So omg I haven't posted in forever, but yeah. I really like this chapter, and I hope you all do too(: You get to see more of Ris and more of her friendship with Austin so . . .

Thanks for reading!

I do not own Supernatural.

C-H-A-P-T-E-R

5

Maryse: 14

Dean: 24

"Rae! Listen to me!"

I looked up at my father, anger filling my eyes. "No! You think that everything is black and white, but it isn't. There are grey areas! Austin is a grey area!"

"This Austin kid is a werewolf. He's probably killed, and if he hasn't, he's going to." I turned to my right to look at Dean. I felt my body shaking, and I wrapped my arms around myself, as if I was trying to hold the rage in. How could he say that? How could he be so willing to just kill someone because they had this . . . this curse and they might kill someone? Not that they had killed someone, but on the chance that they might.

"We already took care of the problem," I said, my voice stony, "Austin wasn't the one killing people or even biting people."

"You can't be sure of that, Rae," Dad said, continuing to stuff his weapons into a bag.

"Austin's parents are hunters!" I shouted, my teeth gritted together.

My brother and father both turned to look at me, their expressions surprised.

I continued, "Austin's parents are hunters, and they lock him up on the full moon with silver chains."

"So your brother's back with you and Dean now?" Austin asked through the phone.

"Uh, yeah, it's a long story," I replied, glancing at the front seat towards Dean. Sam was sleeping next to him in the passenger's seat, his head hanging over the back of the seat. I grimaced and shook my head as I thought of the pain he'd be in when he woke up.

"Well at least you have him back."

I smiled a little at that. Yeah, it was good to have Sam back, but the way he came back to us was not even near the way I would want him to.

Jessica was dead. She'd died in the fire, apparently the same way Mom had, on the ceiling, so all three of us had stuck around Stanford for about a week after, attending the funeral and digging around a bit for any clues. We hadn't found any. So now Sam was with us. He'd been having nightmares, and he was clearly heartbroken. I felt it, and it was worse than being around Dean whenever we talked about Mom. It was horrible and made me want to pull my hair out at the pain. I didn't like that Sam felt like that, and I wanted him happier.

Nevertheless, I responded to Austin with, "Yeah, I'm happy about that."

I imagined him giving me a sympathetic smile. I knew he was worried about me with my dad being missing and all, and I wished he wouldn't be. I hated that people worried about me; I didn't need people to worry about me. I dealt with things as they came at me. I would always take care of myself by just . . . dealing with it; I didn't need them to take care of me.

"Hey, well I gotta go. My mom is calling me. I'll talk to you later, Ris," Austin said, his voice apologetic.

I nodded, even though I knew he couldn't possibly see me. "Alright, talk to you later." Then I pulled the phone away and hung up, stuffing the phone back into my duffel on the floor and lying back down on the seats. I heard the radio being turned up and smiled a little.

"So," I heard Dean say from the front seat, "you and that Ashton kid aren't together are you?"

I rolled my eyes. Dean knew Austin's name, and he knew that we were just best friends, but he also knew that "forgetting" Austin's name and asking if we were together annoyed the crap out of me. "His name is Austin," I answered, "and Dean, you know we're not together."

There was a break in the trees we were passing and sunlight broke through, momentarily blinding me as Dean drove. I closed my eyes and just listened to the music Dean had turned on, finding comfort in it. The Impala, Dean's music, having my brothers with me, it all made me feel safe, like I was in some protective haven that nothing could intrude on. I guessed this was how normal people felt about their homes, and in a sense, I guessed that this was my home.

"All I know," Dean's voice broke through my peaceful state, "is that if a sixteen-year-old boy has enough commitment to a girl to call her as much as that Austin kid calls you, he probably has a thing for her."

I sat up so I could see him. He actually seemed a little concerned, and I smiled a little. "You just don't want me to date," I said.

"Of course not!" Dean shot back, "I know what teenage boys are like, not to mention that whole animal instinct your friend has got going on."

