Note: Thank you for the reads, votes, and comments. I will never get tired of seeing people read and enjoy this story!

This is the conversation that never happened in the chapter Chaos as Therapy. I wasn't going to write it, because Winchesters avoid things, especially when they're hard to discuss. Something happened since I posted that chapter, though, that made me really hate the idea of Anna not having this conversation with her brothers. Hard conversations are where growth comes from.

Don't expect immediate resolution. This turned out long and Anna is in the same negative headspace as in Chaos as Therapy for a lot of it. But do expect a happy ending! As in Chaos as Therapy, Anna is sixteen.

The Straw Girl

"Did you hear what I just said to you?"

"Yeah," Anna said. "So?"

"Are you kidding me? So?" Dean had his arms crossed over his chest, and on the other side of the table, Sam looked deeply uncomfortable. "Give it to me." She didn't move, and Dean fixed her with a deadly and serious look. "Now."

Anna stared dully at her older brother and tried to wait him out. Like usual, it didn't work. He was steadfast and determined, and she was just grumpy and didn't feel like doing anything. She was no match. She flicked her phone into silent mode, turned it off, and passed it begrudgingly to Dean, being sure to slap it into his palm a little harder than necessary.

"Stow the attitude," he added sternly and pocketed her phone. "You know you deserve this."

"Yeah, totally. Why would I deserve to have any semblance of a social life?" Anna griped and rolled her eyes without even trying to hide it.

"Don't be so dramatic."

"Don't be so annoying."

"Don't be such a little-" Dean cut himself off just before Sam did.

"Dean," Sam said and shook his head.

Anna took the opportunity Sam had, however inadvertently, provided her with and got up from the table in the library to go to her room and stew in her anger. She had no idea how she would occupy herself without her phone while trapped in the bunker. She couldn't even play music or watch anything without her phone. Netflix and her right to leave the bunker for anything non-school related had both been confiscated after the party on Friday, four days ago now.

"Don't even think about walking away right now," Dean said, following her just a few steps before he stopped and crossed his arms again. "We are not done talking. Anna."

Except they hadn't been having a conversation. She turned on her heel and put her hands on her hips, a stance she'd learned subconsciously from Dean and was now using on Dean. "No," she said. "You're not done. And you don't need an audience to run your mouth."

"Woah," Dean exclaimed, his head pulled back as if she'd crossed some kind of invisible but sacred line. "How about a little respect," he reminded her, equal amounts of hurt and anger in his face.

His expression hardened, and Anna sighed as he snapped his fingers and pointed at the chair she'd just vacated, facial muscles locked tensely in place. He didn't say anything until she'd followed his unspoken instructions and sat back down.

In his seat, Sam had a dreadful look on his face and was switching between staring purposefully at his laptop and stealing glances at the exchange between his siblings.

In an intimidating pose he'd perfected since Anna's thirteenth birthday, Dean placed one hand on the table and leaned down ever so slightly, putting himself not only at a level twice her height, but also positioning himself so that he was literally directly above her. She hated it, and he knew it.

"You do not talk like that to me."

Just like that, the rebellious and uncaring center of her brain reared in protest. "Oh, I'm sorry. I forgot you were Dad." And just like that, she'd said something she couldn't take back.

A mantra in her head began immediately. Why did I say that? Why did I say that? Why did I say that? Why the hell did I say that? Heart pounding in her chest over a few taboo words that probably hurt her more than they hurt Dean but that also communicated more than she'd intended to tell Dean... Anna lifted her gaze carefully but steadily.

To her surprise, he seemed undeterred by her comment. But he also seemed to realize that she'd hit herself with it much harder than expected. It sucked, because she could hardly remember their father. Thinking of him as an authoritarian hardass wasn't the image she wanted of him and it certainly wasn't what she wanted anyone to think she thought of him.

"Why don't you go to your room and come back out when you remember how to be civil?" he suggested with an air of admirable calm. He stepped back, allowing his sister room to stand and go.

But Anna just felt like shit after everything, and that was unfair because her comment had come from a place of feeling disrespected and unheard, yet she'd been made to feel guilty without anybody but her saying a word. Under her breath, as she left, she muttered, "Fuck my life," and kicked a chair with enough force that it screeched along the floor before falling sideways.

How did everything these days somehow land her here?

She could sense the discomfort and disappointment from each of her brothers as she left the room. They'd never had to deal with another teenager except during their own adolescence and one another's. But they'd understood then.

She'd never wished for another sibling before. But, in that moment, Anna desperately wished for a teenage sister. A little older- No- A little younger. Somebody she could talk to about everything she felt and see admiration and understanding in their eyes instead of disappointment or anger or a desperation to understand, but a lack of actual understanding.

Sam and Dean tried. She loved them for trying. But they didn't get it. They couldn't, because she didn't want to explain how she felt. But she couldn't confidently say that talking about all the crap that swirled around in her head would have been easier with a fourteen year old sister than with a 31 or 35 year old brother.

She especially couldn't say so when those brothers were Sam and Dean Winchester, two of the most compassionate and understanding human beings on the planet Earth, both of whom happened to be pretty okay at talking to and understanding teenagers.

She was so lucky. She was so broken.

As she stepped through her bedroom doorway feeling close to tears and filled to the brim with guilt, Anna thought to the lyrics from Screen by Twenty One Pilots. So simple, so fitting. She wanted to hear the song blaring full volume through her earbuds, OSIRIS sneakers tapping against the wall as she shoved her life away and tried to live inside of a song lyric. But Dean had her phone, her music, her escape.

She slammed the door so hard that she could be sure they heard it from the library.

Nobody yelled at her, and Anna felt guilty.

()()()

In the bathroom, she stood in front of the mirror and tried to understand what was wrong that could make her continue to be and do the very things she hated in or about herself. She felt guilty for acting out against them, and so she did it some more as a way of coping but that fed the guilt and there was no way out. She'd never felt or acted this way so consistently, not even after her mother died and she moved swiftly from sadness to rage. This was a whole other level of anger, seemingly without cause. Sure, she had problems. But this place of constant revolt and anger could not be justified or explained by those problems.

She concluded that she must be possessed. She poured holy water on her arm, and nothing happened. Well, her arm got wet. But that was it. Human.

She blessed the water in her water bottle for school and thought, in the back of her mind, that she should do this every day in case any demons ever decided to mess with her at school. She tried with the freshly blessed water, just in case the holy water she'd used the first time hadn't been "holy enough" or something. It didn't work.

She grew a little desperate. She nicked herself with a silver knife and got angry when it didn't elicit any burning. She pulled the little canister of salt out of her backpack and tossed a pinch of it into her mouth. Her face scrunched in distaste, but it didn't hurt. She tried touching iron and again saw and felt no supernatural reaction.

Having run out of options, Anna stood in a state of confused frustration. If she wasn't possessed then all of this was... her. Just her.

()()()

At first, the party had seemed like something big, a climax. But then nothing resolved itself. She was the problem, not her one choice. Of course, the choice had been why she was being punished in about thirty ways. Turned out that Sam and Dean could be exactly like parents when they wanted to be, and they weren't fond of driving twenty minutes on a Friday night to rescue their little sister from a drunken party where her best friend was vomiting and she'd started a brawl. They found out about that one through Kate's mom on Monday, having originally thought there'd been only a small fight. Apparently, Kate had rambled about that while she was drunk too. She'd been called out for lying by omission, which she still thought was the stupidest thing ever even though she'd been lectured on it since she was five, and for, you know, starting a huge fight at a party full of drunk people.

