Disclaimer: So I own nothing that you recognize in reading this(no matter HOW much I wish I had my own personal Dean Winchester). The only thing I do stake claim to is my lovely Carmen Davis who is chalk full of attitude and kick ass badness at times. Please enjoy.

Chapter 3

Carmen was upstairs in one of the messy, crowded, dusty spare rooms sitting on a window seat looking out the window. It seemed wrong for it to be so sunny outside when all of their lives were such a reck. They had burned John's body and Bobby had drove them all back to his place. That had been a week ago.

Once they had gotten to Bobby's Carmen disappeared to the room she was currently hiding in. She knew that Bobby was worried about her and she could occasionally hear Sam talking to Bobby about her but she didn't care. She didn't remember much after she had found Sam leaning over John's body in the hospital. She didn't remember waking up or fainting or even helping to build the pyre that they had burned John on. The only thing she remembered was walking through Bobby's front door and up the stairs.
She had only left the room when she necessarily had to. She ate because she had to, drank because she had to, showered because it washed off a day's worth of depression, and slept only enough to be able to make it through the day, two, three hours at most.

And she was going to pass today the same way she had the last seven days. Sitting on the window seat, knees drawn up to her chest, arms folded across her stomach, starring out the window.

Bobby sat at his desk in his study sipping whiskey from a glass and watched Sam pace around the room. He knew Sam was stressed out and worried about both Dean, who was trying to bury the feelings of his hurt and loss, and Carmen, who had shut down almost completely. "Bobby, we have to do something. About both of them. Dean is gonna be Dean, but Carmen...Bobby we seriously gotta do something about her." Sam said stopping in front of the desk and pointed a finger towards the stairs.
"What do you expect me to do, Sam? Force her to cheer up?" Bobby said taking a sip from his glass. "Make her eat, first of all. She hasn't eaten since the day dad died. Make her drink something. Bobby, if she keeps going like this, she'll end up in the hospital. Or worse. Dead." Sam exclaimed.

Bobby gave him a look like he was a first rate moron. "Are you stupid, boy? You honestly think that's she's just been up there wasting away? She's left that room, Sam. She's ate just enough to keep herself alive. And drink something? Hell, boy, she filched a gallon of my best whiskey. How she found the damn thing, I'll never know, but I guarantee you that she's been sucking it down up there. After the life that poor girl has had, she can just keep on drinking it til she feels like she don't need it no more." Bobby said drinking the rest of the whiskey in his glass. "What's her deal anyway, Bobby? I mean, how does dad, who hates hunting with other people by the way, end up with a partner, a female partner no less, who is our age?" Sam asked genuinely confused.

"Well I ain't telling you about her life before she met your dad. Your dad told me her story one night while they were here. If she wants you to know about it, she'll tell you." Bobby said pouring himself more whiskey. "No. I mean, dad hated hunting with other Hunters, so how did he end up with someone like Carmen?" Sam asked. Bobby took a sip of whiskey and then looked at the amber liquid in his glass.

"John met Carmen for the first time when she was sixteen. She was an rookie Hunter back then working jobs on her own. She had been shown the ropes to hunting but never shown how to properly do things. She had beaten your dad and a couple of other Hunters at a couple of games of poker was how they first met. Then a few weeks later your dad was working a case. A ghost was haunting an old abandoned house somewhere down in Mississippi. The ghost was killing anybody who stepped foot into the place. Turned out Carmen was working the same case. Nearly got herself killed but John showed up at the right moment and shot it with rock salt. Pulled her outta the house and back to his motel room to patch her up and rip her a new one. Turned out Carmen was real good at research and knew more about the ghost than your dad did and so he decided to let her help him finish the case. He said he had no idea why, but after that first case, he decided to take her on. He said that he saw real potential in her. He tried to turn her into a little soldier." Bobby said laughing at what he had just said taking a sip of whiskey.

"Carmen had no intention of becoming a little soldier. She was out-spoken and strong willed. Butted heads with your daddy all the time. John always called her a little spitfire from Hell. And knowing her for as long as I have now, I fully agree with him. Anyway, after about two years together, Carmen was one of the best Hunters John had ever seen. Smart. Sharp. Quick instincts and reflexes. And a master with weapons and at fighting. John and Carmen had made an agreement that when John decided she was ready, that she could start hunting on her own. I guess your dad had just grown so used to her being around that he couldn't send her away. But I think it was because she reminded him of you boys." Bobby said looking out the window at the sunny weather.

"John Winchester did alot for that girl. Taught her what it takes to be a Hunter. How to keep herself alive. John loved that girl like she was his own and I'm pretty sure that she loved him back for everything he had done for her. If it hadn't been for him she woulda died a long time ago." Bobby said looking at Sam and then back to the little bit of whiskey left in his glass. "John Winchester was all she had left in this world. And now he's gone and she don't know what to do. She's trying to cope with loosing him so suddenly. It will take her a while, but she'll come around." Bobby said answering Sam's question.

That night Carmen was walking outside through all of the crushed and twisted metal that used to be cars of Bobby's junk had been wondering around for a while when she wondered upon what would someday soon be the Impala. She walked up to sad looking car and ran a hand over the frame with a small, sad smile. "Finally out and about?" Carmen heard behind her. She started at the voice and turned to see Dean standing a few yards away.

