The thing about life with the Winchester brothers is that everything is fine right up until the moment that it isn't. And then life is suddenly very, very complicated. You'd been on the road with the Winchester brothers for a month now- moving from motel to crap-hole motel, eating cheap diner food, and waiting for a sign of John Winchester.

Over the weeks you'd finally pried the full story from the brothers. Their father had been absent for much of their childhoods and had no softness left in him; he was caught up in his quest to get revenge on the yellow-eyed demon that had killed their mother. John had died after selling his soul to save Dean. Years later, the brothers had mounted some sort of rescue mission to hell and had extracted their surrogate father, a man named Bobby Singer. It was clear from the stories that this Bobby had been more of a father-figure than John had ever managed to be. Now, in a fit of jealous pique, John was back to extract his revenge on his sons.

Dean didn't seem to be handling this well. A bottle of booze had become a fixture by his bed, a long pull being his answer to most tough questions. He refused to talk about their father with Sam, roughly cutting off any attempt to recall fonder memories. Sam took it all in stride, leaving you to conclude that Dean had acted like this before. Sam became the rock on which this case was built; he researched demon activity every day, compiling a notebook covered in his neat notes and copied sigils. He told you he was trying to find a way to separate their father's essence from that of the demon, but wasn't having any luck. Every testimony and experiment he was able to find reiterated the facts: there was no more John. This wasn't a case of possession, of someone else riding a body containing a whole soul. This was John's soul, twisted and hardened and left to fester until it he had become one of the demons he had previously hunted.

Finally it seemed that Sam had had enough. You awoke one morning to yelling.

"You had no right Sam! No right!"

"I had every right, Dean. Look at yourself!"

"I'm fine. So this case may be getting to me, so what? It's not like this hasn't happened before. We get through this, we're fine."

"A fat lot of help you'll be out there! If you're strung out from booze what are we supposed to do?"

You peeked into the kitchenette portion of this particular motel. Dean rubbed a hand over his face, his shoulders slumping forward.

"What are we supposed to do, Sam, huh? We aren't sure a devil's trap will hold him, we can't exorcise him, and we don't have the rings to open the pit. If he's as powerful as Azazel was, he'll survive the knife. That only leaves the Colt or Death's scythe. You really wanna shoot our father, man? Besides, we don't even know where the colt is!"

"What about purgatory? He isn't in there anymore, not him. Not really. We could get a reaper to take us, we could summon him, and then… we ditch out. We're all human. He wouldn't be able to come back here, but he also wouldn't be in hell. Best outcome, really."

"Reapers. Peachy."

You walked in and hopped up to sit on the counter. "So purgatory is real, too? And what's a reaper?"

"A reaper is like an assistant to death. They pick up dead souls and escort them away. Some ghosts are spirits who ran away from their reaper." The boys shared a glance. "And purgatory is very, very real. We've both been there, and it's not a picnic. It's were the things that go bump in the night end up after we're through with them."

You nodded slowly, soaking in the new information. "And that's it?"

"That's what we think."

"So how do we catch a reaper?"

"We have to summon one and then somehow blackmail it into dropping us off in purgatory. Or we find one that already feels like it has nothing to lose."

"Yeah? How we gonna interview a bunch of reapers?"

"Look, I don't know. We're probably gonna have to do what we did with the demons- just keep summoning them until we get one that will help."

Three hours later, the tiny, chipped table had been adorned with a white chalk pentagram, old runes and Enochian symbols scrolling around the edges of the circle. A shallow bowl sat in the center, cradling an ox bone, a chicken foot, dried yarrow, and pomegranate seeds.

The three of you took one last long, quiet look at the table before meeting each other's eyes. With a half shrug, Sam started the chant, Latin mixed with a scattering of old Babylonian.

A figure flickered into existence on the other side of the table. "How dare you!" she shouted, her neat chignon almost vibrating with rage. "You, you of all people know what happens when a reaper fails to appear when they are needed!"

Dean waved a hand carelessly. "Nope, not you. Go back to wherever you were." The reaper pressed her lips into a thin white line and disappeared.

They repeated the ritual, the foreign syllables rolling more easily off Sam's tongue. A wizened old man appeared, and he refused to even speak. He just dragged out a leather clad notebook, licked the tip of a thin gold pen, and made some sort of note in his journal. Dean released this one, and he disappeared too.

"I guess when we eventually die things aren't going to go easy," you commented after seeing all the angry reactions of more than a dozen reapers.

