Note: I wrote this totally in the spur of the moment. It turned out longer than I thought it would but not excessively long like the last chapter, I promise. I wanted to explore a couple different things. Mostly, I got this title stuck in my head and had to write something that fit with it. Features some angry, scolding older brothers and a seventeen year old Anna. Thank you for reading.

In Your Eyes, I See Myself

Anna sat rigid in her chair, watching Dean pace back and forth. He was still holding that damn pill bottle in a crushing grip. His face was so tight with anger, Anna thought he might explode with it. Then he finally turned on her, slammed the bottle down on the table between them, and asked the question she'd been dreadfully waiting for.

"I can't even believe I'm asking you this," he said darkly, his face the picture of stoicism. His eyes narrowed, and Anna could see the well-masked fear in them. He wanted to be wrong. She couldn't blame him. She wished he was wrong. His face hardened. "Anna Grace, did you take any of these?"

Anna swallowed hard as the question was posed. It hung heavy in the air as she stared at him. She didn't want to answer, because he was reacting more harshly than she'd expected him to and suddenly the aftermath of this mistake seemed a little less bearable. She sent a silent prayer to nobody in particular begging that this remain something they could move past, asking for assurance that she hadn't gone too far.

She didn't want to answer. But lying would get her nowhere except into deeper shit. So she looked up and met her older brother's serious gaze, almost wincing at the hope and anger she saw there, and she crushed him with a single nod.

There was a dangerous pause during which her reply held them all captive. She held Dean's gaze and was surprised at how stolid he remained. Then he pulled back, his face the essence of calm for a moment. He looked past her to Sam who was sitting on one of the motel beds, eyes locked on their little sister. Like lightning, Dean's hand shot out, snatched up the pill bottle, and threw it hard at the wall.

Anna flinched bodily as the cap broke off the bottle and little round pills flew in every direction. One rolled back across the carpet, landing delicately beside her foot. As the room grew quiet again, it became harder not to cry.

"Do you have any IDEA how stupid that was?" Dean demanded. It wasn't a question, but a shout.

Anna shrunk away from his anger in a way she'd never before felt she had to. Of course, she knew it was stupid. Drugs? It had never even been a consideration. But she'd felt cornered at the time, and... Well, there was no and. She shouldn't have done what she did. There were a hundred other ways she could have removed herself from the situation. She should have pulled out her phone and called one of her brothers, and then that guy would have backed off. But she hadn't done that. Maybe she needed to admit to herself that she'd been curious and had slipped up of her own accord, that she had only herself to blame.

"Dean." Sam stepped between them and put a hand on Anna's shoulder.

Anna knew better than to think that meant Sam was any less pissed than Dean. But the gentle touch was welcome considering what a chaotic mess of emotions she was at the moment. She was terrified, confused, and angry. Angry with herself.

"No, Sam," Dean said immediately, not even giving either of them time to breathe. It kept Anna from relaxing beneath Sam's touch. She watched as her brothers stared at each other, seemingly at an impasse. After a minute, Dean pushed Sam carefully out of the way just enough to meet Anna's nervous green eyes. "Don't move one muscle," he instructed coldly. Then he jerked his head toward the door and Sam followed him outside.

As soon as the door closed behind them, Anna let out a heavy breath. She focused on keeping in the tears that had been threatening to fall since the second Sam pulled the bottle out of her jacket pocket and fixed her with a look of absolute heartbreak.

The memory was painful, and Anna pulled her feet up onto the edge of the chair so she could bury her face in her knees, wrap her arms around her legs, and breathe through the urge to cry.

From outside, a voice began to echo in, "She messed up. Big time! And there are consequences for that. Don't tell me you want to let her off the hook just because she's wearing that kicked puppy look  you taught her."

"Keep your voice down-"

Anna winced into her knees at their voices outside. They were talking about her like a child who didn't know any better. She supposed she'd acted like one.

She didn't know how long they would be, but she hoped long enough for her to pull herself together and brace for whatever yelling Dean was about to do. It was quiet for a couple minutes, but she could hear the unsettled and low cadence of their voices outside. She just couldn't make out any words.

