A/N: Alright. So, first of all thank you thank you thank you for favoriting and following and reviewing. Love that for us.

So, it's actually 3:30 in the morning (i'm not tired, who's tired), and I just finished writing this and getting it ready to post. It's heavy, so only read it if you're read for that. Specifically, it deals with depression, which is something I have been meaning to write about with this character for a long time, but I never quite could bring myself to do it before because I know that this is painful and personal and it's just a lot. Due to some recent events, though, I felt like I really needed to write it, and I simultaneously got a request for something like it. So, here it is.

Title comes from a longer quote by Rudy Francisco. Enjoy- thought that may not be the right word for this one ;)

I've Been Trying to Convince My Shadows

Anna is sixteen

Anna's cold fingers curled around the wooden post of her bed. She stared at the shadows on her bedroom wall, thought about shutting her lamp off but didn't move. She didn't have any idea what time it was, but it didn't matter. It had been a long time since she'd crawled into bed, tired and scared, and wanting the world to go away for just a few hours. That was all she needed to know… that it had been too long and she was still awake.

There was a time she would have walked down the hallway and knocked timidly on someone's door. There would have been a little grumbling from whoever she woke up, but then there would have been hot chocolate and comfort.

There were a hundred reasons Anna didn't do that now. But the two biggest? She felt old, too old, so old. And she didn't really want comfort. Or she didn't believe she could find it in the same places she used to. Maybe both.

She didn't feel like she could do anything real, but she also didn't want to lay motionless under her blankets any longer. So Anna pulled herself into a kneeling position on her bed, staring down at her pillows. They were tear-stained, unwilling to let her forget the cry-fest she'd had a couple hours ago… unwilling to let her forget how not-okay she was.

Looking up, she startled at the sight of her own shadow plastered against her wall. She looked massive, monstrous, malicious. She reached over and moved her lamp a couple inches over on her desk. Her shadow shrunk, and she looked human again. Anna took a slow breath, her eyes itching with tears that didn't fall.

She'd been a monster the week before last, when she went to that party with Kate, and she'd been a monster every day after until a couple days ago when the boys had sat down to talk things out with her. She'd been massive, monstrous, malicious. And then they'd poked her in the right places, shifted the light, and she'd been small again, sweet again… silent again.

Anna moved her hand in front of the light, watched the room bathe in near darkness, only a few small triangles of light hitting the wall around her fingers and then slowly moved her hand further and further from the lamp's shade, until her hand was a tiny shadow. It looked like a clever drawing, the top darker than the bottom and the fingers curled like she was about to play the piano or reap a soul.

Anna dropped her hand, moved it to her desk, and flicked off the lamp.

The dark hurt, but it felt like home.

Minutes ticked by. The room was soundless, and pretending she could be as still as everything else quickly became worse than being awake while the world was asleep. Anna reached blindly for her phone which was tangled in her blankets. The lock screen nearly blinded her even though her phone was on its lowest brightness setting.

"Three," she breathed when she saw the time. She'd walked into her room at eleven.

Anna sighed through her nose, dejected and angry and fricking exhausted. She flopped back onto her bed and stared at the ceiling in the dark. They'd talked, and she'd smiled, and the boys had looked relieved, and she was supposed to be okay now. But she wasn't.

She used to walk down the hallway at midnight, murmur, 'I can't sleep,' into the soft fabric of an old flannel shirt, and fall asleep on the kitchen table. How could a couple years feel like forever ago?

She used to scream and shout and kick chairs and compulsively say how much everything sucked. How could last week feel like forever ago?

Flicking her lamp back on, Anna got back up onto her knees and found her earbuds dangling from the corner of her desk. She plugged them into her phone, stuffed them in her ears, and tried not to feel too much as she scrolled through all her favorite playlists. Everything she was always listening to felt eh to her now, but she saw the word Sleep, and stopped scrolling. It felt like some kind of karma.

Anna knew every word to the song. It had been her favorite once. But she still felt like she was listening to it for the first time as the audio crackled in her ear,

They're… they're these terrors.

And it feels like, as if somebody was gripping my throat.

She played it on repeat a few times and eventually decided to listen to the entire album it was on. She got more and more tired, but she didn't fall asleep. By 4:30am, when the bonus track ended, she'd given up on sleep entirely. Anna didn't get out of bed, though. She just stared at the ceiling a little longer, her earbuds laying abandoned on the bed beside her, her ears ringing just a little from having listened at full volume for over an hour.

The bunker lacked the natural light most people's houses allowed, so the room didn't look much different from the way it had at midnight, except that the hall lights always came on around dawn, and that light leaked under her door.

If she fixed her eyes on the ceiling, Anna could pretend the night wasn't over. And as badly as she'd wanted it to end last night when she'd been in the throes of her insomnia, she wanted it to last now. When the night was over, the morning had to start, and when the morning started, Anna had to be human again. No more shadow monsters. Just straw girls, she thought disdainfully. She wasn't supposed to think like that, though, so she scrubbed the words away before they had time to really linger.