She hadn't bothered to correct them and explain just how much of an accident it had been. While she knew they didn't think she was a bad kid or anything, she also knew that they both had it in their heads that she was going through something that was causing her to make a string of very bad choices. A rocky patch? A rebellious phase? She didn't know. She just knew that they were going easy on her even as they acted stricter than ever before. It was confusing and it made her angry.

So, on Wednesday, she convinced Kate to ditch Math class with her, knowing that, because they knew her so well and because they were just that good, the boys would find out somehow.

"You know, we're both still grounded after Friday. Shouldn't we be, like, laying low? Sucking up, maybe?" Kate so clearly didn't want to be ditching right now that Anna felt awfully guilty about having talked her into it.

"You didn't have to come with me," she said. "You can go back. Run in late." Every teacher at this school loved Kate, so she would have no problem being excused for one time being a few minutes late.

"No," Kate said after a minute. It was too quiet, though, and Anna looked over at her in question. "What?"

She was frustrated already and she shouldn't be, so Anna shook her head at herself and took a deep breath. Then she looked over at Kate. She recognized a spark of concern in her friend's brown eyes, and she disliked it. "What?" she threw the same question back at Kate.

"I just-" Kate stopped walking down the sidewalk and grabbed Anna by the arm. "Can we talk about something?"

"Sure," Anna said, but she was prepared to take that back if she turned out to be the topic of conversation instead of Kate.

"Okay, good, because I'm... I'm worried about you."

Anna rolled her eyes and pulled away to keep moving down the sidewalk. Her The Office keychain on her backpack jingled against the I love coffee one and she was irritated by the sound that she usually found comforting.

"Anna, seriously. I'm your best friend. Can you just tell me what's wrong?" It was so close to pleading that it made Anna feel guilty for not talking.

"Kate, I'm fine," she tried to insist.

Kate got angry then, face flushing a light shade of pink as she got right in Anna's face and pointed a deadly finger at her. "Don't patronize me. I don't want you to reassure me. If you don't want to tell me what's wrong, then fine. But don't pretend I don't know you and I can't see that you're not fine. Give me a little bit of freaking credit after three years, will you?" She backed off then, face still flushed. After a second, she started looking a little bit flustered or like she felt surprised at herself.

Anna looked at the ground, unsure what to say. "Fine," she said after a little while. A twenty-something man on a bike sped past them, the whir a welcome break from the intensity of their conversation. "I'm not fine. But I don't want to talk about it."

"If we skip AP French, will you want to talk about it?"

"If we skip AP French, we'll both end up behind on work for the next week."

"Anna, you haven't been doing your work lately anyway. It's not like you. You know, if you keep acting like this, you're gonna have teachers trying to find out what's wrong."

Anna might have shuddered at the thought if she'd had the energy to care. Fact was, she didn't know just what it was that made her feel angry or upset all the time lately. She knew the root of it, but the root of it had been in the back of her mind forever. Why it would suddenly be unavoidable and start affecting her every day, she didn't know.

"If we skip AP French," Kate said again. "Will you want to talk about it?"

Anna was fully aware of what a big offer this was. Kate was intrinsically good in a way that Anna could never kid herself by pretending to be. She didn't care about rules the way her friend did. Likely, that stemmed from the fact that her family had been breaking laws on a daily basis since before she was born. Hell, the breakfast sandwich she'd gotten for breakfast yesterday had been purchased with a fake credit card. But she still hated that about herself. She hated that she was so bad at being good. She hated that she was so good at being bad even as she hated that she didn't know how to be bad. She was a mess. How could she explain that to somebody? Even Kate? It was tempting nonetheless.

"I don't know," she answered and started to stroll slowly toward the alley they'd discovered as Freshmen. It was one of the few alleys in Lebanon that they didn't think of as dark and intimidating. There was one dumpster there, but there was also a little booth bench that appeared to have been pulled from a diner and left there a long time ago. They always sat there when they ditched, which wasn't often.

Settling side by side on the couch, both girls let out a sigh of exhausted and heavy-hearted stress.

"Anna."

A hesitant pause. "Yeah?"

"Are you as scared as I am?"

Another pause. "Yeah."

()()()

Yet another fight ensued over her disrespectful attitude that night over dinner. As promised, they'd been asking nightly whether she felt ready to talk. Every night, she'd quietly shaken her head and they'd all pretended the question had never been asked, having normal dinners. Except that Anna hadn't spoken much lately. It started out simple, like always.

"You're quiet."

No shit, Anna thought sarcastically. She didn't say anything, because saying what she thought would probably be frowned upon. She shrugged instead and took a sip of her iced coffee.

"You know, you shouldn't drink that crap this late. You won't be able to sleep tonight."

Anna bristled at Sam's words despite their simplicity. She was sixteen years old. She knew that drinking caffeine at 6:30 could hurt her chances of falling asleep, but only if she intended to go to bed at eight or nine. She had a hell of a caffeine tolerance, for one thing. And for another thing, she didn't generally go to bed until after midnight unless she was fatigued from a hunt or a long week. She was fatigued from a long week, but she was purposely resisting sleep lately. Maybe she just didn't like being called out on that, and thus she hated Sam pointing out her caffeine intake.

Again, she chose not to say anything because all the replies running through her mind were uncharitable and, honestly, rather rude. She noticed the indiscrete look her brothers exchanged. They both looked vaguely frustrated, which made sense. They had a grouchy teenager at their dinner table.

"So, uh, how was school?" Sam asked, but only after having cleared his throat awkwardly in the silence.

Anna shrugged one shoulder and bobbed one eyebrow as she thought of how they would feel if they knew she'd ditched, then realized her mistake. Her usual answer was a disinterested fine. She could feel the change in their gazes. "What?" she snapped impatiently.

"What are you pissed about?" Dean demanded, obviously lacking the patience that he'd had so frequently as of late. "Far as I can see, we've been pretty nice to you."

Thoughtlessly, Anna rolled her eyes, determined not to engage. There were too many unnecessary and disrespectful comments begging to be spat from her mouth.

"Nothing to say now?"

"Dean," Sam said simply, quietly. It was enough. Dean backed off, but he didn't look happy. He went back to his food, stabbing a piece of chicken harder than necessary.

Anna didn't like that she'd been 'rescued' again, and she didn't like the vibe of the table all of a sudden. She sighed and pushed her chair away, just wanting to be alone.

"You didn't even eat anything," Sam called after her, but she ignored him.

"Alright, that's it," Dean muttered. He stood up, chair wailing against the floor. "Get your ass back here," he ordered, far louder than Anna thought was necessary.

"Spare me the lecture, Dean," Anna huffed and continued toward the doorway, rolling her eyes as if she couldn't possibly care less.

"Anna Grace!" Okay, and that was a little intimidating. Loud, angry, commanding. She turned slowly, an unhappy look still fixed firmly on her face. But she was listening. "Stop throwing temper tantrums like a toddler and eat your dinner."

Anna wasn't impressed by that. He didn't even have a threat of punishment to tack on the end, and she suddenly wanted to take advantage of that so badly. So, unlike she'd been doing for the past ten minutes, she let what she was thinking come out her mouth. "Sorry, you have nothing left to take away from me, so I guess I finally get to do what I want, huh?" She gave a miserable little smirk that she didn't even feel, and turned to go again.

She heard a brief shuffle of feet, but Sam just said, "Dean," and it went quiet. She walked down the hallway with a hole tearing through her gut.

Why couldn't she just be good for once?

()()()

"Everybody fights with their parents."

"Says the perfect one." Kate gave her a sharp look and Anna sighed shortly. "Sorry," she said sincerely. "I don't like fighting with them, but I'm somehow the one who always starts it. And the weirdest thing is, they haven't gone on or even talked about going on a hunt all week."

Kate mumbled something, obviously not wishing for Anna to hear whatever it was.

"What?"

Kate sighed heavily. "I said, they're probably worried about you."

Anna rolled her eyes and closed her locker with more force than necessary. "Yeah, worried that I'll go to another party. They don't trust me, Kate. There's a difference."

"There is a difference, but I don't agree."

"Well, you don't have to," Anna said bitterly. "They're my family. I know them. And I've been a total dick lately. There's no reason they should trust me or even like me right now."

"Anna..."

"Sorry, sorry. I'm being a huge buzzkill. I know." She sighed and went to Kate's locker with her. As Kate withdrew her books, Anna realized just how little mental energy she had. "I think I'm gonna skip again," she said."

Kate tilted her head. There was a combination of concern and exasperation on her face. "Two days in a row is asking to get caught. Not to mention, you're gonna fall so far behind."

Those were two very good reasons not to ditch math again. But Anna shrugged them off. "I'll figure it out."

"Anna, why don't you just come to class and sleep through it. Please."

Normally, a please would do it. Today, Anna sighed, felt a little guilt swell in her stomach for making her friend worry. "Maybe tomorrow," she said. "I just want to breathe for a minute."

"Breathe for a minute in Room 112."

"Kate, can you please be the one person who doesn't question everything I do?" Anna asked with sudden and uncalled for frustration.

Kate seemed to rear back a bit. She ran a hand through her long brown hair self-consciously. "Okay. Fine," she said, and it was a little bit short-tempered, but it was what Anna had asked for.

She watched Kate go with some regret. She should have listened. But hurting people close to her in every microscopic way was her forte these days.

She wandered out of the school building and walked the sidewalk straight through the rest of town before turning around and walking back to the school. It took an hour, which meant she was late for French class, so she decided not to go to that either. Instead, she sat out in the back of the schoolyard, in the shade of a few trees, just out of sight were anybody to walk out the back doors of the school.

She sat and pulled her phone out of her pocket, because as determined as her family was that she deserved to lose her phone for a while on top of every other punishment, they also wanted her safe. God only knew why. Regardless, that meant taking her phone with her whenever she went to school. Well... "to school."

She was surprised, upon looking at her notifications, to see a text from Claire.

Jody's worried abt u. U ok?

Instead of the usual flash of anger that had been appearing every time she heard or saw that question in the last five days, Anna felt a thump of fear and guilt in her gut. They'd spoken to Jody. Probably told her all about what a mess their sister had been. She realized with a start why she'd been acting as she had since Friday.

She'd been so angry when they went easy on her. She'd been so angry when they didn't confirm that she was the straw girl. So, she let the straw girl come out to play. The straw girl was this angry, broken, fearful half of her. It was the piece of her that wasn't good enough and knew she never would be. It was the fraction of her that wanted to be rejected, just so she wouldn't have to fear that all her emotions and fears were invalid. It was the most insane part of her. Yet, Anna had been listening to it all week.

She'd been testing them, trying to see how much it would take for them to reject her. Maybe Jody would be taking in one more wayward girl. The thought punched her in the stomach.

Fine, she texted back.

To her surprise, Claire's response was immediate. Liar.

She didn't know what to say. Claire was right. So? she finally sent back.

U wanna talk?

No

Ok

She was sick of space, yet she was glad to have it. She understood what Claire was doing. Anna had listened and talked to her when she was going through something after moving in with Jody. But it had been a few months since that time, and Anna didn't talk to Claire that much.

Slowly, the anger seeped in. Her brothers were getting other people involved in her business, probably tainting Jody's view of her. Maybe Claire's too. She didn't want to be a pity party, nor did she want to be orphaned in every sense of the word instead of just the literal one.

()()()

Dean glanced up from the table as Sam walked in, and frowned when he didn't see Anna trailing behind him. "Where is she?"

"She didn't answer, and I didn't push."

"Sam-"

"Just don't, Dean. Not tonight. Might be better if we have a chance to talk about this without her sitting there looking like somebody killed her puppy anyway."

Dean bobbed his eyebrows in acknowledgement and sighed. "She'd look like that for five minutes and then she'd turn into the puppy killer when you try to talk to her."

"No kidding. She's sixteen. That's a hard age."

"Every age is a hard age in this life, man. She's never been like this before. She's like a powder keg."

The words echoed back nearly ten years in time. Sam's irritability had appeared very differently in his twenty two year old self than it was now in Anna's sixteen year old self. But, in both scenarios, Dean's description was accurate. Anna was blowing up over things constantly these days, just in smaller, verbal ways. Sam had thrown himself into the hunt, been angry about every inconvenience, and been dead set on a goal that simply couldn't be fulfilled without plenty of time.

"Well, it might help if you didn't lose patience with her immediately," Sam defended, holding his brother's gaze when Dean started to look defensive. "I'm just sayin'."

"Whatever. The attitude drives me up the wall."

"I know," Sam said. "But somebody has to be the patient one, and I don't see it being Anna right now."

"No, you're right. I know." It was quiet for a minute, neither of them eating, but both looking at their plates, lost in thought. "Man, did we ever throw that kind of attitude around with Dad?"

Sam shrugged and then snickered as a couple distinct memories came to mind. "Was pretty rare," he admitted. Then, remembering some stern talking tos and... well, worse punishments, he sobered. "He had a way of deterring us from that."

"Yeah, well, as much respect as I have for the guy, I don't think Anna would benefit from John Winchester style parenting right now."

Silently, Sam wholeheartedly agreed. Anna was at least as stubborn as himself and Dean. Proof of that came in the way she'd steadfastly kept whatever was eating at her to herself over the past week of disaster. It also didn't escape him that Dean had used the word parenting. They never said it around Anna, because she never reacted well to it. Sometimes, hearing the word would cause her to outwardly yell or start acting passive aggressive. But often, she would withdraw, like the thought of being anybody's child scared her and made her feel the need to retreat. Maybe this, now, was a new form of that reaction. "You think we pissed her off?"

Dean squinted at the center of the table, thinking deeply about the question. "No. I think she's angry, but not at us. I mean, Jody even said it; kids get mad, they take it out on people they're comfortable with."

"Which is why we never dared talk back to Dad," Sam grumbled before taking a bite of pizza.

