The final chapter. But don't worry. There's more to come. Thank you guys so much for reading, reviewing, favoriting, and following this story. A special thanks to ArtistKurai for being so inquisitive. I hope y'all enjoy this last chapter, and hopefully I'll have the next installment ready for you soon. And keep your eyes peeled for Rosewood Falls updates! It's slow going, but it is going. I promise. ~SG

Chapter 7

Now

"How often do you and Sam actually do this?" Meredith asked as she tossed a shovelful of dirt onto the growing pile behind her.

They had found Hanna in the old graveyard, and after Meredith had seen her peeking in a window back at the house Sam had decided to stay behind with Kim and Rowan while Meredith helped Dean burn Hanna's bones. This way it would be easier for Sam and Dean to protect the Fairchilds as it had been earlier, and Meredith's presence at the graveyard would draw Hanna away from the house. Dean would have to be a bit more vigilant, but Sam wouldn't have to worry quite so much. Of course, Kim was probably worried enough for the both of them what with her sister essentially making herself ghost bait, but Dean was impressed with Meredith's apparently endless supply of bravery.

He knew she was scared, and as he looked at her in the light of the electric lantern they had brought to see by he could see it on her face. "Too many times to keep count." he replied as he turned his attention back to digging. "How are you holding up over there?"

"I'm fine." she said quickly.

"That's a lie." Dean said, calling her out.

Meredith paused for a moment and stared at him. "Excuse me?"

"If you can't admit that you're scared when you're digging up a grave in the middle of the night because a ghost is entertaining herself by picking off your family members one by one, and you're next on her list, when can you?"

Meredith sighed. "Of course I'm scared, but what good is giving in to it gonna do?"

Dean paused for a moment to smile at her. "You're pretty amazing. You know that?"

Meredith smiled back. "Thanks."

As soon as the word was out of her mouth it was followed by a scream as Hanna appeared behind her and yanked her out of the knee deep hole.

"Dean!" she screamed as Hanna pinned her to the ground.

"It's not fair!" Hanna shouted and swiped her nails across Meredith's face, leaving scratches across her cheek that immediately began to bleed. "Why do you get to live, and I don't?"

"Dean!"

"Hey!" Dean shouted, drawing Hanna's attention away before she could inflict further damage. "Get away from her, bitch!"

A shot rang out through the night and Hanna disappeared.

Meredith was breathing hard from fear as Dean ran over and helped her up.

"You okay?" he asked, noting the scratches on her face. They didn't look too deep. He could fix them up easy.

She nodded. "Yeah. Thanks."

She put her hand to her face, trying to stop the bleeding though it wasn't all that bad, and Dean glanced around to make sure there was no one else around. Someone might have heard the shot and come to investigate, or Hanna could come back to finish what she had started.

Dean handed Meredith the shot gun. "Can you shoot?"

"No, but how hard can it be?" she replied.

He admired her confidence and gave her a quick tutorial on how to operate the weapon he had just thrust into her hands. "I'm gonna keep digging. If you see her, shoot her."

Meredith nodded, and wasn't surprised when she had to fire off two more shots to keep an increasingly angry Hanna at bay while Dean continued digging.

Finally, she heard the hollow sound of the shovel hitting Hanna's coffin and it wasn't long before Dean had the lid pried open. He climbed out of the grave and she moved to stand beside him, doing her best not to look down, as he poured salt on what was left of Hanna Durant.

Hanna showed up again, just across the open grave, and Meredith shot her once more as Dean poured in the accelerate. He lit a match, but didn't have time to toss it in before a fifth shot split the night. Meredith crumpled beside him, dropping the shotgun, and fell sideways into the hole.

"Damn it!" Dean cursed, putting out the match and jumping back into the grave.

Luckily Hanna's aim had been off and Meredith had taken a bullet to the shoulder and not the heart. Dean hauled her out of the grave and laid her in the grass, quickly lighting another match and tossing it in as Hanna took aim again.

Meredith watched as the young woman with murder in her eyes screamed in pain and went up in flames as the fire ate at the remains in the coffin.

Once Hanna was gone Dean crouched beside Meredith and helped her put her arm around his neck. "Hang on, sweetheart. I'm gonna get you tot he hospital." he said as he lifted her off the ground and hurried back to the Impala, leaving behind the lantern and shovels and an open grave. He carefully put her in the car, peeling off the flannel shirt it was too hot to be wearing anyway, and pressing it to the bleeding bullet wound. "Hold that on there, okay?"

Meredith nodded and Dean slammed the door shut, taking a shortcut to the driver's side by doing a hood slide across the Impala that would've made Bo Duke proud, only to loose his footing and land on his face in the grass. When he finally got into the car Meredith was laughing at him.

"Graceful." she teased.

"Shut up." he shot back, sounding more playful than he felt.

As he sped toward the hospital he called Sam. "Hanna's dust." he said. "But she got off a shot before I could torch her, so I'm headed to the hospital with Meredith. I need you to go clean up the mess we made."

"Is she okay?" Sam demanded, obviously meaning Meredith.

"She's got a couple of scratches, and what looks like a through and through in her shoulder." Dean explained as he glanced over at her. She had put his shirt behind her in an attempt to keep from bleeding on his seats, and was holding her hand over the entrance wound, blood seeping through her fingers. "Stay with me, Mere."

"I'm fine, Dean. Just drive!" she ordered.

Dean wrapped up his call with Sam and floored it. Her niece was best friends with the current sheriff's daughter, so he wasn't all that worried about getting a ticket. Actually, he wasn't worried about getting a ticket at all. He was worried about getting Meredith to the hospital.