They'd never been so angry with her before. She'd never been in so much trouble before. She'd never done anything so stupid before.

The door swung open before she even realized the murmurs of their voices had stopped carrying. To her surprise, only Sam walked in. A pang of anxiety slammed into her chest. Had she pissed Dean off badly enough that he was going to leave? Was he so tired of putting up with her shit that this was the straw to break the camel's back?

"Where's-?"

"He's coolin' off," Sam spoke shortly.

So Dean was going for a drive, Anna surmised. No sooner had she reached this conclusion than the engine of the Impala could be heard starting and the car pulling away from the motel. The anxiety of being ditched gone, Anna actually felt a little relief reach her muddled brain. Sam, she could handle. Dean, pissed as he was... He was just plain scary.

Sam sat directly across from her at the table, queueing Anna to drop her feet to the floor and face him. Just like that, she was wringing her hands again. Sam's face did not look kind and understanding the way it usually did when she was in some kind of trouble with their older brother. Sam was mad. Really mad.

"S-Sam-"

"Don't even start," Sam cut her off. His face, his tone, everything in his demeanour was all very unforgiving. "You know, Anna, we never had the 'don't do drugs' talk with you because we never thought we needed to. After all, you saw firsthand what all that can look like."

Anna frowned for a second before coming to understand what he was talking about. "Sam, I..." She didn't really have anything to say, though. If they were about to open that can of worms over this, then he must be one hundred percent serious. In the moment, she remembered justifying her actions in her head by deciding that it really wasn't such a big deal. But clearly it was to her brothers if they were going to revisit the year after Dean came back from Hell.

"Maybe you were too young then to get how bad it was. I don't know. But this is not a conversation I ever pictured us having." Because they trusted her to be smarter, to make better choices than this, to be mature and not to try out the things that a lot of kids tried out because she knew better.

"I'm sorry," Anna said softly. It was sincere, but it wasn't enough and she knew that even as she uttered the words.

"I'm sure you are," Sam said not unkindly. "But that doesn't change the fact that you could've been seriously hurt today."

Anna frowned at that point. She hadn't been thinking of that side of this either. She'd been stupid. That was the problem here. Hell, it was the very thing Dean had screamed in her face not ten minutes ago.

She wasn't hurt, and there hadn't been a risk of that or she never would have accepted- Oh. Yeah, taking drugs from strangers was pretty dangerous, she supposed. But they were mild. The same kind of thing kids at Lebanon High back home in Kansas would bring to parties on Friday nights. Hell, she'd seen kids pop pills in the middle of the school hallways, taking advantage of the crowds of students to hide themselves and their actions.

But she'd had no reason to trust him. Hell, just yesterday the same guy had tried to get her attention while she was walking down the sidewalk with Dean toward the diner, and Dean had threatened to break the guy's face in. Hell, he would have actually broken his face in if not for Anna tugging him away and toward their destination. That should have been enough for her to understand how dangerous the offer was, how untrustworthy the man was. She should have reacted as Dean had with a firm No and a Back off, you bastard.

"I wasn't hurt," she told her brother.

"You think that makes a difference?" Sam asked incredulously. His eyes were alight with a cross between exasperation and fury. "Anna, where did you get those?" he asked tersely, loosely gesturing at the mess of pills surrounding a slightly transparent orange bottle on the floor a ways away.

Thinking of how Dean had reacted yesterday just at the man trying to speak to her, Anna figured she was protecting his life by shrugging her shoulders instead of answering truthfully.

"Are you kidding me?" Sam demanded. "You're actually defending the guy who tried to get you hooked on whatever the hell that is?"

Anna thought this had to be one for the books. She'd managed to get Sam yelling and using swear words in the span of a few minutes. She didn't say anything for a minute, but it quickly became clear that he was waiting for some kind of response. "I would hardly say he was getting me hooked on them," she said, the comment rather snide considering her position.

Sam cut his eyes at her sharply, but then sighed heavily and rubbed a hand over his face. "That's how they work," he explained, because she obviously didn't understand how he'd come to that conclusion. "They give you something and you try it and then by the time the bottle is empty, it's too late and you can't help but go back for more. Except this time, you have to pay for it. It just gets worse from there, Anna."

