Note: Here's some reading material to try out while you're social distancing. Not sure how many school related chapters there've been in this, but I feel like I write too many. Hey, it's what I know since high school has literally taken over my life. Anyway, I wanted to toss around the concept of normal since Sam always struggled with it and I have some ideas about Anna's perception of it. I was writing for fun and picking little scenes to write as a way of playing with normal and one of them got away from me. Thus, this story. 

Note II: Damn, this was forever ago. Over two years, to be exact. And apparently I posted this when quarantine first started, so that's a weird time capsule. Hey, Past Jacinta, this whole pandemic thing... it's gonna be a while.

Anyway, I extended the fight scene in this, changed the POV to third person, and did some editing to just... make it better, I guess?

Anna is fifteen.

Playing at Normal

Anna was craving oreos. Something sweet and crunchy with a delicious creamy filling to make the utter stupidity surrounding her fade into oblivion while she focused on the taste of chocolate. Maybe the serotonin would make her feel less like a zombie.

But alas, they didn't hand out Oreos in History class.

They didn't even hand out brains at birth anymore, apparently. That was the only possible explanation Anna could think of as to why her classmates would be stupid enough to actually try throwing a party when the teacher didn't show up to class on time.

It was high school in a nutshell, Anna thought to herself. Three people had already made that same old familiar claim, "We can leave if he doesn't show up in twenty minutes." And the same old familiar response, "That's college," had greeted the statement every single time.

Anna was ready to saw her own ears off.

Across the room, three boys were trying to start a party, playing terrible music from a pocket-sized bluetooth speaker while one of them talked about ordering a pizza.

A couple kids were laughing at their antics, but the other half of the class was eye-rolling. Anna pulled her phone out and tried to ignore all of it. She was too tired for this shit.

Alessia, the quietest girl on the planet, had her nose buried in a book beside Anna for the first ten minutes of waiting. But when, after another five minutes, more and more of the class trickled over to the corner and started singing along obnoxiously to whatever hip-hop song had caught their attention, Alessia stood up and started ordering them to be quiet. It was almost funny, seeing the quiet girl come out of her shell for the sole purpose of telling a bunch of idiots to shut up.

But Anna watched all the chaos with little patience. It was annoying, being trapped in the monotonous day-to-day world of American high school.

Back at the bunker, Sam and Dean were probably planning a way to stop the next apocalypse. But sitting there in that plastic chair, texting Kate-- whose class had already started, Anna knew, because Kate was making and sending memes of the kid sitting next to her, who just couldn't stop showing off his extensive knowledge of Shakespeare-- Anna couldn't help but wonder whether her brothers should really be bothering to keep the world from ending. This was the next generation: the future was absolutely and positively screwed.

"He's coming! He's coming!" Linus yelled from the doorway, as if their dumbass game of let's throw a two minute party while the teacher's not here had been a world-class conspiracy. A few people groaned about how five more minutes and we could've left. Everyone else hurried to their desks, and somebody shut the music off.

Anna just rolled her eyes. Another day in this shithole, another reason to hate her life. But, really, she knew she should be grateful. This was education, and she was luckier than her brothers to be getting it in the same school with the same people every day.

The problem was, what other people considered a fun little break in the monotony of going to school and taking notes and writing papers, Anna considered to be just another round of teenage bullshit. And all of it was insignificant in light of the world she would go home to-- a world full of real problems.

Anna knew what real adrenaline looked like, and it sure as hell didn't look like a middle-aged social studies teacher strolling down the hallway holding the cup of Starbucks coffee he'd gone to get before first period.

Bluetooth speakers and a lack of Oreos, History teachers and expensive coffee, quiet kids and eye rolls... it all looked the same to Anna. It looked normal. Completely and uninterestingly normal. And if there was one thing Anna couldn't relate to, it was that stupid word: Normal. So Anna sat there, annoyed and very tired.

And she didn't even have a fucking Oreo to make it all worth while.

()()()

"Did you know Will got a girlfriend?"

That was definitely not the kind of news Anna had wanted to receive while on the way to second period. Will was easily one of the most unbearable guys in school. He was arrogant and forward and, honestly, gross.

"Seriously?" she asked, disgust written all over her face. "How? No, wait, who?"

"Penny."

"Walsh?"

"Yeah," Kate replied and tossed her head in an effort to get her hair out of her face. "What other Penny goes to this school?"

"But she's smart and pretty and better than him in literally every way," Anna said in disbelief.

"Yeah, well, she has self esteem problems like all the rest of us-- including you and me."

Anna sighed, feeling her disbelief disappear and be replaced by the usual tiredness. It was true that the school-- and probably the world-- was packed full of sad teenagers who couldn't comprehend their own worth. Penny deserved better than the most uppity kid in school, though, and it was sad that she didn't see that.

Unfortunately this meant they all had to just hope that Will would surprise everyone and treat Penny with the respect she merited.