The thought of getting out of bed seemed daunting. The thought of walking to the kitchen and sitting down and drinking coffee and seeing her brothers seemed even more daunting. The thought of going to school seemed impossible. But Anna dragged herself up out of bed and out the kitchen. She started the coffee pot herself because no one else was up before her like usual. She lay on the floor while she waited for it to brew, and the floor was unbearably cold against her bare shoulders, but she didn't get up and she didn't get a sweater or a flannel or a blanket. She just laid there.

The kitchen ceiling looked different from the one in her room. It made her feel more vulnerable, less at home.

Instead of curling her fingers in the light to make images, she was left staring directly up into the bulb.

()()()

As she stared tiredly at the produce aisle before her, an arm settled around her shoulders. "Y'alright, Ladybug?"

Anna glanced sideways at her brother and shrugged one shoulder. "Fine," she said. "Are you okay?"

"Me? Why wouldn't I be okay?"

"I don't know. Why wouldn't I be okay?"

Sam looked down at her with that spark of interest and concern in his eyes that Anna had grown used to seeing over the past couple months. "I don't know. You've just been really quiet."

Anna shrugged again. She didn't have much to say, she supposed. She preferred thinking. Not that she enjoyed a lot of the thinking she was doing lately since a lot of it reduced her to tears.

"There doesn't have to be a reason," Sam said after a moment.

"I know."

She didn't think she was supposed to, but Anna heard the little sigh Sam let out. "Here," he told her, and she was handed a small plastic bag. "Tomatoes. Get more than one this time. You're eating a vegetable tonight."

Anna wrinkled her nose. Of all the vegetables in the world, he'd decided on tomatoes? What about corn or potatoes? She liked those vegetables. Instead of voicing that opinion, she sighed. "Fine." She dropped three tomatoes into the bag and started trying to tie it, feeling half-spaced out the whole time. She was a little startled when she felt a presence by her shoulder, and she almost wielded her sack of tomatoes as a weapon, but some sixth sense told her it was just Sam.

"Let me help," he offered, holding a hand out for the bag.

Anna couldn't say she cared one way or another who tied the stupid bag, so she let Sam take it and glanced at the cart. He'd gotten lettuce, cucumbers, and some stuff Anna didn't recognize- all plants- in the time it had taken her to walk over to the tomatoes and drop three of them in a bag.

"So," Sam said casually as they strolled down the rest of the aisle. He was leaning down to steer the shopping cart, and it put him just a few inches taller than Anna rather than the usual twelve that separated them. "How'd you sleep last night?"

Anna shrugged, lazily eyeing the display of energy drinks at the end of the aisle. She was totally going to grab one without saying anything. And if Sam didn't want to buy it for her- he had almost as strong a vendetta against caffeine as Anna had an addiction to it- then she would tuck it in her jacket when he wasn't looking and get a five finger discount.

"Are you even listening to me?"

Anna sighed at the thought of having to speak. "Depends what the last thing you said was," she admitted.

"I said I heard you in the kitchen at two o'clock this morning." Sam didn't tend to make things into things like Dean did. He didn't turn to look at her like he'd caught her in some big lie. He didn't even give her a side-eye or wag a finger at her.

"Oh." She planted her hand against the refrigerator door at the end of the aisle and looked at her brother, asking without asking.

"If I buy you one of those things, will you tell me honestly how much you slept last night?"

With another shrug, Anna just said, "Sure." Seemed like a small price to pay.

Sam opened the fridge and pulled out a can of the original Monster to hand to Anna. Then he fixed her with a look.

Anna tilted her head a little, wishing she could crack open the can in her hand now even though it wasn't paid for yet. Caffeine always lifted that fog in her brain, at least for a little while. Even if it didn't last, it still made her feel better. "I didn't."

Sam made a face. "What?"

"I didn't sleep last night. I couldn't."

"Are you serious?"

"Yeah."

That face, though it had looked like confusion before, looked more like concern now. "How are you even on your feet?"

Anna shrugged. "I'm-" used to it, she didn't say. Instead she looked up at Sam, made a clever face at him, and said, "You almost made me say it." She blinked heavily and let her eyes hit the floor, which was tiled, scuffed, and sheened with dirt.

"Did you have a nightmare or something?"

Anna was glad Sam had lowered his voice to ask that question, because while she knew that both her brothers had nightmares all the time and she got them herself as well, it still was not the kind of question she wanted to be asked in public. "No. I didn't even fall asleep."

Sam was looking more at her than the cart or their surroundings already, but Anna was still surprised when he stopped walking. "You know that's not normal, right?"

"I guess. I mean I didn't think everyone just stayed up all night."

"Have you done that before?"

Anna shrugged. "Once or twice." Per week.

"How recently?"

"That night you guys got back. And then a couple days before. When you were gone." She wrinkled her nose and looked over her shoulder the way they'd come. "I really shoulda milked the whole Monster thing. If I'd gotten one for every question…"

"I think the last thing you need in your system is caffeine if you're staying up all night three times in eight days."

Before she even had time to tighten her grip on it, he'd taken the can of Monster back out of her hand. Anna stared in utter heartbreak at it as Sam set it in the front of the cart. She hoped he wasn't planning on putting it back. She was gonna feel like crap for the rest of the day if she didn't get some caffeine in her system.

"Why didn't you ask to stay home and get some sleep?"