"I wasn't gonna take anymore," Anna argued weakly.

"Then why was the bottle still in your jacket?"

There was no answer for that. It certainly hadn't been a conscious choice, but Anna couldn't for the life of her think of why she had left it there.

"People can justify anything if they feel like they need to. It's called cognitive dissonance. Your actions and your beliefs don't line up, so you change the way you feel about something to feel more comfortable doing it. I never would have dreamed when I was your age, or even that first year back from Stanford, that I would end up drinking... demon blood. But then suddenly I was doing it, and as long as I kept telling myself that it was okay because I was doing it for you or Dean or to kill Lilith and save the world... My point is, Anna, that you have to drop all that, because it's a slippery slope. You have to be able to accept that you made a mistake. You have to be able to change your actions instead of justifying them."

Anna stared at her brother for a long minute. The anger in his eyes was still present, but it had taken a backseat. There was more fear and determination at the forefront now. He didn't want her to walk the same path of lies and self-righteousness that he'd stumbled down years ago. But Anna wasn't making the connection. That had been so different from this. She'd swallowed one harmless pill as an experiment or maybe as an act of rebellion. She was never going to get hooked. She knew better.

"You're doing it right now, right? You're thinking up every possible reason what you did was okay." The look on her face when she realized he'd basically read her mind only served to cement in Sam's mind how right he was. "But it wasn't, Anna."

In the end, it was that simple. She'd done something she knew was wrong. "So, I'm guessing there's a grounding in my near future..."

"We'll talk punishment when Dean gets back," Sam said, his tone making it clear that they weren't finished talking.

Anna just glared into her lap. She hated the word punishment. It made her feel small and childish. Like a five year old Anna getting caught with her hand in the cookie jar, or a nine year old Anna caught holding a knife she wasn't supposed to touch, or a fourteen year old Anna getting caught in an intricate lie about where she'd been all afternoon. It was humiliating... and honestly a little terrifying.

"I don't think you get how serious this is," Sam said gravely.

"I do."

"Do you?" he challenged. "You can sit there and look contrite, but you're pretty unconcerned considering."

Anna looked at her brother, offended, and crossed her arms. It was an automatic response to being called out.

"Anyway, it looks like we're gonna have to go over all the reasons why drugs are out of the question, after all." Sam sat up a little straighter in his chair and settled in. "You wanna start this off, or should I?"

It was nothing short of degrading being spoken to this way, and Anna refused to humor him by starting this conversation.

"Okay," Sam said as he recognized her silence for the stubborn refusal that it was. "Let's start with the fact that they're against the law. That means if you get caught somehow, you end up in jail and it's up to us to bail you out. Not to mention, if something happens and you end up in the hospital, the authorities have you then too." Anna grit her teeth and settled in. This was going to be a long lecture. "There's the next thing. It's pretty easy to end up hurt or sick with crap like this. Discounting the possibility of being given bad drugs by lying scum like whoever that gave you those, everything has side effects and a lot of them can be serious."

"Can you stow the speech?" Anna finally snapped. "I get it, okay? It was stupid."

"No, it was beyond stupid. It was reckless and dangerous. You put yourself at serious risk today. So I don't care if you want to hear this. You're gonna listen."

The way he was acting did nothing but further anger his sister. She sighed shortly. "Why are you overreacting? It was one pill, one time. I was gonna get rid of them."

"And I'm just supposed to believe that. Nevermind that you kept the bottle in your jacket."

"Sam-!"

"You can take that up with Dean, Anna."

"Oh, great, so I get to look forward to another lecture."

Sam suddenly shot up out of his chair, looking irate. It was enough to make Anna cower in her seat. Immediately she was back to that feeling of fear and near-tears and shit, what did I do here that she'd been at when Dean slammed the pill bottle down on the table and asked her the question.

"Do you have any idea how worried we were? How worried we are?"

Anna frowned, looking up at her brother in total confusion. "What?"

