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With Dean cured, Anna expected herself to crash hard and sleep for about 24 hours straight. But when she stepped into her bedroom, she forgot how to breathe.
The handcuffs were still hanging empty from her bedpost. Blood had dried on the metal, glistening at her when the light from the hallway reflected off of it. A foot or so away from the bed, the fabric Dean had gagged her with lay, also speckled with blood from her hands.
Staring at it for a moment, Anna reached up subconsciously to touch the cuts on her face with the pads of her fingers. Without making a conscious choice, she backed out of her room and into the hallway. The light wasn’t red anymore, but Anna could practically feel the section of destroyed wall behind her. Someone had pulled the hammer out, but that didn’t change much.
“Hey.”
Anna startled a little more violently than was warranted and turned to look at Dean, who seemed to have just come out of his own room.
“You okay?” he asked her, notably not walking toward her.
Anna nodded, simply because she couldn’t bring herself to explain.
“You sure?”
“I can’t sleep in there,” Anna admitted at his persistence.
Dean frowned, “Uh, why not?” He was coming toward her now, but Anna felt a sudden urge to protect him from the sight of her bedroom. He would feel guilt. Fear. Shame.
“It’s fine,” she said in a rush.
Dean ignored her placation and stepped into the doorway. He paused there, one hand on the doorframe, the other at his side. He didn’t say anything for a second, and Anna leaned forward, panic gone, to touch the arm that hung by his side. She was surprised when Dean pulled back the moment her fingers made contact.
“I just forgot it was there,” she tried to explain, backing up a step in the hopes of making him more comfortable. “I’ll get rid of it. I didn’t mean to-”
“Hey,” Dean said gently, leaning down enough to see into the eyes that were working so hard to avoid his. “I got it. Pick another room for now, alright? You’re exhausted. You need to get some shuteye.”
Anna swallowed, looking into her brother’s eyes for the first time in quite a while. They weren’t all Dean the way she wanted them to be. No, they were bubbles of remorse that looked ready to pop. She wanted to tell him it wasn’t his fault, but she was too afraid the guilt and shame would spill out all over the both of them. She didn’t have the energy to clean up such a mess.
“Okay,” Anna said simply instead, quiet and tired. “Sorry.”
Dean’s hand made a small gesture toward her shoulder. But he aborted the move halfway through and clenched his hand into a fist instead.
It made Anna’s eyes burn with unwelcome tears, and she felt the sadness burn into anger. Dean was so goddamn sorry for things he’d had no control over. But he wasn’t sorry about this. “You know, I’m not gonna shatter,” she said shortly.
“Anna-” Dean started, closer to angry than patient.
“Whatever, Dean.” She walked down the hall, frustrated and weary, and opened the farthest door from her and her brothers’ rooms.
The sheets smelled like hers had the first night in the bunker– like they had been clean decades ago but were left waiting for too long to stay that way. The bed was made so formally that it felt impersonal. But Anna hadn’t slept adequately in so long that she simply crashed on top of the covers and waited for sleep to claim her.
()()()
Anna woke some time later to red light seeping in from the hallway and her own breath coming in shallow pants. She couldn’t remember her nightmare but was sure she’d just had one.
The red light registered in her body before her mind, making her muscles go tense as she sat up in bed. She stared at the door she’d left partially open, her thoughts warring with one another. The hall lights went red in the middle of the night. Some kind of power saving schedule, she figured. But she didn’t know what time it was and didn’t have her phone on her to check.
She knew there was a chance things had gotten really bad again, even if she hadn’t been asleep for very long. It took seconds for shit to hit the fan in their line of work. Literal seconds.
Anna’s heart beat faster as she stealthily opened every drawer in the room, hoping against hope to find a weapon stashed away somewhere. If she’d been less of a wimp earlier and just slept in her own room, she’d have had a pistol and a knife available to her now.
Sam’s name caught in her throat as Anna crept into the hallway. She couldn’t make herself speak, and maybe that was for the best. Stealth was her only real option considering she was totally unarmed.
As she crept down the hallway, sticking close to the wall, Anna listened closely for any sound at all. She would be ready this time. She wouldn’t be caught off guard again.
