A/N: This story was written during season 2, pre-Lisa, so the name is a coincidence and the story is AU. It was also written pre-angels which seems an age ago.

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Chapter 1

The young woman stood against the wall of the diner, terror in her wide, darting eyes. She wore the uniform of a waitress - light pink, form fitting dress, small white apron at her waist. It could have been synonymous with dozens of eating establishments across the country, but the name tag at her breast identified her as Lisa, an employee of Happy Jacks Diner.

It was dark outside, she was the last employee in the place, just about to leave when confronted by the man in the business suit.

"Just take the money," Lisa pleaded, her blonde head nodding up and down, as if to convince the assailant it was the right choice.

"I'm not here for money." The well manicured man cocked his head to the side, a pitying look on his face, lips turning up in a menacing smile.

Lisa swallowed. "Please," she whispered. "I have a young son. I'm all he has."

The man gave a satisfied smile. "I know. And now he has nothing."

Lisa's screams shattered the stillness. As the young woman's pink uniform became stained with blood, her body ripped by unseen hands, the screaming reached a crescendo and then died away, leaving an eerie silence.

"Sam?"

The question was in the distance, through a haze of pain and mixed up memories. Sam fought to bring his breathing under control. He was hyperventilating and starting to feel light headed. Slow it down he told himself. He ignored everything else, the pain in his head, his brother in the distance, the horror of the vision and focused completely on getting his breathing under control. His body was getting used to these sudden attacks and he knew what he had to do to bring it back to normal.

When his respiration was regular again, the young hunter let all the sensations he was holding at bay rush over him and it was the pounding in his head that overbore everything else. A familiar and despised pounding. He closed his eyes and rubbed his temples, certain that the pounding would abate in a few minutes, although a headache would follow him for the rest of the day.

"Sam?"

Sam opened his eyes and gave his brother a weak nod. A nod that conveyed, 'I'm okay.' He hadn't noticed the hand gripping his arm until it was now pulled away.

Relief flooded through Dean and he let out a breath. He hated the visions. It was a cruel 'gift' that his brother had been lumbered with, the ability to foresee horrifying deaths, usually connected somehow to the yellow eyed demon. Sam was a sensitive soul and having to endure such horror affected him deeply. If Dean could have taken this burden from his brother and put it on himself he would have done it in a heartbeat.

Dean sat patiently in the now stationary car waiting for Sam to be sufficiently recovered to describe what he had seen. The vision had come to Sam while they were driving down a long isolated stretch of road and as soon as Dean had seen his brother clutch his head, he had pulled over. Not that Dean could do anything to help Sam, a particularly galling state of affairs for someone who had assumed the role of his brother's protector. This particular pain was something Sam had to endure alone, although by being next to his brother, putting an encouraging hand on his shoulder, Dean did his best to offer comfort and support.

Sam shifted in the seat, righting himself from the slump he had fallen into and turned to his brother with dark, troubled eyes, his expression haunted from seeing a horror that Dean could only imagine but sometimes wished he could also see, just so he'd know what to say, how to react, how to make it better.

"Who gets whacked this time?" the older man asked and cringed at how insensitive the question sounded.

"A waitress," Sam responded wearily, pinching the bridge of his nose. "Lisa"

"Did you get her number?" he smirked, and immediately wished he could take it back. Did you get her number? Could he be more of an ass?

"Did I get her number?" Sam repeated with disbelief. "I just watched her die Dean."

"Yeah, I know man. Sorry," Dean shook his head in apology. "It's just an automatic reaction, you know, you see a waitress you get her number." Stop. Stop talking. You're making it worse.

Silence descended in the car, Dean didn't trust himself not to saying something else inappropriate and Sam tried to make sense of what he had just seen. The screaming kept echoing around the young hunter's mind. And he was fixated on the words "Please. I have a young son. I'm all he has." It struck a little too close to home, reminding him of his mother, making him wonder about her last words. Had she said something similar when the demon came for her? Tried to keep herself alive for the sake of her sons?

"Was it yellow eyes?" Dean asked, pulling Sam out of his reverie.

Sam blinked a few times, trying to focus on the question, trying to remember if he had seen a flash of yellow in his vision. "I don't know. I don't think so."

"What happened?"

Sam rubbed his eyes and sighed slightly at the recollection. "There was a man in a business suit. A demon. It was very like what happened in the cabin last year." Dean swallowed at the analogy, it was not an incident he was going to forget in a hurry, pinned to a wall and ripped to shreds by a demon possessing his father. Sam continued, "This girl, Lisa, was standing against the wall and then started screaming. There was blood everywhere."

"Anything else?"

"Nah."

Sam wasn't sure why he didn't tell his brother about the woman mentioning her young son. Maybe because it was affecting him so deeply, he didn't want to lay it on Dean.

"Do you know where?"

"At some diner called Happy Jacks. I don't know where it is, we're going to have to look it up."

Sam just assumed that they would go to this woman and try to prevent her death, but Dean had reservations. Yes he wanted to save the woman, of course he wanted to save her, but was it something they were capable of doing? Or were they just putting themselves in a situation that could result in their death? They didn't have the colt, so they had no means of killing the demon. Their only weapons were salt, holy water and a devils trap, the first two being defensive rather than offensive weapons and the last one requiring time and cunning to actually trap a demon. The best outcome would be to avoid the demon altogether and get the woman out of the diner before it showed up, but how long could they keep this woman out of harm's way? Demons had an incredible ability to track down their victims, if it really wanted this woman dead, chances are she would eventually die. And if they were with the woman when the demon caught up with her, Dean had no doubt the demon would delight in their deaths also.

He shook his head. Think about it later. He didn't want to discuss his concerns with Sam now, the kid had just seen this woman die, he wouldn't react well to a suggestion that they let the vision become a reality.

"Okay," the older hunter said and started the car. They needed to find civilization and an internet access before they could do anything more about the vision. Sam was looking drained in the passenger seat, and Dean hoped they could find a way to sort this thing out quickly and move on. He had planned on a few days of quiet time, Sam was still struggling with the revelation about their father's secret request and they could use some down time, some binge drinking time. With an inward sigh he realized it wasn't going to happen, not yet anyway, first they had to save the damsel, then they could drink themselves into a stupor.

They drove for half hour in silence until they reached the next town. Sam took his laptop into a café and Dean took the opportunity to order a late lunch. Happy Jack's diner they discovered was going to have them driving for many hours. Whether they could reach the diner before it closed tonight at 10pm was going to be touch and go. They both fervently hoped that the attack wasn't going to occur tonight.

Back in the car, continuing the journey, Dean travelled as fast as he could without attracting unwanted legal attention. He brought up the topic that had been troubling him.

"How are we going to fight the demon Sam? We don't have the colt. And I really don't want to get ripped apart again." Dean said it lightly but the memory weighed heavily on him. It was the most pain he had ever experienced and thoughts of a repetition put him in a cold sweat.

"Hopefully we'll have Lisa out of the diner before the demon shows up, so we won't have to face it." Sam knew that sort of optimistism was beneath them, but he said it anyway, wanting it to be true, wanting it to work out that way.

"Well that would be great, but seeing as we'll be getting to the diner right on closing time, what if it doesn't turn out that way and we have to fight the demon? You got any bright ideas about how to go about it?"

Sam sighed. It was a sad indictment on their lives that Dean expected the worst. "Well I've been thinking about that. We don't have anything to kill the demon, but what if we fight the body its hosting?"

Dean wasn't sure he followed. "You mean shoot the host. I don't know that pain is something that really affects a demon. