Note: So, I gave a lot of thought to where Anna would picture herself and where her family would see her future going. Considering some of the tidbits the show has given us about how Dean and Sam look at kids involved in hunting (like in Freaks and Geeks in season eight), I always thought Anna would be guided away from hunting in  almost as many ways as she's guided toward it. But I also don't feel that doing something other than hunting fit her character. So this is an idea I toyed with a lot and I eventually decided that this story is something that would inevitably happen. Anna is sixteen.

Of Purpose and Potential

The bunker was quiet when Anna and Dean got home and went their separate ways. It had been a long day at school dragging her heavy backpack around, and Anna dropped it in the doorway to the kitchen first chance she got.

Leaning against the doorframe, she took a deep breath and tried to relax. But her fingers twisted anxiously in her curly hair, and her feet bounced against the cold floor.

Anna needed to talk to her brothers. The problem was, she didn't see the conversation going her way. Sam, especially, was going to throw an absolute fit when he heard her announcement. And Dean? Anna had no clue what to expect from Dean.

Her faith in him had her believing he would be cool about this whole thing. After all, Dean had done the same damn thing when he was her age. It would be plain hypocritical if he faulted her.

Dean tended to be hypocritical about her life choices, though. He tended to want her to "do better" than he'd done, whatever that even frickin' meant.

She could and would call him out on his shit. But the fact of the matter was, Anna wanted Dean's approval. She wanted him to be okay with this.

Stepping over her discarded backpack into the kitchen, Anna kicked her shoes off and let them rest on the floor by the counter. Sam would give her shit for it, but after tonight, Anna thought, he would have bigger grievances with her and the shoes would be easily forgotten. The thought made her dreadfully uncomfortable and she swallowed the lump that had formed in her throat. Turning away from the fridge where she had been headed to make herself an iced coffee, Anna snatched the hightops off the ground and headed back out of the kitchen, being sure to grab her backpack out of the doorway on her way.

She passed Sam in the hallway where their bedrooms were, and felt guilty when she answered his greeting with a smile and a 'hey,' as if nothing were wrong. Because something was wrong, but it was wrong because she knew she was going to really disappoint him in a couple of hours. He didn't seem to pick up on her indirect dishonesty, though, and passed by without another word said. Anna wondered if she should have had a real conversation with him as it might be her last chance for a while. If she knew her brother-- and she did-- Sam was likely to stay upset over the coming conversation for days, weeks, maybe longer.

Anna opened her bedroom door, dropped her bag by her desk, and threw her shoes across the room both because she could and because she was troubled. It didn't make her feel better. It just reminded her that she was a teenager, and an angsty one, and that maybe she wasn't ready to leave school and be out in the world. Especially the world of hunting, monsters, and life or death situations. As much as she wanted to shrug this off for her own benefit, the thought stuck in Anna's mind. It stayed there for the next half hour as she tried to do her math homework-- though to what end she didn't know. If tonight went as planned, she wouldn't be in school much longer. Why bother with homework?

The evening slowly approached, and Anna heard the bunker door screeching open and signalling Dean's arrival. She didn't know where he'd been-- hopefully getting coffee among other things because they were almost out and Anna couldn't survive a school day without... She caught herself there and shook her head. She couldn't survive a day without coffee. School wouldn't be an issue after tonight.

Standing up from her desk, she closed her math binder and snagged a flannel shirt from her dresser drawer which had been left half open. Throwing the flannel on over her t-shirt and jeans, Anna ventured out of her room, checking the time on her phone as she went. It wasn't even 4:30 yet, which meant she had another couple hours to think about this thing before facing the music.

"Hey, kiddo," Dean greeted her as she entered the kitchen. He was bent over putting a six pack or two into the fridge and not looking at the doorway. Yet somehow he'd known it was her who'd walked in silently.

"That totally counts as a superpower," she informed her brother and hopped up to sit on the counter next to the coffee pot.

"Nope, just comes with the awesome." He straightened out and shut the fridge door, folding the paper bag he'd been holding. "You ok? You look tense."

Anna shook her head with a nonchalant smile. "No, I'm good," she said, only half lying. She was definitely tense, but she wasn't upset or anything. Just... a bit anxious. She just wasn't sure how this would go... and it wasn't even Dean's reaction she was worried about. More Sam's. "You guys do anything today?"

Dean seemed to accept her answer without much thought, and Anna was grateful. She had once again felt that little puddle of guilt in her stomach for being implicitly dishonest and pretending there was nothing on her mind. "Not much. Sam was looking for a case, but nothing hit the radar. How was school-- you got a lot of homework?"

Anna looked at her hands in her lap, picking at a scab on her knuckle. "Not so much."