I laughed and turned to him to throw him a smirk. "Dean, I promise I'm not-"

Sam shot up, his breathing harsh and his eyes wide, sweat beginning to make an appearance on his forehead. He'd had another nightmare. I grimaced; I hated seeing Sam like this.

"You alright?" I asked, watching him cautiously.

Sam blinked the sleep from his eyes and shifted in his seat before answering. "Yeah, I'm fine."

"Had a nightmare?" Dean asked.

Sam didn't reply, only cleared his throat as he avoided eye contact with the both of us by staring out of the windshield. An awkward silence quickly fell over the car and I folded my arms around my mid rift, feeling uncomfortable. It was clear Sam didn't want to talk about his nightmare, but it was also clear that Dean and I wanted him to. The clash of the two was almost visible.

Dean turned to glance at Sam for a moment. "You wanna drive for awhile?"

My jaw dropped as I let out a strangled, "What?!" I couldn't believe he just— Did he really?

Sam laughed a little and looked back at Dean in slight disbelief. "Dean, in your whole life you've never once asked me that."

Dean's eyes went back to the road as he said, "Just thought you might want to. Nevermind."

My mouth closed again, and my eyes darted back to Sam, who shook his head. "Look man-" he looked over his shoulder at me, "- guys - you're worried about me. I get it, and thanks, but I'm perfectly okay."

I pursed my lips as Dean made a sound of sarcastic agreement. Anyone could tell that Sam wasn't okay; they didn't have to have some weird empathy thing like I did. His pain was obvious, and here he was trying to say he was okay.

Slightly frustrated, I turned in my seat to look at the trees on the side of the road.

"Okay," Sam said, "Where are we?"

"We are just outside of Grand Junction," Dean answered, his voice sounding like an announcer's.

"It's not that grand," I muttered.

Dean's eyes found mine from the rearview mirror, and I gave him a light smile. He rolled his green eyes and looked back at the road, a hint of a smile on his lips.

"You know, maybe we shouldn't have left Stanford so soon."

I heard Dean sigh at Sam's suggestion, and a mixture of feelings engulfed me. Determination. Fear. Guilt. Pain. Sorrow. Frustration. Exasperation.

"Sam, we hung around there for a week and came up with nothing," Dean replied as if he were speaking with a child, "If you wanna find the thing that killed Jess-"

"We gotta find Dad," I finished, looking at Sam.

He looked down at the map in his hands, his expression one of defeat. Dean glanced at him, then me.

"Dad disappearing, and this thing showing up again. It's no coincidence." There was a pause in his speech as he looked out the windshield. Then he continued. "Dad'll have answers; he'll know what to do."

I nodded, even though I knew neither of them were looking at me. Dad would know what to do. He always did. That was something I'd always loved about my dad. He always knew what to do in times when we had no idea how to handle a situation. He was sure when we questioned ourselves. Throughout my childhood, things always changed, but one of the few things that remained constant was my father's knowledge of the supernatural. He had also always been reliable when it came to coming home — sooner or later — until now, which worried me.

"It's weird though," Sam said, pulling me from my thoughts.

"What is?" I asked, my blue eyes training on him.

"These coordinates he left us, this Blackwater Ridge . . ."

"What about it?" Dean interrogated.

"There's nothing around it. It's in the middle of the woods." He turned his head to look at me, then Dean. "Why would he send us to the middle of nowhere?"

I huffed as I sat in the motel room, bored out of my mind. It absolutely sucked being sixteen. I really wasn't allowed to do anything, ever. For example, today at the welcoming center, I wasn't able to go in, because I couldn't "pass for a college student." Or how when we all then went to this girl's house to get information about her missing brother. I wasn't able to go in for that either. And now I sat in a motel room, because my two brothers decided a bar was the best place to go and look over stuff about the case.

I felt like I didn't help at all. At least not anymore. Before Sam came back, I was the one to do the research; it was how it had always been when Dean and I did cases together. But now Sam was back, and I actually felt sort of pushed aside, at least right now I did.

