Disclaimer: See chapter one.

2. Son of a Gun

Is that a pistol in your pocket or are you just glad to see me?

- Mae West

A woman sits at a table, in some small, forgettable bar, in some small, forgettable town, drinking away the blues. Well, not the blues, per se…just her worries.

It's not the best idea for her to be doing it, but since when has she acted on what's the best idea, or even considered it? Do what you like, and hack the consequences, that's the maxim she lives by. It's not like she has anyone to reprimand her any how – the only trouble she'll get for drinking this straight, cheap whiskey, shot after shot after shot, is from her head in the morning.

The lighting is dim, the atmosphere smoky and filtered through by the emotions of half drunken men; loneliness, nostalgia, barely contained aggression. She's been in dozens just like it all over the country, and she knows how to act to be ignored, disregarded and left to her own devices by everyone except the bar maid. The aura surrounding her wards off even the bravest of the testosterone and alcohol fuelled mass – a combination of disdain and the sign hung across her forehead, reading to anyone with an IQ over twenty 'fuck off'.

Which is why she's so surprised when he comes over, another man watching from a table in the shadows, shaking his head. Maybe he's one of the illiterate few. Then again, maybe he's just stubborn and egotistical enough to take her demeanour as a challenge.

The idiot.

She saw them come in, and knew immediately, from a lifetime of classifying people and reading body language, that they weren't regulars. Besides that, something about them just made her narrow her eyes and take notice. It was in the way they walked, their bearing, the barely discernable glances they shot around the room, taking in everything there was to see. It was practiced, and guarded…and almost predatory. She'd have been wary if she could be bothered, but she couldn't. And besides, they hadn't done anything that would make her abandon her drunken appearance, until the man came over. It would have shocked the bar maid, that after eleven shots, she wasn't even feeling the stirrings of light-headedness. For a small woman, she could hold her alcohol. And then some.

He was the shorter of the two – though that was still pretty darn huge, considering the size of his companion – dark haired and solidly built. He had an unconscious grace about his movements and an understanding of his body that attracted the notice of all the scant female population in the bar, and in the back of her mind she smiled, seeing the fluttered eyelashes, plumped breasts and fetching smiles pasted on hastily lip-sticked mouths as he glided past. They were practically licking their lips.

He was handsome, she'd give him that. An almost mysterious quality shaded his angelic good looks, and the face that smiled down at her could only be described as extraordinary. Eyelashes that rivalled, and in many cases, surpassed a woman's for their density and careless curl, a mouth that looked as ripe as a plum, and the eyes…green, green eyes that could suck away a reckless soul.

Ignoring the glare aimed at him from under a scraped back mass of dark golden curls and arched brows, he sat in the seat across from her, a raised eyebrow and amused smile the only response she received. He waved the bar maid over, who'd been eying him, waiting for her opportunity since he entered the place, and said, his voice a deep husky, and unaccented drawl, "Daisy, is it?" The woman, identified by her work badge and now the man as Daisy, nodded enthusiastically, clutching her writing pad tight to her protruding bosom. It was almost falling out of her low, square necked blouse, and the way she bent closer to the man, inclining her head to the side emphasised this fact even more. "Two of what the lady's having, please, if you don't mind."

At least he had manners, our until-then silent observer thought, before deliberately slurring out a scathing, "Even if she doesn't, I do. Pawn your civility and faux humbleness to someone who can't see straight through it."

"Don't worry about her," the man said to Daisy, as though he was trying to excuse her behaviour, while thoroughly ignoring her. "She's just drunk and cranky. Woman problems, I'm sure you understand," was the last stage-whispered comment, before Daisy smiled, winked and headed back over to the bar, hips swaying like the pendulum of a giant grandfather clock.

Finally turning to her, he smiled, and she almost blinked, it was so dazzlingly beautiful. Instead, she hid her initial reaction, meeting his eyes with furious, golden rimmed hazel green ones, and saying, the drunken slur still in place, "What the fuck do you want?"

"Not much." He shrugged, and as though it were a signal, the other man made his way over too. Six foot and then some, long, lanky and all concealed power, the second man took the last chair at her table. He had shaggy brown hair that fell almost to his shoulders, and warm blue green eyes. A mole beside his long nose, and thin, sculpted lips completed the scruffy, boyish good looks that the woman was sure got him anywhere he wanted. He looked trustworthy…which probably meant he was the exact opposite. The woman crossed her arms over her chest, discreetly checking the locations of the knives in her arm and wrist sheaths. If they made any untoward actions, she'd be more than ready to protect herself. "How about you start by telling us your name, or shall we just…guess?"

"Dean…" the second man warned, and smiled at the woman. Mentally she shook her head and rolled her eyes. She didn't know what they wanted, but they were playing good cop, bad cop to get it, which just amused the hell out of her. They weren't getting a damn thing. "We're just looking for a friend of ours…and we thought you might be able to help us."

