Ah, this one took a little longer to write than I expected. I played with many versions of it first and settled on this one.
If you've been waiting for it - sorry!!



Manda awakened with a jolt from a sinister dream. It had been dark, twisted, and she'd seen herself completely ruthless in it. The blood, the bodies, and what the evil dream version of her had lusted for made her feel uneasy.

She'd had bad dreams before, but this one had been horrible. Seeing herself as something she hunted had left her heart pounding in her chest. She worried that this is what had happened to her during those eight days. That she had been that creature instead of who she was.

Manda closed her eyes, held on to the symbol around her neck, and tried to forget the images that haunted her mind right then. She let her mind drift to what Dean had said to her last night. How he wouldn't let anything happen to her, and she hoped that turned out to be true, because right now she didn't feel like she could stop whatever was going on with her, if there was something actually going on.

Normally nothing much scared her, but the feeling inside of her just then did. With how she'd grown up and the things she'd seen, she was used to weird. But the dark feeling inside her mixed with the dream had her scared in believing that she was no longer the hunter, but about to become the hunted.

The night off had been great, but that was all it was – a night off. Manda sighed as she thought about why the balance between nights off and nights working a job were never equal. But the hunter lifestyle wasn't fair, and she had learned that lesson more than once.

Manda got out of bed and groaned when she saw the clock. She'd been in bed for close to fourteen hours since she'd first fallen asleep last night. She knew she needed the rest, but it wasn't like her to sleep for so long even when she was dragging her ass around from being tired or injured sometimes. Someone should have woken her up by now too, it was three in the afternoon.

She pulled on some pants for the courtesy of two of her guests, and started to head downstairs for a bottle of cold water. She felt a little warm still, and her throat felt like she'd been screaming even when she hadn't been. Then there was the matter of seeing what the other hunters had come up with while they had let her sleep. She knew they'd be digging for details again, the night off had come to an end ages ago now.

But Manda also wanted to be near Dean. The shirt of his she still had on just wasn't doing the trick for making her feel safe anymore.

-

Dean was pissed because he'd been right.

Since he'd brought in the knife and the set of matches, shared the find with Sam and Chuch, and then had added the other matchbook which had turned out to be from Manda's jacket to the mix, they had done some digging online. They'd searched the towns both bars were located in for murders, and came up with two that would fit with what the demon that had possessed her would have used her for.

There was a man in each town that had been found with his throat slashed and some other weird markings on their bodies. One was unidentified in the town that was furthest away, and the other that wasn't too far away had been a local man. The unidentified man had turned up five days ago in a wooded area not far from the bar where the pack of matches in her jacket had come from. The other man had been discovered in his home only two days ago.

Manda had been home for three days now. If she had killed both men, then the demon had driven her here shortly after she had killed the second man. That town turned out to be only a six hour drive from her house.

All the evidence pointed to her being there, and since both murders sounded identical, it was something they had to work with finally, and were the only leads they had.

Dean sat there wanting to find the thing and rip it apart. He was sick of demons screwing things up and once again messing around with someone he had grown to care for. "The matches prove Manda was in both towns, it can't be a coincidence that each town had a guy turn up sporting the ultimate necktie. Not with the bloody knife from her trunk, the matchbooks, and her being covered in someone else's blood when she turned up here."

"No it can't be, but we need to figure out why it used her to kill them," Sam said calmly. Meg had made him murder another hunter when she had possessed him, but as far as he knew, these two guys weren't hunters. They had called Bobby to make sure of the one, and he'd never heard of him either.

"At least no one is looking for Manda as far as we know. Cops have no leads in either case, if you believe the articles," Chuch added.

"Thank god for CSI watching demons," Dean quipped. He knew she always kept her real identity well hidden, but when a demon was playing puppet master, anything could happen. But at least there was that small bit to be thankful for.

"How do we go about this then?" Chuch asked as she looked from brother to brother.

"We get whatever we can on the one that's further out from here, then hit the road for a six hour drive, check out that bar and see what we can turn up on that guy in the morning." Dean knew that was the best way to go about it. He also knew that Manda would want to go there once she knew about all this.

Sam looked at Dean. "But why would it keep Manda for eight days? Two murders and eight days don't add up, Dean. We're missing something here."

Dean sighed. He knew it didn't add up, but this was all they had to go on for now, and it was more than they'd had before.

"I'll go do a little work on getting information on the unidentified guy," Chuch said. "Use a little charm or a connection if that fails to get what we need."

"Good, do it," Dean sort of ordered her. Then he looked at Sam, but before he could say anything else the front door slammed shut.