"I wanted caffeine."

"You should try sleeping. It has similar effects except it's more sustainable."

"How's it taste?" Anna muttered, unimpressed.

"Not like battery acid."

"Sounds nasty." She made a swipe for the can of Monster that was still in the cart, but Sam grabbed it and held it out of her reach.

"I wasn't kidding, Anna. You're not drinking any more of this crap until you get some decent sleep."

Anna rolled her eyes. "Fine, can we finish getting the rest of this shit, then?" Admittedly, that had come out with more attitude than she'd intended, but she still felt her mood further sour when Sam gave her a disapproving look for the tone she'd used. "What?"

"Nothing," he said, raising his hands in surrender. He was picking his battles, and it made her stomach turn, but she didn't stop looking at him like an enemy. "You could go wait in the car if you want," he offered.

"No thanks," Anna grumbled.

"Why not?"

"'Cause Dean's in the car. And if I go out there, he's gonna ask why I didn't stay here, and I don't wanna answer any more stupid questions. Clearly that gets me shit."

Sam took a breath and looked ahead at the other shoppers who were minding their own business, reading the ingredients on bottles and cans, humming to themselves, and crossing items off grocery lists. He looked pensive as he turned back to her, staring at her like he had her figured out. Anna thought, for just a second, that he might tell her something serious or vulnerable. Something like 'You're scaring me.' Something like the many things he and Dean had told her nearly two weeks ago when they'd all still believed it was just a few sour thoughts that were making Anna look malicious.

"Don't swear," was all Sam had to say for himself.

()()()

"What?" Anna asked, startled. She normally didn't bat an eye when Dean told her 'no' for one reason or another, but she'd been so sure he was going to say 'yes' this time around that… "Why not?"

"I just don't think you should be hunting right now." His expression gave nothing away as he turned away from her and set his beer down on the table.

Anna watched him in confusion, and slowly that confusion started to morph into that feeling of just plain bad that everything did these days. "I can't go on a spirit hunt?" she repeated incredulously, hoping that if he heard the words out loud, he would decide for himself that he was being ridiculous. That way she wouldn't have to explain it to him.

"Not right now." Dean's face was calm, but Anna recognized the rumble under his voice that said he felt anything but calm on the inside. She didn't care. Hell, maybe she was glad for it. She certainly wasn't feeling too calm herself. He must have seen the rage under her surface too, because he said it again, a little louder, "Not right now."

"What do you mean not right now?" Anna seethed. "Cause you say that every time. So it's starting to look like when you say not right now, you mean never."

"I've said it twice in a week," Dean defended, "and for good reason. Quit blowin' things out of proportion."

Out of proportion, the words echoed in Anna's head, like somebody had screamed them from their front porch and let them bounce off the hills and sky. She was getting good at making everything into a bigger deal than it needed to be. She'd spent a week after the party to end all parties making every word her brothers said to her into a reason to get pissed.

"What are you calling good reason? You won't even tell me."

"You really have to ask?" Dean questioned softly, like he was giving her an out.

Anna saw instantly where he'd been going with this, and her eyes shifted downward, first to look at Dean's feet, then to land on her own. She felt cold. He still thought there was something wrong with her, something wrong enough that she couldn't be trusted on a hunt with them, even though her role on hunts was usually to stand behind them with a gun full of salt rounds and read tons of lore they turned out not to need. "Seriously?" she mumbled. "Because of that stupid party?"

"No, not because of the party," Dean corrected. His face told her he couldn't believe that was what she thought. "Because… Have you seen yourself lately?"

For some reason, the question made Anna angry. Her eyes jumped back up to meet Dean's, and they were full of steel. "I'm fine."

"No, you're not," Dean replied, calm as ever.

Anna's anger disappeared as quickly as it had come on. Her shoulders fell the barest inch, her eyes cooled, and one corner of her mouth twitched downward. She didn't say anything.

Dean's mistake was taking it as an invitation. Anna watched him step closer and open his mouth before she looked down at the floor again, shaking her head but making the movement so small it was barely visible. "You're not fine. You're draggin' your feet everywhere you go. You're not eating unless someone makes you. You guzzle energy drinks like they're the only thing keepin' you on your feet. And you barely said two words all day yesterday."

"So first I'm too loud," Anna said so softly that her t and d sounds stood out against the barely-there vowels. "And now I'm too quiet?"

"That's not the point."

The desperation was apparent on his face, but Anna ignored it. She had to. "Then what is?" she asked, though she knew she'd regret it. For a minute, her brother didn't speak, and Anna was ready to use it against him and tell him 'that's what I thought.'

But Dean let out a sigh so heavy the whole room seemed to deflate with it. "Something's wrong." Anna scoffed and looked away, tears forming in her eyes. She was so frustrated. So frustrated. It was like in those moments she quietly asked for help, everybody always missed it, but when she wanted to go somewhere, do something… then they noticed, and they held her behind. "I know I'm not the sharing, caring, teddy bear type, Rugrat, but I'm asking you to talk to me."

"We talk every day."

"Arguing doesn't count," Dean quipped. "Anna, give me something here."