Dean shot his brother a look that Sam managed to avoid, but he considered that and realized Sam wasn't wrong. John had tried his best, but his best hadn't always been good enough. He'd instilled values in them that he considered important but didn't always seem capable of upholding. He'd taught them skills and responsibilities that he knew they would need, but that they shouldn't necessarily have been forced to shoulder as young as they did. Both of them had been kids only in the physical sense, and they'd relied far more heavily on each other than on their father in just about every area of their lives.

Dean liked to think they'd been better than that with Anna. They used to take her to playgrounds in various towns, play games with her at Bobby's salvage yard-- memories that sang a ringing note of bittersweet now--, and they'd kept her as far from hunting as possible for as long as possible. They were still trying to keep her out of it, even as she fought them tooth and claw on it almost daily, those fights including an effort to drop out of high school.

He thought back to those few days that he'd come to think of as the Dropout War. Occasionally, since then, Sam had brought up college, and they'd both watched her, just waiting to see what she thought. Every time, she kept her expression neutral, as if aware that they were trying to gauge her response, and hummed along to whatever he'd said, never giving any distinct answers. But Dean had the feeling that another war was coming any day now, because Anna had made it clear that she had no desire to attend college, but Sam was dead set on pushing it. The fight would start this summer, and there was no telling just how much of a bloodbath it would be.

Internally, he sighed. He wanted her in college almost as much as Sam did, but for some very different reasons. Both of them wanted her to do anything that wasn't hunting, because both of them wanted her safe. Dean would have liked to see her stay with them, in the bunker, and work in Lebanon or work with them on hunting but stay out of the fight. But those options were unviable. He knew that if Anna were to stay in Lebanon, especially were she to stay in the bunker, she would be forever pushing to join the hunt. So, college was it, the only way to get her to stay out of harm's way. That was the sole reason he felt that they should be pushing her into college.

Sam was determined for those reasons and more. Sometimes, he would read a paper the kid had written for school and he'd praise her skills in rhetorical or historical analysis, and Anna would blush and tell him to shut up. He would talk about her report cards like a proud parent, and it made Dean damn proud too. But Anna always shied away from compliments about academics or intelligence. On the other side of the spectrum, she soaked up every word or praise about shooting, running, or hand-to-hand, things they were only teaching her for the purposes of self defense.

She was constantly pushing for more, and they were constantly reminding her that it could wait, that she was still in high school. Something in that train of thought made it all click.

"You think she still feels a lot of the crap from November?"

Sam frowned, looking confused for a second. Then an expression of realization took over. "You mean from when she wanted to drop out."

"Yeah, all that crap about feeling overlooked or unimportant or whatever it all was." As if he didn't remember every detail they'd discussed.

Sam rubbed his greasy fingers on a napkin and then used them to rub his eyes tiredly. "I don't know. She's stubborn, but we talked about all of that." They both stared at the table, exhausted and distraught. "She used to talk to us."

"I know. And I don't want her to grow up not knowin' how to talk about any of this, man. I don't want her to be like- like-"

"Like us?" Sam asked with a little smirk of understanding. Dean looked sheepish. "I think she already is, Dean. But I agree. I mean, we shouldn't just let her drown in everything. I just feel bad pushing. She's got the right to privacy."

"Yeah, well, there's gotta be a line somewhere. And I'm done watching her act like she has the last week."

"Go a little easy, Dean. She's a teenager."

"That's a reason to go easy on her?"

"Well, yeah. We're not that old. Think about what it was like being a teenager back then. What kind of stuff would have made us upset enough to act like that but not feel like we could talk about it?"

Dean shrugged. "Only thing that ever pulled us that far under was hunting, and she hasn't been dragged into anything lately. I mean, there was that spirit a couple weeks ago."

"No, she's not upset about a case. She'd talk about that." He was right on that front. Anna was generally at least somewhat comfortable expressing fear or guilt or sadness when it was about a hunt. She knew they'd get it and not make fun of her for any of those feelings. "You know, I don't think that's even the weirdest part. I mean, teenagers not talking to their... families," he said after careful consideration. "Is nothing new. But she's not even talking to Kate about it."

"Yeah, and Jody said she blew Claire off."

"I think you're right," Sam said after a minute. "I think she still has it in her head that she has to be a hunter to be important."

"God, hunting. You know, I would kill for a chance to kill something right now."

"Well, we can't exactly go on a hunt while she's in whatever funk this is."

"I know that," Dean said tiredly and took a swig of his beer. "Just startin to get a little cabin fever's all."

When Sam's phone started ringing, both of them paused with food halfway to their mouths. Sam wiped his fingers off and then pulled his phone out of his pocket and checked the caller ID with interest. He frowned with a little pull-back that communicated his surprise and confusion at the call. "It's Kate."

Dean raised one eyebrow. "Kate, like, Kate Foster?"

Sam held up a finger and answered, "Hi, kiddo. What's the matter? You okay?" Dean smiled a little, considering how much his brother had grown that Sam could refer to people other than their baby sister as kiddo. But it didn't seem weird anymore, not even to him. He was pulled from that thought quickly as Sam said, "Yeah, sure. Let me put you on speaker."

"Hey, kid. I think you have the wrong number," Dean joked, letting her know he was there.

Kate's huff of a laugh could be heard, and then she was quiet for a second. "No, actually, I was hoping I could talk to you guys without Anna listening. Much as that breaks the friend code."

"Screw the friend code. If you can tell us what's been goin' on with her, she never has to know you called."

"No, honestly, I'm done with secrets. I don't even care if she knows. Just... I actually was hoping you could tell me what's wrong. I thought something might have happened with a hunt or something. She hasn't been the same since last week."

"Yeah, we've noticed, but she hasn't been the most talkative lately," Sam answered, ending with a chuckle. "Did something happen?" he asked.

"I mean, she's ditching more- er. Ditching. Period. Totally hasn't done that before."

Both boys smiled a little at Kate's failure to save that information she clearly hadn't meant to share in the first place. But then they frowned in unison as well as they both realized Anna had ditched without being caught in the past and had ditched frequently in the past few days. That was the insinuation, anyway.

"Alright," Dean said after a seconds of quiet. "Did you go with her?"

Kate sighed audibly. "The first couple times. I thought she'd talk to me but she didn't. And honestly, missing two days of AP French in a row is lowkey suicidal, so I didn't go today. I might as well have gone, though, cause the whole time I was just sitting there worrying about her."

Sam felt a small smile grace his face as he held the phone between himself and his brother, elbow resting on the table. Anna was lucky to have a friend who cared so much about her. Not only did Kate care genuinely enough to worry about her when she was going through something. But Kate also cared completely enough to talk to Anna's family when she felt her slipping out of reach.

"Where does she usually go?" Dean asked.

Kate stuttered a little as she said, "Sh-She- uh... doesn't ditch often, but when she does it's the same alley by the Kickback. Why?"

"Why there?" Dean asked, ignoring the question posed to him as well as the inquisitive look he was getting from Sam.

"There's this old booth seat from a diner that got tossed back there and we set it up a long time ago. Like, back in Freshman year, I think. We used to just sit there and talk about shit. Not that we ditched a lot," she corrected herself again. "Why?"

Dean sighed. "I thought maybe she'd be goin' back for comfort or something, but it's not adding up."

"What are you talking about?"

Dean looked to his brother. "If she was ditching just to cause trouble or be defiant, she'd want us to know," he said.

