Sam

It had been three days since Anna's most recent round of sanity had shattered.

He glanced into the rearview mirror, checking on Anna curled up in the backseat, humming a soft melody to herself as her eyes darted around the car, flinching away from hallucinations in her mind. He was hopeful though. Every time she came back to herself, it lasted longer and longer, and more and more of her former self returned. This time she'd lasted almost a week and a half.

Sam tries to turn his attention back to the notebook in his lap, but his brain is still firmly set on Anna and her weirdness. Before her sanity had vanished under a tide of screaming nightmares and several weird interactions with poodles, Anna had given the three of them access to the contents of her battered trunk.

He'd recognized it as the same steamer trunk she'd kept her things hidden inside of at Stanford and Bobby's house. Sam was also sure that they'd given Nico the trunk; even though none of them had access to the key, and both her siblings and Bobby had been wary of trying to force the lock. Dean had mentioned trying and failing to pick it open on multiple occasions. They'd all just resigned themselves to never knowing what was inside.

Until now.

Anna had rearranged the contents, and forced both him and Dean to swear on their parent's graves that they wouldn't dig too deeply into her stuff. Sam wasn't too sure how long that promise would keep Dean out of her things. Sam wasn't sure how long that promise would keep him out.

Their questions about Anna, and her past, were piling up quickly and they'd only been compounded by the events at the little roadside motel where she and Cas had met for the first time.

While Anna had been missing for those three highly stressful hours, Cas had told them that she'd been taken by a powerful entity, and that he couldn't see where she was. Then she just reappears in the parking lot, carrying a familiar looking trunk that Sam knows they gave to her adoptive brother, and then fights and nearly kills an angel. When Anna had told them she would give them access to the trunk, Sam had hoped that some of his questions would finally be answered.

Instead he has even more questions now, and absolutely no answers at all. Because inside her freaking trunk, Anna had a book collection that would have Bobby begging on his knees. He wasn't entirely sure where she had managed to lay her hands on some of the books she had in there; most of them he'd only ever heard faint rumors about. Some he'd literally never even heard off. It was a damn impressive collection.

Equally as impressive were all of the translations and notes she'd made. There were dozens of sticky notes and note cards and torn out sheets of paper caught between the pages of the books. Or rather, Sam was assuming it was impressive, since he couldn't actually read her notes and translations. Everything in that trunk was in some kind of code.

And then there was her notebook. Hell, he didn't even know what language half the notebook is written in - let alone trying to figure out how to break the cipher -but based on what little he could recognize, let alone understand, it was a hunter's wet dream.

Between the innocuous worn leather covers of the journal, there were pages and pages dedicated to the hunt. She detailed different ways of layering things like Devil's Traps with banishing circles, how to sketch protections into the foundations of a building, different ways to trap and destroy demons. Sam isn't entirely sure what half of the monsters in her journal even were. It actually kinda explained the scary amount of knowledge she had on hunts they'd gone on together.

He recognized exorcisms in more than a dozen languages, and notes on every type of fugly she's ever come in contact with, heard of or otherwise needed to know about, along with what Sam is guessing is a cliff's notes version of what to look for and how to kill it. There were references to monsters and ghosts and demonic creatures and deities and a dozen other supernatural entities Sam has never even heard of.

There were hunters who would give an arm and a leg for the information contained in the pages of her journal; let alone access to the rest of her library.

He'd always known that Anna was good, it was obvious she'd lived in the hunt for her whole life, but Jesus, the woman was downright scary. And a genius. That much was shockingly clear. He had always known Anna was brilliant, she had to be to even get into Stanford, let alone double major there. But the work he was finding in her journals, the research and translations that were carefully tucked in between the pages of the texts he found in her trunk… If there was a Nobel Prize for hunting monsters, Anna definitely would have won it. Possibly more than once.

The worn pages were warm under his fingertips, the crinkling pages indented with neat looping letters. His biggest problem at the moment was the fact that he had no idea how to even begin to try and break her cipher. She'd written her journals in code, switching between several languages, several of which he didn't even recognize. The only person who even had a shot at attempting to read her journal without her help or permission was maybe Bobby.

He turned the page, skimming past the notes, looking at the diagrams and detailed sketches Anna had included in each entry. Sam paused, fingers tracing the feathered wings spread across the page. Sections of feathers were circled, notes scribbled into the margins, and underneath were some cartoonish gates.

Sam's breath caught in his throat, hands freezing over the entry.

Anna had known that angels existed. Before she'd come back from Hell. Before she'd even jumped in. Sam forced himself to take a deep breath, closing his eyes briefly before examining the entry again.

Angels, and how she knew that they existed, would have to be yet another question to ask her when she was lucid next. Not that Sam could even be sure that she'd bother to answer any of them. Most of the past few days while she'd still had a good grip on her own mind, Anna had brushed off or deflected their questions, from where she'd gotten her trunk from, to the weirdness surrounding her brief disappearance the night she'd gotten it back, to the supposedly dangerous substance in the thermos. That one was really nagging Sam.