"Still sucks," Anna complained. "And it's still surprising. Nobody likes Will."

"Nobody likes anybody." Kate pulled her phone out of her pocket to check her notifications, then put it right back.

"True."

There r hey were again. The two kids in Lebanon High who knew what kind of scary shit was really out there, playing at normal like either of them could ever find it, let alone embody it.

"Katie?"

"Mhm?"

"Don't you hate this place?"

"I mean, yeah. But everyone does."

"No, I know, but..." Except how could she put that into words? How do she explain that she hated school because it was meaningless without sounding like she thought she was more important than these other kids? Damn, maybe Anna had some sort of complex. "Doesn't it bug you," she tried anyway, "the way every day is the same? It feels like the world's not even turning anymore. I used to be in a different town every week. Here it's like nothing ever changes. How do you deal with it?"

"That's what I have you for," Kate quipped with an amicable smile.

"Sure," Anna said. She knew she added some spice to Kate's life. Hell, she had something of a reputation around school already, because she tended to create mischief. "But the whole thing just feels pointless, doesn't it? It's so unbearably... normal."

"Anna, I hate to break it to you, but the fact that you're complaining about how boring and unbearable high school is, makes you pretty damn normal."

Anna had to frown as she considered that. Kate certainly wasn't wrong. Everyone hated school. Was Anna normal? Well, she decided, half of her was-- the half that got stressed about papers and tests and the future that she didn't need to prepare for because, well, hunting. But maybe being half normal was just what normal looked like for Anna. Maybe that was it. Maybe normalcy was dependent on each person.

"You think normal is relative?"

"It's nine o'clock in the morning, I have a chemistry test later, and I got three hours of sleep last night," Kate said, her weariness audible. "Can we do this another time?"

"Yeah, I think I'm getting overly analytical again anyway," Anna admitted. She tried to turn her brain and felt a fog creeping into it. Damn, she was tired.

"Overthinking stuff is supposed to be my job," Kate told her.

()()()

Somebody was being held against the wall by his shirt collar as Anna walked down the otherwise empty hallway toward the computer lab.

Some small part of her wanted to get the much larger guy, who was responsible for his position, to let the poor kid go. But another part of her was wondering what kind of world they were living in that this felt totally normal-- almost obnoxiously so.

Anna sighed and put her phone in the pocket of her hoodie. She wanted an Oreo, not an argument with a bully.

Backpack still slung over one shoulder, she walked over to where the two kids were standing. She was frustrated and only vaguely concerned by the situation.

"Dude, let 'im go," she said, her voice making it clear that she thought the bully was acting like a two year old.

When the broad-shouldered, probably-a-senior guy turned around and let go of the kid's shirt collar, Anna almost groaned out loud. He looked genuinely angry. This wasn't pick on an underclassmen for fun. This was he pissed me off and I won't stand for it.

This was the kind of confrontation Anna usually tried to avoid-- the kind that would probably end in a fistfight unless she played her cards just right.

"Are you talkin' to me?" the jock demanded of her.

"There anybody else here using aggression to solve a disagreement instead of handling their emotions like a mature human being?"

"You self-righteous little prick." He towered over her, but Anna knew how to take him down with the flick of her wrist. Problem was, she couldn't afford to get into a fight. She tried to keep her nose clean here since she was in this place for the full four years. "You wanna take his place?"

She'd gone and made it personal, apparently. Maybe she'd hit an insecurity. "Not really, but I'm not gonna stand here and watch you kill him. He's half your size."

"Like you'd do better."

"I'm basically an MMA fighter, man," Anna quipped, hoping to lighten the mood. "Come at me."

"Right," he said, snorting a sarcastic laugh.

Anna looked over behind him and was satisfied when she saw that the kid he'd been after had already left. Which meant that she could walk away.

Except she couldn't, because the other kid grabbed her arm and spun her back around when she tried to. His fingers were cold and clammy against the skin of her arm. Anna didn't appreciate this guy putting his hands on her

"Chill out," she snapped. She wasn't in the mood to talk anybody off a ledge, but she also wasn't in the mood to get in a fight. "I didn't mean anything by what I said, alright? I just didn't want to see that kid get punched, either."

"Well, he had it coming!"

"Great. Good for you," Anna deadpanned.

"You don't even care, do you?"

"Why should I?" she pointed out. Who stumbles upon some stupid argument in the hallway and gets emotionally invested? That other kid had been lucky that Anna had stopped to help at all.

"That little bitch," the guy started darkly, leaning down in Anna's face. "Kissed my girlfriend."

Without thinking, Anna laughed out loud. A big, not unattractive guy like this being dumped for a scrawny kid like the one he'd just been holding two feet in the air. This poor jock had damaged pride.

So Anna laughed.

