Hey beautiful. Long time no see. You're looking fantastic, as usual.

So sorry it's been so long- I've been tied up in a project that has consumed my life for the last 2 months. But hopefully I'll get to spend more time writing now that it's over! Thank you ALL for all the love and support, you guys are incredible.

Special thanks to my Sammy- Jenmm31. She's an amazing author, and she's got a bevy of fantastic leap-off-the-page characters. I highly recommend her Kate series and any story having to do with Emily, but they're all fantastic. Go check them out.

I've had requests for more Cas/Natalie stuff. This one is a little bit of a reach of that, but it was the beginning to me writing more of them as a pairing, so look for that in a couple stories down the road.

WHO'S EXCITED FOR SCOOBY NATURAL?! Can't wait. Losing my mind over here.

Okay, enough of my blather. Here's a story. Love you jerks and bitches.

A/N- in this story, Natalie is 17 years old. This is part one of a three part story. Please see Profile Page for disclaimer.

Part 1

Long shadows drew lines across the chilly floor. The moonlight glared unkindly through the high window overhead. Natalie Winchester sat back against the cold, cement block wall with a sigh, dropping her head back onto the unyielding stone a bit harder than she had intended to. With a muttered swear word, she rubbed the sore spot on the back of her skull, then carefully leaned back again. Her idle fingers rubbed a piece of the scratchy, gray blanket she was sitting on between them. She closed her eyes, willing the moments to pass, yet scared of them passing. She had no idea what she was going to encounter when that door finally opened.

She opened her eyes and leaned forward again, both due to nerves and the freezing cement that was leeching the heat from her already-chilled body. She considered wrapping the scratchy blanket around herself, but only God knew what was actually on that blanket, considering the place. Since she didn't have a black light on her to check, that option was out.

Rubbing her hands together, she wondered for the thousandth time what was going to happen when that door finally opened. Her practiced speech was flawless- it would make him see reason. It had to. She had only done what she did to get herself out of a very dangerous situation, but she wasn't sure if Dean was going to let her get to that part of the explanation before he just straight up killed her. Which wasn't fair, now that she thought about that. Her dad had been in jail WAY more times than she had been by the time he was seventeen. This was, in fact, her first time. But she still highly doubted that Dean would let her live long enough to present her arguments.

She bit her bottom lip. What was she supposed to have done? Thinking through this entire nightmare of a day, she just didn't feel like she had any other options. There was probably something that she was missing right in front of her face, but she'd been too keyed up in the moment to think about it. She didn't want to imagine the lecture and mountain of lore homework she was going to get for forgetting something that was probably pretty freaking obvious. She'd probably figure it out on the 1000-mile run she was going to get as punishment for this one.

In the middle of her self-lacerations on her lore knowledge, a far door opened down the hallway. The fluorescent lights came on with a snap, and her nighttime-adjusted eyes screamed in protest. She pinched her lids shut, and heard "Winchester, Natalie?" The sounds of two large pairs of boots thumped down the hallways towards her cell. Her heart began trying to outdo the sound of the boots by going into overdrive.

As soon as she could, she peeked her eyes open. There was a thirty something year old police officer who looked like he had just eaten a bag of sour apples- and her father, who looked like he had no teeth left- grinding them together so hard was he. She gulped and opened her mouth to speak, but another look at Dean's face quickly shut her lips.

"Your father paid your bond. You're free to go," the gruff officer said, unlocking the cell door and sliding it open. As much as she didn't want to, she stood up and took a few tentative steps towards the two men standing at the opening. She rubbed her chilly hands on her sides, both in an effort to warm them up and to appear casual. Before Dean could speak, she held up both hands in front of her in a gesture of surrender. All of her carefully worded explanations went right out the window with Dean's death glare upon her. She could only come up with one thing.

"Okay, I can explain," she said in a cautious tone, pretty impressed that at least her voice didn't waver. She tried to re-inflate her lungs and give him a winning smile.