%%%

When she woke up her shoulder hurt and her face felt like she had something stuck to it. It took a moment, but she finally remembered what had happened. Hanna Durant's ghost had tried to kill her tonight. The something stuck to her face was a bandage covering the scratches from Hanna's nails, and her shoulder hurt because she had been shot with a very real bullet.

She groaned in pain when she tried to move just a little bit so she could look around, and drew Dean's attention. He had been dosing off in a chair beside her hospital bed, but snapped back to attention the instant he realized she was awake. "Hey. How you feelin'?"

"Ouch." she groaned.

Dean flashed her a half smile and pressed the call button. "Yeah, I bet."

"Can I help you, Ms. Fairchild?" a nurse's voice crackled over the speaker a few moments later.

"Yeah, can we get a nurse in here with some pain meds?" Dean requested.

"Give me just a moment, and we'll get get that taken care of." the nurse replied.

"Thank you." Dean said, and turned his attention back to the woman in the bed. "Other than ouch, how are you feeling?"

Meredith would have shrugged, but she didn't think that was a good idea right now, so she just sighed and smiled at him, reaching for his hand. "Grateful. Thank you."

Dean shrugged it off. "Just doin' my job."

"That may be, but you still saved my life tonight, Dean." she said as a small, bubbly looking blonde nurse came in. "I'd kiss you right now if I could sit up."

Dean glanced at the nurse and then back at Meredith. "Are you talking to me or her?"

"I meant you, but we'll see how I feel once she gives me those meds." Meredith joked.

The nurse, Carly, smiled, revealing dimples and perfect white teeth. Her hair was a mass of wild blonde curls, and when she spoke her voice was high pitched, but not unpleasantly so, and very Southern. She asked Meredith to rate her pain and then injected the medication into the IV line that ran into the crook of Meredith's elbow on her good arm, the one whose hand was still holding Dean's.

"You oughta feel better in no time." Carly said. "Is there anything else I can get you?"

"Can I have some water?" Meredith asked.

"Sure thing. I'll be right back."

When Carly left Meredith turned back to Dean. "Did you call Kim?"

Dean nodded. "Yep. I told her you're gonna be just fine, and Sam took care of the grave for us, so we don't have to worry about that."

"And Hanna's really gone for good?"

"She should be." Dean said. "We'll stick around a few more days until we're sure though. If that's okay with you."

"That's fine with me." she assured him. "In fact, you and Sam are welcome in my house any time."

Carly returned with the water, checked Meredith's vitals, and then left them alone, commenting to the nurse at the desk on what a cute couple they made.

"I'll take that kiss now, if you were serious." Dean said, expecting to be turned down because he didn't really think she had been serious.

She smiled at him. "You're gonna have to come over here, Romeo."

Dean, thinking she was still joking, played along and moved closer, pleasantly surprised when he was rewarded with a kiss on the cheek.

"Thank you." she said again, all joking aside.

"You're welcome." Dean replied, and gave her hand a gentle squeeze.

She took a couple of sips of water, and then closed her eyes and fell asleep. Dean took her hand again simply because he could, and held it while she slept, thinking that he was glad he had gotten this chance to reconnect with his childhood playmate even though the circumstances weren't exactly ideal. He was going to Hell soon, and this was a sweet memory he could hold on to. Maybe it would help him stay more human and less demon.

%%%

"The resurrection of the preacher's daughter." Sam read aloud at the breakfast table the day after Meredith had been released from the hospital and had gotten a good night's sleep with no threat of being murdered, and Dean filling the usually empty half of her bed.

The four adults all noted the irony of the old news article he had stumbled across, but Rowan didn't seen to care. She was only six and was way more interested in filling every square of her waffle with maple syrup than she was with whatever her mom and aunt and their friends were talking about.

The article recapped the whole ordeal, explaining how Clayton Marshall had actually been insane, and had somehow come to believe that his god-daughter was in love with him. She hadn't been, of course, and according to every report they could find she had been madly in love with Aaron Reeves, a drifter from London by way of the entire Eastern seaboard. In his delusional state Clayton had perceived her relationship with Aaron as unfaithfulness, and had let his mind get the best of him. Any mention of Elva Laroux had been left out, and there had only been vague details on how the police had found Hanna's body and figured out who was to blame.

A second article reported that Clayton had somehow escaped and Peter had hunted him down and killed him.

%%%

Two days later it was clear that Hanna was never coming back and the Fairchild family was safe. Sam and Dean had found another case, and Kim had already left for work, so Meredith, her injured arm in a sling, walked them out to the Impala to say good-bye.

"Thank you both for everything." she said earnestly, but both men brushed it off as no big deal. She understood that it was an everyday thing for them, but for her it had literally been life or death, and they had saved her and her family. "Come see us next time you're in the area." she said, standing on her toes to give Sam a one-armed hug. "I mean it."

"We will." Sam promised.

No one commented on the fact that it would probably only be Sam that stopped by if he was ever in the area. Meredith knew she would probably never see the older Winchester brother again, and she was sad about that as Sam went around and got in the car. She really did like him, and she wished she had more time to get to know him.

Because of that she didn't give him a hug like she had Sam. Instead she gave him a kiss. A real kiss. A long kiss.

"Wow." Dean said, when they finally broke apart. "What was that for?"

"It was a thank you for saving my life." she said. "I don't think I'm ever gonna see you again, so why not?"

Dean smiled. "Can't argue with that logic."

Sam rolled his eyes in the passenger seat as Dean leaned down and gave her another kiss. "Come on, Dean." he called. "That demon in Peoria isn't doing to exorcise itself."

Dean stole one more kiss, and Meredith stood in the driveway until the black car had disappeared from her field of vision.