The Runt of the Litter

by Pie and the Winchesters

She wasn't supposed to happen, but that's the way things go. There was liquor, there was grief, there was a night of hiding in the arms of a stranger, and then there was a little girl. Anna is the little sister of Sam and Dean Winchester, younger by a whopping fifteen and nineteen years respectively. Each chapter is a story from her life.

108. Control Is a Precious Commodity

Control Is a Precious Commodity

Anna is eighteen

Swinging her car keys in circles on her index finger, Anna hums a Fall Out Boy song under her breath. The driver's door to her beautiful car is freezing cold against her back, but she doesn't mind. She's sat for too long in the car with the heater going full blast. The outside air and cold metal are refreshing.

"I'm sorry," she says when she hears the familiar footsteps off to her left. They're rhythmic, more so than most people's gaits would allow. "I couldn't leave it alone, Cas. You're freaking me out."

"You shouldn't be here," is the only answer she gets. It's serious, almost bleak.

Anna dares to look at her friend. His blue eyes are shrewd and stern. But she isn't scared of him, not even a little bit. "Neither should you," she answers with confidence. It's hard to summon, the assertive demeanor she has now. But she's getting more used to it as she gets older. She'll graduate high school soon, become a hunter. She has to stand at her full height and speak from her chest if she wants to get anywhere in this world. That much she's learned from growing up with an infamous surname. "In fact, I think I heard Dean specifically tell you to stay home and chill. So…"

"I am not Dean's charge."

With an eye roll, Anna scuffs the sole of her shoe against the pavement. "Cas, I'm worried about you," she admits freely. "You're gone, like, all the time. I don't even know what you're doing or where you are until you pop up in the bunker. You used to be around a lot more."

It's clear Castiel doesn't know what to do with this information. He clears his throat and looks at something over Anna's shoulder. "There are reparations to be made," he reminds her. He's not being harsh with her, but there is a darkness re-entering his eyes. It's unfortunate how common it is for Cas to look like that. "Heaven is far from recovered. Even recently, with Lucifer, I've done them more harm. It's my mess to clean up."

"So, is that where you go?" Anna pushes, twirling her keys a couple more times around her finger. They jingle against one another, and the sound seems to bother Cas. He winces. "Heaven? Cause, dude, if you'd ask us for help-"

"This is not a job for human beings, Anna." Cas is stern now, a manner that never suited him and still doesn't. She can see in his face that he's running out of patience. Fast. He reaches toward her, and Anna immediately knows what he's going to try.

"Uh-uh," she says and dodges his hand. Maybe he wasn't expecting the action, because he doesn't follow her. "I'm not going home until you do, Cas," Anna says with finality. "Especially not without my car. So you might as well tell me what's going on here."

"You Winchesters, you're all very stubborn," Cas observes, looking almost petulant. At Anna's wide grin, he sighs. That's a win in Anna's book. "I'm working a case." His tone is a mimicry of the way her brothers speak in the field. Confident, hardened, stand-offish in a way that makes them safer. Anna recognizes it in a heartbeat. Cas is good at being distant, cold even. But it's always been strange to see him with his shoulders set back. This confidence is startling. "I found evidence of demonic omens. With Lucifer freed by my own hand, it is my obligation to learn whatever I can about his plans. He no longer resides in Hell, but that doesn't mean nobody knows where he's gone. We can still find him."

Anna frowns thoughtfully at that. "Wait, so, do we know what kind of demon this is? Were the omens especially strong? Cause I'm down to hunt a demon, Cas, but unless it's higher in the ranks, I don't think it's gonna have much to tell about Lucifer."

She thinks for a second how cool it would be if they did manage to scrounge something up about the devil. She'd love to take an angel blade to that bastard for what he's done to Sam alone. Add to that his sins against Cas, against her when she was just a kid… Anna has a bit of a grudge, and she's not the only one. Not by a long shot.

"I don't know yet," Cas confesses. "I plan to find out more once I reach Kansas City. But as Sam said yesterday, 'no leads are bad leads.' Kansas City is our only lead."

"Kansas City," Anna croons with a grin. Her brain fills to the brim with memories. That town is something special, and she's only been there once or twice. "Dude, that's perfect. We can bring back barbecue, Dean'll forgive us ten times faster."

Castiel frowns, one eyebrow slightly higher than the other. But he doesn't ask what she means by that. Instead he just tells her firmly, "I have to do this alone, Anna."

"Have to?" Anna challenges, following Cas as he walks around the back of her car and heads for a beat up Nissan on the other end of the lot. Did he steal that thing? She knows damn well Dean would never lay a hand on a car like that. Not even to fix it up for Cas. "Or feel like you should?" She lowers her voice as they stop beside Castiel's ride. The last thing they need is for someone to overhear them talking about Satan in casual conversation. "I know you feel guilty for Lucifer getting out," she says gently. She loves being nearly eighteen, because she gets to say her piece, and sometimes people actually listen. "But honestly, shit's so complicated, I don't think it's fair to put the blame all on you. I don't care that you said yes. You didn't see any other choice."

Castiel is quiet for a moment. "Go home," he requests one more time, a little weaker.

Anna sighs and crosses her arms over her chest. "If you want to take this stuff on, the least I can do is make sure you don't go alone."

"I can't be responsible for-"

"Shut up," Anna snaps, a little more blunt than she intended to be. She rolls her eyes at Cas and says shortly, "I'm not ten years old, man. I can take care of myself. You're not responsible for me, no more than you would be for Sam or Dean. Okay?"

"That isn't true," Cas argues. Anna knows, on some level, that he's right. "You are very young. You lack the decades of experience Sam and Dean have."

"Doesn't mean I can't take care of myself, Cas." She tries not to bristle too much at his treatment of her. "I'll follow you either way, so, you know. Get in my car if you'd rather ride in style. Otherwise, I'll see you in Kansas City." She's careful not to look over her shoulder as she strides back across the parking lot. Looking confident is often the key to convincing people that you're right.

Settling in the driver's seat, Anna turns the key and plugs her phone into the USB. She's just decided on a playlist when the passenger door opens, letting in a cold rush of air. Castiel climbs awkwardly into the seat, his knees practically against his chest. He's shorter than both her brothers, which makes it easy for Anna to forget that the guy is still over six feet tall. She reaches over and grabs the bar under the seat to help him move it backwards.

The extra leg room makes Cas look a little more comfortable. But he still sits with perfect posture, and his shoulders hold a lot of tension.

"Dude," Anna snickers, hoping to lighten the mood. She doubts it'll work, though. Cas is strange in that he doesn't ever seem to really be calm. He defaults to seriousness. Anna gets it. She used to be like that, at fifteen, sixteen, seventeen. Eighteen and she still can be sometimes, when her PTSD rears up too strong or the depression starts to creep back in. But she's working on it. And she wishes Cas could smile every once in a while. "You look like you're riding shotgun with your friend's dad." She puts the car in reverse and buckles her seatbelt, waiting for Cas to do the same.

"My only friends are Winchesters," Castiel informs her seriously… which is him saying that all his friends' fathers are dead.

"Okay then," Anna murmurs and backs carefully out of her parking spot. That's a point for Cas.

As she turns onto the main road, she turns the music up loudly enough that nobody will feel the need to talk. Not so loud, though, that Cas will be uncomfortable. Dean has no problem busting everyone's eardrums, but Anna doesn't like to do that unless she knows for sure everyone in her car likes the song that she has playing.

She glances sideways at Cas once they get on the interstate, hoping to see him relaxed against the seatback. But his spine is still ramrod straight. What an exciting journey they're in for. Good thing it's only gonna be four freaking hours.

Screw courtesy– Anna turns the music up a little louder. Cas is crappy company, but Patrick Stump is a whole lot better. Sophomore Slump breathes life into the car.

Maybe Cas knows she's given up on conversation and cheerfulness. Or maybe he actually does like Fall Out Boy. Whatever the reason, he finally seems to relax.

()()()

Anna has only been to Kansas City once or twice in all her time on the road. She remembers only little things. But the memories are laced with a pleasant nostalgia. Barbecue, a woman's kind voice. She thinks the first time they came here they must have stayed with a family friend, probably a hunter. She would only have been about seven, because she remembers that Sam was there and that their father was still alive.

Now, with Cas, she steps out of her car and makes her way to the sidewalk. This town is known for barbecue and jazz music, It's December, not really barbecue season, but the tangy sweet smell of it reaches her nose anyway. There's a restaurant on every corner that doesn't give a crap about the season.

The scents take her back.

The second time she came to Kansas City, Anna was thirteen. Sam was hallucinating the devil, Dean was drinking himself into a stupor at least once a week, and Anna was having frequent panic attacks that she didn't know were panic attacks. But Kansas City was their break, just a weekend, at Bobby's insistence. Anna remembers one more time the barbecue, the precious rarities that were her brothers' smiles, and a distinct calmness that for once won over the ever present fear in her young body.

It's strange, really. Anna doesn't remember most of her childhood unless she concentrates. If you tell her a specific year or town or case, she can think about it and come up with a few memories. Some of them are blurry, some surprisingly vivid. But scents… they carry her weightlessly across time. When she closes her eyes and breathes deeply, it's like she's thirteen again. She feels the calm, sees the smiles, knows nothing more than she knew at that age.

"Where are we going?" Cas asks from behind her, snapping Anna back to the present.

She looks over her shoulder at him and shoves her car keys in her pocket with one hand, uses the other to wave him forward. "You can't come to Kansas City and not eat barbecue, Cas. It's, like, the law or something."

"I'm not aware of any such legislation." After so long spent with the Winchesters, though, Cas is getting better at catching on. As he joins Anna on the sidewalk he says, "I assume you mean it is a social expectation. Like handshakes."

Anna smiles amicably at her friend and leads the way toward the restaurant. "I mean, I was mostly kidding. And handshakes are a little more ingrained in-" Nevermind. She cuts herself off and holds the door for Cas, and he ducks into the restaurant. She steps inside behind him, feeling the warm air embrace her. "Damn, it smells good in here," she says.

It's strange eating out someplace that isn't a diner. The joint is laid out differently than what she's used to. It makes Anna itch just a bit. She scans the place visually as they walk through, finding only the one entrance they came through. But there is most likely an emergency exit door in the kitchen as well.

The hostess leads them to a square table in the middle of the bustling restaurant, gives them each a menu, and promises to return in a minute.

"Think they have wifi?" Anna asks, already pulling out her phone. She glances around, trying to find a sign with a guest password on it. "My service is so crappy here. Ugh."

She turns data off and back on, hoping to get more than one unreliable bar. She hopes the boys haven't tried texting or calling. They're gonna be pissed if they find out what she and Cas are up to. But Anna isn't even sure there's a case here at all. This might just be a joyride with her angel friend. No reason to raise suspicion if nothing comes of this anyway. She'd be answering Sam and Dean's texts just like normal– fashionably late but not actually late.

"So, omens," Anna thinks aloud, tapping on random unlocked wifi networks. Fuck it. She hacks the employee wifi for the restaurant. It's embarrassingly easy. And it isn't like she's without a good VPN. Thank God Sam taught her this crap. She opens an internet browser and starts surfing Kansas City news reports for the past week.

"Electrical storms. Cattle mutilations," Cas lists. The waitress returns just in time to catch his last sentence.

She has a concerned expression on her face as she looks between Anna and Castiel. "Sorry to interrupt," she hesitates. "Um- Can I get you guys something to drink?"

Anna orders iced coffee, and Cas orders water because he's just that creative. "Hey, can we just have a couple pulled pork sandwiches and fries?" Anna requests. No reason looking over the menu and overthinking it.

"Yeah, of course," the woman says. Her eyes linger on Anna's for an extra moment before she steps away from the table.

Anna has to smile as the waitress leaves. "Well, she thinks you're a grade A creep."

Cas looks utterly baffled. "I don't understand."

"Well, you're an old dude sitting with a teenager, and you're talking about mutilated cows. So… she probably thinks you're a wackjob, a cradle snatcher, or both." Without further explanation, Anna looks at her phone screen once more. "I mean, all I'm getting from this stuff is that the omens cover the entire perimeter of the city. Which, honestly, is kinda sus. Or convenient. Both, maybe."

"It is unusual," Cas agrees. "What's our next move?"

Anna smirks slightly at her phone. He sounds weirdly like Dean, and it's almost charming. "I don't know. I mean, we have to narrow down the radius. It's not like we can search an entire city."

"Demons seek to create death and chaos."

For a second, the statement seems a bit random to Anna. Then it clicks. "Violent crime," she murmurs and types fervently in the search bar. "Okay…" The articles are all pretty standard. A couple muggings on opposite ends of the city. Many drug-related skirmishes. "Nothing's sticking out," she admits.

At her friend's silence, Anna looks up. He appears downtrodden, a sour but thoughtful expression on his face.

"Doesn't mean it's a bust," Anna encourages. "I mean, those omens are undeniable. Something's been here, even if it's gone. That's a start." She thinks for a minute. "Hey, Cas, I think I got an idea."

"What is it?" Cas asks, head jerking up. His eyes are piercing. She's not used to hunting with him yet. It's weird to see him acting like a hunter. Or like a soldier. Whatever he's being.

"Well, I was thinking. If these guys are here just to let loose, maybe we should check out the kind of places they would frequent. You know, crazy nightclubs, poor neighborhoods. Places they'd get drugs or get away with murder." Not that demons are ever really too concerned with the American justice system. Black smoke doesn't respond quite the same way to handcuffs as a human body.

"Anna, what you're suggesting is an arduous search of a very large town."

"Well, we can start with cutting out all the strictly residential areas," Anna suggests. She's doing her best to ignore Castiel's pessimism. But pessimism is her default setting a lot of the time too, so it's getting increasingly difficult to stay positive. She sighs. "I guess the move is to look at ODs and drug-related crime patterns throughout the city. We can find the most popular clubs that way. Or at least the type demons would seek out."

Castiel is frowning again.

"What?" Anna asks, finally letting her own impatience seep into her voice. "You're giving me nothing here, Cas."

Cas' expression doesn't change. After another few seconds, he speaks slowly, thoughtfully. "I would like to concur with Sam and Dean. But that's hardly an option."

Anna tries her best not to bristle at that comment. But she fails. Tensely, she puts her phone in sleep mode and shakes her head at nothing in particular. Their waitress chooses this precise moment to return with their drinks. So, Anna plasters on the fakest smile she's ever worn and says, "Thank you."

It takes another five minutes of awkward silence before Cas agrees with Anna's plan.

Anna's smile is still fake, but she feels some tension unknotting in her gut. If Sam was here, he'd be nudging her, giving her a silent reminder not to take Cas' actions so personally. But he's not, and Anna's still irritated.

It's not Cas' fault, really. It's just Anna's life in general. She's the kid. The runt. The baby. And a bastard child on top of it. The reality has followed her through her entire life. But she still keeps hoping she'll outrun it someday.

"Let me check concert venues and sporting events," she says quietly. She's careful not to be terse with Cas. But she's not putting up an overly cheery front anymore. No point if it's going to be so ill-received. Stupid mask takes so much energy too. "Not sure they'd hit something too big if they're low-level. But we might as well check."

The smell of barbecue in her nose will bring new associations a year from now. It will remind her of Cas' worried wrinkles and the hunt for Lucifer. She hopes the good memories outweigh the ones she's making now.

()()()

Another bust. Anna feels discouraged, and she can tell Cas is feeling the same. He's been getting quieter and quieter with every failed search. This one seems to have shut him up completely.

Anna sighs and pulls her phone out of her pocket. It's getting dark out, and she still hasn't gotten any service. She's counting on the boys staying busy with their own case. "I'm totally screwed," she declares anyway.

"Is it Sam, or Dean?"

The query makes Anna raise one eyebrow. Then it drops back down, "Oh, it's just… I don't have service. Still. I guess it's the carrier. I don't even know who we have, straight up. We switch phones so friggin often." She realizes she's rambling and bites her lip to shut herself up.

"We should return to the bunker. Sam and Dean might have information on Lucifer. They were following omens too."

"Cas, I…" Anna doesn't want to go home. But she doesn't actually have any real argument to use at the moment. "Yeah," she finally says. "Yeah, fine, we can go back. But I don't want to drive in the dark. And it's prime time for a lot of the other dives we bookmarked. So, we might as well hit a couple more, right?"

"Do you believe the hunt is still worthwhile?" Cas asks.

Anna can't tell if the question is honest, or rhetorical. It's the kind of thing Dean would ask her like a pop quiz. But Castiel isn't Dean. Far from. So, she goes for the Hail Mary and assumes he's being earnest.

She replies, "I don't really know. I mean, I'd think we'd have found something by now. But it's a big city. And it's not like we started with anything concrete. We could be on the wrong side of town."