"Great, maybe we can go out tonight."

"Where to?" Anna asked, suddenly nervous that she would have to postpone her announcement.

Dean shrugged and suggested, "I could go for Chinese?"

Anna nodded her agreement and tried to figure out the right time to take care of business with the new plans. She couldn't say it over dinner now, because they would be in public unless Sam said he'd rather get stuff delivered. Even then, Dean might just have Anna run with him to get Chinese and bring Sam back something. They didn't see as much of each other these days what with Anna's mountains of homework and Dean and Sam's hunting obligations. It might be that Anna would have to wait until later tonight after they'd eaten. At least that way no one would skip supper if they lost their appetites. Namely Sam. He was the most likely to be upset by this and the most likely to skip meals when upset-- well, Anna supposed she might have a similar habit.

"What time you think?" she asked, hoping for sooner rather than later.

Dean shrugged again, "I'll ask Sammy."

Anna nodded again, worried briefly that Sam would be on a research binge and wouldn't want to leave before seven. She couldn't imagine having to talk to them about her important decision at 9:00 after going out to dinner-- and inevitably ending up at the bowling alley like they always did when they went into town on a weeknight. She bit her lip and continued to pick at the scab on her knuckle until it was finally tugged away from the skin and blood welled up in such a small portion that it made her feel a bit wistful.

"You sure you're ok, Munchkin?" Dean asked, voice farther away now. Anna looked up to see he was standing halfway out the door, looking back at her seriously.

"Fine," she told him, accompanying the answer with another nod. Maybe, she thought, just maybe she should forget about this whole idea of dropping out of high school.

Anna dug her thumbnail into the little scar on her knuckle and watched as a bit more blood welled to the surface of her skin. She pulled her hand away and looked at the refrigerator. There were several pictures on it, one of Sam and Dean as small children, one of John and Mary when they were younger, one of Cas and the boys that Anna had taken herself, and the others all different snapshots of the three Winchester siblings at all different ages. A couple Anna could recognize as having been taken by Bobby when he was still alive. One she knew had been taken at Jody's. But her eyes fell on one photo in particular. She was only a couple years old in the picture. Sam and Dean were both crouched beside her with goofy grins on their faces, and Anna was pointing at something behind the camera-- likely their father.

Anna stared at the picture for a long while, just thinking. She looked so small, so innocent in that image. But already Sam and Dean's eyes had been dulled by experience and pain. She wondered how early in their lives they'd lost their sense of childlike wonder and innocence. How quickly had the world harmed them? How many times since then had it chewed them up and spit them out?

These questions in mind, Anna looked away from the picture and caught sight of her own reflection in the toaster. It was misshapen because it was in a kitchen appliance, but Anna still stared at herself for a moment. She was still a year younger than Sam would have been in that picture on the fridge. Her eyes dimmer than those of her two year old self. She was hurt like the boys in that picture, maybe a little more because of how insane these last eight or nine years had been. But she wasn't hurt the way that her Sam and her Dean were.

It was time for Anna to forget about being a teenager-- a kid-- and start being the hunter that her brothers needed her to be. It was only fair that she lose what they lost and become a Winchester in every sense of the word. This wasn't a choice, she reminded herself. It was a necessity. Anna Winchester was dropping out of high school. She just had to queue her brothers in. And she was going to do it tonight.

)()()()(

It was only about 7:30 when they got back to the bunker that night. Anna had been forced to repeatedly tell both of them how perfectly fine she was, because they just knew her too damn well. She was grateful to be back, grateful to be reaching the moment of truth. But she was also more nervous than she'd been all day now that the moment had arrived.

They all headed to the library out of some unexplainable habit and settled into their usual seats-- Anna on the couch in the corner, Sam at his usual table, and Dean in that armchair he was so fond of. For a few minutes, Anna sat with her laptop open in front of her, going over every possible way of starting the conversation that she had been able to come up with over the past forty-eight hours. She decided on the best one, and something completely different came out of her mouth.

"Guys, we gotta talk." When her voice came out hesitant and soft in the silence of the library, Anna sent up a silent prayer that this wasn't a sign of how the rest of this conversation was going to go. Still, the statement was enough to pull both her brothers' attention from what they were doing.

"About what?" Sam asked, his hands still hovering over his keyboard but his head turned to face her.

Anna swallowed, not excited to find out just how he would react to her news. She'd played out a million versions of this... not one went well where Sam was concerned. Dean, on the other hand... she turned to see her oldest brother's expression. He seemed to be waiting for her to answer Sam, expression open just as their middle brother's was.

"I, um..." She'd thought this sentence so many times it wasn't even funny. But saying it... saying it was a trip. "I'm dropping out."