What could be so dangerous to Dean, but also miraculously heal Anna from whatever it was that Cas's failed healing did to her?

Dean pulled the car over into the parking lot of yet another motel. They were finally making their way back west again, heading towards Bobby. Now that Anna's sanity was making longer and longer appearances, and that she knows about the apocalypse, it was as good a time as any to regroup and restart their efforts to ice the devil.

His brother tossed him the keys to the Impala before heading towards the front office to get their rooms. Sam closed the journal and tucked it into the side of his bag before smoothly stepping out of the car. Slinging the duffle bag over his shoulder, he carefully opened the back door to start trying to coax Anna out of the backseat.

"Room five Sammy." Dean called behind him. Sam barely grunts in response.

"C'mon Anna. You're not down there anymore. You're safe, topside. With me, and Dean. Cas is around sometimes too remember?" He coaxed. Anna tucked herself tighter into a ball, shivering. Her eyes were fixed somewhere just above his shoulder, and every few seconds her head ducked down; like she was hiding from something.

He shrugged out of his jacket, and held it in front of the door, blocking out her view of the sky.

"Here Anna, I'll cover you." He offered temptingly. She let out a pained whimper and skittered nervously on the seats. Sam did his best to repress his exhausted sigh. It wasn't Anna's fault that she was like this, couldn't help that her memories of Hell would juxtapose themselves over her current reality. That fear turned her back into little more than a rabid feral animal.

But it was still hard, and incredibly frustrating. And painful. Sam could hardly bring himself to look at her when she was this bad.

"I got this Sammy." Sam jumped, banging his head on the roof of the Impala as Dean clapped a hand on his shoulder. Rubbing his head he backed away from the car. He watched as Dean crawled into the backseat with Anna and watched as his older brother patiently coaxed her out of the car, leading her gently towards their already unlocked motel room. Sam shut the doors and grabbed both Anna and Dean's bags out from the car before locking it.

It never stopped amazing him how oblivious the two of them still were.

Dean became a whole new person around her; soft and gentle. Something that he's really only seen his brother be like around little kids, and occasionally when Sam's hurt and doped up to the eyeballs with drugs. And no matter what was in Anna's past, Sam just hoped that she recovers properly someday. Because she and Dean deserved to be happy; whether they got together or not.

Following the two of them into the room, he dropped all three bags by the front door. Doing a quick sweep of yet another ugly motel room, he noted both the two queen sized bed covered in an eye watering neon green sheets, the tiny but shockingly clean looking bathroom, and the thick salt lines Dean had already laid down along all the windows. Anna was curled up on the bed furthest from the door, humming to herself as she stared cautiously around the room.

"Sam." His hand shot out automatically as his brother tossed him the container of salt. Closing the door, Sam carefully lined the doorway with a thick line to keep out any of the low level nasties. The door to the bathroom slammed shut as Dean headed for a shower.

Sam just hoped that Dean wouldn't use up all the hot water. Again.

He dropped Anna's journal onto the second bed and slumped down on the sheets. Tonight it would be his turn to stay up and keep an eye on Anna while she sleeps, and Dean's to take the bed. Ever since Sam found out that Dean had been staying up late at night to keep watch over Anna, he insisted on the two of them swapping off every other night. He knew his brother still had nightmares - hell they'd both always had nightmares from all the crap they see while doing this job, but Dean's were of Hell. Not unlike Anna, only Anna wasn't always together enough to try avoiding sleep to avoid the dreams. At least by insisting that Anna was his friend too, he was able to force Dean to get at least a little shut eye, no matter how fraught they were by the horrors of Hell.

"Sam?" He startles so badly he falls of the bed in a tangle of limbs and blankets.

"Anna!" He pops back to his knees as quickly as he can, trying to look dignified. Sam is pretty sure he's failing epically at the dignity thing. Anna's head rolls to the side, her gaze fixed on the ceiling.

"I've been fighting for so long Sam. When will it stop?" She asked faintly, her voice soft and low and Sam's heart breaks just a little bit for his friend. He sighed, slumping back against the bed, kicking the tangled sheets off of his legs.

"Soon, Anna. Soon." He lied soothingly. She nodded, closing her eyes tiredly. He knew she didn't believe him. Anna's chest rose a fell steadily with each slow, even breath she takes. Sam knows better than to believe she's asleep yet though. That won't come until both him and Dean are in the same room where she can keep an eye on them, while also monitoring the door.

He opens the journal up again, thumbing through the pages of jibberish. Until Anna is able to translate for them again, the notebook was next to useless. Sam flips back to the section on angels again, his rather morbid sense of curiosity getting to him, and freezes for a second time.

There was a clear depiction of a sword, two wings curled protectively around the blade. Beside the drawing was a single word in Greek lettering, written down in Anna's tidy handwriting.

Μιχαήλ.

This, Sam can read.

Michael.