Anna

She was wrong. Wrong wrong wrong wrong wrong.

Not out.

Visions danced in her head, whirling twirling spinning through her mind's eye. And parade of faces and people and places.

Blood poured over her hands and dripped through her fingers. Black liquid monster mixed with red human and a little bit of gold dust that whispered a victory song to her.

Fire flickered all around her, burning brightly in a multitude of colors; red orange gold green.

She's surrounded by danger and enemies and monsters. She can't let anything past her guard, not again.

Hellhound hellhound, drag her down to hell. Hellhound hellhound, monster of fire and pain. Hellhound hellhound, growl in the dark. Hellhound hellhound will never drag her back again.

Gore slowly trickled down her face, drying in dark streaks. A warning. She's bigger and badder and tougher than any creature in Tartarus and she has the kill count to prove it. She doesn't need her sword to win.

Her hands curl into claws, and she surveys the hellscape she is in. The river Acheron winds its way across the ground, the burning glow of the flaming banks lighting the gloomy atmosphere.

Dean is driving. Sam is brooding out the window. Dark clouds of swirling Mist fill the air, and the screeches of distant monsters warn her to be ready.

Anna looks again, something inside her twitching.

Sam and Dean?

Tartarus flickers, and dark shapes fly past the window of the Impala. Red fire glows and her eyes widen at the green sign the pass.

Welcome to South Dakota.

Her hands flex for Eleos but she lost that somewhere. Gold sand swirling through the air, blowing away in the night.

Tar and brimstone are in her mouth, gummy and cold. She's one of the monsters now. Teeth and claws and fangs and destruction in her wake. Maybe she belongs to the Pit the way monsters do.

She tucks her hands into her lap, looking at the black blood flaking out from under her nails. The worn and cracking leather seat is familiar.

She looks up at Dean and his forehead is creased in the middle, like he's thinking. Smart that man is. Smarter than anyone believes. But also a totally idiot. But he's her idiot.

Or he used to be.

The scream of a harpy sends her into high alert, searching the air for any sign of imminent attack.

Instead of red pulsing ground and jagged glass cliffs, there are rolling black fields, and a navy black sky dotted with stars.

There aren't stars in hell. Or in Tartarus. Anna escaped Hell. But she's trapped in Tartarus. It's too far to climb while also fighting off monsters.

Dean was never hers. She'd been to slow to trust, and then it had been far too late for her to say anything.

Green eyes watched her warily through the mirror.

Mirrors can hold demons. Soft silver shine reflecting souls and baring her secrets. Dangerous things, mirrors. Hybrid magic if she used one and that's also dangerous. Unstable and forbidden.

She's dangerous too. Ventura blood is forbidden and unstable and old and powerful and hunted and hated and her father had known that when he'd met her mother. He'd known what he would do to her by having her and did it anyways.

But it was smart.

She suspected that her birth was less intellectual love, and a whole lot more strategic respect. With a healthy dose of vague divine curiosity in the mix, poof she'd been born.

A bored goddess and a desperate hunter, wondering at what her birth could bring.

Pain. That's the answer. Pain pain pain pain pain pain pain. Victory and pain. Death and blood. Fire and weapons. Pain. That's what Ventura and Olympian blood brought her. Isolde Ventura died when she was ten years old. Left behind a hollow, empty, nameless little girl alone for two years before the goddess renamed her at Camp Half Blood. Her blood lines brought her nothing but pain.

A soft growl filled the air, vibrating up through her bones. Car engine. Dean's car, his Impala, his Baby, carefully loved and maintained.

No, it's a monster, fangs bared and nasty slimy drool dripping from a gaping maw. Claws and teeth and bitter anger towards her and her blood just waiting to kill her properly. She claws at the ground around, scratching at her sides. Where is her sword?

Eleos is gone, and she can't remember how. But no matter. Anna is still the most dangerous thing in the Pit even without her sword. She's mean and vicious and dangerous and clever enough to survive all this time. Nothing will kill her. Not before she kills it.

No it's not a monster.

It's a car.