Sam tilted his head back in understanding. "Right, subconsciously, she'd want to be caught, so she'd slip up."

"But if she usually goes there to talk and hang out, and she refused to talk, it's not a comfort thing either."

"Well, yeah," Kate said as if stating that one plus one equals two. "She's exhausted lately. Have you seen her? She just didn't have the energy for class."

The boys sat on that for a minute before exchanging a look. Sam shifted, straightening in his chair and clearing his throat. "Kate, why did you two go to that party last week?" he asked gently, hoping his careful tone was enough to communicate that he had no interest in starting any more trouble over the ordeal.

"Uh... well, it's kind of a long story, but the kid that threw it was my dad's girlfriend's son and I kinda had no choice."

"But Anna did," Sam deduced.

"Wel- Well, I mean, I guess, but she wasn't gonna let me go alone, so... I'm not trying to get her in trou-"

"No, no, no. That's not why I ask. I'm just... so paint me a picture. You get to this party, and...?"

It was quiet for a second, but then Kate started to explain, telling them the story they'd only gotten in shards up to this point. "Full disclosure," she prefaced. "We walked in thinking one, maybe two drinks, have some fun for a couple hours, go home. But the scene was like straight out of a 90s movie. I mean, people were already puking and smoking and doing god knows what else when we got there. So, we went and met the kid, but he was no prize. And then Anna totally backed down these two morons like a badass and we just had fun for a while. Then my idiot side kicked in and I remember-" she sounded ashamed as she continued. "I remember she tried to stop me from drinking any more and we started fighting and things kinda get hazy after that. I have a foggy memory of the brawl that broke out later, though, and that was insane."

"What did you fight about?"

"Wha- Why does that matter?"

"Look, if you don't want to talk about it, that's fine. But we're trying to put together all this stuff, and if something was said that might be contributing to this, or if she said something that could give us some insight, then we'd really like to know about it."

Dean had to give his brother kudos for the pitch he'd made, because not only was it persuasive but it lacked judgement or accusation and that just seemed like the only way of asking that could make Kate respond.

Sure enough, it took only seconds before another sigh could be heard and then Kate started talking again. "I don't remember the exact words since I was drunk and it was, like, a week ago," she warned.

"That's alright. Just, whatever you remember," Sam assured gently.

"She- she brought up the bar thing from last year for some reason and I told her she wasn't the only one with problems. I said something stupid about her having fun and she said she was alone all the time, which, I mean, that's depressing. Anyway, she kept trying to tell me what to do and I called her bossy and a hypocrite and she called me an idiot, which is fair. So I called her a dictator and she said something about being a shitty friend and I said something about feeling guilty all the time and then I told her to leave me alone and that's pretty much the last thing I remember. Aside from, apparently, telling her I hated her, which, you know, is probably why she won't talk to me anymore."

"Kate, this is not on you, alright? None of it is. Friends fight, and with the alcohol involved too, things were bound to spiral out of control. But everything you just said is helpful, okay? So don't feel guilty about any of this. Just keep being a good friend, because as much as Friday was a mess, you're really important to her and you're good for her."

"Yeah, we don't say it enough, but you're a good kid, kid."

Kate chuckled wetly through the phone at Dean's statement. "Thanks," she said. "Not to give away every secret she's ever told me or make you guys feel bad, but I do happen to know that she gets lonely a lot, so hone in on that, I guess."

"Thanks, kiddo," Dean said.

"Yeah, thanks, Kate."

"Sure."

As the phone's tone signalled an end to the call, both boys looked up to meet each other's eyes.

"So, we should talk to her, huh?"

()()()

She hadn't even bothered leaving her room when Sam knocked and said dinner was ready. She waited, instead, and an hour later, there was a second knock. This one was gentle, three taps of knuckles against the door. She stared at the sheets of her bed and softly called, "What?" She didn't mean for it to sound like an invitation, just like she wasn't going to bite anybody's head off.

But both of them walked in.

"Please tell me you're not about to stage an intervention," she groaned and shoved herself upwards in bed to stand up if necessary.

"Sorry, kiddo. It's lookin' like we're out of choices."

He'd called her kiddo, and somehow that surprised Anna even though he said it all the time. Maybe, in her mind, she'd run too far from the version of herself that was kiddo, rugrat, munchkin, and ladybug. Maybe she had and they just hadn't noticed yet.

"So, uh, we talked to Kate."

"What?" That got her attention. "Why?"

"Take a wild guess," Dean deadpanned.

"You're not acting like yourself, Anna."

"So, you sicced my best friend on me? Is that why she's interrogating me all of a sudden? You know, I could do without the-"

"Okay, cool off there, Scully. We're not spying on you. Kate called Sam, okay?"

The notion brought her up short for a second. "What?"

"Kate," Sam said. "She called me, because she's worried about you. She said you ditched class today."

"Oh, so she's snitching on me now? That's nice." What comes around goes around, ran the familiar phrase through her head. Anna had called her brothers when Kate got drunk enough to vomit and lose consciousness, and Kate called Anna's family when Anna ditched class and snapped at her.

"Stop it, alright? Take a minute and think before you start talkin' about your best friend in the world like she's some snot-nosed freshman brat."

She allowed, reluctantly, the bitter thoughts to fade. She kept her arms crossed over her chest, and let her expression melt into a dull one. "Fine. What, do you want to take my bed away now? I mean, I think you're out of ways to discipline me, but if you want to put me in time out like a five year old, that's basically what my life has been lately anyway."

"Anna," Sam said, clearly making a concerted effort to remain patient even as Dean's eyes brimmed with deadly sternness. "You're gonna have to quit turning everything into a hyperbole about how terrible your life is if we're gonna have a conversation right now."

"Yeah, in saying that, you're forgetting that I don't have any interest in this conversation."

Sam opened his mouth, but Dean cut him off by simply holding out one hand in a gesture to wait. He looked at Anna, held her gaze for a few seconds, then bit the bullet. "What's wrong?" he asked with such authority that it felt almost like an order rather than a question. Yet there was sincerity there too.

Anna stared blankly at him. "Seriously?"

"We said we'd ask every night. The night you refuse to come out of your room is the night it stops being a question. So, tell us what's going on or we'll figure it out."

Anna's eyes narrowed in confused suspicion. How were they intending to 'find out'? After all, the problem was really only inside of her own mind. They couldn't read her mind. They might hack her phone and read all her texts, but she liked to think they would be at least a little bit more respectful of her privacy. Anyway, she hadn't really opened up to anybody, so they had no means of finding anything out.

"I'm actually fine," she said matter of factly. "So, have fun trying to dig up some deep dark secret." She looked away, purposely avoiding both their gazes and instead focusing on the cover of a textbook on the end of her bed. She'd been trying to study a couple hours ago when she'd gotten distracted and simply quit trying.

It was silent for a long time as they stood there, a couple feet from her bed. Today should have been it, Anna knew. No more hiding. But hiding was easy and she could feel herself slipping into that place where every secret was perfectly justifiable. I don't need to tell them. I've been dealing with this for a while now. We don't have to talk about it. I don't need to talk about it. Except that she did need to talk about it and that much was clear after the catastrophe that had been this entire week.