Sitting in the silence that followed the sentence? Far worse than actually speaking the sentence. Anna felt every second in the minute that passed before another word was spoken. And, yes, a whole minute passed.

"What?" Sam finally asked slowly, deliberately.

Anna didn't repeat herself; she knew he'd heard her correctly. She just watched his face-- much paler now than it had been a second ago-- and hoped he wasn't about to flip his lid. Worse, he turned to Dean with a look that Anna recognized-- a look that she herself used sometimes. A look that said, I know you're gonna agree with me on this, so talk some sense into this lunatic. Anna felt a muscle in her face twitch. Damn, she was nervous. She slowly turned her head to face their oldest brother, hoping she'd been accurate in her anticipation of how he would take this.

Dean's expression was almost blank, but his eyes flickered with an unreadable flurry of something. "You are not dropping out."

Anna's mouth went dry. But she quickly recovered. "Yes, I am." She was surprised by the confidence in her own voice, especially in the face of Dean's unexpected response.

"Anna, you can't." Sam's voice was low and on edge. Anna wasn't accustomed to hearing her brother sound like that.

She turned to look at him helplessly, wondering just what he wanted from her. She hadn't asked whether they were cool with her dropping out. She'd announced that she was dropping out. "I can. I'm sixteen."

"You're not doing this," Dean spoke darkly. There was something strange in his voice that Anna couldn't identify. It made her stomach twist the same way the look in Sam's eyes did when she looked up at him a second later.

"You don't get to decide that," she informed. Her eyes blazed, but her insides were shaking. This was important. It was life-changing, and not even the one she'd expected to was backing her up. She hadn't intended on two against one-- at least not these two against this one. "Neither of you do."

Anna was startled when both her brothers stood at the same time, but she matched the move, unprepared to back down. She found herself two feet from the both of them. One six foot something wall of big brother unwilling to let her make this call.

"Where the hell did this even come from, huh? You never even brought it up before now. What, did you just decide on the ride home, What's a good way to throw away my future? Ooh, I know! I'll drop out!"

"What future, Dean?! We all know I'm just gonna be a hunter anyway. And I've got everything I need to be a hunter locked away up here." She tapped her head twice to make her point, and folded her arms before realizing he was doing the same thing. She quickly dropped her arms back to her side, but stood tall in front of both of them.

"You don't have to be a hunter," Sam pointed out casually, as if this wasn't some foreign idea that Anna had never even thought an option.

"Oh, come on, Sam."

"He's right, you know."

"He is not!" Anna retorted more loudly than she'd intended. "That's the exact opposite of what you and Dad told Sam when he wanted to leave the life. Did I miss the rewrites, or is it just different for me because I'm the weakest link?"

"Anna-!"

"I don't want to hear it, Dean! I've already made my decision, and you're not about to change my mind."

"You're not gonna drop out," Sam demanded, the boom of his voice startling all three of them.

Anna turned to him, eyes burning angrily. She was so close to yelling that he couldn't tell her what to do. That neither of them could. But that argument was so childish and if Anna wanted to win this, she had to be as mature as possible. She went another route instead. "He did," she said simply, gesturing loosely at Dean with one hand while maintaining eye contact with Sam.

The room was quiet again for a minute before Dean spoke. "That... is completely different."

"Don't say it's different. It isn't different."

"It is! Anna, there's no reason for you to quit! You're a straight-A kid. You've got friends and potential and-!"

"I'm not staying in school just because I'm capable of it!"

"That's not what I'm saying-"

"Then what are you saying?!"

"You're twice as smart as I ever was. I was no good at that school crap. I was better off hunting with Dad," Dean interrupted his siblings dispute. He didn't mention the mountain of responsibilities he had outside of hunting back then-- the younger brother he had to look out for. "It wasn't even a choice for me. You're a hundred times better than that, Anna. You're not giving it up."

"There's nothing to give up! I told you, I'm a hunter! I'm not going to college and I'm not living in Suburbia. No thanks!"

"Who says you can't?!" Sam yelled. "Why can't you?!"

Anna was fuming, so mad she could hardly think. She didn't see how they weren't getting it. She didn't believe they were even trying to understand. "Because I was raised a Winchester, not a Taylor! If I was meant to be Joe Normal's trophy wife, the winged douchebags would have arranged for my mother to keep me."

Again, the room fell silent, but this time it hardly lasted a few seconds before Sam broke it. "We can talk about that later, because Hunter or not," he said, carefully measuring his voice though it still shook with tension. "You are not dropping out."

"I am."

"You can't."

"You don't decide that!" They were running in circles, and all three of them knew it. Three headstrong Winchesters trapped in an endless battle over the youngest's education. Anna took a breath which did nothing to calm her down. "I have more important responsibilities than that stupid school, Sam, and I'm not going back there."

