5. What to Do, What to Do?

We crash at the motel room. Somehow, I'm still around. By who's mercy, I can't be sure.

I'm bored out of my mind, so I'm leaning against a wall while sitting on the floor. Sam is at the table reading some sort of journal, and Dean is on a laptop. Henry's on the couch, whistling some tune that sounds comforting to my ears.

"What is that?" Dean asks through the silence. "I know that tune."

"'As Time Goes By,'" says Henry. "I hope so. It's from 'Casablanca.'"

"Right," Sam speaks. "Dad used to whistle it from time to time."

"Your father saw 'Abbot and Costello Meet the Mummy' at the drive-in one night. It scared the beeswax out of him. So I got him this little music box that played that song to help him sleep at night. It worked like a charm."

Too bad I never slept with a music box, it sounds like a soothing method. I could use that right now: a quiet place, with low music going.

"Wow, it's hard to believe Dad was ever scared of anything."

"Hey," Dean cuts in, "uh, according to county records, Tom Carey lives in Lebanon, Kansas, and is a very happy one hundred twenty-seven-year-old." He closes the laptop lid. "I say we get some shuteye, head over first thing in the morning."

"Wait, wait, wait. Listen to this. According to Dad's journal, he once tortured a demon that said he made his bones working for Abaddon, who, it turns out, is a Knight of Hell."

I yawn. "What does that even mean?" I rub my eyes.

"Knights of Hell are hand-picked by Lucifer himself," Henry tells us all. "They are the first-fallen, first-born demons."

"Sounds fantastic."

"So very pure, very strong," Sam says.

Henry rises off the couch, which gives me the cue to crawl over and occupy it now. "Legend has it that Archangels had killed all of them," he says, "which, as we have witnessed, is not the case."

"Unless she's the last of her kind," I guess.

Henry gestures to John Winchester's journal. "You say that belonged to your father?"

"Yeah," Sam confirms.

"May I?"

Sam slides the journal across the table to Henry. "It's a hunter's journal. I assume Men of Letters-you use journals, too?"

"I intended to. I sent away for one the day before my initiation." I watch as Henry picks up a small photograph and continues to stare the journal down. "As a matter of fact, judging by my initials here, this one, I believe."

"That was yours?" Dean asks.

"It must have arrived after..." A pause. "I'm beginning to gather I don't make it back from this time, do I?"

"We don't know for sure," Sam says. "All we do know is that Dad never saw you again."

"What did he think happened to me?"

"He thought you ran out on him," pipes Dean.

"John was a legacy. I was supposed to teach him the ways of the Letters."

"Well, he learned things a little differently."

"How?"

"The hard way. Surviving a lonely childhood, a stinking war...only to get married and have his wife taken by a demon...and later killed by one himself. That man got a bum rap around every turn. But you know what? He kept going. And in the end, he did a hell of a lot more good than he did bad."

I bite down on what thumbnail that I have. I feel like I'm intruding, hearing this. I mean, the Winchesters lost their parents to demons. It was something that wasn't discussed often, I could hear that much just in Dean's voice alone. But now I can understand why they're how they are now. Though very interesting from what I've seen, the life of a Winchester holds nothing but trouble. And that's just an observation in less than a day.

"I'm sorry," Henry says sincerely. "I wish I had been there for him."

"Yeah, it's a little late for that now, don't you think?" Dean says quietly. He gets up and heads for the door.

"It's the price we pay for upholding great responsibility. We know that."

"Your responsibility was to your family, not some glorified book club!"

"I was a legacy. I had no choice."

"Yeah, you keep telling yourself that."

I cringe as the door gets shut a little too loudly. A part of me wants to go out there and talk to Dean, but I barely know the guy, so I don't act. After a few quiet moments, Sam gets up and heads out after his brother, leaving Henry and I in the awkward silence. Henry is scanning through John's journal, and I'm keeping to myself on the couch.

I should leave. I really should. What is there for me here? A roof. Food. Company. But I'm also stuck in something I can barely comprehend with time traveling relatives and Knights of Hell. My head feels like it's about to unravel from this dose of abnormality.

I lean over on the couch, my head in my hands. No wonder the Winchesters are screwed up, look at the lives they live! But I don't know the full story, I only know a very small fraction. There's a lot of pieces that I'm missing. But why do I care? What are they to me? They haven't killed me. They saved me, actually.

I grind my teeth as quietly as possible so as to not disturb Henry. I'm not sure how fully aware the men are about the detail. I'm still alive thanks to the Winchesters. If I had been left behind here, Abaddon would have killed me. And God only knows where my resting place would have been. I don't take the brothers so neglectful as to leave a dead body in a motel room.

Shit. Now I think I understand why I'm not running off into the night, back to my old rut. I feel like I owe a debt to these guys, to men I barely know.

"Are you feeling all right, Natasha?"

At Henry's voice, I slowly pick my head up. "Not really. Thank you for your concern, though."

"You're a little calmer. Must be the fatigue."

I shrug. "This world isn't built for me, Henry. It and I don't mix."

"Are you talking about our current situation or the actual world itself?"

I purse my lips in thought. "In my circumstance, I'd say both."

"You have the chance to leave, and you don't take it."

"Henry, please, I already had that inner monologue. I don't want to actually have this conversation." I stand up and end the talk by heading into the bathroom, which I have no right to really go in, considering I did nothing worthy of showering in a motel room that I didn't pay for. Oh well, nobody's gonna care that much about a shower. They'll live with it.