He wasn't having it. "When I get you home, I'm going to tear you into a thousand pieces," Dean growled by way of a 'hello'. "You're never gonna see the light of day again, because I'm going to lock all the pieces of you that I dissect into the basement. I'm going to sell your internal organs to the highest bidder- whoever it is, no questions asked." Natalie felt said organs turn to water as Dean kept proclaiming her sentence. "You're gonna WISH you had gotten yourself locked into a maximum security prison for whatever stupid ass bullshit you just pulled." Natalie locked her frozen hands together behind her back, praying that Dean was almost done. "And THEN," he thundered. "I'm going to hand you over to your uncle." Her eyes dilated back to near black in the continuing terror. "And THEN-" There was ANOTHER and then?! "- Then, I'm going to hand you over to Bobby."

The ultimate death sentence. There was no coming back from that.

Natalie dropped her hands to her sides and pursed her lips, tilting her head to the side while she thought. Finally, she turned to the sour-faced officer.

"Say, Officer, what's the quickest crime I can do to get you to slam that door shut again?" she said in a falsely cheery voice. The officer's face didn't move one iota. Clearly, he was not impressed with her humor.

"Let's go, Miss," he said with not one ounce of compassion in his voice. Natalie sighed heavily, knowing she had no other choice. She moved within arm's reach of Dean.

As she expected, the nanosecond that she was within grabbing distance, Dean latched onto her upper arm with a vice-like grip, yanking her right to his side. She gritted her teeth, once again angry that she hadn't inherited the Winchester gene of height that kept her from being pulled around like a rag doll whenever they felt like it. She also knew that any utterance of any word on her part would set Dean off again, and she really didn't feel like being screamed at in front of the sour faced officer any more than she already had been. She concentrated on matching Dean's long and angry strides down the hallway as best as she could.

Once they got back into the main part of the police station, Dean spun on his heel back towards the officer who had opened Natalie's cell. "Anything else we need to take care of?" he asked brusquely.

The officer shook his head. "You've signed all the forms and the cash is in the till." Natalie squirmed at that- they were never exactly hurting for cash, but she still didn't like costing her family unnecessarily. Although, it wasn't exactly UN-necessary, but Dean was still likely to take it out on her ass, so she tried not to feel too guilty, just yet. The officer continued, interrupting her thoughts. "You're free to go." With what Natalie thought was supposed to be a menacing look at her, the officer dismissed them with a jerk of his head. Dean nodded back, and commenced to hauling her out of there.

They were both entirely silent as Dean pulled her across the parking lot, save for his heavy furious exhales through his nose. He only released his iron grip on her when they reached the Impala. "Shotgun," he barked at her, in reference to where she was to sit. Usually when she was in trouble, he relegated her to the backseat so he could give her the silent treatment. However, if she was supposed to sit shotgun, this meant that he was ready to start laying into her the second the car doors shut.

Eager to not piss him off any more than he already was, Natalie quickly slid into the front passenger's seat. She fastened the buckle and rubbed feeling back into her arm where Dean had been holding on to her, trying to remember her speech on why Dean shouldn't kill her. However, the moment he slammed into the driver's seat, she dropped her hand and all words again fled. He jammed the keys into the ignition, and twisted them violently. Baby roared to life in response. He slapped the steering wheel, gripping it so tightly he was likely to tear the leather casing off if he kept going.

Without looking at her, he said in a tight voice. "You have exactly one chance to tell me the reason I shouldn't kill you right freaking now for getting your ass locked up."

Natalie could see the bone threatening to split through the skin of his knuckles from how tightly he was gripping the wheel. She swallowed hard, took a deep breath, and went for it.

"There's a rogue Reaper on my tail, and he's hell bent on getting me to kill Castiel."

It was perfectly silent in the interior of the Impala, save for the purr of Baby's engine. Natalie hardly dared to breath. She had just told Dean the God's honest truth, but that didn't mean he still wasn't going to kill her. After an eternity of terrifying silence, Dean finally spoke in a low voice.

"That's a good reason," he muttered. Natalie felt the air in her lungs release. Dean relaxed his grip on the steering wheel, exhaled heavily himself, and shifted Baby into reverse. They didn't speak again until they had pulled onto the main road.

