Greetings, you amazing SPN family you.

Still working on requests (I told you I have a TERRIBLE turn around time). They're coming up soon, I promise. In the meantime, here's a case for you all to counteract all the fluff from the last chapter. Shout out to Jenmm31 for her notes and help and being the best sister ever. Go show her some love and check out her incredible stories. Alright, keep it in the road, see you bitches and jerks soon :)

Sidenote- completely not mentally prepared for this Thursday. Anyone else feel the same? ugh.

A/N- in this story, Natalie is 19. This is a three part case story. Please see profile page for disclaimers.

The doctor leaned back in his large leather chair, taking a very careful sip of piping hot coffee. These moments of quiet and peace didn't come often these days, let alone a chance to drink his coffee while it was still actually hot, and he was determined to enjoy it while it lasted. He looked out the window at the rustling autumn leaves, noting that they seemed to be at their peak of color today. He smiled, wondering if he could convince the nurses to spend some more out-of-doors time with the children today than they usually got. If they could see the lovely sight he was seeing right now, it probably wouldn't take much persuading.

A thought occurred to him. It was a long shot, but he found himself wondering if he would actually be able to get away and enjoy some outdoor activities with the kids. He sat up in his chair and opened the black ledger in the center of his messy desk. It held his entire calendar of activities, appointments, follow ups, the whole nine yards. He would be lost without it. Tracing his finger carefully down his list of activities today, he noted that if he moved Sophie Karon's therapy to four, he could spend a full half hour with the younger children this afternoon. He was reaching to hit the call button on his desk phone to inform the receptionist, when another appointment caught his eye, quickly scribbled in his own hand.

Nurse interview 11:30 am. He quickly looked at his clock. 11:27. Oh dear.

In a rush, the doctor bolted forward, setting his coffee down so quickly a bit spilled out onto his hand. With a hissing groan, he stuffed his slightly burned finger into his mouth, trying to suck away the pain, as he frantically tried to make his messy desk presentable. It would never do for a potential employee's first impression of him to be his unkempt desk. Despite the fact that he was one of the kindest, gentlest, most caring individuals this world had to offer, he knew all too well that first impressions were usually more of a surface nature than a heart nature. And he couldn't afford not to make a good first impression- certainly not when they were this understaffed already.

His heart threatened to rent yet again, thinking of the wonderful nurse that they had lost only a month ago. He shook himself, reminding himself to stay professional. He could grieve on his own time. Trouble was, he never had time to call his own anymore. Well, if this interview went well, then maybe that would change.

Right on the stroke of 11:30, there was a soft knock on his door. Quickly slamming the last of his books into a neat pile in the upper corner of his desk, the doctor ran one hand over his thatch of graying hair, cleared his throat, and spoke.

"Come on in," he said, in a voice that he hoped was clear and confident. To the person behind the door, it wasn't. It sounded frazzled but cheerful. A feeling this person knew all too well.

She opened the door upon hearing the doctor's words, and confidently strolled in, closing the door behind her. Clutching her folder to her chest, the young woman walked forward, trying to steady her nerves and her hand as she extended it to the doctor.

"Doctor Cohen?" she asked. The doctor took her small hand and shook it. "It's nice to meet you. I'm Rose Hudson." She kept her face straight, mentally patting herself on the back for doing so.

The doctor smiled. Good handshake, polite and professional introduction. First impressions were, in fact, important on both ends. "A pleasure to meet you, Miss Hudson. Please, have a seat."

She did, making sure to set the folder down on the edge of the desk with care, before taking a seat. She neatly folded her hands in her lap after sweeping her long braid of black hair behind her. The doctor sat as well, gesturing to his coffee cup.

"Would you care for some coffee?"

"No thank you," she replied in a smooth tone. "I don't like it much."

That caused the doctor to chuckle. "Interesting. Most nurses I find are usually needing it so badly, they'd hook themselves to a Starbucks IV if I'd let them." They both shared a pleasant laugh at the joke, before the doctor took another swig of his own brew and got down to business.

"So, Miss Hudson. You're applying to be the new nurse around here, eh?"

She nodded, sliding the folder neatly to him. As he flipped it open and extracted her resume, she spoke. "Yes, sir. As you can see, I'm fresh out of college, and wanting to get involved in the medical field right away."