All three of them looked at each other as they knew who had just left the house.

"Oh shit," Dean grunted as he got up, hurrying to the door.

The rev of Manda's Chevelle started, and then the screeching of her tires and the kicking up of gravel from the driveway was heard as she turned it around and sped off.

Dean caught the back of her car taking off. He knew she'd overheard everything they'd just been talking about. He had no idea where she was headed or what she was going to do, but he wasn't about to let her just take off by herself now.

He was out the door before she would have pulled out of the end of the driveway, starting up the Impala, and then following her at almost the same speed.

Manda had heard them as she was coming down the stairs and had stopped to listen. When she heard about the town six hours away, something in her snapped and she had to get out of there. Knowing that bit of information was worse than knowing what she had already suspected she'd done. She had grabbed her keys once she'd been able to move again after the shock, and then taken off for the one place she knew she had to go, where she would have gone sooner or later anyway.

Dean caught up to her quickly. He knew she saw him because she only stepped on the gas and tried to lose him. He would have tried calling her, but her phone was where he'd left it in the living room.

Manda didn't care at that point. Dean was following her and she wished he hadn't. She took a hard, fast turn, drove awhile longer before she took another sharp turn, and then started to slow down as she reached her destination.

He kept up behind her, but not too close. He was a bit impressed with how she handled the car though. Her driving had been too fast, careless, and yet in control, because it hadn't slowed her down at all, until now. Now she was coming to a stop.

She stopped a little away from some gates and parked.

Dean pulled up beside her, and was just throwing the car into park when he saw she was out the door and running through the gates.

Manda ran. She sprinted into the cemetery to the spot she hadn't been to in almost two years now. She hadn't come here last year around this time. She had been working a job instead of drowning in bad memories.

He knew why she was here, but not exactly where she would be inside of the gates. Dean debated waiting for her to come back out, but then decided against it. He got out of the car and walked through the gates leisurely.

Collapsing on her knees in front of the flat headstone that lay in the ground, Manda's fingers traced the letters and dates etched into it. She felt the peace sore through her, even if the guilt was eating away at every bit of her right then.

Dean wandered around for a bit, and then he saw the top of her head. She was on her knees in front of a headstone. Her head was bowed as if she was in prayer, but her fingers kept running over the engraved lettering instead of being folded in front of her. He didn't go any closer then, but just watched her from afar for a minute or two even though he just wanted to go over and hold her if that's what she needed.

Manda sat there in silence, allowing the calmness to run through her. She felt the surge of love she had stopped feeling so long ago. The power that the love of and for two people who had given up their lives in order to save hers still held. She breathed in deeply and wanted to drown in the emotion that was still so hard for her to feel. "I'm sorry," she whispered.

Dean walked a little closer as quietly as he could until he was a few steps behind her. He noticed right away that Manda was wearing his shirt from yesterday, and if this was any other moment he would have smiled at the sight of her in it. The simple act of her doing that spoke a whole lot for how she felt, even if she wouldn't come out and say it to him.

"I know you said it wasn't my fault, but it was… and now..." Her words were rushed and yet slow, and filled with a pain that she felt deep inside. "I think the damn thing has come back for me… and I… I just don't know what to do or how to stop it. It's calling me to it." Her voice broke just a little right then.

He wondered why she thought that. What had she put together or remembered? He wanted to ask, but he stayed quiet. If she had heard him approach then she hadn't indicated it.

Manda stopped tracing the lettering, and then placed her hand right in the middle of the headstone. She inhaled sharply, sitting there silently for a minute. "I need a little of your strength guys, the kind you always tried to teach me to have. It has to pay for what it did to you… and if I can't do that like I don't think I can then I'll be here with both of you soon." Two tears rolled down her face, but that was it, there was no way she was going to start sobbing now.

Dean heard the love in her voice. This was a part of her she buried so far inside, he knew that. But why did she seem to think she needed their strength to go on, and more importantly, why did she think she was going to die?

"I love you, Mom, Dad… please help me with this somehow." She lifted her hand from the stone and found herself drawn to look to the right towards another headstone. "I don't think I'm ready to end up here…"

They can't save you this time.
Manda heard the dark whisper run through her head, and then she felt an immense sensation of heat run through her before a sharp pain shot down her scars. Her eyes rolled back in her head then, and she fell to the side as she passed out.

"Manda?" Dean called out her name. He rushed the few steps towards her, and dropped to his knees beside her. She was unconscious, and as he touched her, Dean felt how hot her skin was.