"I don't know about that," said Dean, shifting into a more comfortable position in his chair. "I've died a ton of times, and I've only seen a reaper twice."

"There's a sentence I could have gone my whole life without hearing," Sam mumbled before summoning the next reaper. This one popped up in a toga holding a wax tablet.

"Dude, not even a quill? Hardcore," Dean commended him when the reaper claimed to know nothing about purgatory."

Finally, nine hours after the summoning had started, a dark haired, younger looking man showed up in skinny jeans and a baggy band hoodie. "You're a reaper. Like, you find dead people and help them cross reaper?" asked Dean, his disdain clear.

"Yeah dude. We only have to wear black, doesn't matter how it's cut bro. Anyways, you guys want to go to purgatory or not?"

"Yeah, yeah we do- just wait a second while I grab"- Sam sprinted out of the room and ran back with a backpack. "Okay, I've got the demon knife, an angel blade, and the purgatory blade in here, plus all the stuff to summon a demon. Ready?"

You took one of Sam and Dean's hands, and the reaper took their others. For a moment your brain conjured up the memory of learning to square dance in elementary music class, but you shook that ridiculous parody away. "You'll have 24 hours from the time I drop you or I won't be able to get you out and you'll have to make it to the portal on your own. And please don't bother me again."

"Can't make any promises," growled Dean, years of experience darkening his voice.

And suddenly the three of you were standing in a dark forest of huge, mossy trees. The undergrowth was mostly clear, the branches high overhead too dense to allow much light to reach the forest floor. Dean yanked his old blade out of the bag and scanned the ring of trees around you, his knuckles white on the handle. "Okay Sammy, you better get this done quick. Three humans all together smells like a Sunday lunch buffet to these dicks."

Sam sprayed a pentagram on the ground, set out the materials, and started chanting, his eyes moving over the trees and bushes around them. When the ritual was complete, there was a long moment of eerie silence- there was no breeze, nothing moved in the distance, the three of you held your breath.

And nothing happened.

"Maybe he can't hear the summons? Because we are in a different universe or whatever?" you question, gripping the cool metal of the silver dirk the boys referred to as the angel blade.

"Oh, no, I just like to make a dramatic entrance," a voice drawled. There in the middle of the devil's trap was John Winchester, his yellow eyes glowing like a predator's in the night.

"So, purgatory? This your big plan? Point's for creativity, kids, because I did not see this one coming."

Sam scooped up the backpack and threw it over his shoulders. "Come on, we need to get out of here."

"Oh, so you're going to leave me," John called. "I'll see you when the Devil's Trap breaks!"

"What's the plan now?" you called after Dean while Sam guarded your back.

"Stay alive 'til the reaper comes to pick us up!" he called over his shoulder.

You all jogged along for a few minutes, your senses hyperaware, the dry ground crunching underfoot. Dean almost collided with four vampires who stepped into his path, their teeth bared much like a shark's. "Welcome back," one leered before lunging at Dean.

He feinted to the right, dodging neatly out of the creature's grabbing arms, his entire being acutely focused on the threat in front him. Sam ran forward and neatly decapitated another vampire sneaking around to blindside Dean from the right.

You were left with a vampire who seemed thrilled to toy with you. He danced around you in a circle, occasionally darting forward only to skip away again. It thrilled at your shaking knees, the angel blade gripped to tightly you could no longer feel your fingers. You knew better than to make the first move- this creature was built to hunt prey, it was trying its best to antagonize you into running headfirst into its clutches.

You could hear the crunch of gravel and the grunts and exhalations of combat off to the side, but kept your focus entirely on the sadistic vamp in front of you. When it pounced you were ready, the angel blade slashing out, glinting wildly. You cut a gash across its chest which just caused it to grin, the yellowed, needle-like incisors glinting wetly.

The vamp lunged again, but this time anticipated your counterattack. While you were open to attack, your defenses momentarily down, the vampire spun in and shoved against your side, carrying you to the ground. You had an elbow in between the two of you, and for the moment you were holding him, snapping and growling, inches from your neck. You shifted, trying to wriggle the blade and your trapped arm out from underneath you, but that only allowed the monster on top of you to get a mouthful of your collarbone, the warm viscous blood soon running to drip down off of your shoulder in a red rivulet. Just before you felt your elbow slip out from under your attacker, there was a rush of air and the vampire's head separated from his body; blood spattered over your face, hot and sticky.