The doctor's brow creased as he pored over her papers. "Most med students usually start their residency at a hospital or the like," he commented. There was nothing mean behind the words, more just questioning. "Why are you interested in Maplestone Children's Home?"

She tapped on the paper once. "As you can see, in addition to my degree, I also minored in Child Psychology. I have a great passion for helping children and teens, and when I heard that there was a job open here, it seemed like the perfect fit."

"Are you originally from these parts?"

"No, sir, I actually came from North Dakota."

"Quite a long drive for a job interview," he said, smiling pleasantly at the young woman, who smiled back.

"I didn't have anything to lose, and with me currently looking for a job, I'm willing to do whatever it takes. Especially if the job description is textbook what I've always wanted to do," she said confidently. Dr. Cohen had to admire that tenacity. Not something you typically saw in the younger generation. Which brought up a delicate subject that he feared to tread upon.

"Well, that sounds wonderful. But, you'll have to excuse me for the next question I'm about to ask." He smiled a self-deprecating smile. "I've been born and bred here in Tennessee, and I know better than to ask a lady such a question, but you… seem awfully young to have already graduated med school." The well-bred southern gentleman inside the doctor reeled in horror as the words left his mouth. He cringed slightly, almost as if he could feel the ghost of his maternal grandmother boxing his ears for asking a woman about her age.

The young woman nodded knowingly. She didn't seem bothered about the question at all, which put the doctor slightly more at ease. "You wouldn't believe the number of times I've heard that one," she said with a light chuckle. Relieved that he hadn't insulted her, the doctor smiled wider. She gestured to the other side of the folder holding her resume.

"I graduated early. I was in an advanced program for people of my age and skill set. I was tested at a young age and fast forwarded through most of my academics, as you can see in the papers on that side of the folder." She leaned forward a little. "Have you ever seen 'The Big Bang Theory'?"

A bit surprised by the turn in the conversation, the doctor nodded. "Yes. I don't have a lot of time to watch it, but I've seen a couple episodes," he responded lightly, not sure where she was going with this.

The young woman nodded. "I'm like the tall guy from that show. Graduated early and so on. I usually find that's the easiest way to explain myself and how I got to where I am."

The doctor nodded, suddenly understanding the tangent. He sat up and leaned forward eagerly. "Ah yes. Very interesting! That character, I believe, also has symptoms of Obsessive Compulsive Behavior, potential Aspergers, and an eidetic memory. Fascinating, isn't it?" he asked cheerfully before looking back down at the folder and papers.

There was the slightest pause before the young woman nodded. "Yup. That's right," she said brightly. "I mean, I don't have those, but that's…the right character, alright." Luckily, the doctor was reading her academic records at that time, and didn't see her roll her eyes at herself for her own rather dumb comment.

"Good, good," he murmured as he continued to scan the documents. "This all seems to be in order." He set the papers down gently, reaching for and quickly finishing off what was left of his coffee. He looked the young woman right in the eye. "All your academics are rather impressive, but I must tell you, Miss Hudson, that working here- well, academics will only take you so far." He noted that she seemed to sit up straighter, giving him her full attention. "I'm really interested in knowing if you're a good fit for the children." It was clear to her, to anyone that would have seen it actually, that this man truly loved the children that were under his care. Without ever having to say it, that was completely understood, and gave the interviewee a small glimpse as to why this particular question was going to be so important.

She smiled softly back, wanting to set this kind man's mind at ease. "I get it. I do. These kids that are here are all from a variety of walks of life, am I correct?" The doctor nodded. "Some are orphans, runaways, abandoned by their parents. You've got a mixed bag here." The doctor smiled, encouraging her to go on. She leaned forward herself, her own passion for the subject obvious. "But that's what makes me want to help them all so badly. I understand that feeling that a lot of them are probably feeling right now- unsettled. Uneasy. We…moved around a lot when I was younger. I didn't particularly get along with any of my classmates, and we moved so often I didn't really have what you could call 'friends'. However, I was lucky. I had my family. And they loved me more than I could truly say." She looked the doctor right in the eye. "Every kid deserves that. They deserve to know what 'safe' feels like. And I want to make sure they have it, and I'm willing to do whatever it takes to help them find it." As she said it, the truth of her own words struck her soul.

Dr. Cohen smiled hugely as he stood up, extending his hand to the young woman. She stood up as well and took it, unsure if she was being dismissed. But his grin told her differently.

