Sam

They were holed up in another random motel. Anna was docile and compliant, sitting obediently when told to, taking the medicine Sam handed her, eating the food they set in front of her. All her weapons were in the back of the Impala, locked up tightly, the mojo sword sitting inside a Devil's Trap made up of salt as an extra precaution.

Now she was sitting on the edge of the bed, staring blankly at the wall while the two brothers watched her. Dean had made several aborted trips to the beer stash, picking one up only to set it back down again. They had both silently agreed that now was not the time to be drinking.

Sam didn't like the look in Dean's eye. It was that toxic mix of hurt and anger that always lead to his older brother doing something he regrets. Anna sat on the bed, her expression blank. The tear tracks from before and dried into salty trails, and while she was mostly compliant, Anna wasn't letting either of them near enough to touch her either.

Dean paced around the room again, looking for all the world like a caged animal. The tension in the room was thick enough to cut with a dull knife. Sam couldn't take it anymore. He grabbed Dean and shoved him out the door, following behind his brother. Enough was more than enough. They'd double checked that she was human, but that wasn't really the problem at hand. No, the issue was that they knew nothing about her, and now that her sword had mojo, and what little they'd known before wasn't good enough anymore. Not for Dean, and even Sam was hesitant. But the expression on Dean's face, the nervous energy wasn't just about Anna. Or at least not in the sense Sam was right now.

And Sam was done waiting for Dean to just spit it out.

"What the hell is going on Dean?" Sam snarled. His brother ignored him, staring down at the ground, arms folded tightly across his chest as he leaned against the Impala.

"We don't know anything about her!" Dean burst out, green eyes glaring at him balefully.

"So what! She's saved our asses more times than I want to count, and now she needs our help! So what if her sword is a little weird. We talk to Bobby, and he'll tell us if we gotta destroy the sword. But I'd rather find out first, than do it rashly and hurting Anna. That sword means a lot to her. We can't just do things without thinking anymore! That's how we ended up in this mess in the first place!"

"We don't know what she wants!" Dean snapped back, shuffling his feet.

"Bobby trusted her." Sam pointed out.

"Bobby didn't even know she was alive until she showed up at his house three and a half years ago. That's not a good way to know a person Sammy."

"Stop making excuses Dean! Anna isn't like Ruby. She told us a lot of what she knew, didn't ask us to do shit for her, and then jumped into Hell to seal a Devil's Gate. What the hell is going on!" Sam roared, getting right into his brother's face. Dean shoved him back, looking pissed as his fists clenched into tight fists. His brother turned around facing the car, hands clenched into tight fists.

"Because to create a demon you torture a soul until it breaks, then you remake them. Slowly, quickly, by turning them into the torturers Sam. That's what I was on my way to becoming before Cas pulled me out. Because even though Anna got my deal changed, I wasn't strong enough to keep myself from breaking the first seal. And who knows how long they had her for. We don't know if she's turned or changed or a spy or anything else!" Dean snapped, turning away from him. Sam froze.

"I left her down there to rot, and now she's back. We don't know how, or why. We don't know what's in her head, or what's left of her soul. She's not a demon, but for all we know, she could have been pretty damn close to one." Dean's voice had dropped to a rough whisper, guilt filling his expression as he slumped back against the car.

"Your deal. What did Anna do?" Sam croaked, his mind whirling in a thousand different directions, but Dean's deal the most prominent question in his mind.

Silence stretched out between the two brothers for several long minutes. Anxiety and fear and adrenaline collided inside of him, and Sam could hear his heart beat thundering in his ears as he watched his brother struggle to come up with the words to answer him.

"One month for every day you were gone." Dean finally whispered.

"What?" Sam was stunned.

"She traded her for me. She couldn't get me out of it, but somehow she changed it. One month for every day you were gone and then she would replace me. And I would go free. Because she had a way out, or she thought she did. And she was alive while we were down there, so they couldn't have her, but she was in Hell, so she'd fulfilled the terms of agreement. Somehow she'd found a loophole and outmaneuvered the demon deal." Dean took a shaking breath.