Sam stood over you, his chest heaving. He nodded curtly at you before extending a hand caked in dirt and drying blood. You let him haul you to your feet. You didn't talk; you didn't need to here. You just turned away from the bodies and the blood and kept moving through the woods, always moving- Hansel and Gretel and Little Red Riding Hood and every story about the path in the woods gone horribly, horribly wrong.

The next group to attack was a pair of Leviathans; you all got away, but not before one of them took a taste of Dean's forearm. You were dragging behind after being in purgatory for eighteen hours, and by 20 you leaned against whichever of the Winchesters was closest during breathers.

Sam ran a huge hand up your back and then gently pushed you away. "C'mon, four hours to go. You got this."

You looked up at him, a complaint on the tip of your tongue. Dean shouted a warning, but it was too late- a werewolf slammed into your back, pushing you against Sam and slicing your back open from one shoulder to the opposite hip. You heard snarling and growling from the creature, grunts and low curses from Dean. Sam laid you against the ground and started pulling stuff out of his backpack. In your semi-lucid, hazy state, you thought about the fact that Sam was leaning over you unpacking while a werewolf battled his brother not even four feet away.

You heard a riiiiiiip that sounded suspiciously like- yep, that was duct tape. Sam slipped off his flannel, donned his jacket, and held the worn shirt to your back, and started taping. Soon it felt like you were wearing a corset, but hey- it would keep pressure on the wound, hopefully long enough for you all to make it home.

There was a yelp and soon Dean's footsteps thudded your way, significantly more slowly than they were at the beginning of this little adventure. His hands cupped you under the arms and tugged you onto your feet. "C'mon now honey, we can't carry you here. Not now; we'd all die, you know that. We gotta keep moving. Just three more hours, not long now. We're just gonna circle back, meet the reaper, and get you home. Okay?"

You nodded and swayed, but remained on your feet. You'd read somewhere that people who survived horrific accidents with all kinds of debilitating injuries dragged themselves down mountains, or out of forests or ravines or caves- you had the Winchester's and a reaper pick-up service. You could do this.

You did manage to walk, and continued to concentrate on putting one foot in front of the other. You refused to think of the liability you now were for the brothers, or how it felt like your flesh was being peeled away from your spine like the peel from an overripe banana. Instead, you absently noted that your converse, old and worn before meeting the Winchesters all those weeks ago, were nearly unrecognizable as footwear.

You walked, and walked some more. Sam neatly killed a lone wendigo that came too close, and finally, finally, after what felt like forty years in the desert, Dean called for a halt.

You leaned against his strong back, your nose pressed to his spine. You felt him tense, the muscles beneath you tightening like springs under pressure.

"I told you it would only be a matter of time until somebody broke the devil's trap," a familiar voice teased up ahead.

"Dad," growled Sam from behind you. "This is purgatory- a stationary thing like you should have been a snack. How'd you manage it?"

"I just promised my new friends something much better than a meal- I offered them a ride out of here."

Five figures stepped out from between the trees, a couple grinning wickedly.

"You see, I know I'm stuck here. After all, no soul, no way out. But you guys, well. You can smuggle out as many creatures as you can hold."

The creatures swarmed forward and a bloody melee ensued- Dean took on a hulking Leviathan, its unhinging jaw snapping and spitting. A smaller vampire lithely jumped onto his back, forcing Dean to repeatedly slam himself back into a tree while continuing to defend himself from the front.

You and Sam found yourselves side by side, backs pressed to one of the looming trees. Two leviathan and a vampire were snapping and hacking at your defenses. Sam had most of it- he seemed tireless and his arms were practically twice the length of yours.

Dean was the first to fall, his odds so much worse. You caught a glimpse of him stretched on the ground, the vampire rubbing his face in the dirt, his boots kicking and scrabbling for purchase. The leviathan sat calmly atop him.

You were the next down. The leviathan drew Sam out just far enough that the Vampire was able to grab you away from him. The angel blade was snatched from you, and your head was pushed into the loam of the forest floor. You could hear a struggle from Sam's direction, and eventually you saw two pairs of feet dragging Sam next to you.

"Here's the deal, boys. One last choice you have to make. One of you stays here, any one, or all of you take as many hell-spawn as I can squeeze in your veins back topside."

"Don't you even think about it, Sammy," growled Dean, cutting his brother off from the start. "I know what you're thinking, and no. It's not happening. We don't leave family behind."

"You know, Bobby might have been right about a couple things," John mused, casually picking at his fingernails. "He told me I'd forced you into too much Dean, that I couldn't expect you to be a Marine. Sounds like I mighta rubbed off more than I thought." He paused, pursing his lips exaggeratedly. "Good for me."