"What, you thought we were just getting a kick out of this? Anna, you're seventeen years old, you're stubborn as all hell, and you bear the weight of responsibilities most kids your age would crack under. All three of those things put you at risk for things like this."

The explanation did nothing to resolve all Anna's questions, and instead she stared at Sam with the same lost look on her face as she'd given him a minute ago.

"I know you hate hearing it, but you- You're like this combination of Dean and me when we were your age. You've got all the rebelliousness, the smarts, the charm. You're a Winchester; I guess that's all there is to it. But you're reckless. Just like Dean. The last thing we want is to see you make the same mistakes we made when we were kids. Not just when we were teenagers, but when we were in our twenties and being pulled in every direction by angels and demons and..."

Anna squinted at her brother, starting to understand what Sam was getting at. He was seeing himself in her. Not just the demon blood addiction and withdrawal that all resulted from one well-intended but reckless choice, but his own teenage self. His own rebellious and terrified teenage self. The kid who fought John Winchester tooth and nail to go to football games at the highschool of the week. And he was seeing Dean in her. Dean, the loyal to a fault and self-deprecating teenager, the genius dropout. The kid who played peacemaker, parent, and soldier all in the space of an hour or a few minutes if it was necessary.

There was a small part of Anna's brain that whispered at her: You're not like them. You can't be. You're selfish. You're not smart enough. You're not strong enough. You're only half Winchester, after all.

That voice, Anna realized with a start, was the reason she'd said yes. It was the reason she shoved those pills in her pocket and popped one in her mouth. It was the reason she was willing to do something as selfish and stupid as trying drugs. Most teenagers would do it once, right? She didn't even know the answer to that.

"Sometimes," Anna said quietly. "I think you're right. I'm like you and Dean and I'm a hunter and I'm smart and capable and... I don't know, good, I guess." She paused and looked down at her hands, unwilling to meet Sam's eyes as she continued. But she wanted him to know that she understood. "And you think that's the scary part, but that's not why I did what I did." She grimaced at the notion that it was too late for her to go back, that she was too far in this confession to turn back now.

Sam had settled from his state of overwrought anger. When she glanced up at him, he looked much more calm. He looked hopeful. He was getting the truth. That, Anna realized, was why Sam had entered without Dean. Talking like this almost always led them to the real reason she'd done the wrong thing. It almost always led them to what was hurting her. "What is?" he asked gently. He was wearing that puppy dog look that always got him just what he wanted. But today it wasn't for him. Today, that look was to get Anna what she needed. A chance to spill her guts.

"Sometimes," she said again, then paused to try and collect herself. It was hard, forcing the words out. It was embarrassing. She didn't know how to say things like what was in her head. So she just went for it. "Sometimes I think I don't even fit anywhere."

It was clearly not what Sam expected. He pulled one of the chairs away from the table so he could sit by her. "What do you mean?" he asked. His voice was devoid of anger, fear, judgement. It was the voice of liberation. She could speak and he would listen, and it wouldn't end in execution.

"I mean, everything you said. Being reckless and smart and charming and rebellious and stubborn. All of it. Sometimes I think it's not really me. Like I'm just... pretending?"

"Is that a question?" Sam asked with a careful smile. Anna looked miserably at him and his smile faded. "Go on," he urged gently.

"It's stupid," she warned. Sam raised an eyebrow at her as if to say, You're in it now, so just spit it out. Anna bit her lip but she continued. "I can be so selfish," she said. "I mean, I surprise myself sometimes. Like I wake up in the car on the way to some hunt and my first thought is that I want to be back home. Or I get off the bus in Lebanon to start walking to the bunker 'cause you guys are on a hunt and all I can think about is how much it sucks to be alone. Nevermind that you're saving people and risking your lives in the process. Then I get mad for no reason and I sneak out or I rant to Kate about you and Dean even though you didn't do anything and I regret it later but it doesn't change the fact that I did it."

"Anna, that's not selfish."

"Yes, it is." Anna tugged the sleeves of her hoodie over her hands and bit down hard on her lip. Then she started talking again, grateful for and frustrated with Sam's patience. "And I'm stupid sometimes. I don't even mean that one math test I managed to flunk. I mean the way I act and think. I mean, no joke when you walked in here by yourself, I seriously thought that Dean was leaving. For good. I mean, how insane is that?"

