my plate first and then added sweet and sour chicken and General Tso's, and took an egg roll.

"We taught Aly how to play poker while you guys were out." Dean reported.

"Oh?" Dad asked. "How did it go? Did you like it, Aly?"

"I guess, I'll never remember all the different hands." I said mournfully.

"You will, eventually." Sam said. "If you don't want to play again, we don't have to."

"I figured it would be something to do while your ankle is healing." Dean said to me. "Since training is pretty much off the table for now."

"Why?" I asked. "Just because of the cast?"

Dean grabbed another egg roll. "Well, yeah, I mean, you can't spar or learn to shoot a gun or anything right now."

"Why not?" I frowned. "Can I do other kinds of training, stuff that's not physical?"

"Your center of gravity will be off because of how you'd be standing with the cast." Dad explained. "You could try learning to shoot while you're sitting, but I'd rather you just wait until the cast comes off. And yes, we can do training that doesn't involve you standing."

"I want to learn." I said. "I want to learn how to defend myself and shoot a gun and-and protect my mind so that-so that-in case…" I trailed off. I didn't want to go through that experience ever again, and I wanted to learn everything I could to protect myself.

Dean put his hand on my arm. "I know, I get it. And we'll teach you. But for right now, you need to just get better."

I sat back. "But I have the cast on, it's protecting my leg, can't I still do some training?"

"No, you need to stay off your foot as much as possible. If you start standing a lot, there's gonna be the temptation to put weight on your foot, and that's not good. So you keep that foot up for now. Doctor's orders." Calvin said firmly.

"Well, you heard the man." Dean said.

"We'll find other things for you to do, Aly." Sam assured me.

"You can learn the parts of the gun, like you had started to, and we can teach you how to take them apart and clean them. That's part of the training anyway." Dad said.

I sighed. "Okay."

After we ate, Sam and Dean and I went into the living room to watch a movie. Sam found The Empire Strikes Back had just started, so we watched that. Dad eventually came in to watch with us. After the movie was over, I said I wanted to take a shower. Calvin showed me how to put the plastic sleeve over my cast and tie the top closed with a stretchy elastic cord.

I felt my muscles loosen as the hot water ran down my body. I was gentle when washing my face and torso-my eye was no longer swollen and my bruises were turning from purple to blue, but they were still painful. After I washed my hair, I stood in the stream of water for several more minutes, just relaxing. Finally I turned off the water and grabbed a towel. I leaned forward and wrapped my head in a towel and then grabbed a second one for my body. Once I had patted myself dry, I sat down on the edge of the tub. Calvin had instructed me how to get in and out of the tub safely- sit down on the edge and swing my legs over one by one.

I moved my legs out of the tub and dried off the plastic sleeve that was covering my cast. I tried to undo the cord, but I couldn't. I reached over to my clothes piled on the closed toilet seat and got dressed, pulling myself to a standing position with one of the crutches so I could pull my panties and sweatpants up. As I was doing so, the crutch fell with a clatter.

"Dangit!" I muttered.

There was a knock on the door. "Aly? You okay?" It was Dean.

"Yeah, I just dropped one of the crutches." I called.

"Do you need help?"

I was holding on to the towel rack and I didn't think I'd be able to lean down to pick up the crutch on my own. "Yeah, I guess."

"You decent? Can I come in?"

"Yeah, I'm dressed."

The door opened and Dean came in and picked up the crutch. He watched me fit both of them under my arms. "You okay to walk with them?"

"Yeah, I already practiced some. Were you lurking outside the bathroom?"

He reddened slightly. "No, I was-I walked by a couple of times to make sure you didn't need help. I didn't want you to fall or get hurt, y'know?"

"Okay, Dean." I couldn't fault him for being overprotective. "Can you help me with the sleeve? I can't get the knots untied."

"Sure thing." He squatted down and undid the knots, then unwrapped the cord and pulled the sleeve off. He touched the cast. "Dry as a bone. This is a pretty cool invention." He stood up and hung it over the shower rod.

"It is. Thanks."

"Want me to take this off too?" Dean pointed to the plastic wrap covering my stitches. Calvin had said they should not get wet yet, but the steri-strips could come off in the shower.

"Yeah, thanks." I said. He removed the plastic wrap and threw it into the trash can.

We left the bathroom and he walked beside me to the bedroom. "I want to dry my hair, can you plug in my hair dryer please?" I sat down on the edge of the bed and pulled the towel off of my head. "And grab my brush?"