"Welcome to Maplestone, Miss Hudson," he said, relieved and pleased that the interview had been so successful.

"Thank you so much," said Natalie Winchester, feeling exactly the same way.

*SPN SPN SPN*

"Well, break out the champagne," Natalie announced as she let herself into the motel room with a grand flourish. "I got the job," she said, her voice brimming with utmost satisfaction.

"Good job, Bug," Sam complimented, leaning back in his chair a bit to smile at his niece. "Everything okay with your papers?"

"Couldn't have been better. They didn't question any of them at all," she said, walking over to him and hugging him once around the neck, hard. "You did an amazing job with them."

"Thanks," Sam said, blushing and patting her arm awkwardly. After all this time, he still found he had trouble taking compliments from anyone, let alone family. He snickered, breaking the sweet moment. "It's a good thing I insisted on checking that folder this morning, otherwise you'd have gone to that interview with a roster that listed your primary professor as 'Dr. Sexy'." He couldn't help the grin that spread across his face as he watched his niece react in horror, then whip around accusingly to glare at her father, who was sprawled out on her couch, beer in hand.

Dean shrugged, the ghost of a smile playing on his lips. "What?" he asked nonchalantly. In response to his daughter's withering scowl, he turned his attention back to the TV. "I thought it was funny."

"And it could have lost me my shot at that job."

"If you were really as good as you were pretending to be, he wouldn't have looked too hard at your transcripts."

"When transcripts are all I have to try to convince a DOCTOR that I'm qualified at the age of nineteen to work as a nurse in a underage halfway house, then it probably wasn't the best idea to screw with them," Natalie said reproachfully, dropping down on the couch next to him.

He shrugged again, taking another pull of beer. "Well, your uncle saved the day, once again. What've you got to complain about?" he asked playfully. Natalie just shook her head, her smile spreading across her face despite her attempts to smother it. Dammit. She hated it when he got the jump on her with his pranks. Just meant she'd have to retaliate later.

Dean couldn't help but chuckle at the sight of her grin. God, he had missed her unchecked smile. Ever since that business back in Missouri with Will, she'd been smiling again. He wasn't going to question it, but he'd been watching her like a hawk without her knowing it, wanting to make sure she was okay. Between Will, Bobby's death, everything- it had been a lot to swallow at the age of 19. She seemed to be doing all right though. Didn't mean he was going to take his eye off her for a second, but she seemed to be holding her own. Damn, he loved this kid.

"You guys think you'll be able to pass as maintenance men?" she suddenly asked, pulling Dean from his thoughts and back to the case at hand.

"Oh, yeah, that one's easy," Sam said, looking up from his laptop again. "Been checking out the records of the place. Seems they call maintenance on a daily basis."

"Giant cement holding block for troubled kids, I'm surprised they don't have some poor sap on retainer to fix all the broken crap," Dean muttered, drinking again. Natalie reached for his bottle to take a swig herself, but Dean pulled it out of her reach with a loud growl indicating she'd draw back a stump instead of a hand if she tried that again. Rolling her eyes, she pushed herself up off the couch and headed to the fridge. With a quick look, she noted that Sam didn't have a beer, so she extracted two and headed his way, popping the caps off as she went.

Sam looked up just in time to see her take the first cap off. He grinned. "Just like your dad," he commented quietly to her when she set the bottle down. Dean always popped Sam's bottle top before he'd hand it over. Looked like she inherited that trait along with a ton of other mannerisms. She shrugged playfully, looking even more like Dean when she did that.

"Difference is, I make this look good," she quipped back, making a Blue Steele face and striking a ridiculous modeling pose. Sam straight up guffawed at that.

"Laugh it up, fuzzballs," Dean called grumpily from the couch, before hauling himself up and coming to join them at the table. "Let's get down to brass tacks. Your uncle and I have a theory as to what's going on in kiddie prison."

"Dad," Natalie said, a tone of scolding in her voice. "It's not a prison. It's a halfway house for troubled youth." She looked at him with a touch of the bitch face. For all the times that she really resembled Dean in gesture and action, every now and then she'd pull out a 'Sam', which always caused Dean to respond the same way. Ignoring it.

"Drug problems, alcohol problems, problems with the law. They've got a curfew AND have to eat cafeteria food." Dean looked at her blankly. "I don't see the difference between that and Shawshank."

"Anyways, what do you think it is that's going on in that place?" Natalie asked Sam, determined not to egg her father on.