"Why?" Anna asked, lips pursed tight but the rest of her slack. She was so tired of trying to explain herself. "Why would I?" She hated the way her voice wavered, but she hated it more that her chin started wobbling. She made her voice tighter and felt her face heat with frustration. "We tried that, remember? The whole family therapy sesh? I spilled all my shit, and no good came of it."

"So maybe we weren't talking about the right crap."

She could hear his voice rising slightly in some kind of panic or anger, and it raised her hackles. "Maybe there is no talking about the right crap." Her eyes widened and watered. "Maybe I'm just fucked in the head, Dean. You ever think of that?"

"Don't talk like that," Dean warned, his eyes mirroring hers.

Anna had to bite the inside of her lip to keep from crying, so she turned purposefully away from her brother. She could hear his boots against the floor when he moved closer, so she stepped away and knew he'd gotten the hint when his footsteps stopped.

"Sweetheart-"

"Don't call me that," Anna snapped. She couldn't stand the sound of that word in his mouth. He only called her that when she was hurt or scared. It was one more way he talked to her that he didn't talk to anyone else. She usually didn't even notice when he lapsed into it. But on the few occasions she did, it made her feel warm and safe. Loved. And it wasn't as if she didn't know that was how he meant it even now. But there was something about that feeling of being protected and cared for that made her want to run this time.

She turned around and stormed past her brother, brushing against his side in her hurry.

"Hey," Dean called after her, but it sounded more like a plea than an order. Anna didn't know which he'd been going for. "Anna."

She hated the gentleness in Dean that was so often only there for her almost as much as she hated the anger and the hate in herself. But she especially hated the way the two of them seemed to always be surfacing at the same time. Who the hell did Dean think he was, treating her like a hurting kid when she was acting like a spiteful teenager?

()()()

"You really had a crush on this guy?" Kate laughed.

Anna poked her friend in the leg with the toe of one foot. "Yes," she laughed along defensively. "He's cute, you have to admit."

"Yes, because I have an excellent radar for cute boys," Kate said sarcastically.

"Well, I didn't mean he was hot. I mean his face. He's cute."

"I guess so," Kate said. "But this show's from like the sixties or something, right?"

Anna shrugged. "Sounds about right."

"So this guy is like forty years older than you."

"In real life. But who gives a shit about real life."

Kate's smile broadened and then slowly faded as she looked back to the screen so that she just looked sort of content. "Clint Eastwood. Your first crush."

"Total heart-throb to my ten-year-old self. And then I turned eleven and moved on to Little Joe from Bonanza," Anna said with the smallest bit of a smile on her face. She leaned her head back against the armrest of Kate's couch and listened to her friend laugh out loud.

"You had a type, huh?"

"What, you think those two have something in common?" Anna quipped.

Kate smiled again, but Anna just stared wistfully at the TV screen. In a way, it was fun getting nostalgic, thinking back on the things she'd loved so much back when she was still a little kid. But in another way, it was painful. She couldn't find the same kind of pleasure in old westerns anymore- partially because she now saw the sexism, racism, and many other problems they were ridden with, and partially because she'd simply grown out of it.

She didn't do it intentionally or even all that consciously, but Anna tended to think of her life in sections. There was that set of years before her father's death, that set of years before they found the bunker, that snug little year before her mother's return and passing, and then the next year and a little more that she was still living. She figured the current section was going to be one of the hardest. It felt that way anyway. She certainly hadn't felt this way before. She'd felt badly after her mother, but the pain had passed… mostly. And she'd had plenty of moments of doubt and grief and fear and sadness throughout her childhood.

But this part was different. It seemed to hurt for no reason at all. She figured that was what the transition into adulthood was like, at least when you were a Winchester, and especially when you were the youngest and orphaned. But she sure wished she could move on in a hurry, reach a new phase, a better one, one that didn't hurt at all, let alone without rhyme or reason.

"What's wrong?"

Anna picked her head up and looked over at Kate. "What?" She glanced toward the TV and realized Kate had paused the show. The show was so old that even on Kate's new DVD, the video quality was fuzzy and terrible. "I was just thinkin'," she promised and found a shallow smile to offer.

Kate appeared disheartened as she looked back over at the TV. Anna thought she would unpause the video, but instead Kate lifted the remote and hit the power button, and the screen flicked into black. Kate turned on the couch so she was sitting sideways with her back to the armrest. She had her knees bent up like Anna's were, and their toes almost touched on the middle cushion of the couch.

Anna sighed. But she met Kate's eyes, and a wall crumbled inside of her. She had to clear her throat at a sudden obstruction. "I don't know why I'm about to cry over nothing," she said thickly, wiping discreetly at her wet eyes with the knuckle of her index finger.

"You keep saying stuff like that," Kate said with a shake of her head. "But I know you, A, and you don't cry over nothing. Why can't you just admit you feel bad?"

Looking away, Anna folded her arms under knees. "Because if I say I feel bad, I have to try and figure out why."

"Who said that?"

Anna jerked her head up, but she remained curled up practically into a ball as she gazed at Kate. "Sam and Dean, I guess."

"Well, that's the difference between family and friends. Family always think they have to fix everything, and friends just want to be there."