Anna watched as her brothers looked at one another, then back at her. She didn't like the looks on their faces that said they were prepared to argue all night and into tomorrow if it meant changing her mind. She was surprised at Dean's next move. He pointed toward the hallway that led to the bedrooms. "Go to your room."

So thrown by this Anna was that the dangerous look slid right off her face and was replaced by one of confusion. "What?"

"Go to your room," Dean repeated, somehow so calm and so angry at the same time.

"Dean-" Sam started to argue from next to their brother.

"We aren't talking about this anymore tonight," Dean said simply. "Everyone's too worked up. We're getting nowhere." He pointed down the hallway again. "Go to your room."

Anna looked from her brother's hard eyes to his pointing hand and back, irate but unsure how to express it considering the sudden turn this conversation had taken. She finally turned and left the room, balling her hands into fists at her sides and wishing she could punch a wall without being lectured for it. The thought made her anger burn only hotter and Anna breathed out heavily through her nose, teeth grit in frustration.

Once in her room, Anna grabbed the math binder she'd left on her desk earlier and threw it in the mostly empty trash can. She wouldn't be needing it, she assured herself stubbornly in her mind.

The sixteen year old collapsed backward onto her bed and punched the air several times. It did nothing to work out her rage and she in fact grew only more frustrated because it wasn't helping. She punched her mattress once, twice, three times. Nothing helped.

When her feelings changed, it was sudden. Anna found herself overcome with the urge to cry rather than scream and hit. That talk, she surmised, had not gone as planned.

)()()()(

It wasn't until four in the morning that Anna went to sleep for the night. It wasn't that she purposely avoided it, but that she simply couldn't manage it with everything that had happened. It wasn't like she hadn't seen it coming. Sleep was always the first thing to evade her when her emotions were running rampant.

When her alarm went off at 5:30 as usual, Anna woke just long enough to hit snooze before rolling back over and burying her face in her pillow once more. Her mind was barely awake for the time it took to think that she wasn't going to school today anyway. She wasn't going ever again.

However, after another hour of sleep, there was a loud knock on her door and she groaned awake. Blinking sleep from her eyes, Anna didn't even have the energy to move, let alone get out of bed.

"You have less than an hour to get ready. I suggest you get your ass moving," Dean's unsympathetic voice shouted through her door.

Anna woke more fully in a second's time. "I'm not going to school today, Dean!"

Her bedroom door swung open, and Anna flinched, not having expected it. Dean planted one foot inside her room. He appeared so calm, too calm, yet unyielding at the same time. Anna steeled herself, prepared to be given an order by someone who had no right to deliver any.

"You're going, kid." Anna bristled and sat up straight to respond to him, but Dean didn't give her the chance. He held up a hand to stop her from speaking, and somehow it worked. "You finish this week, and we can talk about your little plan seriously."

"Dean, it's not-"

"Anna, get ready for school. You're going one way or another."

Anna narrowed her eyes at him. She strongly disliked the implications of that statement. Did he really think he had the power to tell her something like that? She was sixteen years old. Before she could tell him so, though, he had disappeared down the hallway, shutting her door firmly behind him.

Anna flopped back down onto her pillow and thought about her options. She could go back to sleep-- which sounded marvelous-- and get her butt kicked in twenty minutes or so when one of her brothers came storming down the hall to find her still in bed. She could get up and pretend those two had the right to tell her what to do, get ready and go to school like a good little angel. Or she could go for option number three, which she was concocting in her mind as she rolled out of bed. Yeah, Anna thought to herself, three was the way to go on this one.

"Took you long enough," Dean grumbled at her when Anna walked through the door to the kitchen and dropped her backpack by the counter. He appeared disgruntled when she breezed by him to the coffee pot without even a snarky response. "I made breakfast," he said and gestured at the table.

Anna didn't look at her brother or at the food she could smell on the table. She simply poured herself a cup of coffee and went to the library. They never left until 7:20, so she had plenty of time left and she had no desire to spend it near Dean. Unfortunately for her, Sam was sitting in the library at his usual table, nursing his own mug of coffee and reading some dusty text he probably found on the giant bookshelves in this very room.

He looked up as Anna walked in, but he didn't say anything to her, and Anna had to convince herself that that wasn't the least bit disconcerting. It was one thing for her to shun them, but for Sam to shun her... Anna ignored the hypocrisy there and settled on the couch with the novel she'd been holding last night before the fight broke out. She read in silence until Dean walked in and his voice grated in her ears telling her to get in the car because they were leaving. Anna made sure to brush him with her shoulder as she passed him.