Sam's expression had gone from careful, nonjudgmental, and kind to concerned. "Hey, we would never leave you. Not for good. You know that, right?"

Anna's nose wrinkled in frustration. "Yes. Yes, I do, and I don't, and it's so weird."

"Take it easy, Ladybug."

God, but it felt good to be called that after being addressed only angrily for the past half hour. Had it been that long? Maybe longer.

"What are you trying to say?" Sam asked gently.

"I'm saying, I know I'm not good enough. I know I'm selfish and stupid and I can be weak, too. It's like, I know I'm like you and Dean but I also know I'm never gonna be like you. It scares me," she admitted quietly, as if she hadn't necessarily intended to say those last few words out loud. "And I remember yesterday... Dean got so mad at that guy for even looking at me with a pill bottle in his hand. But instead of walking by him again, I listened to that stupid voice in my head sayin', What have you got to lose?"

It was quiet. It always was in the aftermath of words dropped like bombshells. The Winchesters were familiar with silence of this variety.

Anna chanced a look at her older brother and realized with some surprise that he was wearing a smile that was only slightly hampered with concern. "What?" she asked.

"You're even more like us than I thought," Sam deadpanned.

Anna wrinkled her nose in confusion. Did he have to be so damn cryptic?

"Self deprecation is a family trait." Truer words had never been spoken, yet somehow this hadn't occurred to Anna before. "I used to think the same thing, Anna. I used to think that every time I wanted something that didn't line up perfectly with what Dean or Dad was telling me to do or that didn't directly result in saving a life or completing a hunt... was selfish. But I was wrong. Just like you're wrong. It's perfectly normal to want things to be different sometimes. Especially when your life has been devoted to saving other people since you were born. Trust me. I've been there. You think I'm selfish?"

Anna's response was immediate as she vehemently shook her head. "No way," she said.

"Well, there you go."

"Sam, I haven't saved half the people you have."

"Well, you're half my age," Sam laughed.

Anna let a small smile slip. She was using some seriously flawed logic. It was hard to let go of the notion that she was selfish, especially with her being as stubborn as she was, but she had to admit Sam had a point.

"Anna, a lot of what you mentioned is only happening because you're a teenager." Her immediate response was to huff in aggravation, but Anna forced herself not to. Still, her eyes must have shown some of her frustration, because Sam smirked and said, "Don't give me that look. I'm just saying that it's tough being a kid, especially when you're trapped in that world between kid and adult."

"Doesn't mean I should act like such a pain all the time."

"You know, ignoring today-- though, trust me, we will not be ignoring today-- you've been remarkably easy to wrangle through your teenage years." Anna scoffed but Sam shook his head. "Seriously. I mean, ask Dean, I was a lot worse. I used to get mad at Dad every time we moved because I wanted so badly to be normal. I would fight him on it and then when I still didn't get my way, I'd take it out on Dean by refusing to eat dinner or pack my duffel or anything I could think of to make his job harder. And it wasn't like he enjoyed our situation any more than I did."

"You little bitch," Anna snickered playfully.

For once, Sam didn't scold her for swearing but actually laughed. "Yeah, I could be that when I wanted to," he admitted. "But I was a kid. Kids are like that. And it wasn't my fault I felt that way. But it was my fault the way I handled it. You may get pissed sometimes seemingly without reason. And you rant to your best friend because good friends are willing to listen and you need to say something even if you're gonna feel bad after. That's not selfish. It's healthy. And it's a much better way to handle your emotions than what I used to do."

"Yeah, okay," Anna said. "But I messed up majorly today because of my teenage angst or whatever."

"That's true," Sam agreed wholeheartedly, a little bit of his previous anger returning to his eyes. But his voice remained gentle when he spoke a second time. "And don't think we aren't gonna give you hell for it. But that voice in your head is wrong."

You're only half Winchester, that voice liked to tell her. Maybe it was because she wanted so badly to believe that very claim wasn't true. Whatever the reason, Anna clung to the idea that the voice was wrong.