He went over to my duffle and removed my hair dryer and plastic hairbrush and brought them over. He plugged in the hair dryer and handed it to me. "You good?"

"Yeah, thanks."

He picked up the towel. "I'm gonna go to the kitchen, Bobby and Will showed up a few minutes ago. You gonna come join us?"

"Okay, when I'm done."

He left the room and I ran my brush through my hair and then turned on the dryer. Once my hair was dried, I stood up and grabbed the crutches. As I made my way down the hall I could hear men's voices coming from the kitchen.

When I came in, Dean was smiling. "We could hear you coming, you aren't gonna be able to sneak up on anyone with those!"

Dad, Sam, Uncle Bobby, and another man were all sitting at the table. Calvin was at the counter preparing something.

Dad stood up and pulled his chair out. "Come sit down, Aly."

I hobbled over to him. Uncle Bobby stood up. "Good to see ya, kiddo." He gave me a hug and of course when I reached up to hug him back, one of the crutches fell. Dad caught it and handed it to me.

"Argh, that's so annoying!" I grumped.

"Aly, this is Will Sexton." Uncle Bobby introduced. The man stood up- he was shorter than everyone else, with dark wavy hair and a beard. He reached out his hand and then withdrew it. "Don't want to have you lose your crutch again." He nodded at me. "Nice to meet you."

"Nice to meet you." I said awkwardly. "Thanks for helping with-helping my dad and brothers."

"Will here's got a lot of experience with demons and he's also well versed in spells." Uncle Bobby said.

"That's good." I said.

Dad touched my shoulder. "You want to sit?"

"Okay." I sat down in the chair he offered me.

Calvin came over with a sheet pan covered in loaded nachos. He set it down in the middle of the table. "Careful with the pan, it just came outta the oven." There were several open containers already on the table- guacamole, sour cream, and taco sauce. The nachos had meat, beans, sliced olives, tomatoes, and onion mixed into the melted cheese that covered them.

"Looks great, if you got a pitcher of margaritas it'd feel like a restaurant." Uncle Bobby joked as he served some nachos onto a plate.

"No margaritas, but I've got some tequila if y'all want." Calvin said.

"Whiskey's fine." Mr. Sexton raised his glass.

Calvin came over to me. "Let me take a look at your arms." The raw skin on my wrists looked a lot better and the cut that had been closed with steri-strips was just a pink line now. He touched the edge of a suture. "I want to keep these in for a few more days, that cut was deep, but everything else looks good. I'll give ya some salve to put on your wrists and the other cut at night, it's got cocoa butter and vitamin E in it, promotes skin regrowth."

"Okay, thank you." I smiled at him.

"You feel better now that you had a shower?" Dad asked.

"Yeah, I do." I said with relief. "The hot water helped."

He put his hand on the back of my chair. "Good."

Mr. Sexton was looking at me. "So, Alyson, do you feel up to talking about what happened during the spell?"

"Uh, I guess...what do you want to know?" I asked.

Dad touched my shoulder. "Are you sure? You already talked about your experiences earlier today, I don't want you to become overwhelmed."

"It's okay." I said.

"Well, do you remember anything that the witch said?" Mr. Sexton asked.

"Um, the spell itself was another language." I said. "It wasn't Latin, and I didn't recognize it at all, like you know how you can kinda recognize if something is French or Spanish? That language had sounds I'd never heard before."

"You know Latin?" Mr. Sexton seemed surprised.

"Aly's so good with Latin that she taught her school choir how to pronounce it." Sam said proudly.

I felt my face get hot, and looked down. "Yeah, I guess." I muttered.

"Not, 'you guess', you've always been good at it, Pastor Jim said he thought you had a gift for it when you were younger, remember?" Dad seemed proud as well.

"Yeah." I glanced at him. "And I took a little bit of French when we were living in Delaware last year."

"That's excellent." Mr. Sexton said. "I'm impressed, usually hunters don't pick up Latin that well. You've got a good start."

"Well, it remains to be seen if she actually does do any hunting." Dad said.

"I want to, Dad." It hit me just then, that I did want to hunt-I wanted to hunt down the demon that had killed our mother and changed all of our lives. I wanted to make sure that other demons didn't kidnap and torture people.

Dean looked surprised. "You do?"

I nodded. "Yeah. If I can make sure that demons can't mess with anyone else, I want to."

The look on Dean's face changed. "Uhh...I don't know about that-" He said uncomfortably.

"What? Why? Because I'm a girl? Because I'm your little sister?" I challenged.