Of course, that was a bad idea. And, of course, she got punched in the face for it. Then, of course, her instincts kicked in, and she swung right back. It didn't take long for the two of them to be in an all out fistfight.

Anna felt that irritability that had been with her all day begin to flicker into more of a roaring flame, felt it transform until it looked a lot more like anger. And she rammed her fist hard into her opponent's cheekbone. He ducked her next punch and hit her hard in the stomach, making her gag.

She had to admit that she was impressed by the guy's fighting skills. In fact, it didn't take long for Anna to realize that he had some actual training.

Not to mention, the guy was clearly holding a serious grudge over Anna laughing at him.

"Fight!" Some kid bellowed behind them.

Anna ducked a fist, but the sound of scurrying footsteps distracted her, and a mean swing caught her in the nose.

"Cooper! Cooper!" A handful of boys were chanting.

Anna had to hunch over and hold her face for a second. That last hit had hurt like a motherfucker. She waited for the bully to let his guard down before she swung suddenly back around and uppercut him in the jaw.

"What's going on here?!" an adult voice demanded as Cooper stumbled backwards. "Break it up! Break it up, now!"

"Annaaaaa!" Some kid cheered from behind her. "Kick his ass!"

Anna smirked, ducked, and ran into the jock's mid-section. She tackled him to the floor, feeling satisfied at the breathless sound he made as his back hit tile.

A big hand twisted in the back of her shirt and yanked, and Anna's feet left the ground for half a second as she came off of Cooper.

It was over, and she was panting with exhaustion. But she was fucking mad now. She glared at the jock on the ground and flipped him off. She'd totally won that fight.

"Both of you are going to the headmaster's office," the teacher who'd separated them snapped. "You alright, Cooper?" he asked.

Anna swung a disbelieving look in the teacher's direction and wiped her wrist under her nose. Blood smeared across her skin.

()()()

"I'm disappointed in you, Miss Campbell."  What else was new? "Fighting like an animal in the middle of the school day."

Anna didn't say anything. Let the headmaster make up her own mind about how Anna had wound up sitting in her office while Cooper was in the nurse's office. Apparently, Cooper Jones was the gem of the senior class. Not only was he known for being a good kid, but his mother worked at the school, and he was captain of the regional MMA team.

Maybe he'd laughed when Anna had called herself an MMA fighter not because he'd thought she looked like an easy match, but because he really was an MMA fighter.

"Do you have something to say for yourself?"

"No, ma'am," Anna answered softly, holding a hand under her nose to catch the stream of blood dripping from it. The red substance pooled on her palm, clinging to the space between her fingers.

Cooper was getting medical attention, and Anna was catching blood in her hand.

They said only one of the kids could be tended to at a time, and Cooper's mother had demanded he go first.

She'd glared at Anna like her son could do no wrong but Anna deserved every bruise that was forming on her body. And by the time that teacher she'd never met had pulled Cooper and Anna apart, she had been sporting a hell of a lot of bruises. Cooper was pretty bruised too.

Something told her that the nurse would have disagreed with the assessment that only one of the kids could be helped, especially considering how much blood Anna was losing and how much pain she was in.

"We don't tolerate violence here, Miss Campbell. You should know that, as a Sophomore."

Anna knew that was the school policy. But she also knew they let a lot of stuff go on right under their noses that their policies didn't condone. She couldn't help but roll her eyes.

"Who can we contact about your behavioral problem?" Mrs. Warren asked, her voice tightening with anger at Anna's lack of concern.

"My behavioral problem," Anna repeated cynically under her breath. Cooper had started it.

"Who can we contact?" she asked again, more angrily this time.

"My brother," Anna grit out.

"A sibling instead of a parent. I've seen that before."

She felt blood drip past her fingers and into her lap, and Anna flinched slightly with it. Dammit, she liked these jeans. This day totally sucked.

"Shit," she grumbled quietly. She looked up at the headmaster. "Do you have tissues or something?"

Mrs. Warren looked up from the file she was reading at her desk-- probably trying to find a parent's phone number to call as Anna's emergency contact. Her expression went somewhat sympathetic when she saw how messed up Anna's face was. Based on the throb of pain from Anna's head to my toes, she knew she had to be a sight.

"You should see the nurse," she said, but it seemed more like thinking out loud than anything.

She passed Anna a box of tissues, so Anna used two of them to staunch the flow of blood, tilting her head back and applying pressure.

"As soon as Cooper is finished we'll send you down. He'll be spoken to as well, you know," Mrs Warren said.

"Sure," Anna said cooperatively just to get the lady off her back. Her voice was nasally from the light pressure she was putting to her nose. The tissues were soaking quickly, and she pulled the box into her lap to grab a fresh handful of tissues. She pressed them to her nose and squeezed again, but it ducking hurt, and she lightened up the pressure. Man, at this rate, her nose would never quit bleeding. What had Cooper done to her?

"But for now, I expect you to talk to me," Mrs Warren instructed.