He was baiting her. Taking a sip out of her almost empty glass, she debated on whether or not she should bite. Play along, or get the hell out of here? God knew she had enough enemies, and if she'd been found out…she had to move quickly. Dispose of all the evidence. Until she knew for certain however…she decided to let it lie for a bit, and see what it was the men wanted, then decide. "Now," she said finally, leaning back in her chair again. "One, why would you think that I could help you, and two, even if I could, boy, why on earth would you think I would?" A broad Texan accent thickened the slur further; it wasn't real, but she could fake it better than real Texans could, and they didn't have to know that, seeing as how she'd been using it since she'd arrived. Give them the wrong information, something they could remember that wasn't true, and maybe she'd be a little safer if anyone else came looking.

"Well, let's see now," the first man – Dean, wasn't it? – said, and leaned forwards on his elbows, cocking his head. "You exactly match the picture we have of the person we were sent to look for. So let's drop the act, shall we?"

"Who sent you to look for me?" the woman asked, both the slur and accent dropping immediately, as the man had suggested. She narrowed her eyes, and put two fingers to each spring that would automatically place her knives in her palms. "Who are you?"

The taller man sighed, shaking his head resignedly at the man named Dean. "Do you know of a John Winchester?" he asked finally, turning to face the woman once more.

At that question the woman froze. John, John Winchester, an old acquaintance who'd killed the thing that murdered her daddy and her brother ten years ago. The man who'd started her on this path; giving her all the knowledge she needed to protect herself if the remnants of her family were threatened again, and his phone number, as well as unknowingly sparking the thirst she had for saving people and hunting things, just like he did. John was simply the first of her teachers, and her hero and role model; the first encounter she ever had with things that went beyond the boundaries of normal and explainable. Or as she often called them – things that go bump in the night.

She'd kept in touch over the years, informing him about new hunts, things she herself couldn't handle, or needed knowledge about. She was a hunter now and besides, she told him her whereabouts before every other hunt, just in case. She didn't want to turn out like the things she hunted, and he understood.

He also told her about his sons. They were hunters too.

Sam and – "Dean. Sam and Dean Winchester. Right?" she asked, still a little standoffish. They nodded. "Prove it." As one entity, they glanced at each other, and then the taller one nodded again, reaching inside his pocket. Using his own body as a cover from the eyes of the rest of the bar she settled her left wrist knife against his throat, it having appeared in her hand in a blink. "Slowly, if you don't want a red smile from ear to ear, please, Sam. And Dean? Keep still."

She kept an eye on both his hand and the other man, whose tense body posture she knew concealed power and swiftness that matched, and probably exceeded, her own. Now was not the time to be taken by surprise.

Slowly, and keeping his eyes on hers, the man claiming to be Sam pulled out a tattered book out from the inside of his coat. He placed it just as carefully onto the table top, and then flicked his eyes towards where it lay and back up, suggesting with out words for her to take a look.

She eased back, searching for any movements that could threaten her safety as she went, and when she was entirely back in her own seat, she slid the book closer to her.

As soon as she'd looked at it properly, she recognised it.

It was John's journal. Her eyes shot up into Dean's, who smirked, then Sam's, who nodded and said, "He thought we needed it more than he did."

"Uh…" she said, softly, and then opened it up. On the first page, on top of the first entry was her picture. She'd sent it to John last week, informing him of what she was hunting, and how she didn't know if she'd come out alive. The picture was in case she didn't check in – he'd need it to follow up on her, find out where she'd been, all that, and then to finally identify her body, if there was one. He hadn't seen her in a decade after all, and one does change. "Why are you here?"

"Isn't it obvious?" Dean asked. "We're here to help you kill it. Dad was worried about you."

"I don't need help," she spat, and stood up. The very suggestion wounded her pride. Even at the start John had been against the idea of her hunting, then telling her what she was capable and incapable of taking on, forever underestimating her potential. It made her so mad. She hadn't needed help since that first night, when she'd been as helpless as a new born kitten in the presence of that poltergeist that had killed her family. The poltergeist that had been her real father, and who had been killed by the one she thought was her daddy.

The action of standing was undermined a little as she put a hand to the side of her head. It had left her head a bit swirlier than it had been a second ago, and she considered the idea that the whiskey may finally have been having an effect, then discarded it. "I work alone." She had ever since…well, since ever since. That's when.

"Not this time," Dean said, standing up too. He towered over her five foot four frame, but she didn't back down. Intimidation techniques were a crude practice. "You don't have a choice."

"No?" she asked, rhetorically it turns out, as just after she knocked him out with a swift right hook under his jaw.

"You probably shouldn't have done that," Sam said, standing and sighing at the sight of Dean's body sprawled along the floor. The bar studiously ignored them, and Daisy, who'd just started heading over with the whiskey shots, turned back, almost spilling them. "Now we have to carry him to the Impala, and then inside the motel room, and when he wakes up, he's gonna be pissed."

"We?"

"Yeah."

"Sam, I don't need help." She crossed her arms again, stubbornness and determination underlying her every syllable.

"Of course you don't. But we're giving it to you anyway. Well, maybe. I mean… Dean's gonna be pretty against the idea when he wakes up."

Deciding that she didn't want to get on John's bad side by knocking out both his sons and declining his offering of help, that she liked Sam, and she didn't want to die after all, she grinned, slapped a couple of notes down on the wooden table, and picked up Dean's feet. Looking up at Sam she said, "We going, or what? Blondie here isn't going to move himself."

A/N: I hope you like it so far. Any suggestions appreciated. REVIEWS ARE LOVE.