"So"- you manage to say before Sam and Dean reply as one.

"No," they both ground out in deep, taking no shit tones. "We dragged you into this and you are not staying here. Not a chance," Sam continued.

Something popped in the woods, probably another monster coming to join John's party. "I mean, at this point, we kind of have to choose," you said, already resigning yourself to your fate. You just hoped you wouldn't stay here- that after you died you either went to heaven or hell.

Off to the left, a brief whistle sings out, a cluster of notes ascending to a minor third- Dean's head whipped to the side, and he used the leviathan's moment of distraction to buck him loose- grabbing its own weapon her rolled and beheaded it.

A figure in a dark coat and suspenders barreled into view, shoving the bloodsucker off of you and dragging you to your feet. You blinked at him in confusion. The only things in here were monsters, right? This was confirmed when he grinned, his double row of vampire fangs needling out of his gums. He picked you up and plopped you off to the side as the sound of battle escalated behind him. "Stay here, darlin'" he admonished you before spinning into the fray. He lopped off a leviathan's head with a neat overhand swing before dropping his weapon to rip out a fellow vampire's throat with his teeth.

You noticed that John Winchester had disappeared again- it seemed like he always missed the important moments. You felt silly standing off to the side watching these three huge men fight, so you inched forward to pick up the angel blade, glinting almost purely in the murky darkness that was purgatory.

Your back was burning, and the duct tape felt like it had melted onto the bits of skin it touched.

After the bodies had finished falling- it could have been two minutes, it could have been twenty- the three men walked back. You kept your eye on the cap-wearing vampire, confused as to why the brothers hadn't killed him.

"Sweetheart, this is Benny. One of the best friends I've had," Dean said.

Benny inclined his head to, touching two fingers to the brim of his cap. "Charmed," he said in a voice filled with the slow drawl of Louisiana. "Haven't seen such a pretty sight since I got back down here.

"How'd you find us?" asked Sam, his brows pulled together.

"Word spreads mighty fast in here- when I caught wind of a couple reckless human brothers and a female snack hoofin' it around in here, I figured you'd come callin'. Why'd you drag your sorry asses back down here anyhow- present company excepted, ma'am," he said with a wink to you.

"Long story, brother," sighed Dean. "You wanna come up with us? Things would be different"- he checked his watch. There was a long pause, and Dean's eyes flicked to Sam's.

Sam's straightened his shoulders. "I'm sorry, Benny. I was wrong, and I misjudged you. And I never got the chance to tell you, but thank you. Thank you for sacrificing yourself to help get me out of here."

"No problem, brother," Benny said evenly. He stuck out a large palm, and Sam shook it firmly.

"So, you comin' with us? You won't be on your own this time. You can see as much or as little of us as you want."

Benny leaned back on his heels and looked up, probably imagining all the stars that were invisible from this side of the veil.

"Might as well," he finally said. "After all, one of y'all might need another tour guide again."

Hastily, eyes still on his watch, Dean made a cut on his forearm about three inches long and with a light whoosh, Benny was sucked into the wound, which pulsed red. "That reaper should be here any second" he muttered.

The three of you held your breath, and sure enough your personal grunge-garbed ticket topside appeared. All business, you linked hands and in a blink were back in your drab motel room.

It took a minute or two for your body to realize you were out of danger. You sat on the edge of your bed, the tape tugging on your wound, which suddenly hurt more than anything you had ever experienced before. It felt like thousands of hot pokers were attempting to stretch all the meat off of your body from your neck to your ass. Your vision went blurry and you started to slump over. As you toppled you heard Sam call to Dean, "We better cut her out of that and stitch her up." You felt warm, calloused hands grip your shoulder, and then nothing at all.

Epilogue.

"All right, all right," Dean muttered to himself, flipping open his knife and cutting open his forearm. The sparkling essence that must have been Benny seeped out of Dean's arm and into the open coffin in front of him.

A moment later one charming Southern vampire climbed out of the plywood box.

"I told you I'd put you somewhere nice for when the time came," joked Dean, grabbing Benny in a hug.

He nodded at you. "You're looking awfully nice, missy. A mite more comfortable then when I last saw ya."

You grinned. "Fifty three stitches and a hot shower can do that for a girl."

He whistled low, and the four of you climbed in the Impala. The engine idled, the deep rumble filling the car. "Where to now?" you asked.

"Nowhere. Anywhere," said Sam.

With a grin, Dean gunned it.