Anna rolled her eyes subtly. It didn't mean a thing to her that they were calling Cooper down. It was clear by this point that he was an angel in the eyes of this school's faculty. He would face little or no consequence for today's fight. Anna was sure of it. They were only calling him down so he could spin a sob story about how that scary sophomore girl had attacked him. It didn't matter that Anna had tried to avoid a fight, that Cooper had thrown the first punch. All that mattered was that Anna didn't have Cooper's spotless four-year-record. She didn't have much of a record at all, and what she did have was a reputation for mischief. She was the snarky, funny kid who went a little crazy sometimes but mostly kept to herself

"There's no parent's phone number listed. You'll need to provide one."

Anna's shoulders fell. She hated going through this all the time. It fucking hurt. It hurt a lot worse than her nose or her stomach. "My parents are dead," she said a little more sharply than intended. "You're gonna have to call one of my brothers. They're a lot older than me; 30 and 34. They're my legal guardians."

"Oh, I- I'm sorry. I didn't realize."

"It's fine," Anna said simply and winced as she felt blood slip down her cheek and touch the side of her mouth. It was originating from a cut under her eye, which she discovered by tracing the wet trail until her fingers touched a thin gash. She pulled the tissues away from her nose and tossed them in the nearby trash can. She made a frustrated sound. She couldn't get her nose to stop bleeding, blood still dripping down over her lips and to her chin the second she released the pressure. She pulled out several more tissues and used some on her nose and some on the cut she'd just discovered. It would have been helpful if she'd had a mirror to use. Or a frickin nurse to help her.

"Here, let me." Mrs. Warren stood, hitting a speakerphone button on her desk phone as she moved around the desk. "I'm not a nurse, but I am a mother." She took the tissues from Anna with surprising care while Anna listened with dread to the sound of her brother's phone ringing.

Dean was not going to be happy.

"That's alright," Anna tried to say. But the headmaster gently pulled her hands away and took over despite her protest.

"Hello?"

Well, that was a surprisingly normal greeting for Dean. But then again, Anna knew the only reason she was used to his answering the phone like he was in the middle of a life or death crisis and couldn't be bothered with sentences longer than five words, was because he always checked his caller ID first and knew it was her.

"Hi. Is this Dean Campbell?" Mrs. Warren asked while wiping blood off Anna's face. It was a rather strange scene, but that was the story of her life.

Anna was expecting a who's asking to be demanded, but instead Dean answered, "Yeah. Everything ok?" She didn't think he would have recognized the school number, but she supposed it was possible. It was definitely the only plausible explanation as to why he would have answered that way.

"This is Katherine Warren, headmaster at Lebanon High School. I'm calling about your sister. Anna Campbell?"

"She ok?" Dean asked gruffly.

Mrs. Warren paused and looked down at Anna. Her expression was caught somewhere between a return to her earlier frustration and a sustained sympathy. "Actually," she said, her voice giving away less of her empathy. "I'm calling about a fight that happened earlier today. I'm afraid the circumstances surrounding what happened are rather unclear at the moment. But I assure you we'll be getting to the bottom of it."

Anna smirked, unable to stop herself. Yeah, right, they would get to the bottom of it. They would buy whatever lie Cooper sold them and never even ask Anna for an explanation.

"She was fighting?" Dean asked, his confusion easy to hear.

"Yes. If you can get here-"

"Sure thing," Dean cut her off. There was audible movement on his end of the line, and Anna shook her head.

One elbow on her knee, she rubbed her eyes, wincing at the bruises her fingers made contact with. She was so screwed. Dean was gonna tell Sam, and Sam was gonna be pissed at her. Then Dean would come here and cause a scene as soon as he saw that she was hurt. This day had started our obnoxiously normal and was fast turning obnoxiously eventful. Still normal, though, she supposed. This was still just teenage bullshit. Her head was pounding painfully, and she wiped one more time at the cut under her eye.

"How long do you think you'll be?" Mrs. Warren asked, handing Anna the tissues she'd been using and moving toward her desk again.

"Ten minutes," Dean said, his voice tight. The bunker was  twenty minutes away, but Anna said nothing. He hung up.

"Man of few words."

Anna shrugged at that comment.

"He sounded surprised."

"What?" Anna asked, a little more short with her than she should have been considering the situation.

She felt carefully at the cut by her eye. She had a scar around there from when she was twelve or thirteen and was thrown into a tree with some low branches. That was the lesser of the two scars she bore after that tree branch gouged her, though. There was a much larger, uglier one below her rib cage. She shuddered at the memory, remembering the cold in her bones and the mud under her clothes.

"When he heard you'd been fighting, he sounded surprised."

"What, did you think I was some kind of delinquent?" She sorta was, but not she didn't like the snap judgements.

The headmaster gave Anna an appraising look but didn't say anything more on the subject. "Is there anything you feel you need to see the nurse for?"

