Note: I want to actually post on a regular schedule from now on so I don't keep posting either super infrequently or super frequently. I'm going to try to post chapters on a weekly basis, and Saturday just seems like a good day for it since it's my least busy day right now. So that's the plan and we'll see how it goes, I guess. Thanks for reading. Let me know what you think. In this chapter, Anna is seventeen.

The Grayest Shade of Evil

Anna read to the end of the page she was on then closed and tossed aside her book in the backseat of the Impala as Dean steered into the parking lot of a gas station. "Thank God," she muttered. "I'm starving."

"I know the feeling," Sam agreed with a meaningful bob of his eyebrows in the front seat. "Do me a favor, Ladybug. Make sure he gets something that isn't drowned in grease, sugar, or both."

Anna smirked at the indignant expression that appeared on Dean's face and gratefully shoved her door open, looking forward to a chance to stretch her legs. "Just for the record," Dean said as he shut the driver's door and walked toward the little storefront, quickly catching up to his little sister. "That rabbit food crap he likes so much? Not enough to sustain life."

Anna laughed and shook her head. It was an old back and forth her brothers had going and she wasn't about to get in the middle of it. It was freezing outside, and as Anna entered the gas station just behind her older brother, Dean, she was immediately relieved by the rush of warm air. She looked down at her jacket, adjusting a cuff around the new charm bracelet she'd been given by a boy in her class who drew her name in secret santa last month. "Hey," she addressed her brother. "Do you think they have-" She was cut off by an arm slamming into her chest. She turned her head up almost fast enough to give herself whiplash, eyes widening, pupils dilating.

Ahead of them was a man with a gun, and he looked crazed with a combination of fear and anger.

In hindsight, Anna wouldn't be able to remember what she had been about to ask her brother. She would see the motion of her wrist as she shifted the cuff of her jacket as if in slow motion. She would remember the sound of her bracelet jingling clearly, as if it hadn't been a barely noticeable bit of background noise when she began speaking to her brother. She would feel the way the wind was knocked out of her as Dean's arm slammed protectively across her chest. These would be her final memories before everything blurred into chaos.

Well... she would certainly remember the sound of the gunshot echoing through the small gas station building for the rest of her life as well.

People were shouting, but it was somehow so quiet compared to the rush of her own blood in her ears as Anna flinched bodily at the discharge of the gun. In the space of mere seconds, Dean had managed to throw himself in front of her, a human shield. She ducked her head against his chest and everything went away for just a second.

The rotation of the planet had seemed to slow to a near stop in the moment the gun was fired. But in the aftermath, there was an almost bloodthirsty normality to the way time passed. Anna's head shot up, and she felt Dean's hands on her face before she realized he was speaking to her.

"-okay?! Anna, are you okay?"

Anna stared over his shoulder at the man holding a gun on the two of them. Her green eyes narrowed for a moment as she realized that she and Dean were perfectly alright which meant that somebody else was not. Horror painted her face a pale shade as she turned her head toward the counter. "Oh god," she muttered from her throat, one hand reflexively gripping the fabric of Dean's jacket even as he turned, his back to her as he maintained a protective stance between his sister and the gunman. There was blood on the cash register, a limp, graying hand visible peeking out from the floor behind the edge of the counter. "Dean-" she started softly, her heart rate picking up as she came to fully realize what they'd just walked into.

"I know," Dean said quietly, harshly. Then he looked directly into the face of the man with the gun. He wasn't wearing a ski mask, just a knit scarf pulled tightly over his mouth and nose.

His eyes were blue, Anna noticed, a detail that should have completely escaped her. She watched as Dean locked eyes with the man and swallowed hard as she thought they might both die here.

"Get behind the counter!"

"Woah woah," Dean said, bearing a state of calm that Anna would have found impossible. He had both hands held out in front of him, placating and nonthreatening. "Just take it easy. Nobody has to- Nobody else has to get hurt."

"I didn't mean to shoot him," the guy said in one breath. Then his eyes hardened with rage again. "Move!" he shouted, gesturing wildly with the gun in his hand. From his tousled hair and vibrant eyes to the sneakers on his feet, Anna did a visual sweep and came up with one conclusion. He was young. Practically a kid. Maybe only a couple years older than she was.

"Okay, alright, just stay calm," Dean urged gently, keeping his hands out. He gestured with his head so that Anna would know to move with him. She did, matching him step for step as they moved toward the counter.

"Sammy," Anna whispered. Their brother was outside, pumping gas into the Impala. No way could he have missed the gunshot that rang out seconds ago.

"What?" The gunman shouted in a panic, stepping toward them and pointing the gun at Dean's head.