"We think we're dealing with a shtriga."

Natalie's face registered surprise. "A shtriga? Really?" she asked. "I thought they targeted children."

"And they do- typically," Sam said, his fingers flying as he pulled up the website for his niece. "They like to feed off children because their life force is so much more powerful. This guy, however, seems to be playing by different rules." He turned the laptop towards her. "So get this. The nurse that you're replacing- a Miss Jillian Young- basically withered away in a matter of weeks from when she first started feeling ill. The doctors weren't able to get a diagnosis on her by the time she'd passed. She just kept getting worse and worse until-"

"Until she just bit it," Natalie said, finishing his sentence as she scanned the dead nurse's obituary. "But that still could have been any number of things."

"You're right," Sam said, pulling up another article. "EXCEPT that about three weeks before that, one of the cafeteria workers died unexpectedly, too. Had been perfectly fine, then one day, said he was feeling sick. Three days later, bam. Gone."

"And now they're having what they thought was an outbreak of some unknown strain of flu," Dean offered, causing Natalie to look up from the laptop and into his eyes. "Two different kids started getting sick at the same time. Same symptoms, but nothing they've seen before that matches your typical flu. They've run all kinds of tests, but no doctor can diagnose what's going on."

"There wouldn't be anything- not with a shtriga draining them," Natalie said, the pieces falling into place as she listened to them talk. "They'd just waste away."

"Yahtzee," Dean said, pointing at her. "They apparently fumigated the whole place two weeks ago, hoping that it'd kill whatever bug is running around in there. But since no other kids are getting sick, and they can't technically diagnose whatever this is, they're not evacuating the kids." The tone of bitterness in his voice was unmistakable. Natalie's jaw hit the floor upon hearing the news.

"You've got to be kidding me," Natalie said, thumping her beer bottle on the table in frustration. "Two deaths and two mysterious illnesses that they can't identify, and they're just LEAVING these kids there?" She shook her head, furious. "Man, people suck."

"You ain't wrong about that, squirt," Dean agreed, lifting his bottle to his lips again and taking a mighty swig. Sam just snorted in response to the both of them.

"Well, now that Natalie can go undercover there, I say let's check out the place tomorrow. See if we can figure out who might be the shtriga," Sam said, reaching for his beer.

"You think it's someone who works there?" Natalie asked, eying Sam as he drank. He nodded before swallowing.

"More than likely. We've seen this before. A couple years before you were born. There was a children's hospital in Fitchburg where the doctor was actually the monster. Son of a bitch was draining all the kids in the ward." Sam shook his head, still angry about the whole thing. Dean didn't want to bring up the fact that they had also faced one once before when they had been children. It was still a memory that caused him pain, that and his own turn in a halfway house, so he stayed silent, drinking his thoughts away.

Natalie, however, gripped her bottle again in anger. "A freaking doctor? Are you serious?" She shook her head before drinking again. "Well, I don't think the lead doctor at Maplestone is going to be your guy," she said after the beer went down. "He was really great. Didn't give off that monster vibe at all."

"Since when do monsters go around telling people that they're monsters, Bug?" Sam said in a teasing tone. She grinned and shrugged.

"Hey, I've been at this all my life. I can spot a monster a mile away." Despite the fact that she'd completely missed that Will was one, but not something to bring up now.

"Then this should be easy. You go in, point out the monster first thing, pop some consecrated iron in its ass, turn in your badge, and we'll go hit the diner for lunch," Dean said, his playful sarcasm running rampant. "Sound like a plan?"

Natalie giggled and held out the neck of her beer bottle to him. With an identical grin back, he tapped his against hers and they both drank. After they both finished, Natalie couldn't help but sigh heavily.

"Well, I do want to get started on this. I don't want anyone else to die- not on my watch," she said. The determination in her voice made it clear she wasn't to be messed with. It always sucked when monsters got the people before they could save them, but going after children was a whole separate matter entirely. There were just lines you didn't cross, and for Natalie Winchester, children were a hard limit. She had seen too much loss in her nineteen years. She couldn't bear the thought of an innocent child having to experience that- not if she could help it.

"When are you supposed to start?" Dean asked. She turned to face him.

"Tomorrow morning. With this nurse being gone, they've really been short staffed. The doctor actually walked me around the place after the interview, had me start meeting people right off the bat."