Cas is quiet. But Anna knows he's not ignoring her. More likely he's just being pensive. Cas spends most of his time in his head. At least he has so far during their trip. Maybe it's the guilt making him act so withdrawn.

"We can book a room now," Anna offers, "if you want." She slows her gait and looks over at Cas, holding her phone tightly in her pocket. She's not gonna miss if it vibrates.

Castiel's mouth is partly open, ready to give her a yes or no. But he's interrupted before he starts speaking.

Someone's screaming. And they're close.

Anna's body responds before her mind understands what's happening. She sees the dark outline of the alleyway. The stream of light from the street lamps ends abruptly at the edge of an overflowing dumpster. The contrast is so sharp, it looks almost like a painted line separates the alley from the rest of the world.

Breathing evenly but hard, Anna takes a corner fast. This is where the scream came from– She's sure of it. She has her gun out, though she didn't draw it consciously. Good thing there are no cops around. Last thing she needs is to get arrested in a city she's not supposed to be in at all. Dean would kill her. Sam would kill her.

She swivels one way, then the other, gun held readily in steady hands. Her aim doesn't waver, but there's nothing in the crosshairs. She lets her arms drop a couple inches, just enough to get a clear look at the whole of what's ahead. She can't see all that far, admittedly. It's too dark. She's quick to pull her phone out of her pocket and get the flashlight turned on.

Things are so quiet. She even lost Cas somehow on the run here. Which… that's not good.

She creeps forward. Her spine is crawling with dread. Something's not right.

"H-help," a feminine voice cries.

Anna's flashlight dips toward the ground, and she freezes. "Oh my god," she breathes and drops to one knee beside a woman with brown skin and short hair. "Are you-" She doesn't finish asking the stupid question. This woman is covered in blood. "Where are you hurt?" she asks. She has to put her weapon down to dial the emergency number.

And the mistake costs her everything.

Because the woman before her stops crying and starts laughing. Her eyes are black when Anna finds them again.

Anna is hit by a memory so forceful it disorients her more than the demon's empty eyes.

"What's the matter, baby girl? Roofies didn't agree with you?"

Then she can't breathe. Something's suffocating her, forcing its way down her throat, blocking her airway. It's in her chest, her head, her fucking kidneys.

The alley is desolate. But Anna's not alone.

()()()

Anna watches with dazed fascination as her fingers wrap around her phone. The light spitting out from underneath her phone's camera lens is weak and hued blue. It barely makes a dent in the overwhelming darkness of the alley.

It's something like dissociation. More intense, though, and impossible to break. There's a firm wall where dissociation leaves a fuzzy film. Instead of static, it's fucking brick.

And it's strange. So strange and unnatural, the second presence in her own body– hell, in her own head, her brain, her thoughts. God, her mother died like this. It would probably be karma for Anna to go the same way.

There's a sick osmotic quality to the way the demon in her head can breach the wall it's put up. Because Anna can't get a grip on the damn demon. She can't even think clearly enough to consider breaking down the barrier. But the demon is flipping through her every thought and memory like a friggin skin mag.

It's… Well, it's violating.

She can't keep up. She's in her car in what seems like seconds. The key is turning– or she's turning it– and the radio is refusing to cooperate.

"My bad." Anna would shudder if she had the capacity. That's her voice. But it doesn't belong to her.

Something loud starts to play through the car speakers, something Anna doesn't recognize. It's rhythm is bright, and the notes seem to pop. It's not a genre Anna would play in her car. It's not something she's ever listened to, not even at Kate or Ethan's houses.

But she's singing along. She feels the words in her throat. The vibration from her own vocal chords is rattling.

()()()

They let Anna pass.

Cas is breathing heavily, standing over the corpses of three demons with a bloody angel blade in his right hand. And he's focused entirely on this fact: They let Anna pass.

Three demons, and they all waited for Anna to run by before they jumped Castiel.

He knows before he even catches his breath that this was a calculated attack. He doesn't waste another second running toward the alley Anna disappeared into a few minutes ago. He's sure, though, that he'll be too late. It took too long to fight those demons off.

Whatever they wanted with Anna, they've surely already-

The alley is empty.

Anna's not lying there dead, which is a mercy in itself.

But she's not anywhere in sight either, which is quite the opposite of mercy.

He looks around with his heart racing. "Anna," he calls. The low octave of his voice doesn't make it sound any bigger when it's being swallowed by so much empty space.

It's the corpse of a young woman coated in blood that tells him for sure. This whole thing was a trap.

His phone rings, effectively fragmenting the thin veil of silence around him. Cas often forgets he's carrying the device on him until it comes to life. He should have checked earlier whether he could get service. Anna was struggling with it as he recalls. He wonders now if that was the work of the demons.

"Hello," he answers stoically. He's expecting Dean to answer, maybe Sam. He's surprised to hear Mary Winchester's voice instead.

"Castiel?" she asks mildly. "You're not at the bunker."

"No," Cas confirms quietly. He feels the shame beginning to spread through his abdomen into his chest and up to his face. Anna is too young for this. He should have protected her. He failed. He vows internally to make it right. But it's a disheartening feeling, making yet another promise to himself. If he'd quit breaking everything– everyone– that mattered, maybe he wouldn't have to make such promises.

"Is something wrong?"

It's a marvel, really, the way the Winchesters can pick up on feelings without his admitting they're there.

"Anna's not here either," Mary says as if it's a profound realization. "Something happened."

"I'm going to get her back."

Mary's silence is deafening for all of ten seconds. "Was she taken? Is she hurt? Do Sam and Dean know?"

Cas swallows and closes his eyes. These are all questions he does not want to think about, let alone answer aloud. But he has to think about them, and he has to answer them. "We were looking into a case. I suspected there were demons in Kansas City. There are. I believe they have Anna."

"What do you know so far?" Mary asks with urgency.

"Not enough," Cas retorts. "We were separated. I need to find her. If they take her out of the city, it will be much harder to track her down. Please, Mary, tell Sam and Dean for me. I know I made a grave mistake. But I can't afford the time it would take to explain things to them."

He's a coward, and he knows it. But he's being honest, all the same. As much as he wants to escape Dean's wrath and Sam's fear, the biggest reason he's avoiding them is because he wants to escape Anna's death even more.

"Is she hurt, Cas?"

Mary's question is terrifying, because he doesn't know how to answer it. "I don't think so."

"So you don't know."

Castiel is quiet. He can't deny what she's said.

"I'll call Dean. But the minute you find something– anything– you let me know."

Cas gives his word and hits the red button on his phone screen. The pressure is on.

()()()

Dean taps his fingers absently in time with the music, checking his mirrors without having to even think about it. His window is open the barest centimeter, letting in a refreshingly cool taste of the outside air.

Sam's out like a light in the passenger seat, temple resting against the window.

It's all familiar and calm. There's a reason this car is still their home, even after three years in the bunker.

The hum of the car's tires and purr of her engine are overshadowed by the sudden pitched ringing of Dean's phone. He quickly pulls it from his jacket pocket and answers. Mission success– Sammy's still sleeping.

"Hey," he says. He's got the phone tucked between his ear and his shoulder. He's pretty sure this isn't technically legal– talking on the phone while driving– but the roads are empty, and he's a good fuckin' driver.

"Dean."

"Mom?" His confusion is obvious. Mom called less than an hour ago. He told her he and Sam were on their way home. She said she was in Kansas and planning on coming by the bunker. He said they would be home by morning. She said okay. "Something wrong?"

"It's Anna."

That was so not what he wanted to hear. "What the hell are you talkin' about? Something's wrong with Anna?"

Mom's voice is calm, but he can hear the urgency in it as she explains. "The bunker was empty when I got here a few minutes ago. I called Castiel. Apparently he and Anna went to Kansas City."

"Kansas-" Dean takes a deep breath to keep from yelling. Mom isn't the object of his anger. And there's gotta be something serious going on for her to be telling him this at all. "She was supposed to be at school. What's she doing in Missouri? For that matter, what's Cas doin' in Missouri?"

Mom is quick to say, "They were hunting. Demons, apparently."

Dean knows just based on that one line that the shit is about to hit the fan. He smacks Sam in the arm with the back of his hand, lets his brother start to wake up as he listens to Mom.

"Sounds like Cas and Anna got separated. It must have just happened, because he was still breathing heavy."

Oh, Dean did not like that information. She spoke to Cas. He and Anna were separated. She only spoke to Cas. "Don't tell me," he pleads.

"She's missing, Dean."

Sam's sitting up now, coming at him with a groggy, "What's wrong?"

Dean demands, "How far are we from Kansas City?"

Sam has his phone out and is typing. "Few hours," he replies.

"Dean?" Mary says through the phone.

"She hurt?" he demands of his mother.

"Cas couldn't say for sure," Mom admits. At least she's giving it to him straight.

"We'll meet you there," Dean says and hangs up.

"Dean, what's goin' on?" Sam asks, this time more commanding.

Dean shakes his head. "Take a guess."

Sam's quiet for a second. But he's spot on when he does answer. "Anna's in trouble, huh?"

"Oh yeah," Dean says, tossing his phone to the seat now that he's finished talking to Mom. "Kid's in it deep this time. See what you can find for demonic omens in Kansas City. She and Cas were chasing 'em apparently."

Sam's got a hotspot set and his laptop booted up in no time. "Electrical storms all around the city," he says. "Mostly on the outskirts. He scrolls through a few more search results. "Yeah. Cattle mutilations, the whole shebang. No wonder Cas pinged it. It's ground zero for demonic activity. At least in the midwestern states."

"Dammit," Dean grimaces. "See what else you can find."

But Sam's way ahead of him. "Dean, this is weird."

"Define weird," Dean says tersely.

Sam is clearly worried when he explains, "There's nothing."

"Nothing?"

"Nothing," Sam repeats. "No violent deaths beyond one drug deal gone bad. Only violent crime is a couple muggings almost a week ago. A couple other drug busts. I can't even find any car accidents in the system. If anything the place is too clean."

"Shit," Dean mutters. This is even worse. He'd have honestly preferred Sam tell him the place is crawling with crime and chaos. Because a clean city with definite signs of demonic activity… that's a strategy of some kind. And if he or Sam had been there, they would have seen it. "It was a trap."

Sam is still and quiet. "Dean," he says softly. "Do you think…?"

Dean wishes he didn't know what his brother was asking. But he understands Sam's half-finished question perfectly. Do you think this has something to do with Lucifer? "I don't know, Sam," he snaps, trying not to be too harsh. "But Cas must have thought so."

"Yeah, you're right. He wouldn't have gone chasing anything he didn't think was related."

Sam still hasn't said Lucifer's name, and the fact doesn't escape Dean. "I'm gonna kill that frickin' angel."

Sam makes an exasperated noise. "It's not his fault, Dean. You know damn well he wouldn't put Anna in harm's way. Not on purpose."

"I don't give a damn about his intentions, Sam. She's a kid, she should be home right now. She should've gone to school today."

"She's also stubborn."

Dean doesn't have anything to say to that. He's pissed at Anna too. Or he will be, once he stops imagining all the ways she might have died. But Cas would still get the brunt of his anger.

()()()

Castiel is not a hunter. He's an angel, first and foremost. He doesn't track demons, not the way the Winchesters do.

But he has no choice now. He has to rely on what little he does know, and what he knows is technology. Humans have made great advancements, and Sam has shown him how to make use of them. He hacks the city's traffic cameras, though it takes a longer time than he would like.

Anna's car is distinctive, and he's beyond grateful for that fact now. He sees her pull into a gas station at the edge of the city. The relief he feels is stuck within a sharp frame of responsibility and fear. If he can't save Anna, he'll have to live with that for millennia. Except, on second thought, he won't have to live with it at all. Dean will kill him before he has time to feel guilty.

But Sam and Dean? They would have to live with it. Castiel won't put them through it.

He's got so little power left, but he uses what he has to fly to the gas station, determined to get there before the demon makes it out of the city. He can sense the monstrous presence as soon as he lands. Anna's car is undamaged by a gas pump, but the mini mart is dark. Cas lets his angel blade drop into his hand and stalks carefully toward the door. Anna is here.

There's an eerie silence hanging in the air around him as he stalks purposefully toward the building. He's quiet, but not nearly as cautious as he knows he should be.

As soon as the door is open, he regrets walking in so readily.

"Really, Castiel?"

The blade at his throat is familiar, another angel blade. For a second, he doesn't understand how a demon could get their hands on one. But then he remembers who this demon is possessing, whose voice just taunted him.

"You come in here armed with a blade? Did you forget about my upgraded meat suit?"

"Who are you?" Cas demands. His voice is meant to sound dangerous, but he can't deny his nerves. There is no room to make mistakes with his friend's life on the line.

"I'm offended," the demon croons and shoves him off. He's amazed the blade doesn't knick him. "You don't recognize me? I'm Anna Winchester." She does a little spin, arms stretched out at her sides. "I grew up, too, didn't I, Castiel? You know, I was just a little girl when I met you. And you ruined everything. You tore my family apart." She bobs her eyebrows and amends, "What was left of it. Ended the world. What's it been now, four… five times?"

Cas is on guard but flicks his eyes to the side. It's hard to look at Anna, to see her mouth move around the callous words, and to convince himself she doesn't mean any of it. It isn't her, he knows that. He can see the true form of the demon that's possessing her. But he can also hear Anna's voice and see Anna's face. And it's hard to ignore that.

"That was hardly my fault," he says, though he doesn't believe that. He'll never believe that. He followed orders blindly for too long, and too many people paid the price for it. Not the least of them being Anna Winchester and her brothers.

"Oh please," Anna snaps at him. She twirls the angel blade in her hand expertly, looking murderously at Cas over it. "You never cared about me or my family. You broke Sam's head when he got back from Hell. You nearly killed all of us when you opened up purgatory. But you know, it's funny, she- I mean," the demon gives a cursory smile, "I don't care so much about your shitty choices." She starts towards him, her steps calculated. "I forgave you for them, sweet, stupid baby that I am." She snarls, and it looks so wrong, so inhuman, on a face Cas always saw as so innocent. "What I'm still torn up about is that you abandoned me. And my family. Over and over again. You disappeared. Just like everybody else. Nobody ever stayed for me." By the end of her monologue, she's whispering, and the pain she's mimicking sounds too real to ignore.

"Stop," Castiel demands finally. And it isn't pitiful, isn't a plea. It's angry, fed up. He isn't going to waste anymore time listening to a demon impersonate his friend. "Just stop. Whatever you want, it has nothing to do with Anna Winchester. Let her go." His anger is intense, protective, the kind of thing he never used to feel before he met the Winchesters.

Anna's laughter is off-kilter. "Why would I do that?"

"Because," Castiel says, half-regretting his next words before he even speaks them. "I'll go with you, and I will let you possess me. I won't fight you."

Anna laughs again, "Mhm. Yeah. Sure. You think I'm about to willingly give myself over to an angel? No, Castiel. I wouldn't possess the weakest angel on Earth. Let alone the one known for rebellion and deception. I don't trust you."

More words that hurt coming out of Anna's mouth. Cas focuses on coming up with a logical resolution. There isn't time to be hurt or angry right now. There might never be time for it. "I won't deceive you," he says and hopes it sounds sincere. "Make it a deal if you want to. I won't fight you."

Anna's sneakers are smeared with blood as she steps toward him, and Castiel realizes there would have been humans in here when she arrived. That demon has already killed at least one person with Anna's hands. "No, Castiel," Anna says in a timber that is both soft and mean. "I'm not a crossroads demon. And even if I were…" She steps closer, puts her mouth right by his ear so he can feel the heat of her breath, "You wouldn't be worth the trade."

It's probably meant to offend him, but it rings true to Castiel. He assumed the demon would refuse his offer. "Let her go," he repeats, turning his head toward Anna. There's no personal space, and it's awkward, the way he ends up looking at the freckles spattered on her cheek. She's so young, and his responsibility to her is starting to feel more like a form of strangulation. Not because it's too much, but because he's failing so miserably.

Dean would never fail this way. Sam would never fail this way.

"Now you're just boring me," the demon says, pulling away. "Even the loser behind the counter was more interesting than this." She smirked in that profoundly wrong way again and whispered secretively, "He screamed so pretty." Her mouth closes on a demonic smile that looks everything and nothing like Anna's own smile.

"You don't need her."

Anna's eyebrows pop up. "Oh, right. Men are arrogant." She rolls her eyes and steps in closer to Cas again, knowing he won't raise his own weapon to her. "Believe it or not, Castiel. You don't know what I do and do not need." She presses the tip of her blade to his nose and smiles up at him. "I do need the Winchester bitch. Of course, you would do, in a pinch. But-" Another underhanded smile, "Well, she's less of a risk. Besides," she said, flipping Anna's curls over her shoulder. "I like this meatsuit. It's cute. And flexible. I haven't felt this young in a long time. How old is she again? Twenty-one? I'm thinkin' maybe I'll have some fun before gettin' down to business."