The car ride to the school was tense and quiet. About five minutes in, Dean tried talking to her. "You know, Anna, we're not doing this because we want you to be miserable. It's just..."

Anna looked lazily over at him, keeping her expression carefully bored and disinterested. He didn't continue, and she thought maybe he should have planned his words more before he started speaking. She turned back to the window and watched the land blur by as they drove. It wasn't a long drive to school, only twenty minutes, and Anna got out of the car the second Dean put it in park. He said goodbye to her, but her response to that was shutting her door firmly in his face.

She listened as she walked slowly toward the school building and slung her backpack over her shoulder. Some art class had left easels out on the green and the beginnings of their charcoal work were visible from the front walkway. Anna heard the Impala finally drive away as she neared the door to the school, and she took the opportunity to look over her shoulder. Indeed, the back end of the car was just visible leaving the drive. Anna smirked and turned fully around to head back the way she'd come.

They could make her go to school, but they couldn't make her go to class.

)()()()(

Anna made it back to the school parking lot at exactly 2:55. The final bell wouldn't ring until 3:00, and it would be abundantly clear to Dean that she had skipped if he got there before all the kids came outside and Anna was there waiting for him. Part of her wanted to say that she didn't care whether they found out. After all, the whole point of her missing today was to prove that they couldn't force her to keep doing what she saw as pointless.

However, when she walked casually up the school drive and saw the Impala parked there, fairly close to the front of the school building, Anna couldn't help but freak out a little. She knew what had likely happened. Her brothers knew her better than she gave them credit for. If Dean was still here-- or Sam, she thought optimistically, it could be Sam-- then they hadn't arrived until a few minutes ago, so they must have assumed that she would ditch by the end of the day and called the school to check. Damn those two.

Instead of going inside and turning herself in so to speak, Anna strolled casually over to the Impala and leaned against the hood. She knew that sooner or later whichever of her brothers had come out to the school would come outside, determined to drive around Lebanon until they found their little sister in the middle of her game of hookie. Sure enough, Anna had barely finished the thought before the door to the school could be heard opening around the corner. She looked up with a self-satisfied smirk, which widened slightly when she heard Dean's voice.

"I'm gonna kill that friggin' kid."

"Calm down, Dean. We'll find her. She's just acting out; she won't have gone far." Anna couldn't help but bristle at Sam's words.

"You always say that, Sam. Every time she pulls this shit, you say she's just acting out. What does that even mean?!"

"Dean, she's pissed too. You ever think of that?"

"Oh, so now you're defending her?"

"No, of course I'm not defending her! She's wrong about all of this. But maybe... I don't know, maybe she's got a reason other than what she's telling us and she's just too stubborn to be talked out of it." Anna could practically see Sam huffing at their older brother though the two had yet to turn the corner to the parking lot. "She is your sister after all."

"Oh, that's funny. Because I'm the stubborn one." The boys finally rounded the corner, and both sets of eyes snapped to their little sister. Dean was the first to speak, wasting no time in speed-walking over to the car to stare Anna down. "You are in so much trouble, kid."

"I'm really intimidated by that," Anna deadpanned, looking bored, and slid away from the hood of the car to stand by the back door. Dean blocked her path to open the door, though, and he continued to glare at her. Yes, Dean Winchester's anger was a pretty scary thing, but no, Anna was not about to back down now. "What's your problem? You ditched all the time. Probably more often than you went to class."

"Well, you don't."

"I do now."

Dean leaned forward, eyes aflame with anger. "What's-"

Sam stepped between them before the argument could further develop. "Hey, hey. Dean, stop. Not here." Dean looked at Sam for a moment, then sighed. He looked back at Anna, then walked around the car to get in the driver's seat. Sam looked at their sister, who was smirking at Dean's retreat. "Get in the car," he ordered coldly. He felt guilty when her face fell, but he didn't let it show. He wasn't going to let her think he approved of her behavior, and he certainly wasn't going to coddle her in the midst of this battle which he felt sure was the first of many in the Dropout War.

The ride back to the bunker was silent and tense. No one dared speak, or rather no one was in a good enough mindset to believe they wouldn't regret speaking if they tried it. It wasn't until Dean pulled the car up in front of the bunker that the silence was filled by his measured voice. "Get out," he said simply, not cruel, just serious. "Both of you."

It didn't take more than that for his siblings to understand. Dean was connected to his car, and he was connected to the open road. It was therapeutic for him to drive Baby for a while when he was really emotionally wrought or simply too angry to interact with even his family. Anna and Sam both climbed out of the car without a word and Dean drove off, not even glancing in the mirror at his siblings.