Anna inhaled sharply at the intimidating lack of stability he was displaying and her grip tightened on Dean's jacket. "What are you here for?" Dean asked as a means of distracting him from the name Anna had let slip. "Whatever it is, you may want to make it quick. Cause, buddy, there are about five people in the parking lot who probably have the cops on the phone right now."

"I didn't mean to shoot him!" the kid hollered, his hands shaking severely. For a few blessed seconds, he pointed the gun at the ground, and Anna wondered if Dean would knock it out of his hands. But they were close to the counter now, only having paused in their walking because he'd gotten riled. They weren't close enough to the man to make a move.

"I know that," Dean said of the crime. "But that isn't gonna make any difference to the police when they show up. Buddy, if you want to get out of this, you can either put the gun down and be peaceful about it, or you can get the hell out of dodge before the authorities show up."

The kid had already been shaking like a leaf in a hurricane, and Dean's words did nothing to comfort him. "Kid!" he snapped at Anna, though she was barely visible behind her giant of a brother-- people always said Sam was tall, but Dean was enormous too. "Get the money," he demanded. "Out of the register." He tightened his grip on the gun, leveling it at Dean's chest and steadying his arms seemingly by sheer will.

Anna swallowed. She wasn't about to deny him anything while he held Dean's life in his hands. The minute she moved, Dean shot a hand back and grabbed her arm in a crushing grip. She pulled back at first, thinking he was about to try and stop her. Instead, she was surprised to hear him bite out two words of caution, his voice fierce with concern. "Move slow," was all he said.

"Get a move on!" the man behind the barrel practically shouted. He had started up a habit of glancing over his shoulder at the front door.

Anna wanted to look outside, too, to see if Sam had stepped away from the gas pump and was formulating some sort of plan to infiltrate and save their asses. She wanted to see if there was someone on the phone outside, organizing a rescue the normal way. She stared, nauseous, at the corpse of the cashier as she stepped carefully over the pool of blood near his head. She felt a stab of fear slice through her heart as she realized the boy with a twitchy trigger finger knew exactly where to aim and how to shoot. One bullet was all it had taken for him to take out a civilian.

Anna purposely avoided any thoughts of the dead man at her feet, placed a hand over her mouth to physically keep herself from throwing up, and reached for the cash register. She'd never worked a cash register before, but she figured it out quickly, pressing a couple buttons and flinching as the drawer popped open.

Her legs were weak as she glanced up at the scene that would be burned in her mind from this moment onward-- Dean, hands still held out in front of him, glancing furtively between Anna and the gunman, while the man with a scarf over his face stared only at the place his gun was pointed at, Dean's heart. She stood useless as she waited for further instruction. She didn't want to speak lest she startle him and end up responsible for her brother's murder.

"C-cashier's got a bag."

Anna almost gagged at the implication that she would have to retrieve anything from a dead man's body. "There's gotta be something else," she tried, her voice breathy but strengthening. This situation was unfamiliar, but the threat of death was not. She knew how to handle herself here. She just needed to breathe. Unfortunately, that was easier said than done when you were being asked to take something off a corpse.

"Just get the damn bag!" the man snapped, swinging the gun around toward Anna.

Anna wondered how wrong it was that she felt relieved at the change in his target. The gun was no longer on Dean. The moment of relief was short lived as she heard her brother clear his throat purposefully. Indeed, that was all it took and the target had changed again.

"Stay exactly where you are!" The gunman ordered seriously, but his voice was growing weaker. Anna frowned as she crouched by the body, hearing footsteps come closer. "Don't try anything back there," he was saying. "I just want the money and I'm outta here."

Anna swallowed back vomit as her fingers brushed the rapidly cooling skin of the dead man whose eyes were still half-open. It would only be right for her to close them, but to do that she would have to step around the blood again, and any extra movement could cost her Dean. She untangled the straps of a tote bag from the cashier's fingers. It had been the surprise of the Winchesters' entrance that had caused this man to get shot. She would have to bear that and so would Dean.

"So tell me," Dean began, a distraction Anna was very grateful for as she struggled to think. "You ever do anything like this before?"

It was quiet at first. Then, "No. It's not- It's not who I am," the kid answered quietly, as if in the middle of some existential crisis.

Anna felt light headed as she shoved bills from the register into the bag. This was the kind of thing that only ever happened in movies. She was the character that usually wound up a quiet tragedy. The protagonist is never the one to empty the register. The paper felt so wrong against her palms. Where the hell was Sam?

Anna raised the bag onto the counter. It wasn't heavy. There was a large stack of twenties, some tens, some fives and ones. But this wasn't a bank robbery. Before her stood a desperate, terrified kid, not a knowledgeable and cold-blooded criminal. That did nothing to comfort her. It did nothing to change her rapid heart rate and barely stable breathing.