"Anna is not a plaything," Castiel grits out, feeling the cool metal of Anna's knife as it caresses his cheek and moves slowly back to his throat. "She's a hunter, a Winchester. You may be one of the more pitiful hell spawn, but even you know what that means. You're not so stupid that that doesn't scare you."

Anna's eyes lose the tiniest bit of their glittering energy. For a moment, neither of them is speaking, neither of them making a move. They hold each other's eyes like trophies or pin-less grenades. Then Anna's turn black. "She isn't for me," the demon hisses. "She's a gift. For my Lord."

Castiel's eyes must go as cold with fear as his blood does, because Anna's laugh is boisterous and dirty.

"I'll give you something too," she says giddily. "A little goodbye present."

He's still trying to think of any possible way to prevent this demon from escaping with Anna's body. But all he can do is whisper, "Lucifer," in abject horror before the angel blade is buried to the hilt in his shoulder, and his entire body is burning with unnatural heat and pain. He doesn't hear anything, doesn't see anything for a minute or two. He just shouts in pain and waits out the initial wave of agony.

He doesn't know, at first, whether he's dying or not.

But then Cas opens his eyes, and the demon is gone, and the store is dark, and there's an unfamiliar human lying dead before a cooler of bottled water. It's a nightmare, he can almost convince himself. The world is wobbly and gray like the dreams he had when he lost his grace. But there's a sharpness to reality that isn't lost on him. And there's a blade in his shoulder sending out tides of pain to remind him just how alive he is.

This is bad.

()()()

Mary is in full hunter mode as she pulls up outside an inn at the edge of Kansas City. She doesn't see the Impala, so she knows the boys haven't made it yet. They'll be here any minute, though, she's sure. She slides out of the car and makes for the door quickly.

When she finds the room she's looking for, she gasps at the sight inside. "Castiel?" she questions, running forward to lean over him. There's blood, thick and wet, coating the angel's shoulder. Her heart is in her throat suddenly. "What happened?"

Castiel is breathing heavily, presumably from blood loss or whatever the angelic equivalent is. But he still dodges her hands when she reaches for the wound.

"I need to check it," she insisted gently.

But he was adamant. "I lost Anna," he informs with a grunt. "She's possessed by a demon."

"She's what?" Mary can't even begin to process this. Their rescue mission is suddenly so much more complicated. It's one thing to extract somebody from a demonic hideout. It's another job altogether to capture a demon alive and without harming their host, then to exorcize that demon, again without hurting the host.

"She's possessed," Cas repeats needlessly. He has his good hand pressed to his bad shoulder, and there's a fine sheen of sweat along his pale forehead. "I followed her trail to a gas station on the outskirts of town. She was waiting for me."

Mary closes her eyes in her worry. But she doesn't have time to react further, because the door swings open behind her, hitting the wall with force. She's on her feet in a moment, but she relaxes when she sees who it is. "Dean," she sighs.

He doesn't even bother to greet her, just surges over toward Cas, already pointing a finger at him. "Where the hell is she?" he demands. He's irate, something Mary doesn't think she's actually seen in him before now.

And Sam, racing in behind him, looks more determined and worried than anything.

"I don't know," Castiel admits in response to Dean's question. "But she's possessed by a demon who plans on delivering her to Lucifer."

Sam goes white as a sheet, and Dean's eyes are wider and angrier than ever. "She's what?!"

Cas swallows, "I'm sorry, Dean. I caught up to her at the edge of the city, but the demon overpowered me. I couldn't exactly use my angel blade."

Dean's fuming, that much is easy to see. But Sam's the one who speaks next. "Are you okay, Cas?" he asks with fatigue drowning his every word.

"I'll be fine."

"What the fuck were you thinking?" Dean snaps.

"I'm sorry, Dean," Cas says, but he's nearly shouting and sounds like he's barely containing his own anger. "But she followed me out of Lebanon and refused to go home when I told her to."

Dean is having none of it. "She's a fucking kid, Cas. Of course she didn't just turn around and go home. That's why you drag her ass back to the bunker or, I don't know, maybe to school where she's supposed to be."

Castiel is quiet, "I thought-"

"No, you didn't," Dean yells over whatever else Cas had to say. "Anna had no clue what she was getting into here. She's got no experience hunting down anybody as powerful as Lucifer. But you? Cas, if you'd been thinking, you would've seen from the get-go that this was a trap. This whole damn thing was too clean. They lured you in, and if you'd had your head on straight, you woulda seen it and you wouldn't have taken our sister out here in the first place."

"You done?" Sam asks quietly from behind him.

"Oh, not nearly," Dean throws over his shoulder. "But the rest can wait. Right now, we got a stupid friggin kid to find. And she better be alive, so I can kill her."

()()()

Lucifer reclines on a red and gold loveseat, staring at the screen of a 96 inch TV. The horror movie he put on is so bland, despite the quality of the graphics. He does get a kick out of the women screaming. But mostly, he offers verbal criticism that no one will hear.

"Ended it too quickly," he says with a shake of his head. "Humans," he sighs and sips on a beer. "Always too eager. No impulse control." He wags a finger at the screen. "Bundy had the same problem."

Lucifer picks up the remote and flicks through the channels, looking for a gory news broadcast or something similar. It won't be anything like feeling the warmth of thick blood coating his own hands, but at least the news will tell of something real. These movies are pathetic. The human imagination is uninspired, but the human impulse is so much sweeter.

He lands on a documentary showing footage from warzones overseas. Not quite what he wanted, but delicious all the same. He smiles wickedly and takes a long drink of beer, snuggling comfortably into the couch cushions.

A knock at the door has his eyes flicking red with annoyance. "Go away," he calls over his shoulder, petulant like an angry thirteen-year-old.

"My liege, Lord Lucifer?"

Lucifer's smile returns, and he pauses the program on TV. "This better be good," he chuckles to himself as he struts toward the door. "Or someone's gonna die very slowly." He opens the door and leans lazily against the doorframe, looking with burning red eyes at the nervous little group of demons before him. "I didn't order room service."

"I know, My Lord," one brave mouse squeaks. "But we brought you a gift."

The two demons in front part, and one young woman emerges from behind them. Her eyes are smudged with dark eyeliner and her lashes bear a thick coat of mascara. Her lips are painted a brilliant shade of red. But she is still easy for Lucifer to recognize. Those eyes and that hair… they're hard to mistake.

He begins to smile, one eyebrow climbing toward his hairline. Then he stops, and his face morphs into a snarl. "Is this supposed to impress me?"

The demons, who all had been smiling proudly before, suddenly grow tense. The one possessing the girl shuffles her feet. "Well… My Lord, we brought you Anna Winchester. To do with as you please."

Lucifer narrows his eyes at her. "But you played with the merchandise." He clucks at her, "You naughty little rat."

"She is unharmed," the demon promises, her voice rising in panic. She backs subconsciously away from him, the other two demons staring nervously at her. Lucifer takes pleasure in their apparent fear. "I promise, Sir, we did not hurt her."

"Oh, you didn't cut her throat? Oh, well, let me bow before you," Lucifer snaps sarcastically. He begins to take a bow. But as he straightens again, he snaps his fingers with a dull expression on his face. Both the demons behind the Winchester girl scream in horror as their eyes glow orange. They fall to the ground, limp.

The last demon swallows hard and backs further into the hallway. "Sir, if you'll allow me to explain."

Lucifer smirks, folds his hands in front of his stomach, and says pleasantly, "Okay." He nods enthusiastically. "Explain away," he spreads his hands wide in front of himself.

The demon swallows again, looking left and right as if for an escape route. "Um, you see…" But nothing more is forthcoming. There really isn't anything she could say that would convince Lucifer to let her live. And he loves that she knows it.

"Excellent point," Lucifer nods with a feigned look of serious consideration. "But, then, counterpoint-" He points at the girl's stomach and slowly raises his finger, dragging the demon with it. "You brought a lot of attention my way," he says, voice darkening. "And I just was not in the mood to entertain."

The demon finally sails through the floor, rustling the carpet fibers and curtains on its way out.

"But, okay," Lucifer says with an eye roll and a reluctant smile. Anna Winchester hits her knees, choking on the floor in front of him. "Twist my arm!"

The Winchester girl tilts her head toward him, and he relishes the utter terror in her pretty green eyes. He's never realized it before, but she looks a lot like Sam. Especially on her hands and knees like this, frightened and trapped.

"Hello, Dorothy," he croons. He could crouch, but he likes how small she looks from this height. "I'm afraid you're not in Kansas anymore."

()()()

Anna is distantly aware of the movements of her body. But time moves simultaneously too fast and too slow, and it's impossible to keep track of where she is in a room, in a day, in the world. It's like she's been cut off from half the sensory input her body is getting. She feels just enough to remain constantly disoriented.

Her lips move, her voice crawls like vomit up her esophagus. There's loud music, hands all over her body, and the scent of weed, booze, and sweat. Then there's quiet, heavy breathing, conversations she can't understand. Her body craves rest, and she can feel the ache as it settles into each of her muscles and joints.

It's when the demon possessing her becomes paralyzed with fear that an onslaught of sensory input hits Anna. She can see the sun filtering in through red curtains, hear a familiar voice that sends shivers down her spine. The aches in her body are magnified, and the demon inside of her feels suddenly like a block of cement bearing down on all her organs.

As it lifts, it crushes every part of her it touches. But she's relieved when the weight finally is gone. The relief is just very short-lived.

Her jeans are torn at the knees, so she feels the carpet fibers burn her skin when she falls. Her heart is roaring in her ears, and she feels nauseous. Her arms shake with weakness as she struggles to hold herself up. Anna lifts her head toward the voice above her. She knows her fear is showing nakedly in her eyes.

"Hello, Dorothy," a smug voice croons. "I'm afraid you're not in Kansas anymore."

And Anna knows. She knows she is utterly screwed. If she doesn't die here, somebody else will die trying to save her. Because, though she can't remember the details of what led her here, she knows this man is Lucifer.

He grabs her by the arm and lifts her from the floor almost delicately. But his smile has disappeared, replaced by a look of abject hatred. "Have a seat," he invites, pulling out a gold and red chair.

It takes all of five minutes for Anna to be made entirely helpless once more. Again a prisoner, her arms are tied down, a gag shoved in her mouth, and her feet secured to the legs of the chair.

Lucifer is unknowingly giving her déjà vu as he goes through the contacts list in her phone. He's humming a tune that Anna doesn't recognize but that will surely haunt her for the rest of her life if she somehow gets out of this alive.

She wants more than anything to be home right now. She wants to curl into a ball in the bottom of the shower, fight her stupid curly hair until it looks halfway decent, and brush her own teeth. She needs some ounce of control, no matter how small. She needs her body to do one thing for her rather than for a servant of Hell.

"There he is!"

Anna flinches bodily at the sudden exclamation. She can feel her chest tightening with panic, and this is so not the time for a friggin anxiety attack or a flashback. She's fucking busy, and her brain is gonna have to deal. Of course, she knows peripherally that the human mind doesn't work that way.

"Sammy. My bunk buddy. My bestie," Lucifer chirps into the phone.

Anna closes her eyes and tries to breathe more evenly. Abaddon did this once. And it ended very badly.

Try as she might to convince herself that day was over, Anna couldn't calm down. That day was repeating itself. She made a stupid choice, and now she's paying for it. Her family is paying for it. Again. She's still that stupid kid she's spent the last three years trying to escape. It isn't just her body that betrays her. It's her heart, her brain, her very being.

It seems Anna is nothing but a collection of mistakes.

"How are you, Sam?" Lucifer asks in an overly sweet tone. "I was having a great day, thanks for asking. But then I got interrupted by some pesky little Hell bitches, and you'll never guess what one of them was wearing!"

The call is not on speakerphone, and Anna can't make out a single sound of Sam's reply with her heart pounding so loudly in her ears. She feels like she's going to vomit, which would be all around terrible considering the gag in her mouth and, you know, her general situation.

"She's a cute little prom dress, I can see why you miss her."

Anna's stomach turns harder at that.

"You know, Sam, if she was a little older– and if a part of me wasn't still stupid enough to be devoted to us– I'd have to give that body a spin."

Anna doesn't know if he's talking about possession or rape. Neither one seems a stretch. Neither one seems like a big deal to Lucifer. Both sound like the worst case scenario to Anna. She can't breathe at all, anymore, but at least the world is beginning to fade out. Her ears are buzzing, and her vision is growing fuzzy. She used to hold it together a lot better in these situations.

But Anna's tired. She's so broken for 18. If Lucifer's going to take anything from her body, she can only pray it's her life.

"Now, Persephone and I are enjoying an extended stay at the Hard Rock Hotel in Sioux City. I'd love for you to join us. But if you can't make it, I'll find a way to fill the time." He grins devilishly at Anna, and she understands dimly that he's making threats. "I think this could still be a very good day."

()()()

Sam paces just outside the gas station where Cas was hurt before. Dean, Mom, and Cas are gathered in a little group nearby, talking about possible plans. But Sam knows there's only one real option.

"Dean and I have to go in," he says boldly, stopping just behind his brother. Mom's face colors with indignance, but he cuts her off before she can argue with him. "There's no reason for you or Cas to get any more involved in this than you already are."

"Sam, no," Dean orders. "You're stayin' out of there. Mom and Cas are big kids, alright? They can handle themselves just fine."

"Cas is hurt," Sam points out angrily.

"I'm fine," Cas murmurs, though his remark goes unheard.

"Be reasonable," Dean pleads with his brother. "You know damn well that Lucifer's way too interested in you. You've got too much history. We're not riskin it unless we have to."

"We do have to," Sam snaps. He gestures indistinctly with his hands, emphatic and clearly edging toward panic. "He's got Anna, Dean. And the only one he'll trade her for is me."

Sam can see the anger build behind his brother's eyes. He watches Dean fight for control and catches it the moment his brother loses that fight. In the next second, Dean shoves him backwards. "We're not thinkin' about which one of dies today, Sam. We're makin' sure no one does. Think real answers or quit thinkin'."

"Dean-"

"Can it."

"Your brother's right, Sam," Mary adds cautiously. She touches his arm tenderly, and Sam wants to pull away but doesn't dare. "This isn't a hostage exchange. It's a rescue."

Sam shakes his head in exasperation, but it's clear his family won't give in on this. He caves but still has to say, "Fine. But I'm still going in. For Anna."

Dean looks unhappy, but there's understanding in his face now too. "Okay," he agrees reluctantly. "But we need a real plan before we get back on the road. He points at Cas, "You up for this?"

Sam looks at the blood coating Cas' trenchcoat. Their friend is still weak and pale, but the wound itself started healing even before Sam and Dean reached the city. "You don't look so hot, Cas."

"I'll be fine," Cas promises, puffing up a bit at the implication that he wouldn't.

"Cas and I are our best shot at a surprise attack," Mary says suddenly. "You boys are reckless when it comes to Anna. Lucifer knows that. And Sam, he knows you're reckless when he gets involved. He'll expect you boys to come in hot. So that's what you do."

"And, what, you and Cas charge in from behind?" Dean's hesitation is obvious, and Sam is glad he voiced it for the both of them.

Mary looks thoughtful for a second. "How many hunters could you get to meet us in Sioux City? Who would fight for your sister?"

Sam looks at Dean, and they've both got only a few names in mind. "Call Jody," Dean tells him. "I'll try Donna."

()()()

They're only a couple minutes away from the hotel where Lucifer is holding their sister, and both boys feel it like it's tainting the air they breathe.

They climb out of the car three hours after leaving Kansas City, and all are glad to see Jody and Donna's cars already in the parking lot.

Sioux City should have been a four hour drive from Kansas City and only an hour and a half from Sioux Falls. Dean broke nearly every traffic law getting here, but the others still arrived first. Donna was visiting Jody and the girls, which was a happy coincidence considering Stillwater would have been an extra three hours of driving for her.

Claire shoots of the end of one of the beds inside when everyone walks in. Dean's almost surprised at how worried she looks. She and Anna hate each other so much it's easy to forget that they also love each other. "What's the plan?" she asks eagerly.

Dean pulls his jacket off and tosses it onto the table nearby. "They're at the Hard Rock Hotel, couple minutes down the street."

"We passed it on the way in," Jody confirms. "What are we walking into, Dean?"

Instead of answering, Dean gives Cas a stony look. He's played nice so far, but when they have Anna back safe and sound, he's still planning to kick that angel's ass. He doesn't care what Sam has to say about it– Cas knows how dangerous Lucifer is just as well as he knows how impulsive Anna is. He put the Rugrat in danger, and Dean is never going to let anyone get away with that. Friend, family, or sworn enemy.

Castiel is all business. He treks slowly toward the table so he can sit down. Dean feels a twinge of sympathy. He's taken a knife to the shoulder before. Cas is working hard through some serious pain to make this right.