He shifted. "Well...yeah…"

Tension hung in the air as I tried to fight back my annoyance at him. When was he going to stop being overprotective of me? Wasn't the point of them training me to have me become a hunter with them? Or were they just trying to placate me and shut me up?

Dad broke the silence. "We can talk about that later, all right? None of that needs to be decided right now."

I huffed. Dad raised his eyebrows. "We'll talk about it later." He repeated, his voice dropping a notch, and I knew not to press the issue.

After another long moment of silence, Mr. Sexton cleared his throat. "Well, seeing as how you said that you didn't recognize the language, it may very well have been a Celtic language, they sound a lot different than Latin and the languages in that family. John, you said that there are Celtic symbols on that bowl?"

"Yes, the bowl is in Calvin's study." Dad said. "And Aly remembered that the witch was wearing a pendant with a Triskelion, which is the symbol of the Trifold Path."

"Interesting. They're not usually the type to fall in with demons and the like, so I wonder…" Mr. Sexton rubbed his beard. He looked at me again. "Can you tell me everything that happened, in detail, even if you think it's insignificant?"

"Um, well...Jervis and Dipper came into the room with the witch. She had a bag over her shoulder and was holding the bowl in her hands. She had a lot of silver jewelry on and a dress that had a celestial pattern on it. Jervis told me that he had brought someone in who would shut me up. Dipper said something about me being like the mermaid in a fairy tale, that the witch was going to take away my voice. Jervis got mad at him for that. The witch asked for...she said she needed fire and moon water. What even is that?"

"Moon water is just water that's been sitting out under a full moon, witches believe that the moon charges the water and adds energy to it." Mr. Sexton explained. "Used mostly in spells."

"Oh. I've never heard of that." I said. "Jervis took the witch over to the table and I could hear her grinding up herbs. She lit a candle and started chanting in a low voice. I saw her move something metal through the candle flame and I-I got scared she was going to cut my vocal cords out or something. I didn't know, I thought that because Dipper had said he wanted to cut my throat." I said worriedly.

Dad patted my back. "It's all right, Aly. Are you okay to continue?"

"Can I have some water, please?" I asked.

Calvin got up and brought me a glass of ice water.

I drank some of it and set the glass in front of me. "The witch and Jervis came over and stood in front of me, and Jervis called Dipper over and told him to stand there and be quiet. She started to stir what was in the bowl with her knife, it had an ornamental handle."

"Do you remember what it looked like, any specifics?" Mr. Sexton asked. "Any symbols you recognized?"

I shook my head. "No, just that it was silver colored and had all these shapes on it. She started to chant quietly, and then louder, and Jervis lit a match and put it in the bowl."

Mr. Sexton had pulled a small notebook out of his jacket and was taking notes. "You said she started stirring first, and chanting, and then the herbs were lit?"

"Yeah."

"Interesting. And she's the only one who was chanting?"

"Yeah. Once the herbs were smoking she chanted louder. She told Dipper to take the tape off because the smoke had to go into my mouth and nose."

"Tape?" Mr. Sexton frowned.

"Yeah, uh, Dipper-he put duct tape over my mouth the day before. He took the tape off and I started to say Exorcizamus but he grabbed me and told me to shut up." I heard Dean make a noise in the back of his throat. "I held my breath and turned my head away. Dipper pulled my hair to make me breathe, but I refused."

Dad took my hand and squeezed it. "Proud of you." He murmured.

"Then Jervis-he punched me in the stomach and I gasped, I couldn't help it, the smoke went into my mouth. I turned my head again, and Dipper-he, uh, he said 'this'll make her scream', and he, uh, he cut my arm. I-I tried not to scream, but he-he grabbed my arm and shoved his fingers in the cut and it hurt really bad, I couldn't help it, I did scream-" Tears came to my eyes as I remembered.

Dean shoved back from the table and stood up, walking to the other side of the room, muttering under his breath.

"Dean?" Dad turned to him.

Dean stood still and I saw his back expand as he took a deep breath. "Can we bring that asshole back up here just so I can kick his ass again and send him back?" He turned, scrubbing a hand over his face. "Sorry, I just-listening to Aly talk about them hurting her, it's hard." He came over and leaned down to give me a quick hug. "I don't do well hearing about people hurting my family."

"I'm sorry, Dean." I said.

He touched my cheek. "Don't apologize, it's not you." He sat back down.

Dad was still holding my hand. "You okay to keep listening?" He asked Dean, who nodded. Dad looked at me. "Are you okay to continue?"