"I'm fine."

"You're not that," she said through a smile. "But is there anything that you might need serious medical attention for?"

Anna rolled her eyes. They should have asked her that about half an hour ago if they were concerned. Anyway, she wouldn't have confessed her pain to this relative stranger even if she'd known with one hundred percent certainty that she was bleeding internally. She didn't like this lady, and she didn't trust her. Considering that she was pretty sure she'd only bruised a rib or two, she definitely wasn't about to answer the question.

"Am I suspended, or what?" she asked instead.

"You sound far less concerned than you should be."

"My bad," she deadpanned. "Did you want me to cry about it?" She hated high school anyway. The only downside would be if she got expelled. That would complicate her life a bit.

"Would you like to me to discuss your disrespectful behavior with your guardian when he gets here?"

Anna looked away at the reminder that Dean was on his way. She didn't know how he was going to react to all of this. She knew she had messed up. She shouldn't gave engaged in a full blown fight like that, and she was sure to get a talking to for that. She also knew Dean would be angry when he saw she was hurt. Other than that, she wasn't sure what to expect. She got into lesser trouble all the time, but she'd yet to get caught fighting.

"I didn't know about your parents," Mrs. Warren continued a little more softly. "But, you know, family problems are often at the bottom of aggressive tendencies in teenagers."

Anna let her chin rest in her palm while her elbow dug uncomfortably into her leg. Her nose was bleeding again, but she didn't care anymore. Maybe if she was bleeding when Dean walked in, he would go a little easier on her. She wondered if she was being fair to him. Maybe he would give her the benefit of the doubt. She hadn't gotten sent to the headmaster's office even once before today. Maybe that had been more an indication of luck than of perfect behavior on her part, but surely Dean would still take that as a good sign. Hopefully he would know she hadn't gone looking for trouble.

"Aggressive tendencies," Anna said. She hadn't exactly received any positive attention so far, but she was still impressed at how far Mrs Warren's assumptions had gone. And it pissed her off. "That's a whopper of an accusation considering I didn't throw the first punch and I've never fought on school grounds before." Technically she had, but the headmaster didn't know that, and she didn't need to.

Anna lazily lifted her head and rubbed at a sore spot on her left cheekbone. There was a small lump forming there, and she figured it would be a pretty shade of navy blue by tonight.

"You expect me to believe that Cooper Jones initiated a fistfight with a sophomore girl?"

"Good idea. Be sexist."

"I'm a woman, Miss Campbell, and I meant nothing by that. I just mean that Cooper has always kept his nose clean. And at the end of his senior year, why would he throw four years of hard work away over a fight? It's uncharacteristic to say the least."

She'd gone and pissed the bitch off. Well, fine. Exactly as she had expected, Cooper was getting the benefit of the doubt and Anna was getting shit.

"Cooper will probably be here soon. He didn't look to be too bad off."

Yeah, and yet he'd been the one sent to the nurse's office. Anna wanted to make a sarcastic remark. But she decided to play nice. "You don't want to ask me what happened?"

"You've made it clear that you aren't interested in having a civil conversation."

Had she? Or was Mrs Warren just afraid that Anna would taint Cooper's pristine reputation? Part of her wanted to point it out. It was almost embarrassing how ignorant this lady was being.

"Now maybe when your brother gets here, you'll be more inclined to be truthful."

"Or maybe he'll be more receptive when I tell the same truth I just told you," Anna snapped. She normally let her nose down with teachers, but she was achy and bloody and fucking irritated.

Her chin was dripping blood again, all of it originating from her nose. She used the back of her hand to wipe it off. "Look, I'm obviously not gonna get to go to the nurse, so can I just run to the bathroom and clean up a little? Dean is gonna freak out if he sees me covered in blood."

Mrs. Warren had lost all hints of sympathy, but she nodded.

Anna thought she was trying to be moral, trying to be objective. Trying to pretend she was treating Anna and Cooper equally. But Anna wasn't fooled. Not for a second.

"Thank you," she said tersely and practically ran out of the room.

When she made it to the girl's bathroom, she coughed twice at the tightness that had been building in her chest. She was pretty sure she had a bruised rib or three. That Cooper kid knew how to punch. And he knew where to aim to hurt someone. In fact, if Anna had known he was experienced, she probably would have been much nicer when they had spoken earlier.

There was nobody else in the bathroom-- it was the middle of a class period, so that was unsurprising. Anna pulled her phone out of her pocket. The screen was cracked from when it had gone flying out of her sweater pocket during the fight.

Kate had texted her several times during lunch asking where she was. Anna sighed heavily and miserably and put in her passcode to start spamming her friend with messages. She asked Kate to come meet her in the bathroom. But the texts didn't ever get that symbol that meant Kate had read them, and Anna remembered after a minute that her friend had a test this block. Her phone would be on silent mode and she would be zoned in.