"But we were still stuck down there. In Hell. The deal is your soul needed to be in Hell, but the torture isn't part of the contract. So we broke out. Everyday for weeks. Months. Years. Sammy, you should have seen her down there. She never gave up, even though they caught us time and time again, dragging us back to the rack over and over and over again. And she'd come right back, breaking me out. Even though she knew that my soul was bound to Hell until my time was up, that she could make a real break for it if she left me behind; but she never did. Until one day, they pulled me down from the rack, and put her on in my place. And they did horrible things to her, all while whispering in my ear that if only I took up the razor, if I hurt her instead, just one time, they would take her down. That if I tortured other souls, they would leave her alone. And I hurt her Sammy. I hurt her. I hurt her in so many ways that day. It might have been less than what they'd would have done to her, but I held that razor and carved it into her body. Her living, bleeding, breathing, breaking body. And at the end of that day they took her down. The first seal was broken. I didn't see her again. But I didn't forget what I'd done. Didn't forget how it had felt. It felt good to hurt her. For once to have escaped that rack, with that friggen razor breaking my soul. And I kept going. Going and going and going, soul after soul after soul until she came back for me that last time. And we ran together for what felt like days… we nearly made it out Sammy…. There was this bridge between Hell and, someplace else. But we got caught. And they threw her down into the deepest reaches of Hell and Cas pulled my ass back to the land of the living. One week before the end of my deal."

Sam stumbled back, his breathing stuttering out of his chest unevenly. A rush of adrenaline flows through him, and red crosses his vision.

"Your…. You…. the… you got the deal changed…" He breathed. Sam's shoulder shook as his chest heaved with the force of his breathing. Dean look at him, eyes wide and pleading.

"I didn't know if it was possible… if it was even real Sammy. I didn't… I didn't want to give you any false hope." His brother's voice was uncharacteristically soft. He didn't, couldn't, respond to Dean.

"I did that to her. Who knows what else happened to her… Sam, we can't trust her. We just don't know." Den whispered, his voice low and rough. Sam turned away from his brother. If he looked at his brother, if he saw the raw heartbreak on Dean's face that Sam could hear in his voice, Sam wouldn't be mad anymore. And he wanted to be angry.

Angry at Dean for lying to him. For hiding the deal from him, for not being strong enough to not break the first seal, for so many sins. For drinking too much, for not being serious enough, for his never wavering, unending loyalty to their dad and the hunting life. Angry with Anna for keeping so many secrets. For never telling them her plans, for making them grieve her for so damn long, for never trusting them the way they trusted her.

Sam's anger had always been his weakness. Angry, he was more ruthless than Dean and colder than his father.

But with the literal apocalypse coming down on them, Sam's anger was also in the way. His anger had always blinded him to reality. He forced himself to swallow his pride and turned to face his brother.

Dean's cheeks were dry, but his eyes were suspiciously shiny. Sam softened, his anger retreating back into the smoldering coals that seemed to perpetually live in his chest.

"Dean, she's not a demon. She saved us, and she protected you as best she could. We can trust her."

"But what if we can't?" Dean's voice cracked halfway through the sentence. Sam knew that Dean had been more than halfway in love with Anna before her fall into hell three years ago. After his brother had come back from hell, he had charged through his second chance at life with the fury of both their father and Sam combined. His brother had been on the warpath since his return to the surface, but over the last few months Dean's fury had begun to fade as he moved into the next stages of grief.

For Anna to have been so suddenly thrown back into their lives was nothing more than cruel, but she was here now and she needs their help. And they owed her.

"We can. She's a little broken right now, but she's got us. She'll get better." Sam assured him.

"And if she doesn't?" Dean pleaded with him, his brows furrowed deeply. Sam knew Dean was fishing for something specific.

"Then we'll handle that. Doesn't mean we can't trust her."

"What if… What if we have to-"

"No!" Sam cut his brother off, suddenly realizing what Dean was so afraid of.