I nodded. "Yeah. There's isn't much left to tell. I screamed and the smoke went into my mouth and nose, it burned my throat and lungs and my eyes were watering. Then I coughed and it was like the sound stopped. I tried to say something but there was no noise. I was shocked, and they-they were laughing at me." I looked down, and felt Dad squeeze my hand. "Jervis was like 'this is great' and he said 'you can't say anything about the famous Winchesters now' and told me that-that you guys weren't going to rescue me and that I'd just been a drain on you since-since I was born. He said-" More tears welled up and I glanced at Dad. "He said imagine how disappointed you were when you tried to train me and it didn't take, because I'm just a f-failure." I covered my eyes with my hand, feeling shame well up. "That all I was good for was grunt work and that you could find anyone for that, that you-you didn't care about me." I broke down and started crying. I felt someone move my chair back from the table.

"Aly-" Dad said. "Aly, come here." I felt his arms around me. "That's not true, sweetheart." He said quietly. His mouth was next to my ear, and I felt him put his hand on the back of my head. "You know that demons get into your head and use your fears against you. It's not true."

The words just kept spilling out of me. "When I was little and you tried to teach me-you did try and I could never do anything well, and you-you'd get this look on your face like-like you were disappointed, you'd say 'we'll have to try something else' but you'd just look-like you knew I was a failure."

He shushed me, rubbing his hand up and down my back.

"I was, Dad! I couldn't do anything, and that's why you stopped trying, isn't it?" I exclaimed.

"Listen," Dad let me go and sat back, but he took my chin and made me look at him. "I did-I realized that you were-well, you'd always been a sensitive little girl and you found out-when you found out about hunting it really threw you, you were scared of it all for a long time, and I didn't-it wasn't that I thought you were a failure, I knew that you weren't ready for it because of how you'd reacted, and I-I just wanted to protect you."

"We all wanted to protect you, Aly, and let you have as much innocence as possible, for as long as possible." Dean said on the other side of me.

"I can see now that that was a mistake, I should have gone about it differently, but given what had happened back then, I did what I thought was the best thing. I'm sorry that I made you feel bad about yourself, I wish I had known." Dad pulled me in for another hug. I put my head on his shoulder and my arms around his chest. "You're not a failure and I'm not disappointed in you. I'm proud of you, of how strong you've been through all this." He said, kissing the side of my head.

"Y-you're n-not just s-saying th-that?" I asked through my tears.

"No, sweetheart, I'm not just saying that." He said to me. "I-when we were driving to find you I had a lot of time to think and all I could think about was how I wanted to tell you how much I love you and that I really am proud of you."

I hugged him tighter, my chest starting to heave with sobs. I had held on to that for such a long time, that awful feeling of having disappointed him, it had shaped how I had seen myself when I was younger.

He sighed, and his breath tickled my hair next to my ear. "I'm so sorry, I didn't know you felt like that. If I could go back and change it-" He sighed again. He tightened his arms around me as I continued to cry.

Eventually my sobs quieted and my breathing evened out, and I realized that I'd been sitting here bawling my eyes out in front of not only my family, but a bunch of hunters. Embarrassment rose up in a wave as Dad let me go and I sat back. I lowered my head and covered my eyes with my hand.

"What's wrong?" Dad asked.

"M' embarrassed, crying in front of everyone." I muttered.

"It's all right." Uncle Bobby said. "Perfectly understandable."

"Yeah, we get it." I heard Mr. Sexton say.

"You been through a tough experience, and you're gonna be dealin' with the emotional fallout for a while." Calvin added.

"I think-I just want to go to my room." I said.

Dad stood up and brought over the crutches. "Are you okay to walk?"

"I think so." I said, still staring at the floor. I stood up and fitted the crutches under my arms. As I began to walk out of the room, I stumbled.

Dad was right there next to me, taking my elbow. "Let me walk with you." He walked me to the bedroom.

I looked at him after I sat down on the bed. "Will you-will you stay with me for a little bit?"

"Sure." He took the crutches from me and leaned them against the bedside table, then he sat down next to me.

Suddenly I was crying again. "M' sorry," I sniffled, "I d-don't know w-what's wrong with m-me-"

He put his arm around me and pulled me close. "You've been talking about a traumatic experience for the past couple of days, I think it's normal to cry a lot. It's okay."

"I d-don't wanna be a p-pain-"

"You're not." He said. "Everyone here has been through something similar, something that's hard to process, no one is going to fault you for crying. So you go ahead and cry."