"I brought Anna with me to Kansas City," he admits sheepishly. "I saw signs of a demonic presence. I hoped to find something about Lucifer, and Anna offered to help. I know now I should have turned her down."

"Damn straight you should've turned her down," Dean grumbles. "City was crawling with omens, but there wasn't a single damn corpse or assault vic in the entire town."

"Sounds like a red flag," Donna says with a serious nod. "Where'd you start lookin?"

"I was foolish," Cas confesses. "I didn't realize we were walking into a trap. We cased several 'joints' as you call them. But we couldn't find anything. They lured us with a woman who was injured. Anna ran to help her, and the demons let her pass. But they stopped me. It took too long to fight them off. By the time I got to the alley…"

"Anna was gone," Claire deduces quietly. She picks at the cuffs of her sleeves, frowning thoughtfully.

"What else do we know?" Jody asks.

"She was possessed," Sam says. "By a demon. Cas caught up with her at a fill-up station at the edge of the city."

"I was unable to apprehend her."

"Makes sense," Claire tells Cas with a soft smile. "She was possessed. You'd have to trap and exorcize her. Not like you had the resources for that."

"No, I was grossly unprepared."

"Long story short, the demons took our sister straight to the fuckin' Devil," Dean snaps.

"We'll get her back," Jody soothes, strong even in her sympathy. "I guess you and Sam will be going in first. I can get a floor plan of the hotel. We can figure out what the other entry points are."

"The key is gonna be distraction. But we need some strikers too," Donna says, looking then to Mary. "Great to meet you, Mama. I'm guessin' you know how to handle a blade."

Mary's smile is conspiratorial. "Of course."

Dean takes a measured breath and looks around the room. He would never have admitted it, but he's been scared as hell from the second they found out Anna was in trouble. If anything happens to that kid, he's got no clue what they'll do. Now, he listens to the others begin piecing together their plan, and he feels emboldened.

Without outside help, the Winchesters have pulled Anna out of the claws of lamias, social workers, wendigos, vampires, and some of Hell's most dangerous demons. With their extended family involved, they could surely rescue her from Lucifer.

()()()

Anna is in the middle of a silent staring contest with the Devil when she hears a knock at the door. Four beats, rhythmic. It's Sam, Dean, or both. Possibly unarmed, definitely reckless. She closes her eyes, sensing defeat.

Lucifer moves for the door with this horrible grin, and Anna watches him open it. She sees both her brothers' eyes search for her in the room. But they're both pinned to the wall before they find her.

"Not even a hello?" Dean asks with feigned nonchalance.

Anna can hear his fear, can see it. That's rare for them. It's Dean's way to only show her vulnerability when he knows she needs it. But she catches his eyes, and he repairs his expression. It bolsters her, gives her a brand new strength. She isn't alone anymore, and that means a lot. It means everything. They can get out of this.

She can see something else in Dean's eyes now. Confidence. There's a plan. She can't imagine what it is, but she's not about to start doubting her family now. So, she tries to convey her trust in one look. But she's pulled from the moment all too quickly. Dean's eyes break from hers as Lucifer leans past him and grips Sam's chin tightly.

The devil's eyes flash red, and he laughs. "Here's what I'm thinking, Sammy." He straightens and makes a pyramid with his fingers, tapping them against one another. "Last time we met like this, you were a real jerk. Course, I was in a cage, and there was a time limit on the whole thing. Not exactly what I'd call fair odds." Lucifer wags his finger at Sam, then whirls around and points at Anna, giving Sam and Dean a clear view of her tied to a chair. "Now, I've got nothing but time. And I thought we'd play a little game. For old time's sake."

"Screw you," is all Sam has to say. Anna can't help the hint of a smile she gives in return. But it only serves to make Lucifer chuckle.

"There's that fire I love beating out of you," he tells Sam.

Anna's smile disappears. She twists her hands against the armrests of the chair, but it's useless. Even if she could get free, Lucifer is too powerful to escape. He would trap her again, ropes or not.

"What's your game," Dean demands, gritting his teeth in clear anger.

Lucifer looks at Dean for just a moment, seeming irritated by his very presence. He turns to Sam again. "The game is would you rather," he answers.

Anna can instantly see the dread enter her brothers' faces. Lucifer wants something from Sam, and he's got all three of them at his mercy. Whatever their plan is, Anna hopes the boys hurry the hell up with it.

"So, Sammy," Lucifer says, pulling an angel blade from the table nearby. He runs the tip of the blade over his finger, admiring the weapon with a morbid smile. "Would you rather let me in," he steps behind Anna's chair and presses the tip of the blade to her throat. "Or watch your sister bleed?"

Anna swallows, heart thudding like a pill caught in her throat, but keeps her expression carefully blank. She can feel the heat of Lucifer's breath on the back of her head, and the cold metal against her neck is painfully familiar. Anytime now, guys, she thinks and twists her hands subconsciously one more time. Sweat is making the rope slick, but it doesn't give her any leeway. All it does is make her raw wrists burn every time they twitch.

Sam is surprisingly calm when Anna's eyes meet his. He's asking her for something– confirmation, she thinks, that she can handle this for a minute. Anna's scared, and she knows she's crap at hiding it from her family. But she hopes her trust comes through as strongly as her fear.

"You spill a drop of her blood, pal, and you'll regret it."

It's no shock that Lucifer ignores Dean's threat in favor of watching Sam think. "Come on, Sammy-boy. What'll it be?" Lucifer smiles wickedly, his hand heavy on Anna's head as he strokes her hair. "I'd trade a bitch for a bitch."

Anna can't help the shiver that runs down her spine.

Sam's hazel eyes grow lethal in the span of half a second. "You're not as powerful as you think you are," he snaps, and Anna realizes he isn't struggling the way Dean is. It hurts somewhere deep in her chest, knowing that Sam learned somewhere along the way that fighting Lucifer is useless. His words tell another story, though, "And you are one stupid bastard if you think I'm gonna ever let you in again."

Lucifer lets out this dry, cold chuckle that literally makes Anna shiver. His lips are right by her ear when he says, "I think you're confused, Sam." He presses his blade to Anna's cheek and drags it along her jaw, slowly and painfully. It's a challenge not to make a sound, but Anna focuses instead on her breath and closes her eyes against the burn. "She's the bastard, right?"

"Fuck-" Dean starts to curse but is rendered silent as Lucifer tilts his head at him.

"She's my sister," Sam argues with venom.

Lucifer presses the knife hard against Anna's cheek again, this time just under her eye which starts to water reflexively. "Half-sister," he corrects, holding up one finger on the other side of Anna's head.

"You son of a bitch."

"Dean," Lucifer says impatiently. "Shut up. You'll get your turn, buddy." His knife is sliding along the soft skin below Anna's eye, then, and it feels hot. But mostly it makes her eye tear up all the more, salt water spilling over and stinging in the fresh cut. "Still feel good about this, Sammy?"

Sam looks miserable, but he says, "You're not winning this."

"You'd really let me have this little ray of sunshine?" Lucifer taunts, knife pressed to Anna's throat again.

She's blinking rapidly, trying to get her eyes to clear. "He's not a fucking moron," she informs the devil behind her. "You'd kill both me and Dean anyway."

Lucifer turns his face toward her, far too close for comfort. "I don't remember asking for your opinion," he snarls. His patience is failing him, and Anna doesn't want to know what will happen when the Devil snaps.

"How about it, Sammy?"

Sam's anger is bright in his eyes when he snaps, "No."

Lucifer straightens his spine slowly, some sort of intimidation tactic maybe. Anna can't see his face, but she would bet anything he's flashing those red eyes again.

It's sudden, the punch on the back of her hand. It's the sound rather than the feeling that tells her she's been stabbed. She turns lazily toward her hand, mind buzzing, and the knife is buried to the hilt. Her palm is held fast against the armrest of the chair for a moment. Anna can't hear the words being spoken, but she knows voices are buzzing angrily around her.

She's just beginning to process the world again when Lucifer pulls the knife back out ruthlessly. The blood gushes instantly, but what Anna notices is the onslaught of pain.

"Castiel," Lucifer greets with a chuckle and wipes his blade against Anna's jeans. "Did you really think you could sneak up on me? I know the stink of an angel reject. I had you pinned the second you entered the city."

The throbbing starts so deep in her hand, she can't even pinpoint it. But Anna stares in mesmerized shock as her hand becomes slick with blood. She finally turns her head toward Lucifer, and she can see Castiel just ahead. He came in the same way as Sam and Dean. She hopes desperately that he wasn't their escape plan, because Lucifer is closing in on him fast.

"Anna. Hey!"

Her ears stop buzzing, and Anna follows the sounds to her brothers. Dean is struggling harder against the invisible binds, but he can't speak. Sam is calling to her, terrified and not even bothering to hide it. Lucifer's voice has dropped an octave. He's done playing around, and Anna finds him that much more terrifying now that he's put a hole in her hand.

"S-sam," she slurs. She's planning to tell him she's okay, but it's too hard to form words. So she leaves it at that.

"Now, where were we?" Lucifer asks grimly. "Oh, right. I was about to cut your sister into pieces, wasn't I, Sammy? Maybe they could take turns, her and Castiel?" He swivels to look at Cas again, then crouches beside Anna and slides his index finger along the back of her hand so it comes away drenched in blood. "I don't know. This one's such a cute little thing, like a mini-Sam. She's fun to torture."

"Lucifer, stop," Sam pleads, voice rough but quiet. "We can work something else out."

The moment Lucifer's attention is back on Sam, the hair on the back of Anna's neck stands up. She doesn't know why until she suddenly sees a flash of denim beside her. She flinches but manages to keep quiet when Claire appears by her side with an angel blade poised professionally in her hand.

The door by Cas and her brothers begins to creak open. Anna's heart pounds in time with her throbbing hand. Faster, faster. This is it. This is their escape attempt. It'll either go very wrong or very right.

Claire slams her blade into the side of Lucifer's neck, and his reaction is instantaneous. He's on the floor, hunched over and grabbing at the blade with both hands when Anna becomes distantly aware of comforting faces nearby.

Jody is leaning over her, cutting ropes and untying her gag. Mary is in the room, helping Dean up off the floor. Cas has a blade again, and he's already on Lucifer, stopping the archangel before he can even get back to his feet. There's another woman… Donna?

Everything blurs, but Lucifer is shouting obscenities, many of them directed at Sam and Cas. Mary's blade is the next to wound, landing firmly in Lucifer's knee.

Anna sees little else as Sam swoops in and pulls her out of her chair. "S-s-"

"I gotcha," he promises and heads directly for the door.

This was their plan, and it's precise. Nobody's hesitating, nobody's thinking on the fly. Relief is flushing Anna's system of adrenaline as her head lolls against Sam's chest.

Dean is right behind them for a second, his hand on Anna's forehead. Then it's a cool hallway, a sunny parking lot. Freedom. It's over.

()()()

Lucifer staggers to his feet and looms over Castiel, who's hunched on the floor, nursing a new bruise to his vessel.

Mary and Dean are out the door, ensuring the others make a safe retreat. It's just the two of them here now.

"Aww," Lucifer coos. "Did you get left behind?" He twists a blade in his hand so it's ready to strike. But he barely makes it a step before Cas turns his face toward him.

"No," the angel says with a smug smile. He slams his bloody palm to a banishing sigil and blocks his eyes with his good arm as the room is illuminated.

Dean is by his side in seconds, Mary and Donna hovering just behind him. "Hey," Dean says breathlessly, getting a grip on Cas' arm. "Is he gone?"

Cas is still panting as he nods slowly. "Yes," he says firmly. "He's gone."

"Sammy's gonna be bringin' Anna to the nearest hospital. Let's get out over there and figure out our next move." He stands up and offers Cas his hand as Mary and Donna head outside. Castiel stares at his hand for a moment, the way he used to do before he understood this gesture as a human social cue. "Let's go, Cas," Dean says in a tender voice.

It's an apology and forgiveness rolled into one. And Cas eyes are glimmering as he accepts with his own hand.

()()()

"I d-don' need-"

Sam slides into the back of Jody's car. "Shh," he hushes his sister, pulling her in after him with two hands under her shoulders. Claire lifts Anna's legs in. "Thanks," Sam murmurs. "Where's the First Aid? We need to stabilize her hand."

"Right here," Jody announces from the driver's seat and passes the kit back over the seat.

Claire slides into the passenger's seat and closes her door.

"Ready?" Jody asks hurriedly.

"Let's go," Sam agrees. He tries to tune out Anna's half-present grumbling as he opens the First Aid Kit and moves her hand toward him. "We're gonna get you to the hospital," he promises and begins to rifle through the medical supplies before him. His hands are shaking violently, and he's so clumsy that he drops the splint and bandages more than once.

"It's only two minutes to the nearest hospital," Claire says, remarkably calm given their situation. A map of the city is scrawled across her phone screen, and she zooms out with practiced speed. "Take a right up here, Jody."

And just like that, they're moving.

Sam sees Anna's eyes shoot open at the sudden rumbling of the engine. It's not the Impala, so she's probably confused. Her eyes are glazed over and dizzy when he finds them. "Hey," he calls gently, a shaky smile on his face.

He's kicking himself internally. Anna's injuries aren't that bad. She's gonna live. She's gonna be okay. But it isn't the stab wound or the cuts to her face that worry him. Anna was possessed. Anna was left at the mercy of the devil. They got her out– of course they did. They would have gotten her out no matter the cost.

But what was done to Anna can never be undone. Sam has nightmares about the Devil nearly every night. He dreams about horrors no human being could possibly understand. He dreams up images that haunt him all night but are impossible to remember come morning.

Even his nightmares, though, have always left his sister alone.

The unthinkable is staring him unflinchingly in the face. And he's trembling like a newborn calf trying to stand for the first time. Trembling as if his entire life hasn't been a series of unthinkable tragedies. He's better than this. He's stronger than this.

He hates that in order to get control over himself, he has to resort to one of Dad's old lessons. But Sam inhales, counts to ten, exhales, counts to fifteen. His hands are steadier when he starts wrapping Anna's hand. He would clean it, but it's bleeding too heavily for him to get anywhere with it, and they'll be at the hospital soon. Instead, he applies pressure and does his best to stabilize the wound.

Anna's groaning the whole time, most of her words indiscernible. "N'hospital," is a recurring phrase, though.

Eventually, Sam has to respond. "We're going to the hospital, Ladybug. That's not really negotiable."

"Nuhhh," Anna complains and fidgets more than once. She looks uncomfortable no matter how much she shifts around.

Sam knows the feeling. Possession leaves you sore and tired.

"Don't get it."

Her voice is clearer, but the words still don't make much sense. "What?" Sam asks, leaning closer to her and brushing her hair from her face. He sees her fighting to open her eyes, rubs his thumb gently over the lines between them.

"Don't get it," Anna mumbles again. "Demons."

"We'll figure out a story," Sam says, semi-frantic. He looks up, catches Jody's eyes in the rearview.

"I'll see what I can do about law enforcement," she promises.

Sam nods gratefully and looks back down at Anna, whose eyes are now open as she blinks sluggishly at him. "Sorry," she murmurs. "Sorry, Cas n'ds it."

"Cas what?" Sam repeated in confusion. "Anna, you're in shock, alright? I can't understand you. Just focus on staying awake, okay? What's Dean always say about you fallin' asleep in class?"

Anna's half smile is weak but worth it. Her eyes fall closed again, "Sleep a'night. Coffee in'a'morning."

"Yeah," Sam laughs. "That's right. We'll get you a cup of coffee, okay? Soon as the doctors are done with you."

Anna's frown is slight when it returns. "Doctors…" she slurs and rolls her head toward Sam's hand so it cups her cheek again. "S-Sammy…"

"I'm right here," he promises gently, glancing up and out the window. "I'm right here, kiddo. We're almost there."

The hospital sign stands proudly high as Jody swings up the drive toward the Emergency Department.

"You think they got out?" Claire asks softly up front.

Dean and Cas. Sam was trying not to think about how those two might be faring. Not to mention Mary and Donna. God, if any of them are hurt and he wasn't there to back them up… He looks at Anna again. She's his focus right now. She needs to be.

"I'm sure they did," is Jody's quick response as she throws the car in park. "Run in and let them know what's going on," she orders and gives Claire's shoulder a pat. "We'll be right in."

Claire is quick to follow instructions and glances over her shoulder only once when Jody opens the back door.

"Still with us?" Jody asks with urgent positivity. She smiles down at Anna, her patented smile in the face of danger expression worn proudly and easily. She lays a gentle hand on Anna's shoulder.

"She's awake," Sam promises, though Anna should be speaking for herself. It's unnerving how quiet she gets when she's hurt or sick. She's usually so full of life. Even in her sadness and fear, Anna's curious and often bold. "Make sure she doesn't fall, I'll come around and get her."