It was quiet for a moment, then Anna could feel her brother staring at her. "What?" she asked bitterly, not looking at him.

"You might wanna fix that attitude before he gets back, Anna. You're in a lot more trouble than you seem to think."

"I was trying to prove a point. Maybe if you two would pull your heads out of your asses and listen-"

"Anna," Sam stomped out firmly. Anna was startled by the suddenness and volume of his exclamation. She was expecting him to say something more, but he just glared at her.

Finally, Anna sighed and went inside, hurrying to her room where she threw down her backpack and changed into sweatpants and a long-sleeved Mickey Mouse t-shirt. She was beginning to feel strangely guilty about this whole ordeal. It wasn't often that she managed to piss both of her brothers off at once, and on the rare occasion that it happened, it usually meant that she had done something to get herself hurt or into some kind of danger. Needless to say, whenever they both got this angry, it was a sign of some serious trouble.

Anna had about an hour, she figured, before Dean would be back and prepared to lecture her properly. She couldn't help but feel angry over the fact that he was going to walk in and give it to her over ditching school when he himself used to do the same so frequently. Didn't Dean know he'd always been her number one role model. It was the reason she felt guilty this very moment for disappointing him, and the reason she wanted to drop out and make him proud by being as good and worthy a hunter as him and Sam. With a heartfelt sigh, Anna dropped back onto her bed and pulled her phone out of her pocket to put on some music. Dean would probably try to take the phone from her soon, and she could never predict whether she would be able to talk her way out of that or not-- usually not-- so she might as well enjoy her freedom for as long as she had it.

She was startled awake to the sound of a knock on her bedroom door. She hadn't realized that she'd fallen asleep, but it made sense when she thought about it as she rubbed her eyes and heard the door swing open. She hadn't really slept much the night before, only a couple hours. And while she was used to getting little sleep-- thanks to their lifestyle-- two hours was nowhere near enough rest for a sixteen year old.

"Hey," Dean greeted as he entered the room. His voice was surprisingly kind but held that familiar determination that meant he had a goal and wouldn't quit until he'd reached it, and he sat himself on the edge of Anna's bed without invitation. "Kiddo, we gotta talk."

Anna's expression was guarded as she eased herself up to sit against the headboard. "We have talked, Dean," she said. She didn't see them getting anywhere new by repeating their fight from the previous night. She certainly didn't see things improving between them if they started arguing about her ditching today.

"Yeah, well, I've seen better communication," Dean asserted, trying to meet his sister's eyes. "We've definitely had better conversations."

Anna sighed, "What's your point?"

"My point is that nobody listened to anyone."

"So now I get to listen to you," she finished for her older brother. "Creative preface to a lecture, Dean."

"Really? You think I came in here to lecture you?" Dean shook his head, exasperation clearly painted on his face. "No. As much as you've earned it, no."

"Oh really?" Anna said, disbelieving. "You can change the name of the game, Dean, but if the rules are still the same then nothing's changed. Communication is still a lecture when you talk and I listen."

Dean raised an eyebrow and just stared at her for a moment. "Ok... congratulations on turning into Sam, but I told you I'm not gonna lecture you." He grinned and slapped his hands down on his legs. "Family meeting," he announced and pointed at the door. "In the library."

Anna's lip curled in distaste. Just the words family meeting sounded so sitcom-y. "Great, you're staging an intervention. That's so much better," she said sarcastically, bitterly.

Officially done with his sister's disrespect, Dean narrowed his eyes and barked, "Lose the attitude and march, kid."

Anna rolled her eyes, but stood up and went out to the library, followed closely by her brother. Sam was sitting at one of the tables, and looked up when they came in. It was clear that he'd just been waiting for them as there was nothing on the table that might have been occupying him other than a pencil and a blank piece of paper. "I swear to god, if that pencil is a talking stick-"

"Just sit down," Dean requested and then sat next to Sam, across from their sister. After a few seconds of uncomfortable silence, Dean cleared his throat. "Sam, you wanna-?"

"We're gonna make a pros and cons list," Sam informed his little sister.

"About me dropping out?" Anna asked, thrown by the simplicity of the idea.

"Yep," Dean said, popping the p. "Then, if the pros outweigh the cons somehow, then you can drop out."

"For real?" Anna checked, hesitant to buy into this.

"Yes. For real. But if we're going to do this, then you have to be honest about it. No skewing the data," Sam said firmly.

Anna stared at the two of them incredulously for a minute. She couldn't tell if they were being serious or not, but she couldn't think of a reason for them to lie. She felt pretty certain that they were going to try their best to make sure the cons would outweigh the pros, but she didn't know that they were capable of it considering the hundred and one reasons she had for dropping out. "Fine," she agreed, feeling the anger that had been settled in her stomach for the past twenty hours or so dissipate.