"I don't know," Anna said. "You seemed pretty determined to fix everything a couple weeks ago."

Kate shrugged, but it was tiny. She straightened her spine and sat with her ankles crossed so that she took up only one cushion. Anna didn't reciprocate and take up the extra room. Instead she made herself even smaller, using her folded arms to bring her knees even closer to her chest and rest her chin on them.

Deciding she didn't need an answer and realizing she wouldn't get one, Anna let out a small sigh. "Remember you asked me if I was as scared as you were?"

"Yeah," Kate whispered like the memory hurt. It did Anna too. "And you said you were."

Anna placed the fingernails of her right hand on the back of her left one, digging until she could feel the bite of it. "I am scared," she admitted, voice small and strained. "But it's different than how you are."

"What do you mean?"

"I mean like… like I keep doing things and feeling guilty after. But then I make another mistake a minute later. I did at the party. I convinced you to go, and then I felt bad, and then I screwed up even worse."

"I do that too," Kate said. "Just in reverse. I feel like shit about it and then I do it anyway."

"I know," Anna said, because she did. "But that's not it. I feel guilty, and it's like…" She reached a hand up self-consciously and ran it partly through her curls before catching herself and dropping it back down to under her legs. She dug her fingernails into the back of her hand again. Her voice was taut with frustration as she continued, "It's heavy. Not like… You know what I mean?" she asked hopefully.

"I think so," Kate said. "Heavy like… like when you lose someone and you feel it everywhere and it's physical."

Anna nodded, almost eager in her response. "Exactly." She reached up to itch the back of her head. She hadn't washed her hair out in almost a week, and it had resulted in frizzier-than-normal curls and a somewhat itchy head. But she just kept telling herself she would shower later, and it just kept not happening. She was always too tired. "But it's not just when I mess up. It's all the time. Like I just feel bad all the time. And it makes everything… hard."

"Hard like you don't want to do it, or hard like you can't do it?"

"Something in between. Like nothing matters enough to do it. Or like… like I don't want to do it because I can't make myself care about it. Or even if I do care about it, I can't believe it matters enough to do it."

Kate looked distraught. "I don't get it," she admitted.

"Neither do I."

"So talk some more," Kate requested. "What are you scared about?"

Anna bit the inside of her lip, feeling a little like she had when she'd argued with Dean the other day. "I'm scared it's always gonna be like this."

"Of course it's not."

"I don't know, Kate," Anna breathed, her voice shuddering. She didn't like it, but she didn't try to control it. Just this once, she was going to speak her mind. "The way it feels…" She looked down, eyes tracing the criss-crossing pattern of the couch cushion. "Like I'm…" Underwater? Suffocating? Caged? She couldn't pick a word. They were all wrong for one reason or another. "It feels like I'm here for good," she whispered.

"Anna…"

When Kate couldn't find anything else to say, Anna shook her head. She was at a loss too, but she at least had more to say. And talking sounded better to her than sitting there in agonizing silence, so she did. "I can't explain." Anna swallowed, and her eyes burned. "But the world is like… it looks different. Nothing feels like it used to. It's like I can't see clear anymore. And I know I need to get some fucking sleep at night and maybe that problem'll go away along with about 99 others, but… I can't."

"You can't sleep?"

Anna shrugged and shook her head at the same time. A tear dripped out of the corner of her eye, and to her it felt like an accident, but in Kate's eyes it's reflection was devastating. Anna tried for another small smile, thinking it was probably time they wrap this up and try to be happy again. But she couldn't smile, and trying to made more tears gather in her eyes. Another one fell, and her nose ran. As if that gate opening was permission for all the others to do the same, Anna felt herself let go.

"Kate," she sobbed, "I can't do it anymore." Her shoulders shook, and she had to close her eyes against the push and shove of her misery.

She'd always hated crying in front of anyone. Her hands came to her face like shields.

"Anna," Kate whispered again, helpless.

Anna heard herself cry harder. Hearing Kate like that hurt. It hurt bad, and it hurt personal. Just like everything.

"I can't," she shuddered, trying to stop crying and breathe. She couldn't get a handle on herself, though, not this time. It was the pain's turn at the wheel. "I'm sorry," she choked, wiping messily at her cheeks with both hands. Her palms came away wet, but her face wasn't dry.

"Don't," Kate begged. "Don't say that. Don't… Anna…"

Anna lifted her face to see Kate's brown eyes looking tired and scared and wet. She couldn't imagine the mess those brown eyes were seeing in her green ones. "It hurts so bad, Katie," she murmured, another tear slipping free to join the fray on her cheeks. She started to shake her head, and then she just kept shaking it. "Nothing's right. And I can't-" Her eyes burned again, and the flood started anew. Her chest hitched, and her breath seemed to shake like an autumn wind that warned a storm was on its way. Except this was the storm. They were smack in the middle of it. "I can't…" Anna wheezed. She saw the sound hit Kate, saw the answering wince. "I can't…" she tried again. But she couldn't seem to find a way to end her sentence. I can't get out. I can't stop. I can't breathe. I can't move. I can't see. I can't feel.

She just kept shaking her head until finally her eyes patched themselves and her body went still. There were a few more involuntary shivers and a number of sniffles that achieved nothing. It was then that she got to answer Kate's initial question. What are you scared of, Anna?