Jody nods and gets a better grip on Anna's shoulder.

"D's c'm?"

Jody's eyebrows pull in and up as she leans closer. "What?"

Sam is beside her now, though, with an answer. "Yeah, Dean's coming," he soothes and takes over Jody's position. "We planned ahead, Ladybug, he knows where we are. Dean's coming."

Jody's soft smile catches Sam off guard as she helps him get Anna out of the backseat. As soon as she sees him watching, she shakes her head and manages to look more professional. "You got her?" she asks unnecessarily when Sam hitches Anna up in a bridal carry.

"Yeah, Jody, thanks." He pours sincerity into his eyes for just a second, and then he's hurrying through the doors to the ER, met almost immediately by Claire and a nurse in blue scrubs who's waiting with a gurney.

He's growing distant as he blurts out information. Anna Campbell. Eighteen. No allergies. Someone shoves a form toward him, but he raises his hands away from it. "I need to- to wash my hands," he says shakily. "Claire, can you-"

"I can hold onto it," Claire says softly, watching Sam with cautious empathy. "Bathroom is over there," she points to a wall sign and smiles encouragingly.

Sam tries to say thank you, but the words get caught in his throat. So he just nods, blinks back the emotions building behind his eyes, and turns silently toward the bathroom.

He needs space, and it feels like there's none left in the world.

()()()

It's only minutes after Anna's been taken back that Dean barges into the ER with purpose. Cas, Mary, and Donna are all in tow.

Sam stands up as if instinctually sensing Dean's presence, but he doesn't look like a soldier waiting to report. No, he looks like a kid right now, at least to Dean. All he can see is his little brother when Sam walks over to him with pain in his eyes and a hunch to his shoulders.

"She okay?" he asks gruffly, bending his neck to see Sam's downcast eyes.

Sam nods, but the movement is clumsy. His voice rasps, and Dean knows it's Emo-Sammy time. "Lot of blood, but- uh- but she should be fine. That stab wound to her hand is the biggest problem. It's not life-threatening but- but, you know, nerve damage and all- and all that."

"Okay," Dean says and tries to process the information quickly and objectively. The relief he feels is instant, though incomplete. "She was awake, though? I mean, she looked pretty out of it."

"Definitely went into shock," Sam admits. "But she was awake when we got here. They took her back right away, but I haven't heard anything."

"It's been two minutes," Jody says gently from behind him. She's meeting Dean's eyes and reaching toward Sam like she isn't sure whether to comfort him or leave him be. "They're probably still triaging."

"Okay," Dean says again, this time doing his best to exude calm. He rubs a hand over his mouth, trying to unclench his jaw to no avail. God, that kid. She's giving him gray hairs, no doubt about it. He claps Sam on the shoulder. "Don't worry, Sam," he encourages with confidence. "She'll be fine. You did good."

Sam shakes his head sullenly, but he seems to be pulling himself together at least. He rubs his eyes discreetly with his thumb and forefinger. "She wasn't makin' any sense."

Dean doesn't need to hear anymore to understand what's got his brother so freaked out. He's held Anna's hand while she went into shock before. He's held onto Sam and watched the kid go delirious with fever. He knows what it's like to feel your sibling's skin grow too cold or too hot and listen to them lose touch with reality.

Delirium is terrifying. Shock is terrifying. Things that aren't life threatening start to feel like reasons to mourn when your own sister or brother can't respond to you like they should.

Sam and Dean don't hug. Not outside of Armageddon. But Dean can see Sam needs it.

So they make an exception.

()()()

"Family of Anna Campbell."

Dean and Sam are both on their in the next instant, moving toward the nurse at the door to the waiting room. "Right here," Dean says clearly. "What's goin' on? Is she okay?"

The nurse's smile is rushed and polite. She hands Dean a clipboard. "We just need a surrogate decision maker to grant informed consent so we can perform surgery on her hand."

"Surgery?" Sam repeats, his eyebrows nearly at his hairline. "It's that bad?"

"Nothing is life threatening here," the nurse assures him calmly. She points at the clipboard she's given Dean and explains, "Puncture wounds to the hand run the risk of damaging nerves and tendons. The best way to prevent permanent damage is to surgically assist the body's natural healing process. We flush out the wound, repair what we can, then stitch her up."

"It's safe," Dean assumes, "right?"

"Very low risk."

"Okay," Dean murmurs and starts scanning for places to sign.

"One more thing," the nurse adds as he's scrawling his name. She looks between him and Sam, tightening her ginger ponytail with both hands. She looks exhausted, like she's been in the ER for two whole shifts. "The biggest concern with injuries like this one is blood loss. The hands, much like the head and face, tend to bleed a lot when cut or punctured. Once the surgery is done, it will be easy to control the bleeding. But she lost a significant volume on the way in. Are either of you a match?"

Dean brushes his hand over his short hair, back and then forward. "No," he admits, feeling Sam shift on his feet beside him.

"That's okay," the nurse assures him. "We have O-Negative on site. It's the universal donor."

Dean nods, resisting the urge to snap at this lady who's just doing her job. No shit, O-Neg is the universal donor. Do I look like I just graduated Kindergarten?

"Can we see her?" Sam asks, breathless with anxiety. Dean nudges him, hopes he's communicated that Sammy needs to chill the fuck out. But Sam ignores him altogether.

"One of you." There's an apology in the woman's eyes as she accepts the clipboard back from Dean. "And just for a minute, while she's being prepped for surgery."

She looks at Dean, and he wants to say he'll go. God, he wants to. He needs to see Anna's eyes more than he's ever needed to before. But Sam's a wreck beside him, so he looks over at his brother and says, "Go, Sammy." But if the kid comes back in five minutes still on the verge of panic, Dean's gonna kick his ass.

Sam's gratitude shines vibrantly in his eyes for a second before he practically chases the nurse out of the waiting room.

Dean watches the door swing shut and latch behind them. He sighs heavily, his hand going to his hair again. He's shaking, but he doesn't know if it's nerves or hunger or the aftermath of an adrenaline high. He sits heavily beside his mother, and her hand on his arm feels like a consolation prize.

He tries not to think about how she left them. Tries not to think about how she almost chased Anna out of the friggin bunker and then she left them anyway. Because none of that matters right now. Nothing but Anna matters right now. Anna and the fucking devil on the loose, apparently still with a major hard on for Sam Winchester.

"Sounds like she'll be okay," Mom says.

Dean inhales and lets it out with so much control, nobody but Sam would have seen how scared he is. "I know," he agrees. But he looks at the closed door keeping him from his siblings, and his heart thuds painfully against his ribs.

Sure, Anna will be okay. Physically. Except she might have permanent nerve damage in her dominant hand, and she'll probably have scars on her face for the rest of her life. Still, that isn't what scares him. Dean's seen firsthand what the devil can do to a person. He's seen what possession can do to a person.

He's seen Sam fall apart at the seams over these things. Sam, who beat the devil in a one-on-one, who spent centuries in Hell at the mercy of the Dark Prince, who still has nightmares and mentally shuts down when he gets too cold.

Anna's seen some shit. Hell, he would have said the same thing when she was eight years old. Anna's got baggage, there's no denying it. But Dean can't help it– Every time she gets hurt, he pictures that seven-year-old clinging to his leg in the grocery store after he got her back from the lamia.

Anna's an adult now, legally, but he'll never be able to think of her that way. It's not just the age gap, it's their dynamic. Dean's not stupid, he knows he's the closest thing she has to a father. He knows that was true even before Dad died.

But in times like this, he finds himself admitting it.

And if this is the thing that finally breaks Anna, he's gonna have to live with that. He's gonna have to put her back together, knowing all the while that he should have prevented this from ever happening.

Parents protect their children. Anything less is failure.

Dean shudders at his own track record.

()()()

Anna's only half-awake when Sam reaches her, but she seems more lucid than she was last time he saw her.

"Hey," he breathes, eyes watering. "You look better."

Anna half smiles at him, her eyes glossy with the effects of what are probably some awesome painkillers. "You look like shit," she drawls.

Sam chuckles in spite of himself, wiping discreetly at his eyes with one knuckle. He grabs Anna's hand in his own, the one that isn't wrapped tightly in bandages. It's never going to look right, his sister dwarfed in in scrubs, resting in a hospital bed. "Yeah, I bet I do," he laughs. "They tell you what's happening?"

Anna shakes her head the barest bit and smiles again, lazy but content. She's gotta be numb in the best way.

Sam knows her well enough to know that as soon as reality comes back to her, Anna is gonna spend every waking second analyzing whatever she remembers. She's gonna come to her own conclusions and ignore every promise that none of this was her fault. She's not going to offer a smile like this again for a while, no matter what he and Dean do to try coaxing one out of her.

"They're gonna knock you out so they can fix your hand."

"Ohhh." Anna tilts her head back, blinking up at Sam. "I forgot I got a hole in my hand a little bit."

"Yeah. A little bit." Sam can't suppress the parental instincts building inside of him. He reaches toward Anna, brushes her curls out of her face. She's going to be pissed when she sees the state of her hair in a few days.

"Is Cas okay?"

Sam tilts his head in confusion. "Yeah, he's alright, Ladybug. He's worried about you. Everyone is."

"Everyone?" Anna's frown is loose, the drugs hindering it.

"Yeah, everyone," Sam says, watching her inch toward sleep. "Dean's here."

"S'mad."

Sam smiles softly. He's familiar with that worry. "Yeah, Dean's mad. But not at you, Anna."

"S'okay. He loves me."

Sam snorts. "We all know that."

Anna smiles, eyes closed, body relaxing further as Sam strokes her hair as gently as one would touch a newborn baby. "You too."

Sam closes his eyes. He doesn't know why, but they're burning. "Yeah," he says, feeling distinctly old. "I love you too."

The nurse comes back, and it's too soon. But Sam brushes his thumb against Anna's cheek, feeling the scab where Lucifer cut her with an angel blade. He leans down to kiss her on the forehead, catches a nurse staring at him with dewy eyes.

"She'll be alright," the short woman promises. She presses her lips tightly together and pulls them up in a professional sort of sympathy smile.

Sam just nods. "How long is it gonna take?"

"Someone will brief you."

It's not enough, but nothing would be. Sam knows from experience that his stomach won't stop hurting until Anna's safe at the bunker and Lucifer is back in the cage. It'll be months of fight or flight, most likely.

But now, Sam has to take a breath and get himself under control. It's not time to fight, and there's nowhere to run.

Besides, if he walks back out to the waiting room still on the verge of panic, Dean will totally kick his ass.

()()()

Anna's out cold when Dean finally gets to see her. Something in him still melts at the sight. Maybe it's the heart monitor making steady promises, or maybe it's the Anna's lips twitch up in her sleep.

Dean sits in the chair beside her bed and reaches for Anna's hand. He's on the wrong side of the bed, though, and he stops before his fingers can brush the mass of bandages there. "Man, that bastard really did a number on you, huh, Rugrat?" He settles instead for resting his hand over her arm and rubbing gently with his thumb. It isn't conscious, just a habit he never unlearned.

It's pathetic how badly Dean wants to hug this kid.

Sure, he hugs her all the time. But that's for Anna. She's a girl, she's a kid, she needs hugs. All that touchy-feely crap. He does it, and he's happy to do it. But it's for Anna.

And when she gets out of this bed Anna is gonna need all kinds of hugs. Not Dean. Anna.

"Mr. Campbell?"

Dean turns at the voice and he sees the same nurse from earlier standing in the doorway. She steps in once they meet eyes.

"I never introduced myself. I'm Abby. I'm Anna's nurse for the next couple hours."

Dean is quiet for a second, then realizes there are social expectations here. "Uh, yeah," he says clumsily. "I'm Dean– Call me Dean."

"Okay, Dean." Abby smiles, and her dimples make her look young.

Dean wonders whose kid she is, why she's working in a job where there's so much blood. Then he remembers that Anna's even younger, that Anna's the one bleeding, and he has to stop wondering before it kills him.

"Dr. Grippe is ready to see you and Sam. He can explain exactly how the surgery went and what we're doing for your sister."

"Right, yeah," Dean says distantly. He doesn't wanna leave even though Anna's not awake.

Abby rounds the bed and says, "She's gonna be out for a while longer. And if her vitals change, we'll know."

Dean nods and makes himself stand. "Thank you. You seen my brother?"

"Oh, Sam, yeah. He's just down the hallway," Abby explains from where she's typing up a note in the computer. "He was talking to one of your friends when I saw him. The cute guy in the trenchcoat." She blushes at her own description. "I mean, the– um– the– just the one in the trenchcoat."

Dean smiles but lets her off the hook, turning for the door. It's fun to imagine what Cas' reaction would be if he heard her get so flustered over him. But Abby's just a kid and he doesn't feel inclined to embarrass her.

It gives him pause as he walks down the hallway toward Sam and Cas, who he can see now. When the hell did he get so old that twenty-somethings looked like kids?

Abby follows him out and points toward the end of the hall. "You guys are just gonna swing a left down there, ask reception to let Dr. Grippe know you're ready for him."

"Thank you," Sam replies with a twitchy smile and trails behind Dean the whole way to the doctor's office.

They sit in matching hard-backed plastic chairs. But Dean's spine is straight, his expression stony, while Sam is hunched over, face pinched into one of his classic overthinking faces.

"Okay," Dr. Grippe says after shaking both their hands. He sits in his chair with a quiet groan that speaks of the strenuous hours he's been working. He opens his laptop screen and types in a password before looking over the screen at the Winchesters. "How are you boys?" he asks conversationally. "Long day, I guess?"

"Yeah," Dean laughs and then shakes his head. "What's the skinny? How'd the op go?"

Dr. Grippe nods as if to orient himself, scrolling along a page on his computer. "You're Anna's next of kin," he presumes. "Her… brothers?" He sounds surprised at this tidbit. But he reads another couple lines and smiles politely and, unfortunately, with great sympathy. "I'm sorry about your parents."

"Yeah," Sam says hurriedly. "Can we get to the point, please?"

Dean looks over in vague surprise at his brother's impatience. But he shares the sentiment and doesn't chastise Sam for it.

Dr. Grippe is unperturbed anyway. "Right. The surgery went smoothly. As you may be aware, we have two major concerns with hand injuries." He half-closes his laptop and moves it aside to hold his hand out in front of himself. He presses the area right beneath his middle finger. "The blade entered Anna's hand just below her middle finger, tending toward the ring finger and severing the flexor tendon there. Miraculously, it completely missed the bones in her hand and fingers."

"Okay, so that's good, right?" Dean presses.

Dr. Grippe nods and slides his computer in front of himself again. "We flushed the wound out and repaired the damage to the tendons. You acted quickly, and because of that, I don't foresee much of any lasting damage. Of course, we don't know anything for sure until Anna is awake and can tell us herself."

"What kind of damage we talkin'?"

"More serious possibilities would be loss of feeling in the fingers that were damaged and possible in part of her palm. But if anything, I honestly think she'll just experience sensitivity to heat and cold. Circulation problems are a definite possibility."

"That's not too bad." Dean turns to look at Sam, who's processing this information with full-blown puppy eyes. "So, what's the deal now? How long til she's up and around?"

Dr. Grippe takes a deep breath, and Dean knows this is going to be a long-winded response. "Well, our main two concerns now are infection and nerve damage. We'll have to tackle those things if they come up. Otherwise, she's gonna be on an IV for the night. Between the blood loss and dehydration, she needs it. We've got her hand wrapped up tight. We'll show you how to change the bandages. With the placement of the wound, she won't be able to do it herself."

Dean glances at Sam again, and they both nod. So far, it all sounds like stuff they can handle– stuff they have handled in the past. "Okay," he murmurs.

"The hand is going to be completely immobilized, which is frustrating for anyone. But it's critical for everything to heal properly. We don't want her back in here for surgical intervention because those tendons didn't heal right."

"Yeah, done," Sam agrees. "How long before she can use the hand?"

"If we're talking about regaining full function, I'd hazard a guess of six weeks or so. It only needs to stay completely immobile for two or three weeks, though. Around that time, she'll need to start physical therapy. We'll print out some instructions and write you down the phone number to our recommended physical therapist. Don't worry about memorizing all this."

Dean nods, running over all the information in his head one more time. They can do this. Anna can do this. She'll be fine.

"Risk of infection is low," Dr. Grippe informs them and closes his computer screen. "If all goes well, you can take her home the day after tomorrow."

"Thanks, Doc," Dean tells him and stands up for another handshake.

Sam just gives the doc a tense nod and follows Dean back out into the hallway.

"Man, what's your problem?" Dean asks, not unkindly. "You heard him, Anna will be fine."

Sam looks at Dean like he's an absolute moron. "You seriously think her hand is my biggest concern?"