Appearing pleasantly surprised by his sister's agreeableness, Sam picked up the pencil in front of him and created the t-chart. He labelled the left side 'pros' and the right side 'cons', then looked at Anna as if to ask her to start. It was as she was trying to decide on her first concrete reason to have him write down that Anna realized most of the factors contributing to her decision were rather personal-- things that she didn't want them knowing, let alone considering logically and rationally. She had a feeling that her fear of being forever considered the baby and never an equal in her own family would sound rather silly if she were to say it aloud. Gathering herself, Anna tilted her head at the page on the table.

"We wouldn't be limited to school vacations to take hunts farther away."

Sam bobbed his eyebrows in acknowledgement and wrote the response concisely on the 'pros' side of the list. "Okay," he said when he had finished. He turned to Dean. "And a con?"

Anna pursed her lips and watched Dean as he pondered what to say. He met her eyes before he spoke, addressing his response to her rather than Sam. "You lose your options. College is out of the picture."

Anna sighed but nodded. "College is already out of the picture, but fine." She was grateful for how rational and even this conversation already seemed to be. It felt very calm and not one-sided the way she'd been expecting. "Sam?" she prompted, waiting for him to add another con.

"Alright," Sam said as he finished writing Dean's idea. "I'm saying, socially it takes away a lot of opportunities for you considering how few teenage hunters we know."

Anna nodded, "Fair enough." She bit her lip and thought which pro to give next. She supposed she could mention the whole I miss you guys so bad when you're gone bit, but she thought that would be kind of embarrassing and so avoided it for the time being. She considered adding the whole teenage angst piece where no one at high school even stood a chance at understanding her life and the gravity of what she'd faced in her sixteen years, but again thought that might make her feel embarrassed. She settled pretty quickly on her next option. "I lose the added stress, sleep deprivation, and time consumption."

Sam hummed his acknowledgement and scribbled down the pro. Dean, knowing it was his turn, spoke up before Sam could even finish writing. "You also gain the added stress and sleep deprivation that come with being a full time hunter."

Anna raised an eyebrow at his response and grabbed Sam's wrist before he could write Dean's answer down. "No no no," she protested calmly. "I already have that. Add something else."

Dean squinted at his little sister for a moment as if trying to decide whether she was right or not. But he apparently decided that she was, and deserved credit for the hunter's stress she suffered. He nodded. "Okay." He nodded at the paper. "You're a lot less safe-- the target painted on your back gets bigger and you're in dangerous situations all the time again like it used to be."

Anna rolled her eyes. Leave it to Dean to be all concerned about the risks of hunting. She missed the adrenaline and thrill that came with hunting. That wasn't to say she didn't still experience it frequently-- they hunted on weekends sometimes, and on every vacation and school break-- but that she didn't experience it as constantly as before. She used to never feel safe, and she didn't miss that, but she did miss the almost daily exposure to dangerous situations. She disliked knowing that she would likely die before her twentieth birthday without having the thrill of the hunt as a sort of consolation.

Sam finished writing Dean's suggestion and began writing his own. "I'm adding a pro," he admitted, which caught Anna off guard. That was pretty mature of him, very smart of him, and extremely unexpected. "Because I know you're gonna avoid saying it even though it's obviously contributing to this whole thing." Anna tilted her head at him. "You wouldn't be alone here so much, and we'd get to see you every day for the whole day instead of taking off without you all the time."

Anna swallowed and nodded as Sam added it to the page. It was once he'd finished writing it and looked to Anna for her next reason that she realized those were the only things she was comfortable hearing and saying out loud. She couldn't speak the rest of her reasons out loud. Namely because they were actually just one reason which she knew her brothers wouldn't think valid, but that she knew was real. It was when she looked up and saw the flicker of determined hope in Sam's expressive eyes that she realized this was exactly why they were doing this exercise to begin with. They knew she was hiding her real reason for wanting to drop out, and they were trying to weasel it out of her in a sneaky way. Anna narrowed her eyes at her brother, and Sam seemed to realize that she was growing suspicious.

"Don't tell me that's it, Anna. You need a tiebreaker if you're gonna drop out," Dean told her, studying her so intensely that Anna was sure her theory was right on the nose.

"Wow, that was pretty good, guys," Anna said, tempted to add in a slow clap to emphasize how 'impressed' she was. "But you're not gonna find out some deep dark secret, alright? And I don't believe for a second that you're seriously gonna let me make an important life decision with a pro and con list."

"I don't know what you're talking about," Dean said, but Anna knew she had cracked the code based on his neutral tone of voice and the slight look of frustration on Sam's face. "It's a foolproof method."