Anna blinked, seeing orbs enter and leave her vision with the movement- they were the tears left on her lashes, making them thick and sticky. "What if this is it? What if everything…" The storm of doubts and insecurities, the blanket of fear and sadness, the foggy lens of exhaustion, the perpetual anger and guilt… She didn't finish the sentence, and she didn't finish the thought.

"It's not forever," Kate assured her. And despite the way her mouth was turned so far down it was cartoon-ish and the way her eyes were so bright with a second-hand ache, Kate looked a little like she believed those words. So Anna told herself they were true, and she made plans to start believing them at some point herself.

()()()

Dean picked her up from Kate's the next morning at ten. Anna dropped into the passenger's seat of the Impala feeling drained. She'd slept almost six hours the previous night. But she'd woken up over and over again. And she'd had one of those old nightmares that loved to come back and haunt her so much- one of the ones about her mother.

"Have fun?"

"No," Anna said. She meant it to sound like a joke, but Dean didn't really seem to take it that way if the glance he sent her was anything to go by. "Kidding," she added in the same dry tone of voice. Dean's expression didn't change as he pulled out of Kate's driveway.

"What'd you guys do?"

"We watched TV. Talked. Giggled a lot." That got a little smirk out of Dean, but Anna knew that he knew that she wasn't feeling an ounce of the joking. Fortunately, he didn't also know that there'd been a lot more sobbing than giggling at this particular visit.

It was quiet for a while as they headed for home. But five or six minutes into the drive, Dean perked up. It was as if he'd been thinking and those turning gears in his brain had finally come up with something other than smoke. "You want to try driving?"

Anna's nose wrinkled and her lip curled in confusion. "What?"

"Do you want to drive?" Dean repeated.

The question had an obvious answer, one that Anna knew she should pick. Obviously she should want to drive. Not so long ago- maybe six weeks- it had been all she ever wanted to do. She'd begged her brother to take her driving almost every day. Of course, they'd only actually gone about five times total, and she still wasn't that great at it, because they never went far and they didn't go frequently as of yet. But she'd been eager to drive from day one, and while she was no pro, she was a natural who was taking to it fast.

"Maybe another time," Anna said, turning to look out the window. She felt Dean's eyes on her.

"You don't wanna drive?"

"Not really."

"You don't wanna drive? Do I need to check you for a fever, 'cause I mean, this is way off the map-"

"Shut up," Anna drawled. Again, she couldn't make the words come out how she meant. They sounded twice as tired, half as playful as intended. "I got a headache, okay?" It almost sounded like an excuse, and in some ways it was that, but it was the truth too.

"Again?" Dean's voice pitched with something, and Anna couldn't tell if it was doubt or concern. She had been complaining of headaches an awful lot lately, and a lot of the time it probably had seemed rather convenient for her to mention having one. Like when she didn't want to eat dinner or when she didn't come out for a cup of coffee until almost 11am or when she retreated to her room right after school with barely a word exchanged between her and her family. "Are you two drinkin' when you sleep over here?"

Anna huffed. Of course that was where his mind went. Because of course the only explanation for a headache and a lack of enthusiasm was that she must be hungover.

"I know you think you're mature and grown up, Rugrat, but you gotta quit messing with this stuff until you're older. Sam showed me all these articles about what alcohol does to your brain before it's done developing, and let me tell you it ain't pretty."

"I haven't had anything to drink since that stupid party, Dean." Anna crossed her arms over her chest and slouched in her seat.

"Promise?"

She gave Dean an unhappy side-eye. "Yes," she said tersely. "I promise I'm not hungover."

There was a time that tone of voice would have been enough to get her reprimanded. Anna didn't count herself lucky when Dean just worked his jaw worriedly instead. She would have much preferred he tell her to watch herself than sit there and concern himself with what might be making her act like that.

"You want to stop somewhere? Get breakfast?"

"If you want to."

"Could get those strawberry pancakes you like from the diner."

"That's okay," Anna declined.

"Did you already eat?"

"I ate last night."

Dean clearly didn't like her answer, but he didn't keep up the third degree he'd been giving her. Instead he tightened his hands on the steering wheel. "You're gonna eat a real lunch," he said.

Anna didn't say anything. She still felt all wrung out and empty. Her head hurt, her eyes still stung from her crying session the night before, and she was as heavy-limbed and unhappy as she had been for weeks.

"Hey, Rugrat, you know-" Dean sighed. He looked over at her, and Anna felt it, purposely keeping her eyes on the bottom of her window instead of meeting his gaze. "You know I love you, right?"

It was an automatic response, the way Anna turned her face completely to him. She wasn't sure why she wanted to cry again, but she was glad her body didn't have any more tears left in it to give. "Yeah, of course," she said, the only thing all morning to come out as sincerely as she meant it. "Why?"

Dean didn't answer.

()()()

It was that same day, around 7pm, that Sam came into Anna's room. She had Ethan on a video call, but they weren't talking, both just doing their own thing and making the occasional comment. So when he asked her if she could hang up, she did, even though she could tell by his demeanor that she wasn't going to like their conversation.