"Alright, I can't sit in this," Dean finally said, grabbing the chair to her desk and taking a seat. He turned to look at Anna, and she didn't cower, but she did feel small under his serious and determined gaze. "Are you really dead set on putting this off some more? The conversation's gonna happen eventually."

It was quiet, and both boys straightened in surprise when Anna didn't answer right away with a resounding Go away!

"Are- Are we talking?" Sam asked carefully.

Each fast-paced and booming beat of her heart was felt as Anna's mouth twisted off to the side and she released a heavy breath through her nose. "I guess... I guess we're not not talking," she said, because outwardly and directly agreeing to talk was just a little too terrifying for her right now, especially after everything that had happened in the last six days. Dean's eyes nearly popped out of his skull, and Sam immediately sat down on the edge of the bed and focused his full attention on Anna. She glanced uncomfortably between them. "See, it's already weird," she said and looked down at her hands in her lap. The fingers of her right hand fiddled nervously with the thin braided bracelet on her left wrist.

"No, no, no. It's just been a long week and... It's great that you're ready to talk," Sam told her sincerely, then looked to Dean expectantly. The memo was unreceived until Sam cleared his throat loudly and Dean straightened in his chair a second time.

"Right, so, we just would like to... hear... what you feel about... last week?" He pieced the sentence together word by word, dragging out syllables here and there, and in the end his statement became a question. It did not inspire confidence in Anna that this conversation would go well, but it also told her that Dean was as nervous as she was. Maybe that was good. Maybe it was bad. She didn't know. Maybe that meant it didn't matter.

"Right, well, it's not really just last week. Last week I was just being stupid."

"Anna-" Sam tried to cut in at her self-deprecation. He was cut off.

"No, seriously. I get mad all the time over things that shouldn't make me mad. Or sometimes over nothing. And I blame you guys for it. I don't even know why. Maybe I just don't want to blame myself."

"You know, that's not in your control. You feel what you feel," Sam explained whole heartedly. He believed that, and Anna liked his philosophy, so she latched onto it. She wanted to think that anger wasn't her fault. But that was the part of her always looking for an excuse talking, so she backtracked that train of thought and chose to get skeptical.

"Mhm," Dean joined thoughtfully. "The way you act on those feelings is another matter entirely," he added, being careful not to sound overly authoritarian.

It would have been easy to roll her eyes. But easy choices lead to hard situations, and Anna didn't want to have to have a talk like this again after tonight. She held his gaze.

Dean spoke again, "You know, when you get pissed over things you maybe don't think you should be pissed about... you should figure out what's at the root of it instead of letting that anger control everything you do."

Anna looked down.

Dean made a noise like he'd just come to an understanding. "You know what's at the root of it."

"Yeah, but it's... it's really stupid."

"You say that all the time," Sam marveled. Anna knew he was right. She'd used those words as a brace before discussing anything that was hurting her since she was in pigtails. "We're not gonna think it's stupid," he assured.

Anna bit her lip and purposely didn't hold either of her brothers' gazes for long enough to convey anything. She stared at a dark spot on the wooden frame of her bed and took a deep breath. They would give her time and space and that was all she needed to get together all her thoughts and lay them out to be seen and analyzed and fixed.

"You want to ask me something specific?" she requested. "Cause I really don't know where to start."

"How about I'm never fine. That ringin' a bell?" It was surprisingly gentle for Dean. But it made Anna's stomach churn. "Cause, you know, it might explain the shitshow that this week has been."

She still couldn't believe she'd said that. Why the hell would she say that? I'm never fine. You just never listen. She'd known it would hurt. But she hadn't had time to think. It had just been the only answer, there in her brain, and then suddenly there in the open, hanging between them and making her most comfortable relationships in the world into the most terrifying things to think about. She'd been so afraid that she'd irreparably damaged her relationship with Dean. Or with Sam. Both of them. She didn't even know if she'd been talking just to Dean or to both of them when she'd said You never listen. Anna rarely knew what she meant when she said things so harsh in moments of such peril.

"That wasn't entirely true," she said, treading carefully so as not to hurt anybody again. She also didn't want to lie, though. It was a fine line she found herself walking, a tightrope strung between Earth and the Moon. There was no way to make it across being only human as she was. Not even human. Half a girl, made of straw. What was even the point of talking if she was afraid to say the things that hurt the most? This was discomfort and no resolution. "I mean, I'm not not fine most of the time. I just... hate a lot of things about myself." Yeah, that was bad wording. Or it was exactly what she meant and Anna was just scared. She could feel herself begin to withdraw from this already difficult conversation.

But there wasn't any judgement or astonishment coming her way which was relieving, to say the least. Strange. Anna had always believed that if the straw girl saw direct sunlight, she would be a fire hazard.

"Okay, well, that's... that's not good, but you're gonna have to be more specific, kiddo."

Anna nodded. She'd seen this coming. But there was so much. Maybe she should have come prepared, with a list. There was the list of things she hated about herself, the list of things she hated about her life, and the list of things she disliked about the boys-- extremely short and all leading back to the things she hated about herself.

Anna hated to be halfway between little kid and adult. But every teenager was in that circumstance. Did that fact make the complaint invalid, or did it just mean Sam and Dean could help if she would let them? Of course, they'd been teenagers at one time, and they certainly had not had any easier lives than her at the time.

"It's not that bad," she said, placing a conscious barrier. "It's not as bad as it sounds. I'm fine sometimes." It was backtracking, copping out, running away just like she'd finally decided to quit doing. But to quit quitting is to walk that tightrope strung between planets, suspended in time and trapped by the emptiness and potential of the surrounding universe. She bit her lip, hoped she hadn't made herself sound like an idiot already, and tried to force this timid and terrified side of her into the shadows. It was time to let other sides of her see the light. It was time to let the straw girl feel the sun on her face without fear of explosion.

"You know, it's okay to not be okay," Sam said as if he thought he had to. He seemed to believe it, and Anna was glad that he did believe it. But it was a recycled line, one Anna had heard in health class and from a few enlightened kids or teachers at school who'd been forced to have conversations like this one before. It was the echo of important and true but unhelpful wisdom. Discomfort is not dangerous. Comfort is. Anna sometimes felt she was drowning in offers of support from all angles. As difficult as her life could be in terms of balancing hunting, family, and school, she also knew that her largest support system, by far, was her family. Despite all the support she could lean on, it was incredibly difficult to admit to being not okay whether for a few minutes, an afternoon, a week, or a month.

Over the course of the previous six months, there had been days when getting out of bed was difficult. But she wasn't depressed. She just lived a hard life and staying motivated could be a strain at times. There had been an increasing number of instances where she would get stuck in negative mindsets that cyclically tortured her for her place in her family or her inability to be like the other kids at school. But all that seemed too little to bring up. So Anna let herself believe that, even if it hurt, it didn't matter because it was small. It wasn't worth making people uncomfortable. She didn't want to feel different. She didn't want a relationship to change because somebody knew every side of her. But if anybody were to understand, it would be one or both of these two men in front of her. They knew the hurts, fears, and joys of her lifetime better than anybody else. Kate knew her anxieties to an extent. Claire knew her anxieties differently.