The sound of the bag being set on the counter attracted the robber's attention and he took a few rushed steps so he was right next to the counter. There was a brief silence in which all action seemed to stop. A decision was made instantly and unbeknownst to Anna or her brother.

Then there was a hand gripping a fistful of curls at the back of her head and a gun pressed tight against her temple, and Anna swallowed, slowly raising her eyes to meet Dean's panicked ones as the gunman inched his lower half around the edge of the counter to stand on the same side as Anna. His foot hit the corpse on the floor and Anna winced at the sound of a limp arm flopping to hit the base of the counter.

"Let her go," Dean demanded through grit teeth, appearing to barely contain his fear driven anger.

"Give me the bag," the man, now pressed almost against her back, ordered into Anna's ear. He paid no mind to Dean's request.

"Let her go, man," Dean tried again, this time managing to sound more calm. "There's no need for this. We're not here to get in your way."

In her ear was heavy breathing, and Anna swallowed. Tense didn't begin to describe the air of the room.

"She's a kid, you son of a bitch," Dean snapped, visibly out of patience.

She didn't fancy the idea of being shot in this gas station in a town she didn't know the name of, but aside from that point, Anna was willing to do whatever he said if only to get that look off Dean's face. She reached a hand out slowly and passed the bag backwards, feeling the grip on her hair release as the boy instead snatched the bag from her.

"Look, I- I've seen this movie," the young man behind her said, his voice shaking almost as badly as his hand, the gun against her head still moving with his terror. "You don't- You don't know how I feel right now. Y-you just want to make it out of here alive. I get it, I'm- I'm the villain right now. But I've got a- a tragic backstory to beat the band, and I- I need this money. I need this money," he repeated so emphatically and sincerely in Anna's ear that she wasn't sure who he was trying to convince. "Call it what you want, but I have to get out of here. I need this. I'm sorry, kid," he said, hand shaking as he wrapped his arm around Anna's neck and started moving backwards, dragging her with him.

On reflex, Anna moved both hands up to grab the arm around her neck, seeing Dean jerkily step forward with wide eyes, his entire body visibly tense. "Wait," she gasped, struggling to breathe. The bag with the money in it swung in his hand and hit her shoulder. Anna blinked, feeling adrenaline thump through her body. "You can't do this," she rasped.

"I have to," the man argued, still moving backward, still taking her with him. Dean was following them, matching every step and looking almost feral with ire. "Stay the hell back, man, or she'll get it!"

There was a moment of transition. Something had broken inside of this young man's head. He'd decided it was okay to be the villain so long as he survived this and got what he supposedly needed. He'd gone into this scared and hesitant and he was about to walk out feeling more sure than he had a right to be.

"You're not gonna shoot her," Dean asserted calmly. "It's not who you are. You said that."

"Five minutes ago it wasn't," the man said, pressing his gun hard enough into Anna's head that she gasped in pain and would have stumbled if not for the arm over her neck that held her in place. Anna saw Dean glance at something behind her and the gunman. He appeared to relax marginally, the change only visible in the slightest drop of his shoulders. Anna noticed it and she knew exactly what it meant. "But five minutes ago," the fatefully broken and tragically angry boy continued, unaware, "I wasn't- I wasn't a- a- a-"

"A murderer," Anna spat venomously, confidence swelling at the knowledge that Sam had arrived and was standing behind them, likely with a gun trained on the boy who was too far gone to talk off the ledge.

Anna's words seemed to cut somewhere deep. She was suddenly shoved forward and just barely managed to keep her feet under her. As she stumbled toward her oldest brother while looking over her shoulder to see whatever was about to unfold, Anna heard the jingle of her charm bracelet. She felt Dean's hand grasp tightly onto her own and acknowledged his strength as he pulled her forward and into his chest, one arm immediately slinging protectively across her front. She saw the glint of Sam's Taurus in the early morning sunlight that was peeking past a drawn curtain behind Sam.

The drawn curtains should have served as a warning sign. But their little family had been so okay before. There had been no reason to believe their morning would take such a turn.

"Put the gun down," Sam said, catching the gunman off guard. His voice was steady, calm, and authoritative.

"Oh god," the young man muttered. The bag of money fell from the limp fingers of his left hand. "No."

"Put it down," Sam ordered a second time.

"You don't understan-"

"Now."

Maybe it was a miracle, maybe it was a shred of decency left inside of the robber's soul, or maybe it was a shred of hopelessness making its way into the robber's head, telling him that there had never been a way out of whatever he'd needed this money to fix. He dropped to his knees beside the bag of money and lowered his gun slowly to the ground, sliding it away from himself without Sam having to tell him.