"What's up?" Anna asked, rolling onto her back on her bed and dropping her phone at her side.

Sam sat down on the edge of the bed. "I just wanted to show you some research I did. I think it's something we should talk about."

"About the hunt?"

"No, we're not actually taking that hunt after all." Sam swallowed, shifted a little. Anna barely had time to think how weird he was acting before he said, "Actually it's about you."

Her face scrunched with confusion. "You did research about me?"

"Yeah."

The confusion shifted and turned somewhat defensive. "What kind of research?"

"I guess you could call it research into adolescent psychology."

Her defense went back to confusion and then suddenly she got it. And Anna didn't feel anything. "And?"

"I found some articles," Sam explained carefully. "I just… I had this hunch, and I couldn't get it off my mind. So I started tracking down resources, and I found a list of symptoms-"

"Symptoms?" Anna cut him off before he could say for what. That word alone confirmed her fear. He was trying to diagnose her with something. And she had a feeling she knew what it was, because she'd thought the word herself a number of times over the past couple months. But she'd only thought it long enough to remind herself that it didn't fit her.

"Symptoms for depression in teenagers. Warning signs, causes, all this stuff. I read everything I could find, and…"

"And what? You decided I have it?"

"No," Sam said like he was offended she'd suggested that of him. "I decided you should get screened for it."

Anna scoffed, though she couldn't have explained why if asked. "You're kidding me."

It was the last answer Sam had wanted, and she could tell because his frown got deeper. "No. I'm serious."

"I don't want to."

"I figured you would say that."

"So why'd you bring it up?" Anna raised her voice. "Why didn't you just leave it alone?"

"Because," Sam said. Anna almost mistook the softness of his voice for a kind of calm. But she caught that little shivering undercurrent that made it obvious Sam felt anything but calm, and she knew he felt as strongly about this as she did. Unfortunately, their minds weren't lining up the way their hearts were. "Because I can't-" She watched him pause and blink up at the ceiling. "I can't watch you like this."

"Watch what?" Anna asked like she didn't know. "There's nothing wrong with me."

"Yes, there is. It's not your fault, and it's not fair, but there is something wrong. And if this is what it is, then we have to figure it out and start working on it, because I'm not gonna let you keep jamming the self-destruct button just to see what happens."

For a second, Anna couldn't make herself feel a damn thing. It was like the off switch had been hit on her limbic system. She thought back to that morning not so long ago that she'd spent lying on the floor in the kitchen, staring up at the lights on the ceiling. Their brightness had looked so different from the lamplight of her room. In her mind's eye, Anna shifted the light, so she could watch a scary pattern turn docile. It was so easy in that way. But it was hard too. It was impossible.

"You're not gonna let me self-destruct?" she repeated incredulously. She wasn't sure what it was exactly, but she'd heard an accusation somewhere in there. And it made the numbness burn into a sort of dull anger. "I can't even sleep at night, Sam. How am I supposed to fix myself?"

"That's not what I meant. It's not about fixing you. It's about making things easier."

"I'm not depressed!"

"Then what's the harm in taking the assessment?" Sam shot back, level.

"How the hell am I supposed to get one of those tests without seeing some stupid doctor?"

"I found one online."

"You're kidding me. Where? On ?"

"That's not funny. I hacked a site that offers resources for therapists who input their credentials."

"Oh." So it was an actual official depression screening.

"Just take it, Anna. Please."

There was a strange temptation to cave in. So Anna threw herself in the opposite direction. "No."

Sam looked more than displeased this time. He looked blindsided. "Are you serious?" he demanded as he stood up. "What the hell is so scary to you about getting a little help?"

"I don't need it."

"Anna!"

"I don't need it!" She'd matched his volume, and the bunker practically shook. It should have been no surprise when Dean swung the door open and barged inside.

"The hell are you two arguing about?"

"Nothing," Anna bit out.

Sam turned on her with a sharp look. "It'll take ten minutes."

"It won't take any minutes. I'm not taking it."

Dean frowned at their brother. "You already asked her?"

Anna crossed her arms tightly over her chest. "Oh, so it's a conspiracy."

"Alright, hang on before you get all pissed off," Dean said. "Did you tell her what the crap was that convinced us?"

Sam shook his head minutely and reached into his back pocket to pull out a piece of paper that had been folded into quadrants. "Look it's not like we sat down and figured why not," he told Anna as he began to open up the sheet of paper. "These symptoms, the ones that aren't internal? They fit you."

Anna accepted the piece of paper and began to scan it slowly. There were things listed like changes in appetite and sleep, headaches, slowed speech and movement, irritability and angry or emotional outbursts. That part had her swallowing nervously. She had to admit- though not aloud- that she could see why her brothers had taken the idea and run with it.

It was as she read the longer list of symptoms, though, that she really started to itch. This single piece of paper was explaining the last two months of her life in calloused, distant detail. Sadness and crying spells, frustration and anger, annoyance and irritability, sometimes all of these over nothing. Losing interest and pleasure in activities and in the company of family or friends. Fixating on failures, becoming sensitive to rejection, and feeling guilty. Hopelessness for the future. Trouble concentrating. Trouble remembering. And all of that was before she even got to the physical symptoms.