"Sammy, what if we have to?"

"We won't. We won't put her down. Never." Sam growled firmly. Dean relaxed slightly, even though he didn't look entirely convinced. Sam didn't like the uncertainty in his older brother's eyes. It was unnerving to be the one reassuring Dean, to be the one protecting Dean from his fears. Even when they were trying to keep Dean from going to hell it hadn't felt like this. Trying to undo the deal, or watching his brother's back on hunts had always felt natural.

Protecting Dean from something like this, promising him that this girl he liked, loved, was safe, was weird.

A scream pierced the night. Dean and Sam both turned and charged into the motel room towards Anna.

Dean slammed a foot into the door, the wood splintering. Anna stood in the far corner of the room, her eyes wide as she stared into empty air, one arm dripping with blood. There was a low growl and vicious snarling, the sounds making the hair on the back of his neck stand up. When they tried to charge into the room to help her, they collided with an invisible barrier. The familiar snarls coming from the room sent chills crawling down Sam's spine.

The last time they heard that sound, both Ellen and Jo had died.

"Anna! Get out of there!" Dean roared desperately. Sam threw himself against the barrier again. He had no idea what was keeping them out, but Anna wasn't fully lucid and Sam had given her some pretty heavy medication to keep her calm. She was a sitting duck in there.

"Anna!"

"Anna!" They were both screaming her name but she never even looked up. Something invisible sent her flying, slamming her against the back wall of the room. The impact broke the cheap art that had been hanging in the room, tearing open a large hole in the center of the canvas. Deep gouges appeared in the furniture and the walls, shredding wallpaper and sending plaster flying everywhere.

Anna's eyes flicked all over the room. Sam had a sneaking suspicion that she could see the hound. When the next attack came, she ducked and rolled under the invisible blow.

"Hey! Come after me you ugly bitch!" Dean was insulting the hound, trying to lure it from the room. Anything to get it away from the most vulnerable member of their trio.

Sam saw what happened next almost a fraction of a second before it happened. She tensed slightly, then took to steps forward and launched herself into a forward tuck through the air. Twisting around, she landed in between the door and the hound. But instead of making a break for it, Anna promptly leapt forward and tackled the hellhound. She let out a wordless cry and began to viciously attack the invisible dog. Her hands pummeled the air, while her legs seemed to be locked around nothing, leaving her hovering at least four feet off the ground. The hellhound had to be huge; much bigger than any of the hounds they'd encountered before.

Sam watched in an almost horrified fascination as Anna sank her teeth into something; one hand clawing at the hellhound, her fingernails coming up bloody. The nearly black blood of the supernatural monster dripping down to the floor, puddles of it appearing out of thin air. She spat out a mouthful of blood before getting unceremoniously thrown from the back of the hellhound.

Dean seized her arm, which had landed outside of the room and dragged out of the room, away from the fight. Anna snarled and spat, but Sam could see a large welt on her forehead from where it had slammed into the door. She squirmed towards the door, nothing but animalistic fury in her eyes.

"Come on! Let's go!" Dean snapped as he lifted Anna into his arms. Sam didn't need to be told twice, sprinting for the Impala. They could hear growling behind them, and Sam went straight for the trunk and their arsenal.

"Sword!" Sam obeyed the order without question, grabbing the weird sword from the salt trap and slashing behind him. There was a terrifying howl, but after a second there was nothing but silence and the faint smell of sulfur. Anna was on the ground, her hand wrapped around her arm, eyes fixed on nothing in particular. Dean stood next to her, gun cocked and a hard expression on his face.

"What was that?" Dean asked slowly, turning to Anna. The hunter said nothing. Anna seemed to be done talking after her one shouted order. Task complete, Anna slumped back into her silent stupor. Sam carefully laid the sword back inside the salt circle. He remembered Bobby once mentioning something about her sword being special. But special enough to kill hellhounds?

Sam wasn't sure, but he sure as hell planned on finding out.