Anna didn't wait any longer staring at the downfall of a self-proclaimed villain. Instead, she tapped Dean's arm, ducked away, and headed for the counter, for the body behind it. She closed her eyes and swallowed at the sight of the pool of blood by his head. She placed a hand over his eyes and closed them, whispering, "I'm sorry," to the man who'd been killed by the bullet that would rest forever in her memory as a catalyst for chaos.

"Hey."

Anna blew out a heavy breath, a few stray curls lifting away from her face for a moment with the force of it. Then she turned her head. Sam was behind her, and set a hand on her shoulder. "I'm okay," she assured him before he had a chance to ask. "Is Dean-?"

"He's fine. Somebody outside called the police and they just got here. Dean said he would talk to them."

Anna nodded and stood to face her brother more fully, feeling nauseous and shaky. When they'd left the car just twenty or so minutes ago, she'd been starving, not having eaten for twelve hours and having spent an unbearably long time cramped in the back seat of the Impala. Now all Anna wanted was to go back to the relative safety of the car they called home and the redemptive scene of the open road. "So we can go?" she asked hopefully, unable to hide her residual turmoil.

Sam bit his lip and looked over his shoulder at Dean, who was standing in the doorway speaking to a police officer. Looking back at Anna, he seemed to struggle to answer. "We don't know if they're gonna wanna talk to you or not."

Anna nodded. It wasn't like she hadn't seen that coming. "What's he gonna tell them about how you stopped him?"

"I don't know," Sam admitted, looking nervous and concerned.

Anna nodded at the expected response, "Should be pretty easy to avoid talking about that." How many times had she pretended to be a terrified or grieving girl and played on the sympathy of police officers or civilians to get them what they needed?

"Alright, let's get this over with then, okay?"

Agreeing easily, Anna looked back down at the body on the floor. "He killed him when we came in," she confessed quietly. "I guess we startled him."

"It's not your fault," Sam said immediately, dutifully.

"Yeah," Anna allowed softly. They both knew those four words meant nothing when there was a dead man laying on the floor at their feet.

"Come on," Sam urged, placing a hand on her arm and nudging her toward the door where Dean and the officer were.

Anna was surprised to notice that the gunman had already been taken out of the building. She could just see flashing lights outside through the drawn curtains that they should have thought twice about earlier. "Did they identify the guy?" she asked. "The robber, I mean."

Sam frowned slightly. "No. I mean, I don't know. I didn't talk to any of them."

Anna accepted the answer without reply. She wasn't sure why she'd even asked. Her charm bracelet made twinkling sounds as she ran a hand through her tangled hair and blew out another miserable breath. "All I wanted was a friggin sandwich," she said through an exasperated laugh.

Sam snorted next to her. "Tell me about it. Winchester luck," he grumbled.

"Winchester luck," Anna repeated, downtrodden once more. What the hell was wrong with their family that this kind of thing could happen and feel like just another shitfest?

Two paramedics passed by them and Anna couldn't help but turn to see where they were going. They stopped by the dead employee and crouched low. She turned back around and squeezed her eyes tightly shut, pinching the bridge of her nose to fend off an impending headache.

"Looks like they're satisfied," Sam said softly, wrapping an arm around his sister's shoulders.

Anna looked up, opening her eyes and seeing Dean wave them over, keys in hand. As they got to him, his first move was to grab Anna by the shoulders, and she instinctively reached up to put her hands on his forearms. "You okay?" they both asked one another at the same time. Identically slow smiles appeared on both their faces.

"Sammy?" Dean checked, letting go of their sister.

Sam nodded. "I'm fine. Feel like I missed all the action," he said.

"You kidding?" Dean said.

"You saved our asses, man. We were toast."

"I wouldn't go that far," Dean said, elbowing Anna. "I had a plan to get us out. I was just... waitin' for the right moment."

"Oh, great, this bullshit again," Anna muttered with an exaggerated eye roll.

Sam just gave Dean a bitchface and shouldered past him into the parking lot.

"I did," Dean repeated emphatically, looking at his sister as if he thought she would believe him.

Anna raised one sarcastic eyebrow to show him just how unimpressed she was and followed Sam outside.

As he watched them go, Dean's expression changed, no longer playfully offended but suddenly grave and worried. "That was a close one," he said so quietly the words were barely audible. He stood there for a moment watching as Sam's arm went over Anna's shoulders and he said something that made her throw her head back in laughter. Dean smiled fondly at the two of them. Then he hurried after them and surpassed them both to get to the car first. "Hurry up, kiddos, I'm starving."

"After that?" Anna asked in disbelief.

"I'm a growin' boy," Dean quipped with a winning smile.

Sam glared into the Impala at his brother. "You're thirty-six, Dean."

La Fin