"Shut up," Anna demanded, growing angry that they'd tried to weasel her reason out of her.

Dean sighed and looked over at Sam, who had put down the pencil and was meeting Anna's eyes. "You don't have to tell us anything you don't want to. But if you don't explain why you want to drop out, Anna, then you're not dropping out. It's that simple."

"It's not that simple," Anna argued, directly contradicting Sam's point. She knew she was getting angry more quickly than she should. But she couldn't help it. She didn't want to tell them why she felt that she had to be with them instead of in school, and they were trying to tell her she didn't have a choice. This little ultimatum of theirs more than angered her. It hurt. She wouldn't have expected them to try to force her into anything-- even just talking-- because it wasn't what they did. As a family, it wasn't what they did. They helped each other, and they supported each other. Anna didn't feel any of that right now. So she returned to them exactly what they were throwing in her face. "You don't get a say. Neither of you do." If her voice hadn't been so damn shaky, Anna thought, then maybe they would've gotten angry right back as she'd expected them to. Instead, though, they both stood up and rounded the table, worry blatant on their faces.

The open display of concern for her made Anna's composure crumble, and she quickly shoved her chair back and stood. She had to get out before they saw her cry. Crying was weakness. Worse, it was admitting you had a weakness that you couldn't hide.

Unfortunately for Anna, Sam caught her wrist before she could get far enough, and he turned her back to face them. Anna tugged on her wrist, and let her hair fall in front of her face. "Leave me alone," she commanded, voice cracking with audible emotion.

Dean was on her other side, though, and there was no escape from their care for her. "What's going on, Rugrat?" he asked gently. He brushed her hair away from her eyes so he could see her face, but she was still managing to keep her tears at bay.

Anna swallowed, deciding she was capable of speaking the few words necessary. "I don't want to talk about this," she said firmly.

"You're gonna have to," Dean told her. "Because this is affecting you too much, whatever it is."

"Dean..."

"Anna, you're our baby sister," Dean said, making it clear with those words that he wasn't letting this go, and that he knew Sam wouldn't either.

Anna shook her head and wrenched her arm free of Sam's grip. "That's it," she said simply, softly. "That. I'm tired of being the baby, the youngest. I'm tired of being alone all the time. I'm tired of being the weakest and the dumbest and the one you have to take care of. I'm sick and tired of all of it. And if I could just move on with my life, and just be a hunter... Maybe I wouldn't feel so useless all the time." In the aftermath of her explanation, Anna felt suffocated by the silence that overtook the room. She could feel the thickness of the air choking her, her brothers staring openly at her, and her own heart pounding wildly as she realized what she had just admitted to. Unsure how to move beyond this moment, Anna swallowed once, collected her frayed emotions, and looked at the floor, embarrassed. "Sorry," she said, because she didn't know what else to say and it felt like someone ought to say something.

"No, don't apologize," Sam said as if it were a dirty word. "I guess we just weren't expecting that."

Anna's cheeks colored in shame. She knew she shouldn't have yelled at them, and she felt the urge to apologize a second time but remembered that he had told her not to. An apology wasn't what they wanted. She could guess that they wanted to talk. Unfortunately that was the opposite of what Anna wanted to do. She mumbled a request that she be allowed to go now, but it was so soft that neither of them were able to make out her words, and Dean spoke over her.

"Anna, you have got to stop making up our minds for us," he said, a hint of exasperation mixed with the sensitivity in his tone and made him sound almost like he was making a joke. Anna looked up at him with a curious expression in the hopes of receiving some explanation about what the hell he meant by that. "We might think of you as our baby sister, Anna, but that doesn't mean we think of you as less of a person or even less of a hunter. And if you think you're stupid or weak, then you've got another thing coming, because you're wrong."

"Ladybug, you're never gonna stop being the youngest, but you are gonna grow up, believe it or not. There's no reason to rush it just so you can be an adult faster. You should enjoy this as long as you can. We don't think you're stupid and we don't think you're weak, and you have to stop telling yourself that."

Anna looked expressively at each of her brothers, seeking honesty in their gazes. She found it there in abundance. Uncomfortable with the attention they were paying her, she suddenly looked down again and wrinkled her nose at the floor. "So, I guess I better do my homework then, huh?" She couldn't help her smile when they both laughed and sandwiched her in a hug.

"That's my girl," Dean said and dropped a kiss on the top of her head.

"You won't regret it, Anna," Sam assured her, his own smile audible.

Anna basked in their affection for just a moment before she made herself pull away from them. She looked over at the paper on the table and couldn't help but chortle somewhat bitterly. "A pro and con list," she mocked. "What is this, Gilmore Girls?"

La Fin