Her shoulders dropped with the memory, and she stuffed her phone back in her pocket.

She looked in the mirror. She looked like hell. Her hair had fallen out of her braid in places, stray curls springing out on both sides of her face. There were two bruises on the left side of her face-- one of them by her temple, which explained the pounding headache. Under her right eye was the cut that she'd felt earlier. It was still trickling blood, but not enough to concern her. Her nose, on the other hand, had gone back to gushing blood, most likely as a result of her race down the hallway to get here. She thought of the wad of tissues Mrs. Warren had shoved into her hand when Dean agreed to come to the school. "High and mighty prick," Anna muttered while pulling several paper towels out of the dispenser and wetting them under the sink to clean her face up.

She couldn't get her nose to stop bleeding, so she settled for using a couple wadded up paper towels to keep her fingers from getting bloody while she pinched it with as much force as she could bring herself to use. It hurt so much that she cursed several times and had to lighten up the pressure. It was in this position that she dragged her feet back toward the headmaster's office.

She could hear Dean's voice coming from the office when she got close. He sounded pretty angry, and her dread increased tenfold. He was trying to maintain a calm demeanor. After all, angry parents could easily be misinterpreted as threats to the safety of the school. What wouldn't a parent do to protect their child? Or, for that matter, an older brother to protect his much younger sister? Especially when that older brother was Dean Winchester-- well, Dean Campbell as far as Lebanon, Kansas was concerned.

"Are you kidding me? She's fifteen years old. You have the senior boy she was fighting get medical attention, but not her?"

Well, at least he wasn't angry at Anna. Yet.

"I assure you, Mr. Campbell, she had no serious injuries."

"Yeah, not that she'd tell you about." He wasn't wrong. Maybe she was having trouble walking in a straight line and without limping, but Mrs. Warren would be the last to know that.

"I'm fine, Dean."

He turned at the sound of my voice and moved about as fast as I'd ever seen him toward the doorway. She'd stupidly taken her hand away from her face, and there was blood dripping from her nose again, she guessed, because Dean's first move when he reached her was to grab the wad of paper towels from her hand and put pressure on her nose again. It hurt, and Anna wondered if the reason her nose was still bleeding was because she was too much of a wimp to put on enough pressure.

"This is not what fine looks like," Dean grouches, tossing another irritated look over his shoulder.

"It's not comforting to see that you condone her actions, Mr. Campbell," Mrs. Warren stated, her voice almost as uptight as she was.

Dean ignored her, much to Anna's relief. "What happened?" he asked. He looked serious, but he also didn't look like he was assuming-- as everybody else was-- that she was the perpetrator.

"I pissed off a teenage MMA fighter," Anna said while he guided her head back to help stop the bleeding her nose was still doing.

Dean's eyebrows popped up. Clearly that wasn't the answer he'd been expecting. "These people talk about you like a juvenile delinquent."

"I know."

"Pissed him off how?"

"He was holding some kid up against the wall and I told him not to handle his emotions like a toddler."

"And then you hit him?" Dean asked, confusion written all over his face.

Anna sighed. Of course he'd been told that she had started it. And of course he was confused. After all, her insulting some kid for being an aggressive, testosterone-driven teenager wasn't exactly a great reason for then hitting him.

"No, he hit me. And then I hit him. Apparently the scrawny kid kissed his girlfriend." Dean laughed the way Anna had. "Hey, that reaction is what got me this bloody nose."

"I'll warn you for the last time, Anna, that lying is not tolerated. Cooper Jones is an excellent student and the child of a faculty member here at the school. He upholds our values about as well as anyone here could."

"Yeah, if you're values include chokeholds and fistfights," Anna muttered under her breath. Dean gave her the side-eye, a warning to let him handle this. He grabbed her hand and put it in place of his own on her nose, squeezing so she would know to maintain the same amount of pressure.

"It's Katherine, right?" he asked the headmaster

Mrs. Warren raised one eyebrow. "Yes."

"Katherine, call me Dean."

She sighed as if she thought he was trying to worm his way into her liking. But he wasn't. Anna knew the many faces of Dean Winchester. This was his attempt to create level playing ground, to make himself Mrs. Warren's acquaintance at a similar level that Mrs. Jones-- Cooper's mother-- was Mrs. Warren's colleague. A first name basis was key to that goal.

"Alright, Dean. You wanted to say something?"

"Yeah. I wanted to let you know how bad it looks when you make a fight where two kids wound up with bruises and bloody noses into a crime by the younger and smaller one against the older." He paused just long enough to see Mrs. Warren's reaction-- which was rather indignant. She opened her mouth to speak, but he didn't give her the chance. "If you're going to tell me not to condone violence, Katherine, you should try not condoning it when it's this Cooper kid. I don't care about his track record. If Anna says he threw the first punch, he threw the first punch. She might be a piece of work, but one thing she doesn't do, ever, is lie."