I take my sweet time in the bathroom and am almost sent into bliss with hot water. Not cold drops of rain or small things of hail. Something of comfort, something that I haven't felt in a long time. I almost forgot what this feels like.

I almost feel like the past years haven't existed. I almost feel like I'm back at my house, with my family, in our bathroom that we have to share.

I am very reluctant to get out of the shower, but once the water runs out of heat, I hop out and wrap a towel tight around my skeletal frame. I don't take my appearance too much into account, usually because my clothes are so big that I ignore what I look like. There's no comb (unfortunately), so I use my semi-clean stubs for nails to make it knot-free. My scalp feels a million times better than it has for a long time. I feel refreshed, like life has given me the night off in this fiasco I can't seem to walk away from.

When I look down at my clothes, sporadic on the floor, I'm reminded of where I have really been. How low I've sunk from where I was. All because I couldn't grow any courage and hang around. All because I didn't have the bravery to go back and stick it out with them. I may be brave for almost anything, but I can't go back to them. They're my kryptonite.

I wish I had been fortunate enough to stumble upon the Winchesters when I had had those two with me. They would have loved this place. They probably wouldn't have appreciated all the strange shit that was going on, though, being that they were so young and barely able to understand any adult concepts.

As I pick up my clothes, I hear the door open. Before I can get a word out, I'm standing up straight, clothes in hand, while I'm frozen as the green eyes stare me down.

"Should I even begin to ask the reason why you're now using our shower?" Dean grumbles.

"It's not even yours," I retort, pulling the towel tighter around me. "Don't you know how to knock?" In a knee-jerk reaction, I throw my dirty clothes in his face. "Respect must not be another virtue of yours either."

"Is this all you do? Shoot people down?"

"I'd rather shoot them down with words than an actual bullet." I shift my weight. "I'd like to have those back now."

"Why'd you toss them in the first place?"

I shrug. I motion for my clothes. "Come on, no games. It's been a long day for us all. Don't make it worse."

"You want these back?" His nose wrinkles.

"Unless one of you is gracious enough to lend me some clothes, yes. Now, seriously, clothes, and then shut the damn door so I can change."

Instead of throwing them back to me like I want, I have to go fetch them from Dean. I give him a shove big enough so I can shut the door and lock it. That was the big mistake on my part, forgetting to lock the bathroom door.

After I change and ruffle my semi-damp hair with a towel, I'm back out and head straight for the couch. Henry already takes up half of it, and he's asleep. I decide to squeeze myself on the other half and turn so that my back is facing everyone else. This beats soaked stone and uncomfortable concrete by miles. It's so comfy, and I almost fall asleep on the spot if it wasn't for the brothers' voices.

"I say we drop her off at a shelter," Dean murmurs. "She's no use with us. She's only an extra person to watch out for."

"She could be helpful though, Dean."

"How, Sam? How can a girl who tried to steal a car from us be of any help? I just don't get why she's still sticking around."

"This is probably the best she's been in a long time," Sam says thoughtfully. "Think about it: she was trying to steal the car for a reason, not for sport. Wouldn't you want to hang around too, if you went from where she probably was to this?"

"Not if I'm not used to this stuff! Don't tell me you're actually considering having her come with us after this fiasco is over. We don't need extra people; Henry is more than enough to handle as it is. Besides, all she'd be good for is around here. She'd be lost if we took her out of town."

"I don't think it's right to abandon her."

"We wouldn't be abandoning her, Sam. We'd be dropping her off somewhere so she can get the help that she needs."

"She's not a mental patient!"

"You know what I mean," Dean groans.

"What if she can't run away from this, Dean? What if we've got no choice-"

"Oh, no, not this again, Sam. We're not taking in strays. You remember what happened the last time that we did?"

An uncomfortable silence follows. It's taking all the restraint in the world to not pop up and ask what happened.

"She got out, you told me that," Sam mutters quietly.

"Just because she managed to survive doesn't mean that she will. We can't do that again, Sam, we can't. I know you've got a big heart, but sometimes it's annoying as hell. You got to know when to not take in people. I know she's a similar case-"

"They're not the same."

"How do you know that?"

"I just do," Sam justifies himself. "She was run out of town by demons, she'd had past encounters before we met her. Natasha is a different story. She has no relation to us of any kind. She's a stranger. I'm telling you, she's not..." I'm guessing Sam can't get the girl's name out of his mouth.

I purse my lips. This clearly isn't the first time the Winchester brothers have had this impasse. I can see both sides. I'm sort of thankful that Sam is even considering letting me tag along. But at the same time, Dean's idea doesn't sound half bad. I'd be away from all this stuff. But if you were dropped off somewhere, the family would be contacted. You're not ready to face them. You don't know how they'd take to seeing how you are now. And I can't forget that part of me feels obligated to repay a debt since the brothers saved my ass from Abaddon earlier today.

I let out a quiet puff of breath. It's hard to say what will determine where I will go from here.

**I wanted to use the original version, but I love me some Sinatra!

Hmm, maybe this could be a theme for a particular pairing? ;) I mean, I already have their theme picked out (which will be known much later down the road), but this one could be a nice alternate, don't you think?

Oh, and did anyone pick up on the "she" in the conversation that wasn't Natasha? If you've read another book by me in the Supernatural fandom, it'll ring a faint bell. If not, you might wanna read the fanfic that I'm hinting at so you get the reference :)**