Dean pulled her up off the ground, cradled her against him, and smacked her face lightly a few times to stir her. "We've done this before, Manda… time to get up." He didn't know what had happened to her. She had just passed out, and she was burning up, but she wasn't sweating at all. He kept one arm around her, and smacked her a little harder this time to get her to come to. "Come on… wake up."

Her eyes opened and looked blankly up at him.

"Are you all right?" His tone was hurried and concerned.

Manda felt the pull of something evil in her, but she also felt something stronger than that, something was trying to push the darkness out. That was all she could focus on at that moment.

"Manda?" Dean called her name again. The blank look in her eyes as she looked at him had him worried. It was like she wasn't there or that she didn't recognize him at all.

The feelings left her, and then she closed her eyes for a minute, opening them again to see Dean. "Huh?" She looked and sounded a little confused.

He saw the blank look was gone from her eyes now. "You okay?"

Manda nodded at him as she saw the worry his eyes held as he looked down at her.

"What's going on? What just happened to you?" Dean fired both questions at her quickly. His concern was that something was really wrong with her.

"I… I don't know." Her voice was shaky as she answered him. She didn't know exactly what had happened. She had heard the voice in her head, felt the unbearable amount of heat, the pain from her scars, and then it had been lights out for her. That scared her, but she wasn't about to say anything yet, because if she did, she knew what would happen. Dean would get himself further involved into this and she didn't want that.

He just looked down at her. Something was happening to her, and he had no idea what it was. And all Dean wanted to do right then was keep her close, and make sure she was safe.

"Don't… just… please don't," she said quietly. She knew what he was going to do as she saw the way he looked at her.

"Shhhh." Dean pulled her a little more up against his chest.

Manda went to pull herself away from him, and raised her knees to get her footing to start to get up, but then the arm he had behind her slipped a little more over her waist, and his other arm went across her. His hand gripped her shoulder, and she knew she was stuck.

"Don't even think about it," Dean said quietly. He didn't want her to get up yet, but he also wanted to keep her close.

"It's my mess, Dean," she uttered. "Dragging you into this is wrong… let me go." She looked away from him.

He let go of her shoulder, and then moved her head gently to look at him again. "I'll decide when it's wrong, and you're not doing this on your own. So, you either let me, Sam, and Chuch help you with it, or we'll just do it anyway."

Manda saw it in his eyes, how he would be there no matter what. She just wanted him to walk away from her then. "I can do this without any of you, and you can go before something happens to you. You know what happens to people that are close to me… just look at what's here in the ground."

His arm went over her again. "You know I'm not going anywhere." Dean's tone was calm but serious. He wouldn't leave her to deal with any of this on her own. He was sticking around until whatever was going on was over. Nothing was happening to her if he could help it.

"It's going to end bad… I know it is. It always does." She couldn't keep up her brave act then, not when he had just told her he wasn't going anywhere, even if a part of her wanted him to leave her alone. Her hands gripped on to his arm that was across her, and she pressed her head against his chest, close to his shoulder.

Dean tightened the arm he had over her then. He just wanted her to feel safe at that moment because she felt so small and defenseless in his arms right then. "Are you going to tell me what else is going on now? You're going to have to start sharing with the class sooner or later you know."

She thought she would cry, but she couldn't cry anymore for something that had robbed her of so much. Manda stayed quiet for a moment, not knowing what to say or where to start. "You heard me. I know you were standing right there and listening."

"Why do you think it's the same demon?" Dean thought she was just jumping to conclusions, but it was always possible she wasn't.

"The town six hours away… I knew it without you having to say the name of it, it's where I got my parents killed," Manda said.

Dean's eyes registered the surprise. It had taken awhile to figure that out, but he and Chuch had both realized it soon enough. "How did you know?"

"As soon as you said it, I just knew." Her voice was vacant even if she was very much there. "I have to go there… I need to go there." She let go on him and tried to break out of his hold.

"You're not going out there alone," he told her. Then he let her go even though he didn't want to. He got up before she did, and put out a hand to her. "We'll figure it all out, Manda."

Manda nodded at him, then took his hand and felt Dean pull her to her feet almost effortlessly. She wondered where her strength was then, because he had done that way too easily. She went to let go of his hand, but he held on to it for a few more seconds longer before he let go of it.

"You're still a bit warm," Dean said. He didn't like that, it wasn't making sense. "That got anything to do with whatever is going on with you now?"

She looked at him and wondered if she could explain it. How she felt all that darkness inside her, heard that strange whisper before she had passed out, and the stuff that had happened before when she had woken up. "I-I… no… I don't want to talk about it here." Her eyes swept down to the ground now.

Dean looked down at the headstone, and then to the ones beside it. He'd been too busy focusing on her that he hadn't looked at them before.