The roar of the Impala's engine signalled an end to their conversation. "You think he's still mad?" Anna asked, looking much more sincerely apologetic by this point.

"Yeah, but I think he's got a handle on it by now."

Anna nodded and looked down at her hands in her lap.

"Wait here," Sam said and headed for the door as they both listened to the sound of the car door slamming shut as Dean got out.

Anna had no doubt that Sam was filling in their older brother on everything they'd talked about. She hated it... but she understood why he was doing that. She knew better than to think they'd go easy on her because of it. After all, they were determined that despite being her brothers and not her parents, it was their job to correct her behavior when they deemed it unacceptable. But she was definitely hoping Dean wouldn't feel like he had to say something to make her feel better. Having to look Sam in the eyes having confessed all of that to him had been hard enough. She didn't want to listen to Dean give her some kind of pep talk too, especially in the same breath as he scolded her for this whole mess she'd gotten herself into.

"I got it, Sam," Dean's irritated voice carried through as he opened the door and both of them entered the room.

As he walked toward the table, turned around the chair Sam had been sitting in a minute ago and turned it backwards so he could straddle it, Anna noticed how bruised his knuckles were and came to a terrible conclusion. "Did you...?" She looked pointedly at his knuckles and he understood her question.

"Don't worry, he'll live," Dean said gruffly. He did seem much more like his usual, charming yet exasperating self now. "Sammy tells me you get the picture. But there's something he don't know, right?"

Anna frowned and jerked her head up at Dean's apparent knowledge, but she quickly put a lid on her reaction and tried to school her features efficiently. If Dean had gone to that guy and tried to beat the crap out of him, he'd probably gotten some answers he hadn't been expecting.

"I don't know what you're talkin' about," she said nonchalantly. That stubborn gene had to kick in even though she knew it was a lost cause.

"You know exactly what I'm talkin' about," Dean returned without missing a beat.

"Do I even wanna know?" Sam asked, that old determinedly angry look appearing in his eye.

"Actually, yeah," Dean said, a glint of something unrecognizable in his own green eyes. "See, our little sister here didn't agree to take a bottle of pills off that asshat's hands solely for kicks."

Anna glared intently down at her lap, embarrassed as hell that they were talking about her. She could feel both of them looking at her even though they were talking to each other.

"What is that supposed to mean?" Sam asked in total confusion.

"It means, she's not the only kid around town he's been bothering," Dean said.

Anna blushed a bright shade of red and pulled one foot up onto the edge of her chair, knee against her chest. "It doesn't matter," she said. "I still took one."

"Yeah, you did," Dean said, voice going dark again. "But you wouldn't have if you hadn't been backed into a corner in the first place. Once you were holding the bottle, you were ten times more likely to take that next step."

"Wait, so you were protecting someone else?" Sam asked.

"Kinda," Anna professed. "He was talking to some kid when I rounded the corner goin' toward the diner. This boy, like, maybe thirteen years old. He had him by the collar, and he only let him go once he had me holdin' those." She gestured with her head at the bottle still lying on the floor.

"Why didn't you say anything?" Sam questioned softly, his entire demeanour changed.

"Because I still shouldn't have done it, Sam," she snapped, still angry with herself and unwilling to forgive herself as easily as they seemed willing to do. "There were a hundred other ways to get out of it that I didn't even think of."

"That's true," Dean said from his seat in front of her. "But it is different."

Anna rolled her eyes and crossed her arms.

"What? Now you're mad at us for not yelling at you?"

"No," Anna pouted. "I don't know. Just stop looking at me like that."

"Like what?"

"Like that," she said emphatically, gesturing toward Dean's slight smirk and then Sam's suddenly relaxed posture.

They looked more comfortable than they had since discovering that pill bottle. But she'd still done wrong. They had no right to feel better about it yet. Not until she'd been punished. Again, she hated that word, but at the moment it was well deserved and she knew it.

Dean held his hands up in mock surrender at her accusatory gaze, and he shifted once in his seat. "So if we think about the problems here... You were reckless with your life-" He pointed a stern finger at Anna when she opened her mouth to protest that point. "Don't interrupt me," he instructed curtly. Anna fell silent and quickly looked contrite again. "Right. You also lied by not telling us for two days."