Puppy dog eyes flashing a new color every time she looks at him. Sam. Short Stuff. Sam Sam Sam Sam. Friend. Ally. Hunter. Study partner Sam. He's watching her in the mirror too. Dangerous bloody Anna, she can smell his fear. He's afraid of her.

Anna shook her head. Where is she?

She knew she was crazy. The problem with knowing she's crazy, is that she has no faith in her own mind anymore. And Anna's mind is her most deadly weapon. That's what she kills with. The fight is over before she draws a weapon. Anna looks out at the acid sky and the soft swirling galaxy above her head.

The huntress constellation glitters out her window, and Zoë's bow shifted on its axis. Pointing east. A warning and a sign all wrapped up in a shining glittering package. Zoë had been her friend once. Guided her when she'd been lost. Talked to her quietly when she's been hurt. Quieted her mind long enough for her to learn to think properly. Zoë would never steer her wrong.

They are going the wrong way.

Dean

He drove. For hours, never stopping, his foot like lead on the pedal. The needle in the speedometer never dipped below ninety, and Dean only kept half an eye on the increasingly familiar roads.

The car is completely silent.

Sam was brooding through the dark window of the car. Anna sat in the backseat, her empty gaze trained at nothing. Her arm was bandaged clumsily, having bared her blood stained teeth in a ferocious snarl every time either him or Sam got too close to her. The nearly black blood had dried on her face and her hands, flaking off in tiny increments. They had been unable to coax her into washing it off. She just glared and growled at them, shivering in the corner of the backseat until they backed off. Dean just decided to count it as a win that she wasn't trying to lick the blood off her own face. He couldn't deal with a second demon or monster blood junkie.

Anna was silent again. Nothing they said or did seemed to register with her. She just watched them with an empty expression on her face. She sat when she was told to sit, drank the water they gave her and moved with a jerky abruptness that worried Dean. She only reacted when he or Sam tried to check her for injuries. He hoped that the only thing wrong was her arm. There was nothing else she would let them check, let alone fix up.

So Dean drove. He drove towards Sioux Falls as fast as he could. Because no matter how Bobby reacts, no matter what happens, they need help.

Anna's insanity had broken once, and remembering that keeps hope flickering inside of Dean. Anna is still there, buried somewhere deep down. She's just hiding underneath whatever happened to her in Hell. Hiding under what she had been forced to become. He glanced back at her again.

A hellhound had attacked her, and she'd lived. Anna had survived alone and unarmed when Ellen and Jo had died. When Dean had died.

Anna can see hellhounds. And she knew how to fight them. Her sword could kill them. The weird mojo sword, glinting with its' four unfamiliar metals. The demon killing sword.

The copper smell of blood filled the car, and the urge to gag came over Dean. Blood never bothered him before. But it's dried on her face and her hands, staining her teeth. Monster blood. Dean resisted the urge to look at Sam.

A hellhound had attacked her. She was back on Earth, but she still wasn't safe from the horrors of Hell. Hell had sent their attack dogs after her, even though she'd fulfilled her deal. Anna watched something out the window, laser focused on the sky. A wrinkle formed between her eyebrows, her lips pulling tightly at the corners.

He'd always known she was smart, brilliant even. But he hadn't understood the hidden intelligence behind the hunter's cold silver eyes until she had lost her ability to hide it. Not even in Hell had he understood the power of her brilliance; and she'd employed every resource they had, every skill either of them possessed with ruthless efficiency to try and save them both. It just hadn't been enough down there. But topside? She was possibly the most beautiful, ruthless thing he's ever seen.

Yellow eyes had called her special. Bobby had warned them that her family was powerful, and old. Hunting is more than the family business, more than a job. It's a legacy she's carried since before she was even conceived.

Nico had whispered into the shadows that she was one of the most dangerous beings he knew. On late nights after she'd fallen, when the three of them plotted different ways to rescue her, Nico never doubted his adoptive sister's ability to survive anything and everything at all costs.

Dean watched her on hunt after hunt. Watched her push limits that shouldn't have been possible for her size to push. Saw her recover from injuries a little too quickly, react to threats a fraction to fast, lift weight just a little too heavy. She accomplished things Dean can barely explain. And a lot of things he can't.