Four in a row belonged to her family. They were standing in front of the one that held the names of her parents. Her grandfather and grandmother were two over on the right. He guessed the one on the left had been the uncle she had mentioned a few times, along with another name that might have been an aunt or a cousin she'd never mentioned.

But the one that Dean didn't like to see was the stone between her parents and her grandparents. He kept the cringe he felt inside hidden as read Manda's name etched into the flat grey stone. He hated to see that whenever she came to this spot she was faced with knowing she was the last of her family's line, and that her name was already written into the stone, waiting for her to end up under it.

Dean knew how hard it was to stand at a spot like this and see not only your past, but also your future before you. It had been similar for him once or twice, but he still had Sam at least. And then he saw the memory of rising from his own grave, the spot where Sam had buried him when he'd gone to hell.

He felt the sadness inside him as he realized another reason why Manda seemed to understand parts of him so well. She hadn't died like he had or been to hell, but when she came here, the only thing that would eat away at her as much as the guilt she held on to was seeing the place she would end up sooner or later staring her in the face.

Manda had seen his eyes settle on the headstone with her name. She hadn't seen a reaction from him though, so he either didn't know what to think or he hid it from her completely. She had never wanted that stone, but it'd been there for a long time now. And no matter where she was when she did die, this was where she'd end up. The trust her grandfather had set in place would see to that.

Dean looked back at her then and saw the pain she was trying to hide from her face. He wanted to tell her he wouldn't let her end up here, not as long as he was around, but he wasn't sure what that would do to her. He placed his hand on the side of her face, and noticed she her temperature was back to normal now. "If you need a few more minutes here…"

"No," Manda cut him off. "I'm done and if you want to know the rest, then let's go. I can't talk about how badly I've screwed up in front of them, especially with how right they were with what will probably end up being what puts me here with them."

His eyes narrowed in on her then. Dean wasn't sure what she was going on about, but he'd get it out of her in time. He stroked her cheek lightly before he let his hand fall back to his side. "Take a minute, I'll wait." Then he turned around and walked a little bit away to give her one last moment there by herself.

Manda took one last look at where the ashes of her family lay beneath the grass, let her thoughts say how much she loved them, missed them, and to say goodbye before she walked away and caught up with Dean.

He walked beside her and decided he needed to lighten the mood just a bit. "So…wearing my shirt huh? Careful there, Chambers… someone might get the idea you're starting to get sweet on me."

She chuckled just a little. Dean could always be counted on to lift the seriousness out of a moment, and she needed that right now. "Careful there yourself, Winchester… following me out here might give someone else that same impression."

Dean smirked at how quickly she played into the shift. Despite whatever was happening, he knew he was falling for her a little harder at that moment. "We wouldn't want that now, would we?"

Manda's smile was small and a bit sweet. "No, we wouldn't," she said, knowing it was lie. She let her fingers graze against his then.

He felt the sweep of her fingers beside his and his smirk widened at the gesture. "Definitely not," Dean agreed with the lie.

They walked through the gates, and then he stopped her before she headed to her car.

"Going to talk out here or back at your place?" he asked.

"At home. I'd like to eat first since someone let me sleep in way too late." Manda looked at him like it was his fault, but her lips curled into a smile quickly.

Dean chuckled. "You needed it."

"Thanks for helping with that," she said. Then Manda leaned in and kissed him softly. She knew Dean was right, she had needed the rest, but she had also needed the night he'd given her.

He grinned at her suggestively. "Anytime you need more help with getting to sleep or just because…"

"Nice line… and I'll let you know if I do." Manda grinned back at him, and then headed for her car.

"Looking forward to it," he said with a naughty smirk, walking to his car. Dean knew that sooner or later they would have to figure out if they were going to try to be together, if that wasn't what was already happening in the middle of whatever mess this was going to turn out to be. He had come out here for her after all, and right now she was letting him be there for her too.

Manda backed out first, and then waited a little ahead so he could follow her. She cranked up the music and let herself enjoy the brief moment of feeling good, because at least for right now, the darkness inside her was nowhere to be found as she drove home with Dean following behind her.


And now there's a few pieces of the missing days...
Now, I fear I'm making Dean too soft at times, but hopefully I'm not. I imagine I might be taking him way out of character and if you feel so - well, I do too at times, but that's where it's gone in my head for playing around with some of his layers.

If you care to comment - by all means go for it. If you don't, well then, hope you enjoyed it anyway.
A little shout out to antariangirl93 for being such a vocal reader - thanks for commenting and reading!
I'll try to get the next chapter up soon...