I snuggled into his chest and let myself cry for a few minutes, but then I made myself stop. I was tired of crying and being upset! I had to just try and get over it, that's what my brothers seemed to do after they came back from a hunt. I could count on one hand the number of times I had seen them upset after they came back from a hunt, and neither of them ever spent the days afterwards crying randomly.

There was a knock on the door and Dad called, "Come in."

I sat up, wiping my face with my palms. Sam and Dean came into the room.

"We just wanted to check on Aly." Dean said as they came over to the bed.

"M'okay." I looked up at him and Sam. "I don't want to-to bother everyone because I'm crying all the time."

"You're not crying all the time, and it's okay, we get it." Sam smiled at me.

Dad leaned over and snagged the box of tissues from the bedside table and handed them to me. I blew my nose and wiped my eyes. "I'm tired, just gonna go to sleep." I told them.

"Do you want me to sit with you?" Dad asked.

I did want him to, but I knew he probably wanted to talk to Uncle Bobby and Mr. Sexton about things. "Uh, no, I-I'll be okay." I looked to the side as I crumpled the used tissues in my hand.

Dad took the tissues from me and threw them away.

Dean leaned down to hug me. "You give a yell if you need anything, okay?" He said.

"Okay." I agreed.

"Proud of you, short stuff." He dropped a kiss on top of my head as he stood up.

"Thanks, Dean."

Sam hugged me next. "I'm proud of you too, you've been through a lot, and you don't have to worry about crying too much. We're all here for you."

"Thanks, Sam."

Dad was the last to hug me. He helped me get situated in bed with my leg propped up and pulled the covers up. "I love you, Pumpkin. I'll leave the door open so that you can call out if you need anything, all right?"

"Love you back. Thanks." I smiled at him.

Dad turned off the bedside lamp and pulled the door partly closed behind him as they left the room.

Exhaustion hit me just then, and I fell asleep quickly.

I was tied to the chair, Jervis leaning down in my face, his eyes black. "I know that your family's just pretending to care about you-you're not a hunter like them, you just drag them down. They're not going to rescue you." He said.

"Shut up!" I snapped as tears came to my eyes. I knew what he said was true, though.

Suddenly his face changed, coalescing into Dean's. All the angles of his face were sharp and his eyes gleamed black. "You've been a thorn in my side since the day you were born. It was always, "watch out for your sister" but I hated every second of it. I couldn't wait to get away from you."

"D-dean!" Tears came to my eyes- I couldn't believe he was saying that to me!

His face morphed into Sam's, his eyes a hard black as well. "You're the dumbest kid I've ever known. No one wanted to take care of you, Dean and I argued all the time over who had to watch the whiny little annoyance. We were glad when Dad took us on hunts, so glad to drop you off at someone else's house so you'd be their problem." Sam sneered.

"Sam, I'm sorry!" I gasped, tears starting to slide down my cheeks.

His face changed to Dad's, his brows down and his jaw set."You're a failure in every sense of the word." He spat. "We hadn't planned for you and it's safe to say you were a mistake, and I regret having you. You don't live up to the Winchester name and no matter how hard you try you're always going to fail. You're worthless, and you're not my daughter. If I could get rid of you, I would."

I looked at him, tears streaming from my eyes. "Please- please don't- I'm sorry-"

His hands came up to grab my throat, and I screamed-

I woke up screaming, tears pouring down my face.

Dad sat up next to me. "Aly! Aly, wake up!" He said urgently, touching my shoulder.

"M' awake." I propped myself up on my elbow.

"Do you want to talk about it?" He brushed my hair back from my face.

My feelings were a jumble in my chest. One one hand, my family had spent their time reassuring me of their love for me since I'd been rescued, but on the other hand, there was everything Jervis had said to me, and that terrible dream. Whenever he had taunted me about my family I was always worried that what he was saying was what was really true. What if Jervis had been able to reach into my mind and ascertain how my family really felt about me, and that's why I had had that dream? Maybe everything they said in the dream wasn't my deepest darkest fears, but rather, my family's secret thoughts and feelings about me. I knew that sometimes Dad had stressed about trying to find someone to watch me before a hunt. I knew that there had been times in the past when Dean and Sam had been tired of watching me. I felt confused and ashamed- were their assurances now the real thing, or was the dream the real thing?

I couldn't tell Dad about the dream, the shame and worry I felt were too real. He put his arms around me, and I hugged him back. "It's all right, I'm here with you, you're safe." He said.

I made myself calm down and stop crying. "M' okay." I mumbled.

We laid back down and I tried to go back to sleep.