Anna looked on with her head tilted downward, feeling shy all of a sudden. It was uncomfortable having her character praised. And Mrs. Warren was looking at her like she couldn't figure her out. Anna didn't think she wanted to be figured out, though. She didn't like all the attention. She might have been better off just shouldering the blame for all of this and going home.

"Maybe I have overlooked half of a two-sided story," Mrs. Warren admitted with surprising grace.

Anna didn't look at her or Dean. She just stared at the floor, feeling the paper towels in her hand soak through with blood as she had stopped putting pressure. Shouldn't it have stopped bleeding by now anyway?

"Cooper is still in the nurse's office. I'll go speak with him and his mother. Perhaps he'll tell the same story if it's true. He really is a good kid. In the meantime, you two can wait here or join me."

"We'll wait," Dean said gruffly, and watched as she left. "High and mighty prick," he grouched as he turned around. "That's not how you stop a bloody nose," he said, exasperated as he took over again, tilting Anna's head back and applying pressure once more. He guided her toward the chair she'd been sitting in earlier before he got here. "Here," he said. He used his foot to drag over another chair and sat across from his sister. "You hurt anywhere else?" he demanded, his voice implying that she had better not lie.

"Yeah, my ribs a little. But nothing's broken. I'll be fine."

"Hold that," Dean said, putting her hand over the paper towels again. "Keep pressure." His fingers were coated in blood now. "Lemme see?" he asked.

It was a question Anna heard a lot after hunts gone sour or fights that turned physical. She used her free hand to pull her shirt up enough that he could see her ribs. They were bruising rather colorfully already. It had only been about forty five minutes since the fight ended, so that was pretty impressive. Carefully, Dean checked for invisible damage, but as Anna had said, there was nothing broken. He eased her hand away from her nose to see if it was still bleeding. "Son of a bitch. Did he break your nose?"

"Doesn't hurt enough," Anna said. She had never had a broken nose before. But she broke a shifter's nose once, and he'd screamed like she'd cut off his boy parts. So she figured it must be pretty painful.

"Yeah, it's not crooked either," Dean agreed. "But if it doesn't stop bleeding, we'll be going to the hospital."

"That's what happens when you stumble across the only high school student who apparently has Martial Arts training."

"Don't know what they see in that little shithead. Any eighteen year old who would deck a fifteen year old has got to show signs of being a certified organic bitch."

Anna snickered at his terminology. She said, "Not in front of the headmaster."

Dean bobbed his eyebrows at that truth. "Like to get my hands on this Cooper kid for just thirty seconds."

"Don't make a scene."

"Yeah, yeah," he agreed. "You know you've got yourself a hell of a problem, kiddo. At the very least, you're about to be suspended for a week. At the worst, they'll expel you."

"Don't overestimate their integrity. At the worst they'll give me a week of suspension. At the least, they'll tell us to forget about it and keep our noses clean. These people are gonna be freaked when they realize Cooper's college future is in danger."

"Tell me you at least got a couple of good hits in," Dean said while wincing as he ran a thumb over the cut under Anna's eye.

She didn't have a chance to answer when Mrs. Jones-- who she'd only ever seen in passing-- stormed into the room with her son and the headmaster close behind. "I see where she gets it from now," the angry mother practically shouted. "With parents like this who needs-"

"I wouldn't finish that sentence if I were you," Mrs. Warren advised. Nobody explained that Dean wasn't Anna's father. "Elizabeth, we ought to be civil about this."

"Civil," Mrs. Jones snorted. She looked directly at Anna and glared heatedly. "You'll be out of this school," she promised angrily. "I'll see to that. And you won't get into another one in this county. You can bet on it." She stepped forward, and Anna was admittedly growing nervous.

It was a great comfort when Dean stepped in front of her, taking up a protective stance. "You have no business talking to my kid like that," he said evenly. "Not after he started the whole mess."

"Oh, and I suppose you would believe that story. After all, she convinced my son to tell the same lie. Why wouldn't she convince you of the same thing?"

Anna looked up, surprised, at that statement. Cooper had told the truth? Even about the scrawny guy he'd been holding dangerously against the wall? She met the older kid's eye, and he seemed regretful at worst, apologetic at best.

"Mom, I told you. That's really what happened."

"Cooper, do you realize what's on the line here? Your future. Your college acceptance and scholarships. Everything. A pretty girl bats her eyelashes, that's no reason to tell lies for her."

Anna's jaw dropped. The ducking audacity this woman had.

"Excuse me?" Dean demanded. "You wanna accuse her of something, say it outright and see what happens."

Mrs. Warren stepped between them. "Alright. That's enough. Elizabeth, I'm going to ask you to leave the room." She paused and looked up at Dean. "In fact, I'm going to ask both of you to leave the room. I think we've reached a point where these two are more prepared to discuss what's happened in a civilized manner than their guardians are."