All of it made her want to answer with a plethora of questions. For how long? Can you be not-okay for a year and have that still be okay? Or is that only applicable if you were not okay for one night and now you're over it? Is it okay if you're still not okay? Or can you only talk about being not-okay in the past tense, once you've gotten through it? Maybe it's okay to not be okay, but can you be not-okay and keep all the good things and people that you have? Or do you have to accept, in the process of becoming okay, that you're going to lose relationships that were really great before?

"Just spit it out," Dean suggested. "You'll feel better after, kiddo. You know it."

Anna looked up at him, saw the genuine care and hurt on his face at seeing her in such turmoil. She caved, twisting one finger tightly in her bracelet as she finally answered. "You ever listen to MCR?"

The question seemed to throw both her brothers rather far off course. "What?" Dean asked after a minute, appearing utterly lost but like he was trying to find the connection.

"The band." Clearly, the band MCR didn't ring any bells, and Anna wasn't surprised. She sighed a little, feeling like she had no chance of explaining any of how she felt in quite the same way without them knowing the band. "They have this song called Famous Last Words," she said anyway. She got two blank and further confused looks. She wasn't helping them put the pieces together very quickly, and she knew that. "It's about a cancer patient because that's the album, but it's kinda not too. You know, in that way that most stuff only makes sense if you talk in paradoxes. Like, I matter but I don't, and all that shit." She was about to keep rambling about the song, but she closed her mouth when both boys shifted and opened their mouths.

"Can you repeat that?" Dean requested tilting his head down and slightly forward as he looked at her.

Anna shrugged. "It's... about a cancer patient."

"You know that's not what he's talking about," Sam said knowingly but gently.

Anna sighed. "You mean the I matter but I don't part?" she asked, staring down at her fingers as she picked a thread from her mattress.

"That would be it," Dean said snidely. His expression softened quickly, though. "What does that even mean, Anna? You matter. Tell me you know that."

His expression was so genuinely sad that Anna wondered if she should have been more careful about her choice of words. She shrugged a little, biting her lip as she suddenly felt like crying. She didn't want to hurt them through any of this, even if it meant making herself feel better.

"Don't even think about clamming up now, Rugrat. We are having this conversation."

That piece of her that hated being told what to do, that often roared dangerously at orders... stayed silent. "I know that I matter," Anna said, and it was hard to say which probably wasn't a good sign. "I just... feel like that's an illogical thing to think. Like, yeah, you'd be sad if I died, but, like, nobody else would know the difference. And that's chill, but, like, it sucks too."

Maybe it was the teenage dialogue mixed with feelings she'd only openly discussed with them a couple times before, but Anna felt like she wasn't making sense. She looked at each of their faces and realized they didn't seem to be understanding her.

"What are you saying, Anna?" Sam finally asked.

"In the song, there's this line that goes, I'm incomplete. A life that's so demanding, I get so weak. And then there's this other part that says, My eyes are shining bright cause I'm out here on the other side."

"Is this goin' somewhere?" Dean asked, not unkindly but impatiently.

Anna sighed shortly. "I think eventually, yeah." She took a careful breath and thought through her next sentence before speaking it slowly. "It's just that... sometimes... I feel like I don't do anything. I'm literally here all the time, and whatever, I'm lonely, who cares. I just want to do something that matters at least a little."

"Okay, hold on," Dean urged. "Rugrat, listen to yourself. You don't have to be a hunter to matter. What percentage of people on this planet are hunters? You think all those other people don't matter?"

"That's different," Anna whispered dismissively.

"No, it's not," Sam argued, leaning forward to catch her eyes. "Why do you have to be a hunter, Anna? There are at least a hundred better options."

"Oh, come on," she said, again being dismissive.

"No, really.You have to know it's the last thing we want for you."

Anna frowned as if she'd never actually allowed herself to think what he'd just told her. She'd known, on some level, that there would be a fight about college some day, or about her desire to become a hunter. She'd been open about it with Claire a little while ago when they all went to Sioux Falls. But neither of her brothers had ever said it to her face that they didn't want her to become a hunter. It felt powerful and expected at the same time. Anna curled her lip and looked at the sheets on her bed. "Well, you might want to start getting over that," she suggested, still sounding vulnerable more so than her earlier belligerence.

"We'll see," Sam said like it was a challenge, frustrated disappointment written all over his face.

"No, see, that's the problem. If I don't hunt, then I'm just gonna feel like this forever."

"Okay, hey. The hunting thing- That's a conversation for another time," Dean butted in, shooting Sam a look of warning.When Anna didn't say anything, he adjusted his position and leaned forward, hoping she would take the hint and meet his eyes. "Listen to me," he said gently.

Anna raised her gaze, but not her head. Dean was taken aback by the naively vulnerable glossy look that lay in his sister's eyes. He hadn't seen her look so young in a long time, it seemed. Although, she'd looked rather childish and lost on Friday night even as she raged like a woman seeing the world's brazen injustice with utter clarity for the first time at age forty.

"Whatever is goin' on in your head, we can help you, but you have to say it out loud. Go back to your song lyric if you have to, but talk to us." He watched as she held his gaze for a second, and he could see that she was fighting tears. It broke his heart, but he looked steadily into her eyes.

Anna swallowed and broke eye contact to pick at a loose thread in the knee of her jeans. "It's just... sometimes it's exhausting to be halfway between a hunter and a high school student, and I don't like to say that because I know your immediate response is gonna be to pull me right out of hunting, and that's not what I want." She let out a shaky breath. "It's just hard to walk a tightrope all the time and, I mean, I could say one wrong thing at school and be out-casted and I don't think I even care but there's still that pressure of being somebody different for seven hours a day. And I know I sound like a whiny little kid considering the shit you guys are up against every day, but I hate the in between. I'm half a high school student, and then I hunt sometimes on the weekends and it's freeing but it's also caging because I'm also only half hunter. And hunting is the family business which kinda... kinda makes me half Winchester-" The looks on both their faces transformed immediately upon hearing that, and Anna cut them off before either. "Come on, you know it's true. I ignored it for a long time, but I'm still your half sister and you can't pretend you've never thought about it."

When she looked between the two of them, scrutinizing their facial expressions and trying to get a sense of what they were thinking or feeling, Anna was startled to see that they both look somewhat angry.

"What?" she asked, voice raising in pitch in a combination of confusion and fear.

"If anybody else said that about you, you know what we would do?"

She did know. She could picture it: the blood that would gush down their face, the way she'd have to check to see if either of them had broken any fingers or knuckles in their time spent beating this imaginary foe's face in. "Yeah," she mumbled. But that would be, in part, obligatory and, in part, a defense mechanism. They wanted their family to be whole and happy, so attacking one person attacked all of them. It didn't even make sense as she thought, which led Anna to begin questioning her own statements before Sam or Dean even started to disprove them.

"I know none of us was raised to be a glass half full kind of person, Anna, but you're looking at all of this in the wrong way. You know, you said a while ago, when you were convinced you wanted to drop out, that you didn't think you were strong or smart enough to be like us. Here's the problem with that," Sam said seriously.

He had this frustrated look in his eyes, and he was hand-narrating as he spoke, a sure sign that he was feeling passionately about his argument. It made Anna feel loved and intimidated at the same time. She'd pissed him off, but he was fighting for her.

