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- Diana's POV -

Sitting in the back seat with Charlie, I clutched my birthday present from my kids to my chest. A beautiful leather bound journal filled with letters and memories from my family. Grace included some incredible sketches and Toby even penned some of his poems into it. I chewed my lip nervously as we drove away from them, hoping beyond hope that they would remain safe. I didn't think I could live with myself if they were hurt, or worse, because of me.

Charlie reached out to put a hand on my shoulder. I flinched beneath her touch and moved away.

"It's still sore," I explained.

"Sore?"

"Yeah." I rolled up my sleeve to reveal a new tattoo, matching the boys', on the reddened skin of my shoulder.

"Cool!"

"You got inked?" Dean asked from the driver's seat, peering at me through the rearview mirror. "When?"

"This morning," I replied, rolling my sleeve back down gingerly. "Jake has a parlor back home and when he told me, I asked him to do mine. I got the symbol you guys have, the one to prevent possession."

"Smart girl."

We drove for a while longer in silence. I kept trying to catch Sam's gaze, in the hopes of finding some comfort in his eyes, but he never looked my way. I gave up and turned to Charlie. She seemed to have noticed my disappointment and anxiety and offered me a small smile, reaching out and squeezing my hand. I responded with a weak smile, but held onto her hand as I turned to watch out the window as the miles slipped past.

"Where are we going?" Charlie asked.

"We're taking you home," Sam answered quietly.

"What? No way! Things were just starting to get intense!" she protested.

"Which is why you need to go," Dean agreed. "Sam, Diana, and I are stuck in this mess. You're not. You can go home and be safe. We appreciate your help, we really do, but this is beyond your abilities now and we would just feel a lot better knowing you were out of harm's way."

"But-"

"Charlie," I looked over at her with pleading eyes. "I've become really close with you in the past few days and I can't tell you how much I appreciate your support... But, the boys are right... You need to go home..."

Charlie looked down at her lap, sighed and nodded. I squeezed her hand gently in thanks. She returned the gentle squeeze, then gave Dean her address. We slipped into silence again.

Once we took Charlie home, she gave us each tight hugs and wished us well. We offered her pained smiles, then got in the car and drove off again. After another hour of suffocating silence, I put my earbuds in, laid down on the back seat and closed my eyes. Drowning my thoughts in terribly haunting songs, silent tears slowly fell down my face as I allowed the familiar heartache of missing my mother to overwhelm me and I fell into another restless sleep.

I was falling down to the waters beneath the bridge, falling through the center of the earth. Searing pain stabbed through my abdomen as I fell endlessly, like Alice down the rabbit hole of hell. Darkness enveloped me, bound me, suffocated me. But, rather than fight and struggle to draw breath where there was no air, to see when there was only pitch black, I embraced the pain, let it wash through me, and allowed myself to finally fall away.

- Sam's POV -

When we finally found a motel far enough away from Charlie, I carried a sleeping Diana into the room and tucked her into the far bed, pausing a moment to gaze down at her and wonder at Cas' words. He seemed to be trying to tell me that she was nothing more than another tool on a shelf and couldn't feel emotion or affection any more than a hammer could. But I couldn't believe it. I had seen the way she looked at the kids from the foster home, the way her eyes shone when she told me about her parents. Her reckless mistakes and rash actions of the past few days were as a result of concern for people she valued and cared for. I couldn't let Cas talk me out of this. I couldn't let him convince me that she didn't feel the way any other person feels, that she was incapable of caring for me the way I cared for her. I had to believe that she could, that she did. I had to believe that I had a shot at having something good with her, something worth keeping. I had to believe that I could love her.

"Sam?" Dean's voice pierced through my thoughts. I looked up to meet his tired eyes. He looked like hell. I'm sure I didn't look much better.

"Yeah?"

"Sammy," Dean sighed. "I don't know what to do."

I returned my gaze to Diana. "I don't either... But we can't just give her up."

"Sam..." He paused for a long moment, then exhaled. "I don't think we have a choice."

My head snapped up again. "What?"

"Look, Sammy, I know that you care about her. She's growing on me, too. But Cas has a point. We can't take on every son of a bitch that's out there. If we let one of them take her, then we just have to worry about the one, instead of all of them."

"Except that they will continue to fight for her, Dean!" I snapped. "She'll just be passed from one captor to the next! I know that Cas thinks she's an all powerful weapon, but she's also a person and people have breaking points. I'm afraid she's nearing hers."

"We can't help that, Sam," Dean sighed. "We can't run forever. This is the only option we've got."

"I promised her I would keep her safe."

"And I get that, I do, but we can only do so much, Sammy."

I looked away from him, down at the sleeping girl in the bed below me. She looked so afraid, even in her sleep, her forehead creased between her eyebrows, and my heart broke for her, knowing all that she had been through and the weight of all that she had had to learn to come to terms and deal with in the past month or so. I just wished I could erase it all for her and send her back to her life before her roommates were attacked, or even before the fire, but I knew that wishing the past would change was a useless waste of time and energy.

"I just don't understand... This can't be the only way..."

"It isn't," came Cas' voice behind me. I whipped around to see him standing beside Dean. "However, I believe you will dislike the alternative far more than this option."

"Alternative?" Dean asked.

"Kill her yourself."

"What?" I felt my jaw drop. "Cas, I thought you were on our side! I thought you wanted to protect her, your precious weapon!"

"I do," Castiel replied simply, "but what you fail to realize is that she has an automatic re-set button that will make her drop from everyone's radar again."

Dean folded his arms, his jaw set. "The immortality clause. Kill Diana here and the power gets a clean slate. New body, new memory, new life, no demonic aftertaste."

"I'm not killing her!" I barked.

"I know," Cas sighed. "That is why I suggested you surrender her. And it is also why I told you to back down from your feelings for her. I told you, Sam, she will never return what you feel for her and she will soon forget you."

"Cas, you can't threaten her like that," Dean growled.

"Why are you so upset? I am protecting her," Castiel protested.

"No, you're killing an innocent girl who has done nothing but work her ass off to help others."

"Dean, you don't understand-"

"No, you don't understand, Cas!" Dean glared at him, his voice raising with his frustration. "You kill her and you kill one of the good guys!"

"That has to happen occasionally, there will always be more," Castiel replied calmly.

"No, Castiel, there won't!" I yelled. "Not if you and the angels keep killing us off instead of helping us out like you should! You don't know that this power thing is going to keep finding good people to live in! What if in it's next life, the person finds out about the power and teams up with Crowley to use it! What then, Cas?"

"We're already being picked off by the monsters, Castiel," Dean huffed. "We don't need the angels speeding up the process."

"You're only shooting yourselves in the foot anyway." I turned away from the angel and my brother, unable to handle the ridiculousness of this conversation. I was pissed that Castiel was, once again, blindly following unreasonable orders from some invisible source that only made our lives harder. It was getting to be really difficult to continue our friendship when he was constantly working against us.

"Sam?" his voice came again.

I gritted my teeth. "What?"

"I'm sorry."

I spun around to yell at him again, but before I could get a word out, he had pressed two fingers to my forehead and sent me tumbling to the floor. As I fell, I caught a glimpse of the angel blade in his hand before everything went black.

Again, just making this up as I go...

Thoughts?