Fortunately, the path to her own bedroom was completely clear. She ducked inside and snatched her handgun off her desk. Sliding the clip out and replacing it, then double checking that there was one in the chamber, Anna flicked the safety off. She held her gun at the ready but pointed to the floor as she crept toward the kitchen.
She heard voices, muffled but seemingly angry. Anna’s heart pounded faster in her ears and throat. She walked faster, hoping her steps were still quiet enough not to give her away. But she had to save Sam. She had to stop Dean. She could shoot him in the leg or something if she had to, maybe. It would be hard, but she could do it to save Sam. She could do it.
Turning the corner into the kitchen, Anna raised her gun to point it at Dean. She adjusted her aim when she realized he was crouched on the floor, directly over Sam, who seemed to be unconscious. “Get away from him,” she said coldly, and Dean’s reaction was instantaneous.
“Woah,” he said in what appeared to be genuine surprise. His hands shot up in surrender, and he looked at her with concern. His eyes weren’t black, but that didn’t mean much. “Anna, the hell are you doin’?”
“Shut up,” Anna snapped. She took a step farther into the kitchen, her aim unwavering. “Stand up and get away from him.”
“Okay. Okay, hey, easy,” Dean soothed and slowly straightened until he was standing. He took two steps back and kept his hands up where she could see them. “You got holy water, Sweetheart? I can prove it’s really me.”
Anna’s cold glare fell for half a second at the pet name she hadn’t heard in over a week. She recovered quickly.
“Or- hey,” Dean called, eyebrows raised as he searched for her gaze. “Christo,” he said. “God. Jesus. You see? No flinching. No black eyes. Now can you put your gun away, please?”
That was the evidence she needed. But Anna was slow to lower her gun. She didn’t flick the safety back on yet. “What’s wrong with him?” she asked suspiciously.
“He’s drunk,” Dean said, moving cautiously back to his position crouched over their brother. He kept one eye on Anna– on the gun she still held in both hands as if ready to use it. “Turn the safety on,” Dean told her.
Anna swallowed, her heart still racing. Her suspicion ratcheted again at the command, gentle as it was. Dean wasn’t a demon, but he could still be fucked up from the Mark. He could still have done something to Sam. She half-raised the gun to point at him but stopped again and lowered it when her eyes caught on something. An empty liquor bottle on the counter, light reflecting from its surface.
Finally, Anna’s muscles loosened some. She turned the safety on and set her gun on the kitchen table. She crouched on Sam’s other side and took a good look at his face. He seemed light, almost happy, his jaw unclenched for the first time in ages. “Is he okay?” she asked awkwardly, glancing at Dean– just as far as his chin; she couldn’t look him in the eye.
“He will be,” Dean said with enough confidence that Anna believed him easily.
They stayed there for a moment longer, and Anna could feel her brother staring at her. “I’m sorry,” she said quietly, her voice a little shaky. Adrenaline was fading throughout her body, causing her to tremble from head to toe. “The power’s off. I thought- I don’t know what I thought.”
Dean nodded in her peripheral vision and didn’t say anything.
“I know it’s not–” she began, but he cut her off.
“You don’t have to explain. I get it.”
Anna bit her lip and sat down on her heels. She’d fucked things up here, and she knew that. Dean had already been sidestepping her for a few weeks before he’d become a demon. She loathed to think how far he’d go to avoid her now that she’d pointed a gun in his face like he was an absolute threat. She couldn’t recall ever holding a gun on him before. Maybe when he’d found her expecting a monster, when she was freshly traumatized and hadn’t yet realized it was Dean she was aiming at. But she had never aimed right at him intentionally.
“No, you don’t,” she told him softly. “You keep thinking I’m scared of you or something. I just miss you.”
“You always miss people down the sights of your gun, then?” Dean teased.
Anna didn’t think it was a particularly funny joke. She closed her eyes and rubbed her palms over her lap a few times. The bandages around her wrists were coming loose, but she didn’t give a shit. She’d fix it later or take them off. It didn’t matter. Nothing did anymore.
“Shut up,” she requested, clenching both her hands into fists against her legs.
“I don’t know what you want from me here, Anna,” Dean admitted. He was squatting, looking at her, with forearms resting on his knees, hands hanging between his legs. He looked so casual, so normal.
“Yeah, you kinda do,” Anna challenged with an angry sort of chuckle.