Dean tilts his head back in understanding. He scrambles to find the right words to reassure his brother, but there aren't any. And before he can offer anything, Sam turns and walks away from him, leaving Dean with his mouth partly open around what would have been an entirely worthless promise.

()()()

She wakes inside a ball of cotton. Or maybe cotton candy. Sugar rot and fluff combine inside her skull, making it impossible to understand the sounds and scents coming at her. And there are a lot of them.

The rumbling highs and lows of human voices, the sharpness of antiseptic, and the muted wash of cologne that hasn't been reapplied for days. They slowly start to make more sense, slowly start separating from one blob of sensation until each voice and each smell holds its own meaning.

Someone's holding onto her hand, skin on skin, warm and applying the slightest bit of pressure. It's nice. She sighs, squeezing her eyes shut more tightly for a minute. Christ, she's tired.

"Woah," someone exclaims, and the voice moves closer. "Anna?"

The hand wrapped around hers shifts but remains in contact. The movement allows her to feel the roughness of the palm. It's Sam. She can feel the scar he never let fade, the scar that maybe saved his life.

"Mmm," she grumbles when another hand rests on her forehead. She recognizes that one too. It's Dean, and he's speaking to her softly. But Anna's tired, and she doesn't know why the boys are in her fricking room. "Sl'pin."

Dean has the audacity to laugh at her. But he brushes her hair off her forehead again. "Come on, Rugrat. You can sleep again later. I promise."

That's a promise she doesn't get too often, so Anna finally cracks her eyes open. She's assaulted by blinding fluorescent lights, and she hears a high beep to her left. She tilts her head in that direction, sees the monitor over Sam's shoulder. She feels silly for thinking she was at home.

"H'spit'l?"

"Yeah, you got a little banged up," Dean reminds her gently.

Anna frowns, eyes falling closed again as she searches for the memory. But Sam rubs a thumb between her eyes, washing away the wrinkles there. "Don't worry about it right now," he requests. "You're on a lot of painkillers."

Anna hums an acknowledgement and fights to open her eyes again. It's then that she sees the dozen other people in her hospital room. She blinks a couple times, wondering if she's seeing double. Nope, there really are a lot of people here. She can't process everything she's seeing, so she just looks up at Dean, hoping he'll understand the question she doesn't have the words to ask.

Her brother doesn't miss a beat. "Yeah, I know, eight's a crowd, huh?"

"Who's…?"

Movement just past Dean's shoulder makes Anna flinch, but she relaxes when she recognizes Jody moving towards them. "We wanted to make sure you were okay before heading out," she says with a sweet smile. She pats Anna's foot, covered by a thin hospital blanket. "How you feelin?"

Anna blinks slowly at her and sighs tiredly. "M'okay," she says quietly. She meant for that to sound much stronger, but it takes a lot of strength to speak all of a sudden. "S'everyone good?" Her voice shrinks even more, but Sam is still close enough to hear and understand her.

"Everyone's fine," he tells her and rubs his thumb along the back of her hand. "Scrapes and bruises."

Donna suggests and comes up behind Sam, placing her hand on his shoulder. "Got knocked around, that's for darn sure." She smiles, leaning in a little so Anna can see her past Sam's head. "But all's well that end's well, huh?"

Anna smiles half-heartedly, wondering what the hell went down to attract all their friends in a hundred mile radius. She doesn't have the energy to figure out. She doesn't even have the energy to freak out about it. In the next second, an inexplicit memory tickles the back of her head. The only thing that comes through strongly enough to really get her is the feeling of intense worry. "S'Cas?" she asks suddenly, the monitor to her left beeping more quickly. She struggles to get her elbows under her, lifting her heavy head to look at the other faces in the room. Mary, Claire…

Sam and Dean both grab a shoulder and ease her back down against the pillow. "Hey," they tell her in unison. "Take it easy."

Anna blinks frantically, alarmed at not being able to see Castiel. "S'Cas?" she demands again, her voice a little louder but still exhausted.

"He's right here," Dean promises, tone suddenly stern. "Lie still before you pop a stitch or something."

Anna frowns, eyes closing again. She squirms but doesn't try sitting. There's a blurry image, snatches of a memory or a bad dream. Castiel bleeds from the shoulder, his face pale. But whether it's real or imagined, she doesn't know. What happened to land her in the hospital, she can't recall.

She tries wearily to find an answer, but her head is fuzzy.

"S'bad," she murmurs, her mouth dry and clumsy. "In my head."

"No, it's gone," Sam tells her urgently. His voice softens, but Anna can hear the effort in it. "There's nothing in your head."

Anna's frown deepens, and her eyes squeeze more tightly shut. She was talking about the drugs she must be on. But something was in her head? It's out now, that should be a comfort. But that's a horrifying thought– something was in her head. And Cas was bleeding. It's gotta be real. No nightmare.

And something was in her head?

"S'bleeding. Cas s'bleeding."

"No, Anna," Castiel's gravelly voice promises. When she peels her eyes open and attaches them worriedly to Cas, she sees him standing beside Dean. "I was before, but I've healed almost completely. I appreciate your concern, but there's nothing to worry about."

Anna sighs, sinking toward the dark calm of sleep. She jerks awake again before she's fully out. Everyone's in her room. So many people, all their most trusted friends. "Happened?" she asks blearily, praying for an underwhelming answer.

Dean crouches down near the head of her bed and tucks her messy hair behind her ear. "I know it's hard to think right now, alright? But everyone's okay. What happened; it's over. We can talk about it when you're feelin' better. Just go to sleep, Rugrat. You need it."

Anna nods, but the movement is jerky and small. She's half out when Dean stands up, his hand moving away from her face. She turns subconsciously toward the hand that's still near; Sam is touching her shoulder.

"Drugs got her pretty out of it," someone says, and there are answering murmurs. But Anna's too far gone to understand anything else.

()()()

The next time she wakes, Anna can think a little more clearly. She's still groggy, but this is a more familiar feeling, and she knows how to work through it.

Claire is sitting by her bedside this time, Mary standing over by the window. Anna didn't necessarily expect everyone to have left already. She doesn't even know for certain how long she's been in the hospital. It could be minutes, hours, or days since she last remembers waking up– and she barely remembers it at all. But she definitely didn't expect to see these two people and no Sam or Dean in her hospital room. She's never woken up to that in her eighteen years of life.

"Hey, Rapunzel."

"I'll kill you," Anna groans at the familiar nickname. She catches Mary smiling and moving closer. But she keeps her distance, looking uncertain. Anna wonders if Mary will ever stop tiptoeing around her.

"I'll kill you if you do something stupid like that again."

"Yeah, well, I just asked myself…" Anna shifts in place, feeling every bruise and tired muscle in her body. "What would Claire do? And surprise, surprise, the answer was stupid."

Claire actually laughs instead of coming back with a witty retort.

In truth, Anna doesn't fully remember what stupid thing Claire is referring to. But she figures it's a good thing Sam and Dean aren't standing in front of her. She figures once they see that she's lucid again, they'll chew her out good for whatever it is she did.

"How you feeling?" Mary asks patiently.

Anna shrugs, but looks down when the movement stings somewhere around her hand. She frowns at the sight of thick bandages stabilizing her dominant hand. "What happened?" she asks. "I don't really remember much."

"It'll come back to you," Mary tells her. "It's been a crazy couple of days."

That's not the most comforting response, not considering the Winchester lifestyle. Anna thinks hard, tries to remember what happened to leave her in this state. There's gotta be a memory within reach, something connected to her hand.

And there it is. A monitor spikes beside her as she remembers the devil's glowing red eyes. Sam shouted, she remembers, when the knife found its home in the back of her hand. But she doesn't think she felt it, not at first.

"Lucifer," she whispers into the suddenly quiet hospital room.

She looks toward Claire, knowing she's more likely to be brutally honest.

"Did I… Did I…?"

"You didn't really do anything," Claire admits, looking quietly between Anna's face and her own hands in her lap. "You were trying to help Castiel. Things just went sideways."

Anna digests this new information, tries to put the puzzle together. She's got only the pieces to one side of the frame, though, and a single piece from smack in the middle. She can't believe how stupid she still is. How does she always do this? How does she always wind up playing into the hand of the most evil forces on the planet?

"Calm down," Mary requests softly. She's closer than she usually would get to Anna.

It's almost worse than being alone. But that's awful. That's a horrible thing to feel. Anna hates herself for it the very moment that thought crosses her mind.

"Where's Sam?" she asks in a rush. She feels breathless, and her hand is suddenly throbbing. She looks down at it, heart pounding beyond her control. Is the pain really this bad, or is she just thinking too hard? "Is he okay? He didn't… I mean…" She was so angry when Castiel brought the devil within five feet of Sammy. Now she's done the same thing.

"He's with Dean. They're just getting breakfast."

Breakfast. It's morning. Anna nods, trying to slow her breathing. She can see Claire reaching for the call button and snaps, "Don't fucking touch that."

Claire's eyes widen, and she smirks but it's see-through. "Fine, Rapunzel. Hyperventilate."

Oddly enough, the scathing response is exactly what Anna needed to start calming down. She breathes more slowly, unwilling to let Claire and Mary bear witness to her fainting like a wimp.

"I'm sorry," Anna says after a minute. It's too quiet, and maybe that's why she started speaking. But now that she's started, she thinks she might as well finish her apology. "I didn't mean to drag everyone into this. I don't even remember what I was thinking, but I'm sure it was stupid. It usually is."

"Everyone's stupid sometimes," Claire says. And Anna knows Claire knows what she's talking about.

But usually when Claire is stupid, it doesn't hurt other people. Well, actually, that's not true. She almost killed Dean once. She dumped Anna on the side of the road in an area she didn't know. Hell, she's held a gun on Sam, probably come close to killing Castiel more than once.

For once, that thought doesn't make Anna hate the girl a little bit. For once, it's almost comforting. And that must be a sign of how very awful Anna is at being a Winchester. How wrong does she have to be to find it comforting that someone else was stupid enough to nearly get her family killed?

She's done it, and she hates herself for it. She always has. Claire's done it, and she should hate Claire too.

But Anna can't. She can't hate Claire. Claire's a couple years older than her, but she's known about angels and demons for half as long.

Still, she hates herself.

"Yeah, well, nobody does stupid like I do."

"Self-deprecating doesn't suit you," Claire snaps, impatient. "Anna, come on. Don't flatter yourself thinking you're some special brand of stupid. You forgive other people, even when it's hard. If you can do that, you can forgive yourself too."

Anna stares at Claire, and Claire stares right back. It's strange, how much they seem to understand each other in this moment. This isn't who they are. Not with each other.

"Besides," Claire finally says. "You can't see the future."

Anna smiles softly, but it fades fast. She looks past Claire, realizing suddenly that Mary will have heard all this. But she's grateful to see that Sam and Dean's mother is no longer in the room. She relaxes somewhat. "Life fucking sucks," she admits miserably.

"Yeah," Claire agrees through a small laugh. "It really sucks."

All they can do then is wait for someone older to show up and fix it for them.

()()()

The bunker is calm and beautifully quiet for a few days. Anna sleeps half the time, takes her pills on a strict schedule, remembers in bits and pieces what went down in Kansas City.

It's three days after they get home that she realizes the ugly truth: She was possessed.

She wakes up in a cold sweat, breathing like she's been underwater for a lifetime. She's in her bedroom, and it's blessedly empty. Her hand is throbbing, a sure sign it's almost time for her next dose of painkillers.

Anna rolls out of bed and stands still for a second, riding out a dizzy spell. She stares at her closed bedroom door, pulling her hand in toward her chest. There's a pit in her stomach begging her not to leave the safe isolation of her room. But louder is her conscience, begging for the truth, for accountability.

She steps into the kitchen a few minutes later and relishes the warmth as it washes over her. She can smell muffins in the oven and knows Dean's making them for her benefit. Sam might like muffins, but Dean would always rather have bacon and eggs. It's one of the few boring things about him.

"Smells good," she says quietly and heads straight for the coffee pot. She can only drink one cup of coffee each morning for now, so she uses the biggest mug in the cupboard. It's probably twice the size of your standard coffee cup, which makes Anna feel proudly like she's cheating the system. What do they call it? Malicious compliance?

"Only the best for you, Rugrat," Dean teases and twists a knob on the stove. "You better eat some friggin eggs, though, too. You gotta have some protein somewhere."

Anna rolls her eyes and inhales deeply, holding her coffee near her nose.

"Alright, you little addict, sit down. I'll get you a plate."

He's already got the cupboard open when Sam steps in. He's not the last to wake, though. He's wearing his running clothes, and his hair is damp with sweat.

"I'm tellin' you, Sammy, you were switched at birth."

Sam's laugh is huffy as he opens the fridge and pops out with a bottle of water. "Shut up," he tells Dean and twists off the cap. He swallows some water and looks to Anna. "You know, you're really not supposed to mix caffeine with pain killers."

"Yeah, and you're not supposed to run with a stick up your ass either," Anna snarks. She's got a feeling she'll be able to get away with that remark, and her theory is proven true when Dean barks a laugh.

"She's got you there, man."

Sam is watching her with a disbelieving smirk. "I wasn't switched at birth," he complains. "You two are just the same friggin' person." He shakes his head and makes for the doorway again, "I'm gonna hit the showers."

"Yeah," Dean acknowledges and slides a plate of food in front of Anna. "How's the hand?"

"Still stabbed."

"Funny girl," Dean deadpans. He retrieves his coffee mug from the counter and sits across from her with a tired grunt. "Lemme see." He waves her hand toward him, and Anna complies without arguing. She's got to eat with her left hand either way.

She lifts up her fork but doesn't even touch her muffin before she pauses and sets the utensil back down. "Hey, Dean?"

"Yeah."

"Was I possessed?"

Dean's hands freeze where they're halfway through unwrapping her bandages. "Why do you ask?"

Anna shrugs one shoulder and picks her fork up again just so she can push her scrambled eggs back and forth. "I remembered something this morning. It's kinda blurry, but… I guess maybe I had a dream about it. I have this image of Cas' face in Kansas City. We were in some mini mart or something. I was holding a blade on him. He had his angel blade too, but he wouldn't hurt me. And I was talking, but it wasn't… I don't know. It felt wrong."

Dean is quiet through her explanation. And Anna's grateful, because she knows she's a clumsy talker, knows she's probably making little sense. But now she needs him to answer her. She needs him to fix it.

"Yeah, kiddo," he finally tells her. It sounds like he doesn't want to be admitting it to her. Maybe he was hoping she'd never remember. "Those demons you and Cas were after, they got the drop on you. Separated you and Cas. One of 'em took you for a ride."

Demons. She was hunting with Cas. Anna tries to remember the moment she was possessed. All she can get is the smell of barbecue, the utter lack of leads in the city. She remembers walking down the street with Cas right next to her in the dark. She was trying to text someone. Or maybe she was checking her texts?

Anna frowns. "I had no service," she realizes. "They cut us off. We couldn't find any leads, because they didn't want us to find any leads."

Dean nods patiently, cleaning her hand as he lets her think through it all.

The wound looks gnarly. Medical grade stitches always look a little startling when you're used to improvising bandages and letting things scar. But even the neat needle work can't disguise the depth of the injury. There's a dark bruise on either side of the gash on the back of her hand from where the hilt of Lucifer's knife rammed against her skin. On the other side, the skin is jagged and puckered, trying to heal and reddening around the edges.

"Someone screamed," Anna murmurs. "I went to help her, and I thought Cas was behind me, but he wasn't."

"They cut him off," Dean explains, seeing the confusion on her face. "He said he had five or six demons to fight off. He got out okay, but by the time he got to the alley, you were gone."

"And the woman who screamed?" Anna asks. She already knows the answer, but she wants to pretend she doesn't. Just for a second.

"Dead before you heard her scream."

Anna nods, turning her face to her plate and feeling shame burn in her cheeks. Her stomach is turning. She feels suddenly hollow. "Why can't I remember?"

"That's pretty typical with possession," Dean assures her. "You might get bits and pieces, but for the most part it's like blacking out."

"No, I was awake," Anna argues, refusing to look Dean in the eye.

He's focused on her wound anyway. She can feel the burn in the very center of her hand. The pain is good, she's been told. It means she hasn't lost all feeling. That was apparently a possibility at one point.

"Awake or not, Rugrat, there's nothin' you coulda done."

Anna snorts and feels suddenly wrathful. She's the fuck-up again. She's gotten people hurt again. She's the stupid kid again. And Dean won't even admit it. "Well, that's a lie."

Dean looks up in surprise at her new tone. "Excuse me?"

"Sam took control back from the friggin' devil, Dean. I might've been a kid, but I remember that." She almost misses those days. She was too little to be blamed back then. Not that she felt innocent at the time, but she was. Eighteen, and Anna knows that her innocence is no longer an objective fact. It's all subjective. Her family thinks she's just a kid. Kate thinks she's a good person. But Anna knows herself best. She's not a kid, and she's certainly not good.

