A/N: Most frequent typo? Dena. Most annoying typo? Dena. Typo my husband finds hilarious? Dena. In other news, Sam obsessed Leprechaun it is. ;-D

Disclaimer: Meh. Too lazy. I'm posting to procrastinate finishing the discharge summary I should be typing. Also, this took a lot of work. I hope I managed to pull back from General Hospital and move into a manlier place (Not that I'm disparaging Sonny Corinthos. He can angst on me anytime).

Dean stepped out of the shower and toweled off. He'd wasted a couple minutes waiting for the water to heat up by sniffing the different conditioners and bodywashes. Did one woman really need all this just to get clean? Every scent had been clean and fresh, with just a hint of something floral in the shampoo and conditioner. The bodywash, like the shaving cream, was unscented and medicated for sensitive skin. Everything had been undeniably Annie.

He pulled on his clothes and left the small bathroom, sitting on the unmade bed nearest the restroom. The other bed was still made up, but covered with papers and books spread open. Dean leaned forward for a closer look and saw that only one small stack had to do with their current case. The others were too varied for him to see a patter. Evidently Anna juggled other work and research with her works in progress.

"What happened, man?"

Dean's gaze shot to meet Sam's and, unable to find an answer right away, Dean closed his eyes and exhaled, running a hand through his hair then down his face. He shook his head.

"I don't know. One minute I'm in the cave and the next I'm waking up to a girl on top of me." Dean flopped back on the bed with a grunt, disgusted at himself. The door swung open and he shot up as Anna poked her head through the frame.

"Sam, that key?"

Sam noticed she was very carefully not looking over at Dean. He quickly fished the key from his pocket and lobbed it toward the door, remembering belatedly that she had just been dropped from close to two stories onto a car. Anna barely winced, however, as she reached up and plucked the key from the air. She disappeared back into the sunshine and pulled the door closed behind her. Sam turned to Dean and found his older brother staring at the door with a lost expression he couldn't recall ever seeing before. Even through all the chasing after their father Dean always seemed to hold it together. Anger at Anna swelled in Sam, dying out almost instantly. She was hurting too, he knew. He'd seen what she had, before they had seen the fake Anna's face.

Dean's eyes slid to meet his own.

"I swear, Sam, I opened my eyes to Annie. I thought it was her." Dean clenched his jaw in frustration, and then let out a self deprecating laugh. "I should have known I wasn't that lucky."

Sam's heart went out to his brother and he gave a weak smile of his own. "Well, on the upside, we found the bad guy."

Dean laughed in spite of himself and lay back on the bed, staring up at the ceiling. He heard the rustle of papers followed by the sound of the TV. Dean tuned out the noise and tried to fight the rising guilt and self loathing in his chest. Was he really so desperate for Anna that he hadn't noticed the body had been all wrong? The legs, upon reflection, had been too short, the breasts a little too full, the entire body way too soft for Annie's toned physique. Or was he just that into sex that it hadn't really mattered?

He sighed and pulled an arm up across his eyes. Who was he kidding? Just the glimmer of hope that it could be her had shut down any objection his body had had at Anna not being the same Anna from the dream. He had known something was wrong, but he was just too dense to realize it right away.

And this was exactly why he avoided relationships. Getting too close to someone got them hurt, and then they hurt you. Well screw this. He was done playing Pacey to her Joey. He and Sam would stick around long enough to bag this stone bitch, then they were dropping Annie- MacKeary off at the airport.

Anna hung up with her brother, also her lawyer, and once again apologized to the manager, sticking to the cover story she and Bill had created years ago. She promised faithfully that she and her companions would hold off testing any further stunts for the next Justin Timberlake video until the proper precautions and safety barriers were in place.