"You're not half a high school student, half a hunter, or god forbid half a Winchester. You're one hundred percent all of those things. And that makes you strong and smart and capable and, honestly, pretty impressive. So, don't talk about yourself like half a person. Give yourself some credit."

It was quiet and a little awkward for a second, but Anna sat digesting everything that she'd just been fed. She remembered thinking, on the night of the party, that it wasn't fair how good Dean was at being one hundred different things when Anna couldn't even be anything. She turned that on its head now as she looked into Sam's hazel eyes and saw the intensity there. She thought, Dean is a parent, a big brother, a leader, a hunter, a friend, a guardian, and a lot of other things. Sam is a parent, a big brother, a little brother, a friend, a listener, a hunter, a scholar, and a hundred other things. And I watched them both be all those things, and I became a daughter in some ways, a sister in others, a student, a hunter-in-training, a friend, and... well, maybe some other things too.

"Sam's right," Dean said with enough certainty that Anna wouldn't have dared argue even if she'd wanted to. And she didn't want to, for the first time in a long time. "And you know what?"

Anna looked him dead in the eyes and waited.

"I don't know how the hell you don't see Dad in yourself."

It wasn't at all what she'd been expecting to hear, and her expression of utter bewilderment communicated that. Sam snorted from her other side, and Anna shot him a look of inquiry. She didn't know what they were talking about at all. Sammy was like Dad because he was stubborn and smart and he had a hunger for answers and resolution. Dean was like Dad, because he was the strong, natural leader and protector, the one always at the front, a shield between his family and the outside world. There were differences between Sam and Dean and there were differences between each of them and John, but the boys were John Winchester's kids.

As she watched, they both adopted smiles of amusement and nostalgia. "He's right," was all Sam said when Anna's eyes begged him for an answer.

"Kid, you act just like him when you get mad. You're dead quiet and then you explode."

"You do that."

"Well, so did Dad," Sam said with an understanding nod.

"Okay, so I got his temper-"

"Not his temper, just the way you show anger," Sam corrected as if making an important distinction.

Dean bobbed his eyebrows in acknowledgement and then smirked again. "And you're stubborn-"

"Oh, come on."

"You don't think you're stubborn?" Sam asked in disbelief.

"No, but you're both way more stubborn than I am!" she argued, crossing her arms over her chest, looking ready to debate.

"Yeah, well, you might call it a family trait," Dean said pointedly.

Anna paused and then she felt the fight go out of her. He was right. She needed to spend some time squashing that voice in her head that had taken over on Friday night. "Okay, whatever," she said in defeat, but her voice sounded lighter, too. She'd lost the argument, but she felt better, ten times better.

They weren't done, though. They just weren't talking directly to her anymore, but to each other instead. About her.

"And the nose thing."

"Over everything."

"What does that even mean?" Anna asked indignantly. "What nose thing?"

Sam laughed at her, "You wrinkle your nose."

"All the time," Dean added.

"Dad did that?" Anna asked in disbelief.

"Yeah. I mean, not the exact same way, but yeah," Sam said. He looked to Dean, "Was a lot less adorable when Dad did it, huh?"

That comment surprised a laugh out of his brother. "You're not wrong."

Anna glared and crossed her arms again, feeling more affronted with every passing second. "Excuse me!" Her nose wrinkled in anger, and she caught it, immediately trying to flatten her expression so they wouldn't make fun of her. Both of them noticed, though, and laughed harder. "Shut up," she grumbled and slouched. How had this turned into a teasing session when it started out with them being all encouraging and sweet?

The laughter in the room faded within a few more seconds, and it got quiet for a second, but Anna felt eyes on her. She looked up to see that both her brothers were staring at her. She thought maybe they were waiting for her to say something, so she started thinking through what she should say. An apology for the past week of mayhem would be a good start. A promise to be open were she to start sinking into this and not feel capable of pulling herself out again would be a great second line. An expression of gratitude for everything they'd done and their relentless efforts to help her even as she pushed them away would be the perfect finisher. But, apparently, they weren't expecting her to say anything.

"Munchkin, all those traits you didn't get from Dad ain't half bad either. And they don't make you any less a Winchester. None of us is an exact replica of anybody else. But you grew up Winchester style and you've got all the right traits."

"You're just young," Sam finished for his brother. "And you know what? Honestly?"

"What?" Anna asked, feeling shy at the many reprimands and compliments that had been dumped on her i the past half hour or so.

"Dad didn't know how to smile like you do. Hell, we don't know how to smile like you do." He let the words lie for a minute before continuing. "You're really good, Anna."

"Funny timing to be telling me that," Anna mumbled ironically and looked down to pick at the thread in the knee of her jeans again.

"Yeah, well, it's been a long week," Sam admitted, but he didn't sound like he regretted saying what he had.

"And we all have our moments," Dean added.

"Look, if- if you ever want to take a break from the hunting side of this, we are more than okay with that."

Anna snorted. "Yeah, you'd be thrilled, huh?"

Sam smiled a little, "I'm just saying that if you don't feel up to a hunt, say something. Or if you want us here, say something."

"I always want you here," Anna said softly and without censorship. She didn't hurry to correct herself because she wanted to learn how to be honest all the time instead of just when it was comfortable for those around her.

Dean stood up and moved over to put a hand on her head. He pulled her sideways so her head rested against his stomach, and it was a strange but comfortable hug. "We can't be here all the time," he said, sincerely apologetic. "But we can be here when you need us here. Or you can be with us." He let her go and ruffled her messy curls.

"We never wanted you to feel lonely, Anna. We just want you to have something stable," Sam explained gently. "And this place provides stability."

"So, now would be a bad time to ask about dropping out again."

"Unless you're in the mood for a much longer talk where you lose that argument again, yeah," Sam chuckled.

"Is that why you didn't hunt all week?" Anna asked after a minute. "Cause I was being an idiot?"

"Because we wanted to be here until we knew you were okay," Sam corrected, giving her a disapproving look for her choice of words. "Yes."

Anna bit her lip, thinking for a moment about what case they would have taken on had she not been causing trouble all week. Who might've died because they were in Lebanon instead of some town in Georgia or Washington or Rhode Island? She forced it down. She didn't want to think about herself as an inconvenience. They loved her, and they clearly didn't want her to think this negatively about her position. They clearly thought she was worth something that went deeper than hunting things and saving people.

She pulled the sleeves of her sweater over her hands. She was a source of light, she realized in the corner of her mind that she usually silenced, the corner that often wanted to argue with thoughts like Half-breed or Baby. Her job, she thought, as the baby-- though she still hated to think the word-- was to be the most innocent, the happiest, the most naive. She didn't have to try at those things because it wasn't hard to be happier than her older brothers, and because she hadn't seen enough of the world to lack naivety, and because, with everything they had, her family had protected her innocence, that hopeful glint in her eyes.

She took a deep breath, and reached forward to hug Sam too, because they'd done the impossible and made her feel better about things she'd always thought she deserved to feel. Sure, tomorrow it would be harder to remind herself that those things she always thought of herself weren't true. She would certainly still have days where she couldn't help but sit in her room and cry. It would still be hard to be her.

But she sat there, tucked her head into Sam's shoulder, and took a match to the straw girl.

La Fin