Don't get me wrong, I was completely happy to have Sam back, elated even. I just . . . wished I could be more of a help and that I could do more with the case.

Pursing my lips, I closed the novel I had been reading before I'd gotten distracted with my hatred towards my age, and I contemplated calling Austin. I didn't think he'd be asleep. Still, I didn't want to bother him in case he'd decided to go to bed considerably early. I could always get a shower while my brothers were gone, so I wouldn't be holding them up when they got back.

I got up from the table I was sitting at and made my way to the door of the hotel room to throw the additional lock. I knew that if anything of the supernatural sort was trying to get in, that lock wouldn't do much to keep it out, but the extra lock still gave me a sense of security.

Then I grabbed my duffel that had been lazily placed by the door and took it with me into the bathroom. I closed the door behind me, leaving a small crack so that I could maybe hear if anything happened in the main room. I turned to my right and reached for the light switch, quickly finding it and flipping it on to look around at the run down bathroom.

Grimacing at the state of the room, I opened my duffel and pulled out a razor. Then I stripped and got into the shower, scrunching my nose at a questionable yellow stain on the wall of the shower. Trying to ignore my surroundings, I turned the water on, hoping that the hot water was working.

Thankfully, it was, and the water heated up quickly, immediately filling the bathroom with steam. I let out a sigh of relief and reached for the wrapped up bar of soap on the side of the tub. I quickly unwrapped it and scrubbed myself with it. As I stood there, I let my thoughts wander, thinking on the recurring yellow-eyed demon.

If recurring was the word for it; I'd only seen it twice. The last time I'd seen it was a little over a week ago, at the fire. There had been something evil at that apartment, and since Jessica had died in the same way my mother had, I couldn't help the haunting feeling that came, that taunting voice in the back of my head that told me this had something to do with me. I wasn't much of a believer of coincidence, and I had seen this demon right before we'd left Jessica, and when we got back and the fire happened, it had appeared to me once again. Did I bring it to the apartment? Was it following me?

"It is not your fault, Maryse."

I bolted upright, my razor clinking against the floor of the tub and my feet slipping slightly on the wet surface. That voice was not my voice.

I quickly pulled the curtain back, my eyes trailing around the small room. Nothing. There was no one there, but the mirror - to my horror - was shattered, spreading out like a web from the middle. Bits of glass were scattered across the counter and floor.

I took a breath, telling myself I needed to check the main room.

Quietly, I reached for a towel on the rack next to the shower and stepped out of the tub, not turning the water off. Watching where I stepped, I wrapped the towel around me. I was taking precautions as if I didn't want the intruder to know I was aware of their presence, which was stupid, because if they were speaking to me, they wanted me to know they were there. Shaking my head at myself, but continuing to do what I had been taught, I reached into my duffel and nearly let out a sigh of relief when I felt the coolness of a gun touch my fingertips. I pulled it out, and looked at the door, the only barrier between me and this person.

I felt my heartbeat suddenly quicken, and I found myself wishing that my brothers were here, wishing that I hadn't chosen to get a shower, wishing that I wasn't only in a towel readying myself to attack some creature. A creature that could move completely silently and could break a mirror without even touching it. My breath caught in my throat as the real danger of the situation hit me.

I tried to shove the fear off, calming myself like I had been taught to. Then I slowly opened the door, raising my gun in defense.

Nothing.

There was nothing there. Just an empty room.

My eyebrows scrunching together in confusion, I took note of a knocked over lamp with a shatter bulb and a slight crack in the corner of the crappy TV, but there was nothing there to do all of that. Not accepting that this was my imagination or that I was hallucinating, I took a few steps into the room, swiftly opening the closet beside me to find it empty. There was no one here. I was going crazy. I-

The door behind me opened, but it was immediately stopped by the lock I'd thrown.

"Ris! Open up!" came Dean's voice from the other side.

I'm excited to know what you all think might be going on with Ris. Okay, yeah, sorry. I just thought I'd say that. Haha(: Till next time . . .