Dean tipped his head back in guarded understanding. “Okay, maybe I do,” he allowed. “But you don’t know the whole story-”
“That’s such crap.”
“Rugrat-”
“No,” Anna snapped, getting suddenly to her feet. She wrinkled her nose at him, rage filling her eyes. “No, fuck you, Dean. It’s a matter of time, I get that, okay? It’s a matter of time. But you don’t have to rush it. You don’t have to leave.”
Dean took a measured breath and rubbed one hand over the Mark on his arm. He stood up– albeit it much more slowly than she had– and let himself lean back against the kitchen table. “I don’t expect you to understand-”
“No, shut up!” Anna cried and would have marched forward if not for Sam, passed out on the floor between them. “I do understand. You’re scared. You’re scared you’re gonna hurt me or something. But I don’t care. I’d rather get hurt than be alone.”
“You’re not alone,” Dean countered. “You got Sam. You got Cas. You got your friends.”
“But I don’t have you?” Anna said what he wouldn’t. “I’m not nine years old this time, Dean. Or 13. This isn’t my first rodeo. And I don’t wanna have all kinds of regret because you were too scared to touch me.”
“I’m not the one who’s scared. You walked in this room and pulled a gun on me, Anna. You think I don’t know what that means?”
“It means I just barely got you back,” Anna reminded him. She crossed her arms over her chest, but it was more protective than angry or self-righteous. “And I woke up, and the lights in the hallway were red, and I didn’t know what time it was. I got turned around.”
Dean was quiet for a second, pinching the bridge of his nose with two fingers. He looked defeated, and Anna was a little worried she’d once again managed to make things worse instead of better. “I know,” Dean told her softly, though. “I know, Rugrat. I just need some time. So do you.”
“No, I don’t,” Anna tried and tasted bitterness on her tongue. “I need you not to use this as an excuse to leave. You always wanna stay and fight until you’re the one who needs help. I need you, Dean.”
His head popped up at that, and there was something raw in his eyes. Something that couldn’t have appeared there when the green was gone. Something so undeniably human that it stole Anna’s self control. Her chin wobbled as she stared at Dean’s eyes.
“I need you,” she said one more time, because it seemed truer than ever when her brother looked like himself for the first time in over a month. She’d missed him. Missed having a tether. “I know I act…”
“No, I know,” Dean affirmed, the rawness in his eyes leveling out. He moved around Sam cautiously and, though he hesitated for another second first, he then grabbed Anna by the arm and gently pulled her away from their brother. He didn’t let go but didn’t seem to know what to say.
But looking at her brother, seeing his shields coming down in exactly the way she needed them to… Anna found herself feeling small. Small and childish in all the ways she hadn’t been for the last few weeks.
She’d tried too hard to be Sam’s equal. At a time when his defenses were low. He’d needed Dean, and she’d tried her best to be that. But she wasn’t. And neither was Sam. Maybe they had wounded each other in their messy attempts to be okay.
“I’m so scared,” Anna admitted, letting it all show clear on her face. She felt the burn in her eyes that meant she was about to cry. But she didn’t push it down like she had so much lately. She let her eyes well. “You have to stop leaving. You have to stop-” She choked on the words and looked down at her feet, feeling all her teenage shame come back at once. She wasn’t supposed to fall apart as easily at 16 as she had at nine. But it was hard when she was put in the same positions.
“Hey, it’s okay,” Dean promised her cautiously. His hand lifted from her arm, and Anna grieved it completely and devastatingly for a few seconds before she felt him grab her in a hug. His arms wound tightly around her, and she felt like nothing could possibly rip her away from him.
This was the safety net she’d been missing. A place she’d always been able to come back to until suddenly it had been taken away. And then again. And again.
Dean moved one hand to the back of her head, and Anna melted. She hugged him tightly around the waist, gripping her own wrists with the opposite hand behind his back, ensuring that Dean couldn’t change his mind and leave her behind again.
“I gotcha, Sweetheart,” he said softly, though, and she melted even further. That voice was a promise in itself. He’d used it when she was a little girl. When she begged him not to leave her with just their father. Or when she cried because John had gone away again and she was afraid Dean would leave her too. “I’m right here,” he said. And it was the same. “I’m not going anywhere.”
La Fin