Anna isn't evil. She's not some fugly that they have to kill. She's not a ghost or a demon or a revenant or a shapeshifter. She is human, and, and crazy, and a little (ok a lot) lost, but she is their friend.

"It's nothing Sammy." He dismissed his brother refocusing his energy on the road ahead of him. His hands tightened over the worn leather of the steering wheel. She'd dropped to her knees in that cemetery, desperate and lost and scared and in pain and utterly utterly human. In the motel room there was nothing in her but savage violence and an empty look in her eye that made the little voice in the back of his head that pointed him towards hunts scream kill.

They just needed to get to Bobby. Bobby would fix things. Bobby would fix her.

Dean's mouth tightened. He pressed harder on the gas, even though he never stopped watching Anna through the corner of his eyes.

Sam

The rumble of the car is familiar and comforting, but Sam was a hundred and fifty miles away. In the bloody and destroyed motel room they'd left behind.

The growl of the engine echoes in his head; familiar in the car, but menacing as he envisions the empty space the hellhound occupied. In his mind's eye all he can see is the feral look on Anna's face as she had launched herself fearlessly at the monster, teeth bared like fangs, and every inch of her body quivering with beautifully brutal, savage, violence.

A streetlamp flashes, sending wild shadows through the car. Four blended metals flash in his mind's eye, the sword was lighter than he thought it would be. A wild slash with the blade. Gold powder, smelling like sulfur, exploding out from nothing. Sam's hand clenched around the imaginary pommel in his hand. He doesn't even remember picking up the sword. He just obeyed the sharp order that had been barked at him.

He glanced into the mirror, and caught a glimpse of Anna. Her eyes had always been mildly unnerving. Hunting had always made their family observant, and years spent watching his reserved father and equally reticent brother had always made Sam good at reading people. But he'd never gotten a handle on Anna. Even when from the first time they'd met in chem class at Stanford, he'd never known what she really thought. Silver eyes had flashed at him across the lab table, and her gaze had been cold and assessing. She was always watching, in a way not even his dad ever did. He'd gotten used to the flashes of cold metal in her eyes, because he liked the warm laughter at parties and the whirlwind of courage she carried around when they hunted.

But now… with nothing behind them, they were down right disturbing. The blood crusted onto her face and hands didn't help the image. Blood so dark it dried black on her face only made the pale silver in her eyes stand out even more, like two bullets waiting to be fired. If he hadn't known she was human, if Anna hadn't been his friend… She would look an awful lot like something he would hunt.

Until tonight, Sam had never been afraid of Anna. He'd always had a healthy respect for what she could do, and after she came back he's been worried about the things she could do, both to him and to herself. But he'd never be scared of her. Now he was wondering if he should have been all along. Her head lolled against the window of the car, her eyes fixed on something far away.

He took a deep breath, reassuring himself. He glanced back out the window, the fields flying by nothing more than black smudges in the night. Dean made like a bat out of hell from that motel, and Sam felt the same way. The quicker they got to Bobby the better. The older hunter would know what to do.

"Wrong." The car jerked under them wildly and both he and Dean jumped at the hoarse voice. Sam twisted around to look at Anna, her face steadily watching the sky a hand pressed up against the window.

"Anna…" She snapped her head back around to face them, her face twisted with desperation, glaring at Dean.

"Wrong. Go east." She snarled.

"No Anna, we're going to Bobby's. Remember Bobby? Uncle Singer?" Sam reminded her gently, watching her warily.

"East!" She insisted, her eyes trained on the sky. Dean's phone rang. Sam reached around the seat, trying to pry her away from the window. Maybe if she stopped looking, she'd settle down.

"Hello. Donna?" Sam's head snapped back to his brother. Why was their old babysitter calling Dean? His brother looked back at Anna and sighed.

"Sure, we'll be up there soon." The phone snapped shut and his brother pulled the car around in a sharp u-turn.

"Dean?" He shook his head.

"We're heading to Massachusetts. We're going east."