"Okay, kid. What's going on here." It wasn't a question. It was time to spill the beans- on everything. Despite the admission that she had a good reason for getting arrested, Natalie knew he still wasn't going to be happy with the rest of the story. She took a deep breath and began.

"Remember two days ago, when we were ganking that shifter?"

* FLASHBACK- TWO DAYS AGO *

Natalie dodged behind a tree, breathing hard. She quickly unloaded the empty clip from her favorite silver .45 and slammed a new one in place. She tried to still her breathing to listen to the sounds of the forest around her and figure out where this bastard was, but she'd been running pretty hard for the last couple minutes trying to pop this a-hole. She needed to focus.

"Come out, come out where ever you are," the shifter called mockingly, his now-familiar tone grating. She rolled her eyes and tried to judge where the voice was coming from. "Is the little girl tired?" he said again, high and condescending. She gritted her teeth and focused her anger into tracking his movements. A tiny rustle of leaves told her that he was about twenty feet behind her, slightly to her left. Another moment of silence, and the call of a mockingbird overhead told her exactly what she needed to know. Dean had scaled a tree and had a clear view of the shifter from his position.

With a deep breath, and before she could think too much about it, she whipped around the tree, silver-bullet loaded gun aimed in the direction of the monster. She had deduced his location correctly, but he was still too fast. She fired off a shot, but he darted to his right, anticipating her move. With a growled curse word on her lips, she took off again to her right, trying to counter the creature. She didn't want to drive it away- she wanted to drive it closer to Dean so he could take the kill shot.

"Ah, little girlie wants to run in circles," the shifter said, keeping his electric blue eyes on her. She trained her gun on him, but didn't feel confident enough to take the shot. She had to keep him talking- and moving. She began creeping forward while moving to her right, tightening the spiral they were moving in. "She wants to play ring around the rosy," it said, using a sing-song voice. She didn't give in- she only had one clip of silver left on her. Every shot had to count right now. The shifter matched her steps, never even blinking to let her out of his sight for even a moment.

"Don't you know it's not nice to shoot at strangers, little girl?"

"If you hadn't murdered all those guys back in the boardroom of that office, then yeah, I'd say it wasn't nice."

"They had it coming. What would you know about it."

"I know that they had families. And you kept them all from going home to them. That's all I need to know."

"And what about my family? What's going to happen to them if you kill me today?"

"First off, you mean WHEN I kill you. And second, you telling me that you've got a cozy little duplex somewhere with your 2.5 offspring and a puppy?"

"What if I do?"

"Just means I've got more killing to do tonight." She knew exactly what she was saying, and it worked. The shifter apparently did have someone or something he was loyal to, and her words made him see red. What she didn't anticipate, however, was how he attacked- and his speed.

He turned, and with an animalistic scream, ran halfway up the nearest tree, turned, and in an insane moment of anti-gravity, launched himself like a battering ram straight at her. She had never seen a shifter move like that, and for a second was too stunned even to aim. Dean, however, had been watching the entire exchange from his leafy bower, and literally jumped into action.

"MOVE!" he screamed, jumping from the limb he had been perched on, praying his timing was right. Instantly, Natalie obeyed and dove to her left, tucking right into a pile of rotting, fallen leaves on the forest floor. She heard the 'thud' of Dean's body colliding with the shifter's, and the grunts of both of them as they hit the ground, hard. As she was scrambling up to get a new bead on the monster, she heard a bizarre splashing sound and felt something sticky and wet hit her cheek. She quickly ran her arm along her face to clear it, and whipped around. Two identical Dean Winchesters were picking themselves off the forest floor.

Dammit. The fucking thing had shifted. Into her father.

She held up her gun, aim fluctuating between the two of them. In tandem, both Deans held up their hands in surrender. Before the shifter could truly sort through Dean's memories and find the one piece that would save him, Natalie barked out one word.

"Hey."

"I know," said the Dean on the left.

"What?" said the Dean on the right.

She plugged the one on the right in the gut. He fell backwards onto the grimy forest floor, as the Dean on the left held out his hand. In response, still keeping her eyes on him, she pulled a silver spoon from her pocket and laid it in his hand. When his skin didn't sizzle in response, she exhaled heavily, turned, and fired another round at the shifter's heart, finishing the job.