"I was just thinking about how your dad would react seeing the Impala in such a state." she said turning back towards the car. "He would probably be fit to be tied." she said with a small half-humored laugh. "So what are you doing out here? And why the hell are you wearing those?" Dean asked eyeing her baggy sweatpants. She looked down at her white form fitting spaghetti strap shirt and baggy grey sweatpants.

"Had one too many shots of whiskey. Started to feel a little dizzy so I decided to take a walk." she said turning back to look at Dean. She then looked down at her sweatpants and gave a sad smile. "I stole them from your dad. These and some other clothes of his." she said and looked up at him. "They make him feel close by, you know." she said. "What are you doing out here? Too late to do any repairs." she asked Dean. "Had to get outta that house. It's like there's an everlasting cloud of gloom in that house. It was either get out or get smothered." Dean said taking a few steps towards her.

"So why did you come back after Bobby called you? I mean, you left dad. So why come back after you heard about the crash?" Dean asked. Carmen looked down at the ground and sighed. "I loved your dad, Dean." Carmen said looking up at him. She seen what looked like shock flash across his face. "John was all I had left in this world. He taught me how to me a Hunter. How to fight. How to use my weapons. How to stay alive. My family was killed when I was 10 years old. By a demon possessed human. The human survived. I managed to get away but I was never the same after that night. I started researching everything I could think of. But all the research in the world don't mean anything without experience out in the field. I had started hunting about a year before I met your dad. No real major jobs. Mostly ghosts and spirits, things of that nature. But after my family I became real good at hiding my emotions when I needed to. I became a pretty good poker player, which is how I got most of my money." she said taking a deep breath and continued.

"I heard about this job in Mississippi and thought it would be pretty easy to do by myself. I got injured pretty badly by the thing. It was about to kill me when your dad showed up and saved my rookie ass. He took me back to his room, practically drowned me in whiskey, patched me up real good, ripped me a new one, that's for sure." she said laughing at the memory. "After that, he took me on. I don't know why, he never told me, but he kept me around. Started training me and told me that I couldn't leave until my training was finished. Which in John Winchester's mind means whenever he says so." she said looking up at Dean.

"I didn't leave your dad because I wanted to that day, Dean. I left him because I had to." she said. "Why? What reason could you possibly have to leave him like that? When he needed you there the most." Dean said trying not to get angry at her leaving his dad when he had needed her the most.

"I left him because of what he was asking me to do, Dean. I had lost everyone I had every cared about and he knew that. And then he was going to look me in the eyes and ask me to go with him to watch him get himself killed? To go with him on his twenty year crusade for this demon that would most likely kill him before he killed it? I couldn't do it, Dean. I loved John but he was a selfish bastard to ask that of me." Carmen said trying to get him to understand why she had left.

"I left because it was self-preservation. I didn't leave because I stopped caring about him. I still cared. I told Bobby to keep tabs on you guys and to call me if anything serious happened. He called and told me about the crash, I was speeding down the highway less than ten minutes later." She seen a look on his face that said she hadn't given him the answer he was really looking for. "Look, Dean, just ask me what you really want to know." she said getting ready to get defensive.

"Fine. You keep saying you loved my dad. Were you more than just his partner? I knew my dad and he hated hunting with other people. You said that you two hunted for four years together. There's only one reason that I can think of that he would keep you around for that long." he said.

Dean had never seen anybody get so angry so fast. He had seen her pissed off before, even furious the time she had caught up with them after the vampire hunt. But she went from white to red in about three seconds flat. Seeing her reaction he expected her to attack him. And did she ever attack him. He made the mistake of asking that offensive question with her standing by his car.

She reached behind her and grabbed a crowbar off of the front seat and stormed after him with it.

He took a couple of steps back and was lucky he did because she chose that moment to take a swing at his head with the crowbar. She went to take another swing at him but he reached out and grabbed the crowbar with one hand and her wrists in the other. After stopping her swing Dean pulled the crowbar out of her hands and threw it in the direction of the Impala. Thinking he had her disarmed, he was surprised to feel a sudden pain in his side, which was caused by her knee.

Because of the pain he loosened his grip on her wrists, both of which she yanked away from his grip. She reared her right arm back and punched Dean in the nose. Surprised by the punch Dean recovered quickly and grabbed her wrists again, in a tighter hold this time. He felt her leg fold behind his right before she jerked them out from under him, causing them to fall backwards.

Carmen fell on top of him and, knowing that breaking her hands free was pointless, began attacking him with her legs. "You bastard! How dare you! How dare you ask me that! You say you knew your father but the man you knew was just a tunnel visioned crusader!" Carmen yelled at him. She had started crying while yelling at him and had stopped fighting, but Dean wasn't dropping his guard.

"I loved John Winchester the same way you did. That man was everything to me. He was my partner, my friend, and my father. To suggest that he only kept me around for sex...for four years. I should cut your tongue out right now." She said still crying. Her strength finally gave out and she collapsed crying harder against his chest.

"You think you and Sam are the only ones he left behind? He left me too, Dean. He may have left you, Dean, but he left you with Sam. He left me all alone. He was all I had and he left me alone. What did he do Dean? Why would he do it?" Carmen whispered as she began to cry even harder than before.