It felt like an appropriate time to cry. But Anna wasn't so good at doing things the way she should at the moment she should anymore. Her eyes stayed dry. "Let me think about it," she requested.

"The only reason you're not saying yes is because you already know what the results are going to be."

Anna looked up at Sam with steely green eyes and a jaw held tense. She didn't understand how he could be so gentle about saying something so harsh.

She wished she were standing up. It wouldn't have put her at her brothers' level, obviously, but it would have made her feel a little less like a child. She didn't stand, though. She sat there, waiting for her own mouth to move around some kind of answer. But none came.

There was definitely some kind of something showing in her face, though, because Dean sat down beside her, leaning back against the headboard of her bed, and rested an arm around her shoulders.

"You can think about it in the morning," Sam said.

"But can you just say," Dean started, squeezing her against his side. "Does this thing-" he poked at the paper in her lap- "describe you?"

A little too well, Anna didn't say. The words weren't necessary, and she couldn't expend the energy needed to speak them. Instead, she curled sideways, her fingers twisting almost violently in the fabric of Dean's flannel shirt, and she buried herself in her brother's side like she hadn't in a long time. Like she only did when she felt insatiably sad or lost or was in too much pain to quantify.

She felt Sam's hand on her leg, warm, and she knew she would do the screening.

()()()

"I don't know why I asked for this," Anna admitted aloud. She crouched low, and her fingertips grazed the green grass under her as she nearly lost her balance for a second. "You're really not gonna be able to help me, and I always get sad when I come here." Her mouth twisted to avoid tears. "But I guess it was just one of those things. You know… when you have to do something, and even you don't know why."

A cool breeze adjusted everything in its reach.

"Figured I'd give you an update, I guess. Which is kinda silly. I mean, you either care and you know, or you're sitting up there completely oblivious, and you're not gonna hear me anyway. But still. I want to tell you. I think I need to."

Anna breathed slow and deep, and she waited a good minute before she actually started to explain. "I guess it started a couple months ago. Now that I know what the symptoms are, I know they started before I ever went to that party with Kate. I wonder if they started after my mom and just never went away. This stuff ebbs and flows, I guess."

Anna shook her head at herself. "I'm great at explaining, huh? You don't even know my friends. Long story short, it was a bad coupl'a months. Sam and Dean convinced me to take this test for depression. I know, I know." She sighed. "But I got the results yesterday, and I totally flunked it. Not the first test I ever failed, but that didn't make it easier. It was really hard actually. Think that's why Dean agreed to drive out here.

"Anyway, I want to tell you I'm sorry," Anna whispered, nodding solemnly- almost sternly- to herself, her eyes glossy with tears. She mulled that over for a second, felt twice as sure of it, and nodded again. "I'm sorry for everything. I mean, I think I always knew what I was. You know, I knew I wasn't as strong as Sam or Dean. I knew I was always gonna lag behind a little. But I don't know… I don't know how I got here. It's been twenty four hours, and all I keep hearing from the boys is how this isn't my fault."

Anna sniffled, tried to blink away the wetness of her eyes, and only succeeded in knocking a tear off her eyelid and down her cheek. "And I think… I think that's right. I don't think I… I don't think I ever had a say in this. I don't think…" She cleared her throat. "But… But I can't help thinkin' how disappointed you would be if you could see me. Not for… not for the whole having depression thing. But for breaking down under it."

She ran her sleeve across her face, clearing away a couple tear tracks. "I'm not going to therapy. I just can't. But I think they're gonna find me someone who can prescribe an antidepressant. Sam was talkin' about it. I don't know what you would think of that. But like I said I can't imagine you bein' happy about it."

With a heavy, shuddering sigh, Anna stood up. She wasn't done, but she didn't know what to say next. She thought back through her apologies.

"I know I shouldn't have caved," she said, though she didn't know that at all. "But I couldn't do it. I just couldn't."

She blinked, and anger welled in her stomach. "But you know what? Who are you to judge me anyway? If you wanted to have any kind of say in this, you shouldn't have left me. Maybe if you'd been here-" Looking slowly down again, Anna lowered herself back to a crouch. "No," she muttered. "I am sorry. I think. That's the problem. I don't know what I am or where I am or who I am. I just know I'm kinda fucked up.

"Well, anyway, I know I shouldn't be thinkin' this stuff and pretending like it's what you would think. I don't know what you would think. I never have. But I feel like if I could just pin that down, I could know which stuff was right and which was wrong, you know? Not like I made a lot of choices. But I made some big ones.

"That's stupid anyway. I should know I did the right thing, because Sam and Dean talked me into it, and they don't really tend to lead me astray very often."

The sun burned brightly overhead, and Anna shook her head at the sight of her own shadow, cast long and looming on the ground beside her.

"I don't know what it is, really. I just feel like…"

With a heavy-hearted sigh, Anna tucked her jacket tighter around herself and turned around, leaning against the side of the headstone. She looked at the grass between her legs with her lips pressed tightly together and her eyes stinging threateningly.

A cloud drifted above her, and Anna's shadow disappeared.

"I feel like I lost, Dad. But I don't know when."

La Fin