She's hurt waiting to happen. But she hates herself for even believing that. She's not special enough to be a special sort of stupid. Claire was right to say that.

Anna's lost halfway between hating herself and dismissing herself when she hears her brother speak.

"Anna, that was a million-to-one," Dean scolds. His anger is unexpected, but it runs deep. "You remember Meg?" he demands. But he doesn't give her time to answer before continuing, "She possessed Sam for a week. A week, Anna. And he couldn't take control back then. Lucifer? Sam's a tough son of a bitch, and what he did was incredible. I ain't sayin' it was luck. But I am sayin' he's the only one in the history of ever to actually pull that off. Don't hold yourself to standards that are impossible to meet."

The tears in Anna's eyes aren't relieved but hurt. And she doesn't even know why. "I coulda killed Cas," she grieves.

Dean makes a sound of frustration and clenches his jaw. "You're wrong," is all he can tell her, and he says it tersely.

It occurs to Anna then that Dean has probably had this conversation several times in his life. Sam's been possessed three times that she knows of, including this Meg possession Dean just told her about.

"Anna, before Sam took back control at Stull Cemetery… You remember what happened?"

She swallows and reaches back. Stull Cemetery. It had been a gray day, but the sun peeked out from between the clouds often enough to remind them that the world wasn't over just yet. Anna can't get much back. Her minds is a mess of repressed and preserved memories. All she can remember is Dean pressed back against the Impala, his face swollen beyond recognition. She remembers crying from the ground, covered in blood. Oh. Oh, God. Bobby's blood.

"Lucifer killed Bobby," she says softly. "And Cas."

"Yeah."

"He almost killed you too."

Dean nods, voiceless this time. He's set about rewrapping her hand, but Anna barely feels it anymore. She's so lost in her head. "Rugrat, you never once blamed Sammy for those things."

"Well, it wasn't…"

"Him," Dean finishes for her. He looks at her knowingly, and she can see him longing for her to understand. "I know."

Anna hangs her head again. Her breakfast is growing cold in front of her, scrambled eggs congealing into a rubbery state. "Yeah." Her voice trembles. "Sorry."

Dean sighs, but he sounds almost relieved. "You understand?"

Anna swallows hard. "Yes," she replies. And she's not lying. She gets it. Hell, she feels it. It wasn't her fault what the demon did. But she's still got something horrible swirling in her gut, and she can't put a name to it.

"You okay?" Dean asks a minute later when Anna's hand is secure again.

Anna looks at him, looks back at her plate, and doesn't answer.

()()()

The shower is a safe haven. Anna sits with her knees to her chest and imagines a rainstorm soaking hot into her skin.

She never ate her breakfast, and she's feeling it bad right now. Her stomach is aching and growling, sending waves of hunger so strong they almost reach her chest. She got in the shower so she wouldn't eat. Anna knows that's not healthy. She knows she should feed her body.

But she needs the emptiness, much as it hurts.

Since speaking with Dean, she's been thinking. She remembers more and more. The dead cashier at that gas station, the wounded glimmer in Cas' eyes when he found her, the nightclub where her voice sang along to songs she doesn't know and her throat burned with cigarette smoke and weed. It's all terrifying.

But the worst thing she recalls is the suffocating weight of the demon's presence in her head, her chest, her gut. It was like constant pressure along every inch of her skin, her bones expanding, her blood thickening. Hours upon hours spent waiting to explode.

Anna curls forward, her face in her knees. Steam curls around her, filling the bathroom. The water is hot enough to hurt just a little, her skin turning pink beneath the spray.

She hates it, the sweat mixing with water on her forehead and in her hair. She hates the way her hair, weighed down by the water, sticks to her skin like a decal. Everything that touches her feels like another violation. She wants the water to cleanse her insides the way it does her skin. Burning, but purifying.

And this feeling is familiar. She was assaulted for the third time, but this instance feels more violating than the others. This demon got what it wanted. It felt every inch of her, read her every thought and memory, smothered her every feeling. At least Leo never fully got her clothes off. At least that man in the truck stop met his match.

Crying is hard, but Anna can feel it building in her. She scratches her nails up and down her legs, watches the marks turn white and then red.

Her stomach hurts.

()()()

The tricky thing is, Anna knows what an eating disorder is. She's familiar with the words anorexia and bulimia and binge-eating even the less common orthorexia. She knows that starving yourself can turn quickly from a habit to a sickness. Hell, maybe you have to be sick to even start. She doesn't know.

But Anna doesn't know if she cares. The truth is, she's been bad about eating since she was a little kid.

When she was seven, she was taken by some sort of monster. She should know the name of it now that she's an adult, but she doesn't. She's a bad hunter.

The important detail is, it ate children. She watched it eat another child. The monster gave them no food or water. Anna doesn't remember how long she spent down there with those other kids. But she remembers how much her stomach hurt when she got out. She remembers how hard it was to eat afterwards, how hard it was to keep track of night and day.

She started get better, she thinks, because Sam and Dean were so clever about fixing her back then. But food got harder every minute. Dad died, and she turned eight. Then Sam died, and she turned nine. Then Dean died, and she turned ten. Then Sam died, and she turned eleven. It never ended. People were always dying. Anna always had a reason to feel sick to her stomach.

But there's a difference. She knows that. When she felt sick, it was grief or fear or anger. This isn't something beyond her control. This is her making herself sick.

She should stop. She has to stop. She wants to stop.

()()()

A week later, Anna doesn't want to stop. She craves the hollow feeling that tells her she's alone in this body. It gives her control, gives her power. (She knows that's what drives people to starve themselves. She knows she's getting sick.)

She turns on her phone and opens an internet browser. Types control with no expectations.

The first thing she sees is a dictionary definition from the Merriam-Webster website. To exercise restraining or directing influence over: regulate. Anna thinks of her oldest brother and keeps reading. To have power over. She thinks of God and reads on. Rule. A single company controls the industry. She thinks of billionaires and nearly laughs out loud.

Control, she decides, is a joke.

But she keeps scrolling. There's a video game called Control, apparently. It's an action-adventure where your character has supernatural abilities. Anna swallows, feeling nauseous. She imagines being the character in a video game.

You know there's somebody out there with their thumbs on joysticks and lettered buttons. But they're invisible to everyone else. So your hands are coated in blood, and your mouth moves around witty voice lines. But none of it– not a second of it– is yours.

She shudders and feels the urge to throw up. But she hasn't eaten all day, and it's five o'clock, and she hates throwing up bile.

Masochistically, Anna edits her search. Control quotes. As she hits go, she's daring the internet to give her something that can fix demonic possession. She knows it won't be covered here.

What consumes your mind controls your life. Anna sets her phone face down on her bed and stands up with her hand over her mouth. Consume was a good word for this. The feeling of being devoured from the inside out.

She picks up her phone but can't bring herself to sit again. There are pages and pages of empty inspiration that make her feel smugly like she's right to give up.

Dean knocks on her door, and Anna tells him she'll be out later. He walks away, and she clicks on a new link. The goodreads page is instantly different.

Anna sinks onto her mattress, her right arm around her stomach. Incredible change happens in your life when you decide to take control of what you do have power over instead of craving control over what you don't.

Minutes pass as Anna thinks it over. There's no denying she craves control. But when she tries to come up with something she does have power over, she comes up short. She feels lost in her own head, like the spacce doesn't belong to her anymore. Demonic possession is a control so total and so violating that Anna isn't sure this quote applies.

Freedom is the only worthy goal in life, another line goes. It is won by disregarding things that lie beyond our control.

Anna frowns. Control and freedom are antonyms but in an abstract sort of way. She can't wrap her head around it, around the depth of this quote. She's so hungry, so tired, she wonders if her brain is dissolving from all the shit she's seen and done. She's too young, Dean always says, to be exposed to more and more violence. But violence is a language Anna knew before she could speak.

John Winchester was fluent in it. Violence was a language he commanded. Command, control. Freedom.

Anna reads more. A line from a novel, I have lost control over everything, even the places in my head.

She reads more. Pain is the feeling. Suffering is the effect the pain inflicts. If one can endure pain, one can live without suffering. If one can withstand pain, one can withstand anything. If one can learn to control pain, one can learn to control oneself.

Ignoring the rest, Anna breathes the last line. If one can learn to control pain, one can learn to control oneself.

It's the proof she needs. Pain is control. Control is pain. Controlling pain is controlling the self.

Anna lets her back hit the mattress, holding her injured hand to her chest as she gazes up at the ceiling. She can feel the wrongness of the belief even as she solidifies it. Pain is control. To control pain is to control oneself. She can get control back if she hurts enough.

She doesn't care about being wrong or being right. She just cares about being free. And Anna's got this feeling like no matter what she does, she'll be trapped in a world of pain. It's an endless cycle. She turns different directions every time she comes to a fork in the road, but somehow she still finds herself at the same destination.

It's hard to cry. But she does it anyway, because if the only way to get control is to decide where it hurts, Anna isn't sure she wants to live. Being empty doesn't feel like enough.

()()()

Anna sits in the hallway outside Sam's bedroom door. It's only four in the morning. Her brother may not be up for hours. But she has a question for him, and she refuses to lose it.

She hasn't slept all night, and it's making her body feel like an itchy coat. She wants out, she wants away, she wants to stop being held at the mercy of an unforgiving vessel. Or maybe she just wants to make it hurt so bad it dies, and her with it.

Anna can't tell the difference anymore between wanting desperately to live and wanting desperately to die.

Sam steps out of his room at 4:30 and jumps a mile when he sees her. "What the hell are you doing?" he asks, but it isn't angry so much as alarmed. "What's wrong?"

It's hard to explain, and she's too tired to do hard things. So Anna just asks the question. She figures she's been patient long enough. "Did it feel like mind-rape?" she says bluntly, her voice devoid of feeling. You have to repeat dangerous questions over and over and over again to separate them so well from their emotional aftermath when you speak them aloud. Anna's spent hours with this one. "Like everything inside your head has been smothered and groped. I mean, it's different. I know it's different. But it's not." Sam hasn't spoken, but he's frozen. "Did it feel like that for you?" Or is there something special about me? Am I a special kind of stupid? A special kind of damaged? Please say no. Please say yes.

It's a few seconds or a few minutes before Sam sits on the floor next to her. Anna remembers this. Their shoulders touch like they did after the FBI named her a victim of a serial rapist. Except Anna was the lucky one, because she wasn't raped.

This is the difference between Anna and her brothers: she gets away by the skin of her teeth, and people look at her with sympathy, let her know it wasn't her fault. Sam and Dean fight their way out of unimaginable horrors, and people look at them with fearful admiration, let them know their power is recognized.

Sam looks sick. "Yes," he says, nearly swallowing the word.

Anna nods, feeling it in the air just how desperate Sam is not to talk about this. He wants to help her, she can see it. But he can't do it.

She should have been kinder with her pain. Instead she threw it in his face right after he woke up. Someone said once, Always wake people gently, and Anna has never been good at that. In fact, she's a record breaker for midnight heart attacks.

"Sorry," she mumbles, shaking her head and looking tiredly into her lap.

"Don't be," Sam pleads. He touches her wrist, right near the end of her bandages, and the movement is slow and deliberate in its comfort. His caution helps Anna not to flinch. "You can ask me anything, alright?"

Anna nods, and her smile only wobbles a little bit. But she doesn't ask him any of the million other questions she's got locked up in her head.

She appreciates her brother– She really does. But she can't kill him for her own good.

()()()

It's another week before Anna really starts to feel how starvation is a sickness. She's weaker, wearier, and always pale. She's dizzy all the time, and it feels like there's a drill buzzing against the back of her skull.

She hates the feeling. She hates all these feelings. Even the emptiness.

"Does it hurt any more?" Dean asks her for the tenth time today.

Anna shakes her head, ducks to look at her phone while Dean finishes unwrapping her injured hand. She hasn't answered Kate's texts for three days. She's just so tired.

"It doesn't look red."

"It's not infected, Dean," she complains. "Can you just rewrap it and move on, please." Despite the polite language, she's not being very patient.

They go around and around for a few more days. Sam asks if she's sleeping, asks about nightmares. Dean mutters about fevers and hidden infections, tries to convince her to move her follow-up appointment to this week.

Anna just counts. It's not about calories, but they are a good measure, she thinks. If she eats too much in a moment of weakness, she feels it for hours. It weighs so heavily in her stomach that it makes her feel physically nauseous. She doesn't even have to stick her fingers down her throat anymore. At least not every time.

She knows, though. She knows it's bad. She knows it's wrong. She knows she is wrong. It's just that Anna's scared too. That feeling she gets now whenever she eats something substantial— she's come to associate it so strongly with possession. It feels like surrender.

But it hurts keeping this up. God, does it hurt. It hurts so completely and so deeply that Anna has no idea if there's a way to make it end. It's like there's this ugliness inside of her, a feeling hiding somewhere in her very DNA. She was born broken, maybe. Or born fragile, ready to break.

She just keeps thinking the word maybe in utter desperation. Maybe if she empties herself out completely enough. Maybe if she purges until there's nothing left inside of her.

But it's wrong. She's not thinking straight. She knows that.

And Anna realizes one night, staring at the ceiling in the oppressive darkness of her bedroom, that it's her. She's the horrible thing she can't escape.

()()()

When Sam says he's got a case, Anna is thrilled. But when he says it's in Iowa, she wants to disappear.

She knows she can't avoid a whole state for long, especially not one that borders Kansas. But fuck if she hadn't been planning to try.

Her hand is almost usable now, but it hurts like hell every time she bends her fingers. She'll start PT next week. In the meantime, Anna sleeps in the car for two hours before they stop for gas. It's odd that she can suddenly sleep through the night, sometimes even without dreaming. But it's even more strange that she's now falling asleep all over the place.

On her desk, in the kitchen, in the car, in the library. She's always conking out. Maybe that's why her brothers keep checking her stab wound.

The gas station is mostly deserted. It's early yet. An elderly man walks out of the mini mart with a paper coffee cup, pulling his keys off his belt and looking ahead toward his truck. The sun glows warmly overhead, reflecting off the metal of passing cars.

Anna sits up straight and feels heat wash over her from head to toe. She feels breathless and dizzy but is determined not to let it show. Fortunately, neither of her brothers notice. They're both getting out of the car already.

In an effort to seem okay, she pushes her way out of the backseat. But the change in altitude is too much for her, and Anna nearly lands flat on her face. She only manages to catch herself a few seconds before she would have hit the ground, but it's her bad hand that she catches herself with. The impact of her still-healing wound against the gas pump is enough to make Anna lose her breath.

"You okay?" Sam asks from in front of her. He's holding his arms out toward her, like he's ready to catch her.

Anna knows she must look like utter shit. Her stomach is cramping, her head hurts, and she's so dizzy. She's always dizzy. "M'fine," she says, the words like cotton balls stuffed inside her mouth. She tries to straighten, her hand throbbing in time with her rapid breathing. Usually these feelings fade after a few seconds. But now, they refuse to dissipate.

She goes to step past her brother, but the world tilts, and Anna loses track of everything. It's just buzzing, her vision black then orange then black again. She wakes up what can't be more than thirty seconds later, eyes fluttering open and shut. She's on the concrete, back against the Impala's front passenger tire.

Sam is crouched beside her, holding her upright with his hands on her biceps. He's speaking to her, but she can hardly make out the drone of his voice, let alone the actual words he's saying.

She's still breathing wrong. She can feel the sharpness in her chest. It blends painfully with the cramping in her stomach. Her vision finally begins to clear, and she knows with one look between Sam and Dean that she is well and truly screwed. She should never have gotten out of the car.

"Well, what the hell?" Dean is asking to her right. He's crouched beside Sam, but he's holding a bottle of water and frowning like he's mad about something.

Sam, by contrast, just looks worried but calm. "I don't know," he says tersely over his shoulder.

Anna blinks a couple more times and manages to slow her breathing down a smidge. "Sorry," she murmurs, sweating as her skin turns clammy all over. "S'okay." She presses her palms to the ground, hoping to brush this off as unimportant. She's under no illusions that it'll work, though, and she's proven right when Sam applies just the tiniest bit of pressure to her arms, keeping her seated.

"Just sit," he tells her firmly. "What happened?"

"Dunno," Anna lies. Her entire body feels weak, like she's withering into herself. Something is dying in her, and she wants it to stop. But she's so filled with shame, she can't bring herself to admit what she's done. She'll fix it herself, or she'll see it through. She's not going to make this a thing.

"Yeah, okay," Dean snipes and passes her the bottle of water. "Drink that," he orders. "When's the last time you ate?"

Anna shrugged one shoulder, surprised at the ache there. No matter how much she rests lately, she's always sore. She can barely lift the bottle to her mouth, but the water tastes so good in her dry mouth. It hits her stomach and swirls, cold and heavy. She shoves the bottle back toward Dean, and she just manages to catch it before her hand falls back to her lap.