The manager left at last, Bill's card in hand, to wait for the express courier with the cashier's check. Anna moved over to the impala and climbed up on the hood, pulling her wallet out once more, sifting through the cards for the one she wanted. She stuffed her cigarette case turned wallet into her coat pocket and took a deep breath. She stared at the boy's door, her temper rising with each breath; a cold anger coiled in the pit of her stomach. She didn't blame Dean; none of her anger was for him. he had been tricked, had thought it was her in bed with him, and, honestly, what man would turn down sex from a woman he was-

Dating didn't quite work. It sounded far too normal. Courting fit their situation. Courting.

No, Anna fully acknowledged that the rage she felt was aimed where it should be. She was going to gut the whore, tear her wings off and beat her to death with them- once she found her. And for that, Anna would need help. She flipped her phone open and turned the card over, punching in the number there and tapped her foot on the bumper as the phone rang.

"Genchy," she said. "What are you up to the next few days?"

Anna laughed at his answer and studied her fingernails, wishing she had her lab kit with her to examine the debris under her nails. No point wasting the material, she thought, and she slid off the hood, headed for her room.

"I'd make it worth your while to come help me out."

Anna swung open the door and shut it with her foot behind her as she stepped into the room. She pulled her gun, in its holster, from its place in her jeans at the small of her back and tossed it onto the table near Sam.

"It'll be easy," she said shaking her head at Genchy's excuses. "You come up to St. Louis with a tracker and help me locate a target. In exchange, I cut you a check for an obscene amount of money and you'll be up to your dick in tits and ass for a month."

Sam cringed at Anna's crude language and reached out to help her as she struggled to remove her jacket. He snuck a glance at Dean who looked oddly amused. Like he normally would be. Which meant his big brother was shutting down, pulling away from his feelings. Sam swallowed a curse of his own, listening to the muffled laughter coming from the phone and catching a comment about the guy being all the tracker she'd need.

Dean watched as Anna moved away from Sam to lean against the door once freed from her jacket and he let his eyes take her in, keeping his expression carefully neutral. He noticed her black boots for the first time, appreciated the way her jeans and t-shirt hugged her curves without being constricting. Then he saw the bandages and any fantasy he'd been entertaining about leaving shattered. She was hurt. She'd just been hurt again and he hadn't done a damn thing to help. Again.

He finally looked up at her face and froze at the expression on her face. She was watching him, a hard, unflinching gaze that seemed to look right through him. He clenched his jaw and just stared back, unwilling to be the one that cracked first.

"It's like this, John," Anna said at last, and Dean ignored the look Sam gave him. "I'm going to rip her fucking head off and I'm inviting you to come watch. You in?"

Her lips twisted in a cold grin and she moved at last, pulling a large silver case from under the spare bed plopping it with a thud onto the table.

"Good. I'll see you tomorrow."

She closed the phone and tossed it behind her to land on the bed. Sam stood to move out of her way and started carefully clearing off a corner of the spare bed.

"Who was that?" He asked, sitting down.

"John Genchy," she said without turning around. She opened the case and pulled several small plastic baggies from a box and began scraping the dirt from under each nail into its own bag, labeling them. "He's a tracker. He can help. He'll be here tomorrow."

Anna finished with her task and closed the case, then turned to face the brothers, leaning back against the table.

"What do we do while we wait?" Dean spoke up.

Anna's eyes locked with his for a moment before she pushed off the table and crossed to her duffel, pulling out some clean clothes.

"Well," she said after a moment, turning to face them once more with a large bottle of Jack in one hand. "I vote for food, booze and bad porn. But I'm gonna take a shower first."

She tossed the bottle to Sam and headed off toward the bathroom. Dean watched her movements and observed how stiff her motions were, her discomfort plain to see. He wasn't ready to grovel, but they had to have this out before she could get away from him. He wasn't going to be held responsible for having been fooled. He threw his brother a "look" and Sam, thankfully, got the message.

"I'm going to go get some food," he stated, setting down the bottle and heading toward the door. "Burgers and fries good? Good."

He was out the door before Anna could react and Dean took advantage of her hesitation.

"I wont apologize for something I didn't do."