Dean looked back at Anna, and she didn't so much as twitch a muscle. She had nothing to tell him that would be reassuring. She was dreading this little meeting, and she was further dreading the fallout. She also hoped Mrs. Jones wouldn't confront Dean while there was nobody there to play middle man. If there was one thing Dean got hot headed over, it was family.

As soon as Dean and Cooper's mom had shut the door behind them, Cooper turned to Anna. "I want to say I'm sorry."

Anna stood up so they could talk on the same level. Of course, he was still a couple heads taller than she was.

She might have ignored him except that he was being entirely genuine. She still hesitated. "It's alright," she said. "I hit you too."

"But you tried to avoid it," he admitted. "I was too angry before to think about what I was doing. I love Allison, and she cheated on me with a kid I couldn't pick out in a crowd. I'm not gonna get over that for a while. But you didn't do it, and I shouldn't have taken it out on you."

Anna nodded. He wasn't wrong. "You've got a little more integrity than I'd have given you credit for," she told him carefully.

"Well, you've got a lot of character yourself. Not many people would step in if they saw a senior boy twice their size threatening another kid."

Anna bit her lip. She was almost annoyed by how nice he was being right now. It was weird. A complete 180.

Part of her wondered whether he would turn around and punch her again when she saw him next if there was no teacher watching. But another part of her knew that couldn't be right. He was risking some pretty big stuff to tell the truth. If he wanted to be a dick behind everyone's backs, he could've lied and no one but Anna and her family would ever have been the wiser. That he hadn't taken advantage of that power made Anna think he deserved it a little more.

Maybe she'd misjudged Cooper from the start. He wasn't your average hot headed jock taking advantage of his size compared to wiry kids like the one he'd been standing down earlier. He'd been genuinely upset at the loss of a relationship, and it had clouded his judgement. How many times had Anna snapped at someone she cared about or spent hours downstairs in the bunker beating the life out of the punching bag after yet another hunter friend died?

The problem with that was that it meant she had to reassess her understanding of people like Cooper. If he wasn't as shallow as she had anticipated, then who was to say they weren't all that way?

Yeah, some people were just pricks. That was the way of the world. But what if there was no such thing as the average jock? What if everybody on the planet was only playing at normal? What if everybody felt out of place, and everybody dreaded monotony, and everybody thought they were people of character? What if normal wasn't relative, but just didn't exist or was unattainable?

"I see you've both cooled down," Mrs. Warren said, sounding pleased, as if she'd had anything to do with the problem's resolution. "Cooper. Anna. Why don't you sit and we'll talk about this."

()()()

Anna, fortunately, managed to narrowly escape a hospital visit because Sam managed to stop her nose bleed when she and Dean got home. She also, just as fortunately, managed to avoid the lecture she had been expecting to get.

The school had suspended both her and Cooper for three days, and had agreed that because we both showed regret for our actions, they would not list the incident on our official records. Something told Anna that Mrs. Jones was going to make her life a living hell when she got back to school for even threatening her son's reputation, but Anna didn't care that much. She rarely came into contact with her anyway.

"Hey, Sammy," Anna said at around seven that night. She was lying on the couch with her arms over her throbbing ribs, wishing she had a handful of tylenol but feeling too lazy to stand up and get some.

"Yeah?"

"You ever get decked by an MMA fighter?"

Sam snorted. "Nope."

There was a pause.

"Has Dean?"

"Not that I remember. No."

Anna grinned. "So, I'm the only one." That was a hell of a record to hold. Man, she was gonna be bragging about that for years. For her whole damn life.

Sam let out a chortle. "That's not exactly an achievement you should be celebrating. Your face is gonna be black and blue for at least a week."

"Yeah, but imagine the story I can tell now when someone asks what happened. I fought an MMA fighter."

"He's a high schooler."

"So what? He packs a punch." Anna pouted slightly. "Give me this one, huh?"

Sam rolled his eyes. "Alright, Dean."

"Whatever," she said. But admittedly she knew she was acting a lot like Dean. That wasn't so bad though. If it hadn't been for Dean, that headmaster never would have believed her. She probably would have sided with Cooper's mom when she suggested that Anna had smiled pretty at Cooper and gotten him to spin her a fairytale where he was the villain. "I'll take it."

"You do that." He turned back to his laptop and his fingers danced over the keyboard.

It all got Anna thinking again, though, about Cooper and jocks and normalcy.

"Hey, Sammy?" she asked curiously.

"Mhm?"

"What's the deal with normal?"

It was quiet for a minute. She figured he was thinking about normal, about what it meant, what it looked like, how it might feel. Sam looked over at her with something like grief in his eyes. "It's complicated. But... it's not exactly an option."

"Yeah," Anna said. "That's what I figured." But not just for Winchesters. Not even just for hunters. For everybody.

La Fin