"Hey," Dean snaps, and Anna looks up at him. She hadn't realized she was looking down. "When's the last time you ate?" he demands again, and Anna can barely read the worry past the sharpness of his anger.

She's got very few choices now. If she lies and says she ate this morning, they'll know she's bullshitting. But if she tells the truth, they'll know how bad it all is. So, Anna settles on a half-truth. Or a half-lie. She's a glass-half-empty girl these days. "Yesterday," she says sheepishly, feeling a little heat rise in her cheeks as she fibs. "Morning."

Dean cusses her out. Nicely, maybe, but there are so many swears coming out of his mouth that she can't even tell. "Drink the fucking water," he finally orders and moves toward the mini mart.

Anna doesn't raise the bottle to her mouth, though. She looks instead at Sam, who's watching her with suspicion, eyes narrowed and thoughtful. "What?" she asks tersely. "I'm fine. Can we get off the ground, please?"

"Anna."

Anna feels shame creep higher into the cavity of her chest. She knows it's wrong, and she wants the knowing to be enough. She wants the knowing this is wrong to make it right. She doesn't say anything, but she does look at Sam again. He's the picture of concern and frustration.

"You know how dangerous this is, right?" he asks.

Anna stares into her brother's eyes, trying to read how much he knows. But she can see his resistance to confront this. It's the same look she saw when she asked him about possession. But this time Sam is the one asking the questions. It's infuriating to Anna that she just keeps doing this– forcing him into confronting his own horrifying trauma for her benefit– even when she's desperately trying not to.

"I don't know what you're talking about," Anna denies and presses her palms back against the car to stand up. She takes it slow, knowing that she'll fall on her face if she goes too fast. That was her mistake getting out of the car, after all: going too fast and getting dizzy.

"Anna. Not eating?" Sam presses, stepping back to give her space as she opens the back door and sits on the edge of the seat, legs still outside the car. "It doesn't help anything. You're making yourself sick."

"I'm not…" Anna purses her lips and sighs harshly. She wants to tell him she's eating just fine, but it would be an obvious lie at this point. Clearly he's noticed her behavior despite her best efforts to hide it. "It's none of your business," she finally snaps instead. At her brother's unexpected silence, Anna looks up and has to bite her lip against a wave of pain in her stomach.

Sam doesn't look angry or impatient. He just looks hurt.

But Anna doesn't have the energy to fix it right now. She doesn't know if it could be fixed, honestly.

When Dean comes out, he's got a bag of pretzels and a stony expression on his face. Anna doesn't want to argue with him, so she nibbles on the pretzels and doesn't say a word when her oldest brother starts driving back the way they came.

Eating with an empty stomach makes her feel ravenous. It's torture, really. She makes herself bite tiny pieces off each pretzel, hoping that if she eats slowly enough, her body will catch up, realize there's food in her stomach, and stop aching for more. But every instinct screams at her to shovel them in one after another. And she wants to so badly.

But she eats slowly. If she can get by on five pretzels, she tells herself, then she doesn't have to throw up her dinner tonight.

()()()

When Anna wakes, she recognizes the scenery outside the back window. She's flat on her back on the seat, someone's jacket pillowed behind her head. It smells like sweat, ash, and cologne. She cracks her eyes open and feels dizzy as they cruise down the road.

Anna tries to bask in the gentle quiet, but the boys are talking up front. They don't know she's awake.

They say things out loud, words she's barely let herself think. Words like self-punishment and starving and sick and suicide. Depressed. Therapy. Sick. Depressed. Sick. Starving. Possession. Possession. Possession.

Possession. It's a horrible, horrible word. The clearest declaration of ownership the English language has to offer, and the most suffocating descriptor ever placed upon her. It's filthy and angry and full.

Anna's stomach feels blessedly empty. She feels blessedly alone.

"I'm serious, Dean. I'm worried about her. She won't talk to me."

"You think she's gonna talk to me any better?" Dean demands. He sounds angry in a vague way, like he doesn't know which way to throw his pain without hurting anyone. "Or Ramone? Sammy, I'm sorry, but you're the only one who's been through this. I'm not sayin' you have to share and care if you don't want to. I'm just sayin' I can't give her what she needs this time."

"Dean, Ramone is a therapist for hunters. He's talked about this with people before. He must have."

It's quiet for a minute, and Anna tries not to cry. It would give her away, let them know she's awake. But it's hard to stomach the thought of telling Ramone any of this. The silence stretches uncomfortably until Dean finally speaks again.

"You ever think about talking to him?"

Sam's response is immediate, his words so quick they tie themselves in knots. "What? No. I don't need to. It's been a long time."

"Hasn't been that long," Dean refutes patiently. But he sighs and doesn't push. "Alright. Look, let's just feel this out first. She doesn't have to explain things for us to get it, right? I mean, half the time we gotta tell her she's tired just to get her to go to sleep."

Sam is slower in his answer this time. "Yeah," he says. "Alright. I guess we should focus on food then."

"Way ahead of you."

Anna's heart is in her throat. They're going to make her eat.

()()()

The internet is full of encouragement for those who want to shrink. Anna finds herself on a page full of people with goal weights and scary diets.

She just wants to know how to hide her habits from her family. She wants to stop worrying them.

Instead she feels sick and terrified as she scrolls slowly through posts about how to bully yourself into starving. There are pictures of beautiful women with big bodies plastered all over the place, captions implying their hideousness. The comments are full of people who want to be small.

Anna doesn't want to be like these people. She doesn't want to pretend there's something wrong with taking up space. She just wants to hide. She just wants to be her own.

She's already tearing up, battling her own head as to whether she needs help or needs to toughen up, when she stumbles across a long text post by a women in her forties.

If you're here, you need to hear this: There is nothing glamorous about anorexia or bulimia. Eating disorders are the leading killer of all mental illnesses. Anorexia killed my mother and nearly killed me too.

I started dieting when I was eight, because my mom was so hypercritical about my body. I was always too big, no matter how small I was. I thought she hated me, but I see now that she really hated herself. She ate so little when I was growing up, and oscillated between wanting me to be well-fed and wanting me to be the thinnest (read: prettiest) kid in school.

Anna sets her phone down and tries to shake the image of an eight year old girl with nothing to separate her skin from her bones. Kate's a size fourteen, and Anna remembers vividly the day her friend confessed to her intense self-esteem and body image issues. In truth, Anna has never met a woman who didn't have a problem with her appearance. Claire, Alex, even Jody. Sometimes these things are subtle and sometimes they're consuming.

She keeps reading, hand over her mouth as both a trap and a safeguard.

It got worse when I started high school. It was the '80s and everyone was trying to be fit and thin. This was also the era where it was cool to do drugs and smoke and get drunk every weekend. (Maybe this is all still cool, I'm not sure. My kids love to remind me how out of touch I am.) I wanted to be pretty and popular or even just liked so badly that I ate less than ever. I smoked, I drank, and I starved myself. I felt sick every single day, but I was so used to it that it honestly never occurred to me that I had a problem worth solving. Every girl I knew was on a diet and had similar habits, so I just thought this was normal or maybe even 'healthy'.

I was wrong. I was sick. And if you're here, you know exactly what you're doing. You know that you're sick too.

Anna feels a flash of indignance but reigns it in. She needs to hear the end of the story. She prays it's something beautiful.

When I was 22, I started passing out on a regular basis. Pretty much every day. About a month before I would have graduated from college, I was hospitalized. Turns out I was anemic and low on just about every nutrient a person needs to survive. By this point, I was eating only once a day, and usually it was something as small as an apple or a cookie. I was drinking a lot of coffee and alcohol. I was diagnosed with anorexia about two days into my hospital stay.

It was a long road to recovery, and by the time I really stopped starving myself, I'd already done permanent damage to my body. My bones are weak (I've broken my left arm six times since I was 30) and I'm always cold, often because of anemia and other deficiencies. I get sick constantly, I have CFS, and so much more.

I can't tell you in one social media post how badly I wish I could turn back time and undo my slow suicide. But I can tell you to stop yours. Please. You're not what needs to change. Your body is beautiful as it is, and beautiful as it was, and beautiful as it will be. You don't need to starve to be beautiful or worthwhile.

When my mother died, she was little more than a skeleton. I read in one of her letters to her sister (who passed when I was a kid) that she knew she was no longer chasing happiness, but that she didn't know how to stop running after whatever was left for her. I begged her to eat in the weeks before she died, but I never got through to her. I still don't know if she chose death, or if she forgot how to live.

Your body is your home. You need it, but it needs you too. Because without you, it isn't anything but blood and bone. The same way an empty house can't be called a home. I know there are some kinds of sadness that run too deep to reach any other way. But you're not coping. You're killing yourself. Please, if you haven't yet, don't start this. If you have, find some help.

Check my profile for crisis numbers and resources.

Anna scrolls up to the top of the post, skims it a second time. Her thumb hovers over the woman's profile picture as she wrestles with herself.

You're killing yourself, she sees again. Her heart thuds loudly as if to emphasize this point, and Anna clutches tightly to her phone, walking purposefully out of her bedroom. She feels dizzy and has to catch herself on the doorframe and rest before stepping into the hallway. It's awful, this sick feeling in her gut. She's tired of it. She's tired of everything.

She remembers the silver knife she held to her wrist when she was seventeen. After Leo. Eyes closed, head weightless, Anna hears Dean's voice in her head. "It's just more pain." Her excuse then was the same as it is now. She wanted it to be hers. She just wants it to be hers. She wants ownership over her body.

Anna feels a bit dazed as she walks toward Sam's bedroom, phone in hand. As she stops in his doorway, she sees her brother sitting in bed, staring at nothing. Anna feels nauseous for a new reason. She's been so wrapped up in her own head, her own self-pity, that she didn't notice how badly Sam has been doing with all of this.

She almost leaves, but Sam turns her way, and suddenly she doesn't know how anymore.

"Did you wanna show me something?" he asks, gesturing to the phone in her hand.

Anna looks dumbly at the lit screen, at the words that were so powerful mere seconds ago. Now they sit still, and she doesn't know if she wants to hide them or tattoo them on her skin.

"Anna?"

Sam's voice is convincing without effort. Anna walks in and sits beside him on his bed. "Are you okay?" she asks, turning off her phone screen with a click.

Sam looks at her for just a few seconds before he's back to seeing through the wall. "No," he admits after a moment. "No- Not- Not really, Ladybug."

Anna nods quietly, biting her lip. She's always wanted her brothers to be honest like this with her. But now that Sam is speaking through his open wounds, she doesn't have any idea why she wanted it. She can't help. She certainly doesn't have any kind of panacea to offer.

"But I will be," he promises before too long, voice still soft but more sure.

"You wanna talk about it?" she offers gently. Her voice comes out sounding more cautious than anything, and she knows Sam hears her nerves, because he wraps an arm around her and half-smiles into her hair.

"Thanks, Anna, but I don't really know if there are words for it." He hugs her for a minute, and Anna presses herself closer to him, relishing the ironic warmth created by their two cold bodies. "Mostly," Sam admits, "I'm worried about you."

Anna doesn't feel the usual flash of angry indignance at that. Instead, she looks down at her hands in her lap, phone still clutched in one. "I…" She sighs and shakes her head. She doesn't have the right words either. But she's got another language to try out. She unlocks her phone and hands it to her brother, letting him read the post with the speed of a literal genius. The entire time, his arm stays around her shoulders, warm and heavy and strong.

Anna stretches her legs out in front of her, her purple socks touching Sammy's black ones. There's a bubble of warmth beginning to surround them. It makes Anna want to stay here for the rest of her life.

"So you've been doing it on purpose?" he asks. But it doesn't sound like an accusation. Anna nods silently, then feels guilty and clenches her fists. "Why?" Sam asks simply. He sets her phone down in his lap and uses his now-free hand to cover one of her cold, angry hands.

"That's a loaded question," Anna tells her brother and bends her knees toward her chest but leans them toward Sam so their legs are still touching. She's like a kid, now, curled into a ball under Sam's arm. But she's okay with being a total child right now if it means she can be safe. And she is. She's safe here.

"So give me a loaded answer," Sam encourages, rubbing her arm once before his hand goes still again.

"I'm just tired," Anna breathes. "I feel like every time I start to think I know what I'm doing, I get knocked on my ass. And just like that, I'm a stupid kid again."

"You're not stupid, Anna." At her answering snort, Sam says, "You're not." He leans to the side so he can see her face. "You know, sometimes we lose things– parts of ourselves or other people or literal material things… and we don't know how to deal with it. But that doesn't mean we can't deal with it."

Anna frowns. "Why?" she asks bitterly. "Why does it have to happen over and over again? I used to think all the awful stuff that kept happening was gonna mean something someday. You know, like it made me special or smart or something. But no matter what I think I've learned, I just keep doing stupid shit, getting people hurt again."

"The things that happen to you aren't your fault," Sam tells her firmly. He softens again, pulls her against his side in a one-armed hug. "You don't always have the power to change the outcome, Ladybug. Hell, I think we only get to make a few real choices in this line of work. That's why we have to make the right ones. But the truth is, Lucifer has been out there and he still is, and if this plan hadn't worked, there'd have been another one. And if that didn't work, there'd be another one."

"I hate that," Anna spits, jaw clenching. "What's the point in it? Why do we bend over backwards trying to do the right thing? Is there even a right thing?"

"Yes," Sam snaps with such certain faith that Anna believes him before he actually explains his response. "You know what the right thing is, Anna. You do it all the time. There aren't always big stars-aligned answers. Sometimes fighting– Sometimes fighting is the point."

"I don't get it," Anna says softly, but she's not trying to make an argument. She's just lost and needs it to be known. "I don't get how you can turn all this crap into a reason to fight. Don't you wanna quit? I mean, it fucking sucks. I'm tired. You're tired. Dean's tired. Cas is tired. When do we throw in the towel? I mean, at some point the ends stop justifying the means. And I swear, it seems like all we do lately is lose."

Sam is quiet for a couple seconds, but Anna can feel his displeasure. He doesn't agree with her, but he's measuring his next words. "We win all the time," he tells her finally. "We won this fight with Lucifer."

Anna shakes her head and chuckles dryly. "Yeah? Cause he's still out there."

"So are you," Sam says simply. "We got you back. We're all alive. Lucifer didn't get what he wanted. That's a win, Anna."

"I don't feel like I'm back." The words aren't entirely hers, but that only makes them feel more accurate.

"You are," Sam commands, his voice pitching strangely in its effort to stay quiet. "Anna, you have the same drive in you that I have. That Dean has. That Dad had. You're a fighter."

Anna can't say for sure that he's wrong, but she isn't sure she wants him to be right either.

"We don't have power over everything, kiddo. That doesn't mean we don't have power over anything."

"So, what?" Anna demands and pulls away from her brother to glare at him. She's not angry, though, not really. Or maybe she is. She doesn't know. She doesn't know anything. "What do you do? What am I supposed to do? Because when the thing I don't have power over is my own stupid body, I find it really hard to believe that I have power over anything at all."

Sam looks patient, but his eyes bleed grief. "That demon didn't take your body away from you," he tells her emphatically. "It's yours again. It was always yours. The demon used you, but it didn't change you. You're still you, Anna. You're still my smart, adorable, infuriating little sister."

Anna's eyes fill, and she feels them burn. "So what do I do?"

"Eat," Sam instructs. "Anna, that's why I don't eat burgers breakfast, lunch, and dinner like Dean does. That's why I run even when I don't have to. I like taking care of myself, because it's one thing I know I'm doing right. And it's one way I can take back control of my own body."

And oh shit, Anna is never going to tease her brother about being a health nerd again. She might even punch Dean in the arm next time he says something.

"I've been where you are, okay? I know it's scary as hell. But starving yourself isn't the way to fight back. And trust me, one day you'll wake up and realize it's been months since you last thought about how it feels to be possessed. And you're gonna want to throw a damn party to celebrate, it's gonna feel so good."

Anna looks at her brother's earnest hazel eyes and swallows hard. She hopes he's right this time. God, she hopes he's right. "It's gonna be hard, isn't it?"

"Everything worthwhile is."

Anna wraps her arms around her stomach and leans into Sam's side again, his arm once again a warm weight over her shoulders. They don't speak again for a while. Anna just lies there, searching for a reprieve from the ache in her core. It would be naive to hope a good conversation will fix her issues. But Anna knows, at least, that refusing to eat is definitely not helping. So she promises herself that she'll eat a good dinner– maybe even include a salad for once, like Sam does– and stay out of the bathroom so she doesn't throw anything up.

The problem with all of this is, Anna still doesn't know what to do with this pain. She doesn't know how to feel better, or even if she can.

All she knows– really knows– is that she's found another dead end.

La Fin