Anna bit her tongue to avoid the argument she wanted to make that, Not saying anything isn't lying. She could practically hear her brother's coming back simultaneously with, Lying by omission is still lying.

"But you also helped a thirteen year old kid get out of a dangerous situation," Dean followed up, leaving Anna slightly exasperated with their return to that point as well as confused as to why he was determined that it made the situation better.

"So, what?" Anna asked seriously. "Am I grounded? On laundry duty? Weapons-cleaning duty?"

"All good ideas, but no."

Anna frowned. What else could they possibly make her do? Her face fell. "You're taking my phone."

"Nope," Dean said. He waited when Anna remained silent. "Oh, you didn't wanna keep guessing?"

"Smartass," Anna grumbled even though she wasn't sure he would tolerate even a playful remark considering she was in trouble.

Dean actually smiled, though, and reached out to ruffle her hair. It was annoying, and Anna immediately reached up to fix her already messy curls, but it was also comforting knowing that he wasn't still angry with her. "Actually," Dean said, back to business. "You're going to have an escort everywhere you go for the next two months."

Before she had time to think about her reaction, Anna's jaw dropped. Two months. That took the cake for the longest punishment she'd ever endured. And having an escort? Talk about demeaning.

"What, you got a problem with that?" It was an invitation to get herself into deeper trouble, and Anna didn't bite the bait. She shook her head repentantly. "That's what I thought."

"What does that even mean, though?" Anna asked, a hint of dread making its way into her voice though she tried to sound nothing but obedient.

"It means you don't leave unless one of us is with you. That way, we can guarantee you stay out of trouble."

"Even in Lebanon?" Anna asked, growing more miserable as the thought of those conditions stretching two months into her future hit her. How was she supposed to have any fun hanging out with Kate or anyone back home if she had a six foot bodyguard standing behind her all the time.

"Yeah, even in Lebanon," Dean said gravely. At least he didn't take joy in it, Anna thought consolingly.

Anna sat quietly, waiting for him to tell her officially that they were done talking and she could get up now. Her ass was long past numb from sitting in the same spot for going on an hour now. When he didn't say anything for a couple minutes, she still felt his eyes on her, and Anna looked up. "Are we done?" she asked more tersely than intended.

Dean gave her a side eye but finally looked away, catching Sam's eyes across the room. Anna figured that meant yes, and she started to stand up.

"Hey," Dean called, but it wasn't a reprimand. Anna looked at him inquisitively. "I want to be really clear about one thing here, kid."

Anna immediately sat back down and gave Dean her full attention. To her surprise, he reached out and took her chin in his hand. She took it as a queue to meet his eyes, and she did, surprised by the intensity of his serious gaze.

"If I ever, and I mean ever, find out you were doin' drugs of any kind again, I will not be half as generous. I'm serious." It couldn't have been clearer how serious he was. In fact, for the first time in a long time, Anna was having trouble maintaining eye contact. But she knew she better or he would think she wasn't listening. She'd thought he was done, but he went on. "That crap is not something you mess with. Ever. There's enough out there trying to kill us already. We don't help 'em out. Consider this your only warning, because if we have to have this conversation again, it's gonna be a lot less pleasant. You understand?"

Knowing he would settle for nothing less than a formal verbal response, Anna held his gaze and answered steadily, "Yes, Dean."

Dean kept eye contact for another few seconds before, satisfied, standing up. "Awesome, 'cause I'm starving."

"You're always hungry," Sam and Anna said at the same time. They caught each other's eyes. You're like this combination of Dean and me...

The thought made her smile. As she tugged on her denim jacket, she couldn't help but ask, "That coconut cream pie we tried last night... You think they make that every day?"

Dean grinned, looked back at Sam and pointed distinctly at Anna as she strode toward the Impala. "That's my girl." They were both smiling, and both their smiles faded in time with one another.

A two way message passed silently between them as each of them silently promised the other, She's okay. And she always will be as long as we're here.

La Fin