Anna spun to face him and Dean found himself wishing again that he knew how to read her. Her eyes roamed his face, his body, and Dean tamped down his physical reaction and tried to focus on being angry at her for being mad at him. After what felt like forever, she turned away to the sink counter and began to remove what little jewelry she wore, toeing her boots off before bending over to pull them off. Dean blew out a frustrated breath and rubbed a hand across his face, leaving it spread across his mouth. He tried to be mad, but the emptiness inside him just kept growing.

"You don't have anything to apologize for."

Dean's head shot up and he met her eyes in the mirror.

"I owe you an apology," she said and bit her lip, looking down. After a moment she continued. "I was wrong to blame you. You didn't deserve what I said. I'm sorry."

Before he could respond Anna grabbed her clothes and mp3 player and escaped into the bathroom, locking the door behind her. He stared at the door and found that breathing was much easier than it had been a few minutes ago, the hollow place inside him gone. He frowned at the realization and flopped back once more. What sounded like Japanese techno came blaring through the bathroom door, followed by the sound of the shower, and the only words Dean could make out sounded like "Ichirin no hana," and he had no idea what the hell that meant. He didn't even know how she could stand that driving beat or the screeching. He'd take Janis Joplin any day.

Staring at the ceiling, looking for answers to questions he wasn't willing ask, Dean admitted to himself that things were not going well with Anna. Every step of this… whatever this was seemed to have an obstacle. He repeated to himself that this was why he avoided getting involved. The last time he had gotten serious, the relationship had pretty much crashed and burned. This one wasn't even on the tarmac, was probably still at the gate boarding passengers and already was falling apart. And now that he had ground that metaphor to dust, he accepted that he couldn't just walk away. He hadn't had another dream like the kitchen dream, but the cave had reared its head again a few times. As long as he kept having that dream…

The song changed to Nelly Furtado's "Maneater" and Dean couldn't stop the grin that spread across his face, absently bobbing his head in time to the music. He may not know Annie well, but her need for music when thinking was something he recognized as uniquely her. His thoughts began to stray into a list of pros and cons. She was great, a fearless hunter, and a major kicker of big bad monster ass. On the other hand, her fearlessness made her too lax about her personal safety, which had aged Dean about ten years in the short time he'd known her.

She was cute and funny, a good cook and a fan of food. She was adorable, not a word Dean often felt the urge to use, when she stumbled across the kitchen for that first cup of coffee in the morning. She was smart, bordering on brilliant Dean suspected, and became oblivious to the world when she disappeared into her research.

Unfortunately, she was stingy with information and didn't really work well in a team. Dean had the feeling she balked at authority, which meant he'd have his hands full with both her and Sam if they ever actually managed to track John Winchester down. Plus, her taste in music was questionable, to put it mildly. Although, as Kansas kicked in with "Carry on My Wayward Son," Dean wondered if there weren't some hope for her.

Dean cracked his knuckles and felt the heavy ring on his finger, the almost forgotten gift from his dad. Studying the runes etched into the silver band, his father's words came back to him.

Let Anna into your heart… Protect her…

Well, he'd screwed the pooch on that. Every time he turned around she had a new injury. Things were going too fast, they had to slow down.

The door opened and Sam walked in. at the same time the water shut off and the music was changed again, mid song, and after a few moments Flyleaf blasted. Dean sat up and smiled at Sam.

With that one smile Sam could tell that things were better and Sam offered up a prayer of thanks to any deity that cared to listen.

"Well," he said, setting the bags on top of the case still taking up the table. "I got food and more liquor. Let's see if she can keep up this time."

The music shut off and Anna stepped out of the bathroom, her towel slung around her neck, wet hair hanging down her back, a few strands plastered to her neck and cheeks, and a very short pair of yellow ducky shorts. Dean and Sam stared as she, shirt in hand, pulled a small mason jar from the collection of jars and bottles on the counter and turned to face them clutching the ends of the towel to cover herself.

She smiled sheepishly and walked over to stand between the two brothers.

"I need some help, please."