"Great," Dean said, before jerking his head at his brother, the plan already forming in his mind. "Sammy, pull up the ground plans of that place. Nat, tell us everything you noticed about the layout and the people that you met. Let's see if we can't get ahead of the game here."

*SPN SPN SPN*

Several hours later, around 2 a.m., the Winchesters finally felt as if they had gleaned every possible bit of info and intel they could about Maplestone short of actually going in there themselves. The notes, ground plans, and rosters of both staff and patients were organized on the small motel table in neat piles. Badges, uniforms, and gear had all been dug up and prepped. Dean had ordered all of them to bed so they could get a good jump-start on the next day.

Natalie, however, couldn't sleep. She had laid on the couch, simulating rhythmic breathing until she was positive that her father and uncle were both asleep. Then and only then did she push herself up into a sitting position carefully. She watched them for a few moments, making one hundred percent sure they were both under, before getting up and crossing to her weapons. She might be nineteen, but her father would still kick her ass seven ways to Sunday if he caught her out of bed on the night before a hunt.

She gently picked up the cleaning solvent, rags, and cotton swabs on the table that she'd "forgotten" to put up, knowing way before Dean had told them all to sleep that there would be no rest for her tonight- not for a couple hours at least, anyway. She tiptoed back to her couch, pulling a small LED light out of her backpack before sitting down. She extracted her pearl handled .45 from under her pillow and began the slow, painstaking process of stripping it and cleaning it. It was doubly hard since she had to be absolutely silent doing it or risk waking the guys up. But the pressure of that gave her the concentration and the focus she needed in order to set her mind at ease and start to unravel her brain from what was really bothering her.

Any time a child was in danger from anything supernatural, it made her see red. She was still slightly smarting from the case of the haunted house, where they had sent the ghost child on to the next world in the arms of his mother. She was still surprised at the intensity of her feelings towards that poltergeist that had killed innocent people and would have killed her family had she not intervened. It might have been a ghost, but it was still a child. For some reason, that made the fury that she normally channeled towards these monsters feel different. Combined with the fact that she had still been grieving for Bobby and the loss to her family, it all still shook her to her core. She had actually found herself sorry for this ghost. Grieving for his loss and acknowledging his misunderstanding of what was happening. Sympathizing with a murderous ghost hadn't ever happened to her before.

She didn't truly understand it. Yes, she herself had been a child thrust in the middle of the supernatural world, but she had never felt that it had been a drawback- in fact, she considered herself luckier than the average human. If something came for her or her loved ones, she wasn't helpless or hopeless; she knew how to fight back. And that had only come from an entire lifetime of training. She had loved life on the road. In fact, the singular year that she had gotten a taste of the 'normal apple-pie life' as the Winchesters called it had been the worst year of her life. She had hated kindergarten, hated being away from Sam and Dean, and hated the lack of real-world knowledge she felt she lost in that year. The only redeeming factor was that she had had Bobby all to herself for the duration of that time. It was the only thing that had kept her from insisting that Castiel transport her to wherever Sam and Dean were and getting her out of the hellhole known as School.

So why did she feel so strongly about these children? She wrestled with the deeper impact and psychology behind these feelings as she meticulously rubbed the cotton swab into the gun's chamber. It kept boiling down to the fact that losing a child to the things that went bump in the night meant a loss of innocence and purity in the world. There was so much evil and so much wrong with the world, both on the supernatural level and just plain on humanity's level that losing anything good was a blow. And nothing was more pure and good than a child's innocence.

It was kind of ironic when she thought about it, that she, who had seen death since she was an infant, who had made her first kill at the age of twelve, and seen too many people shuffled off this earth way too soon, had never felt that she had truly lost that innocence or that purity. Hell, she'd only lost her virginity a couple months ago to Will, and for a Winchester to hold out until the age of nineteen must have counted as a minor miracle at least. But she had always been in control of that. That had been HER call. No one had taken her purity, her innocence, and her childhood without her permission.

Maybe that was it. It was that these children that were being attacked, having their life forces drained, had no choice. It wasn't THEIR call. It was happening TO them. And that she just couldn't abide by.

Feeling settled about that in her mind, she polished and dried the rest of the cleaning solution off her beloved gun, exhaling peacefully. She felt a small smile creep on her lips.

These kids were going to be safe. The Winchesters were in town. And no more children were going to die. Not on her watch.