"Nice work, squirt," Dean said, tossing the spoon up into the air and catching it before handing it back to his daughter.

She took it with a grateful, albeit twisted-to-the-side grin. "Thanks. You too. Jumping out of that tree like that? That was badass."

"Just call me the 'Predator'," Dean said with a smarmy grin.

"Damn, I've never seen a shifter move like that," she said, the adrenaline of the moment still pumping through her veins like an oil derrick. Dean shook his head, a wizened look on his face.

"That was a new one on me, too. I knew those bastards could move fast; I didn't know they could become freaking Bruce Lee." He looked his daughter up and down for signs of distress or hurt. The blood smear on her cheek caused him to go into overdrive, as usual. He darted over to her, barely resisting the urge to grab his face in her hands.

"What happened? You okay?" he said, trying to tone down his worry. Sam had been all over him lately for his tendency to mother hen, so he was actively making an effort to chill out- a big step for him, and Natalie knew it.

"I'm totally fine, Dad," she said calmly, with a smile that offered no patronizing feel to it. She knew how hard he was trying to appear casual rather than freak out, so she respected his feelings and didn't make fun of them. She reached up and wiped more of the blood off her cheek, showing him the intact skin beneath it. "I think a piece of the shifter hit me when it changed." Dean stepped back and really examined the rest of her.

"Yeah, you ain't kidding," he said with a barely concealed smirk. At that, Natalie looked down. Her jacket, pants, and boots were slick with blood, skin and slime. In the rush of the moment, she hadn't noticed until now.

"UGH!" she said loudly in disgust, causing Dean to snicker at her discomfort. Now that the adrenaline was receding, she could really feel all the supernatural goo all over herself. "Oh my god, I'm gonna barf," she said, running her hands through her hair and trying to remove all of the slippery mess from it.

Dean just chuckled again and moved closer to help her out. He plucked something off her shoulder and held it up in front of her face. "I'm sorry, could you speak into my good ear?" When Natalie was able to focus on it, she saw that Dean, indeed, was holding the shifter's ear three inches from her face. She shoved his hand away, completely grossed out but still laughing.

"Just for that, I'm going to wait till we're in the Impala to hurl."

"Like hell you are," he shot back, still chuckling under his breath as he wiped slime off his daughter's jacket. She looked down. Her boots had taken their fair share of the shifter's old skin.

"I'm gonna scrape my boots off in those leaves," she said, grumbling, as she pulled away from Dean and headed towards a pile far from where she'd been splattered in the first place. "Did you bring towels for me to sit on so I can actually ride in the car on the way home instead of clinging to the top?" she said jokingly over her shoulder, knowing Dean wouldn't be happy if she did get Baby's interior messy, no matter what the reason. He didn't answer, so she picked up a handful of leaves and started wiping her boots off. "Dad?" she asked a few moments later, curious as to why he hadn't answered her. She turned around to find him standing stock still- completely frozen. She dropped the leaves and rushed to him. "Dad?!" she said loudly, waving her hand in front of his face. Just then, she heard a slow, methodical clap behind her.

With the intensity and speed of a hunter whose adrenaline kick hadn't quite worn off yet, she pulled her gun out of her waistband and whipped around, training her weapon in the direction of the sound.

From the shadows, a man emerged. He was probably early fifties, medium build. He had that look of someone who was withering, but wasn't admitting it. His tailored black shirt and pants neatly covered his slightly-too-skinny arms and waist. His graying hair was slicked back so severely, Natalie thought there must have been an entire bottleful of whatever product he used in it. As he advanced towards her, she saw his alarmingly white smile glisten in the moonlight. She quickly flipped through the supernatural catalogue in her head, wondering if his teeth were venomous, when he spoke.

"Wow. Just- wow. I have to say, seeing it in action is MUCH better than the stories." The man advanced on her again, and she renewed her grip on her gun, making it obvious she was aiming to kill. He grinned at her. "Dearest, you really don't want to waste your silver, alright? I'm not one of the bad guys."

"Sure. I'm totally inclined to trust a creepy dude dressed in black who's slow clapping me in the middle of nowhere."

He giggled in a high-pitched voice, then covered his mouth like a child being caught laughing in a church. "Sorry, so sorry. That was just really funny." Despite the severity of his look, there was definitely a hint of whimsy about him. Whimsy or insanity, she wasn't sure which. Her left eyebrow cocked in disbelief- who WAS this guy?

As if he was reading her mind, he stopped, pressed his hands together as if in prayer, and tilted his head charmingly. "Allow me to introduce myself. My name is Cullum.

"Golem?" she said, not hearing him correctly.

He pursed his lips in displeasure. "No, CULLUM. KA- sound."

"Don't really care. What do you want?"

"For you to help me out on something I desperately need."

"And what is that?"

"I want you to help me bring down a being. A being that should have been dead long ago. You see- I'm a reaper."

The blood in Natalie's veins turned cold. She knew what happened when reapers appeared to people. Her eyes quickly darted over to Dean- who had died over a hundred times before she was even born. Cullum quickly held up his hands when he saw the furious look cross her face.

"No, no, dear one. I'm not after your father. Trust me. If he's not dead by now, he never will be," he said in a placating tone. "Same thing with your uncle Sam. I'm not here for them, and I'm not here for you, either."

Natalie's guts settled a bit after hearing that. She didn't take her eyes- or her gun- off the reaper, though. Dean had taught her better than that. "So who is it you're after?" she asked, steel in her voice, wanting to get to the bottom of this.

Cullum drummed his tented fingers together. "Well, first, I should explain exactly WHAT kind of reaper I am. See, I'm the reaper of the things that go 'bump' in the night."

"You're a reaper of…monsters?" Natalie couldn't help but ask. She had never heard of anything like that before.

"How else do you think they get from one plane to the next, silly?" Cullum said, making a 'duh' face at her. "It's my job to bring in the supernatural. And of course- your family has kept me more than busy. I suppose I should thank you for the job security. You, in particular, are quite the…anomaly. You're incredibly good at what you do, for such a young age. And of course, your family is legendary, so it only follows that you are, too." He tilted his head again. Natalie saw a flash of- something- in his eyes that she couldn't quite name. "You can put the gun away, if you please. Even if I wanted to hurt you, I can't. Not without help."

Natalie quietly lowered her gun, but kept her hunter's eyes trained on the reaper. "So you need my help," she asked, no nonsense in her voice.

"Exactly!" Cullum said, clapping his hands together like a child, and bouncing on the balls of his feet. "Well, I suppose it could be any old hunter. But I have to say, after eons of this reaping business, I get bored. So if you were to help me put away this particular creature that should have been dead years ago, well. The poetic irony is just too tempting for me to pass up. It HAS to be like this."

"And exactly what creature are you wanting me to kill?

"Your angel. Castiel."

*END FLASHBACK*

Dean exhaled loudly again. "This happened two days ago during the hunt?" The irritation and anger in his voice was enough to make her feel like a misbehaving seven year old. "You wanna tell me why you didn't tell me right then and there?" he said angrily.

Natalie gulped, knowing that in Dean's mind, not telling him everything was tantamount to lying to him. And he did not take kindly to being lied to. "Because- well, because of the next part of the story. I thought I had finished the job."

Dean rolled his jaw around, focusing on the road and shaking his head. "Well, you clearly missed something. And you're gonna have to wait on the second part of that story. There's someone else you're gonna have to answer up to for whatever you pulled tonight."

Dean pulled Baby into the bunker's massive garage. Natalie felt her blood once again turn to ice as she saw his huge silhouette standing there next to their usual parking spot. Even from this distance, there was no mistaking the amount of smoke pouring out of Sam's nostrils. Dean parked quickly, getting out of the car and slamming the driver's side door with more power than usual. To avoid being hauled out of the car, Natalie quickly unbuckled, shot out of the passenger seat, gently closed the door, and came face to face with a fuming Sam Winchester.

"Okay, I can explain," she said, holding up her hands and pleading.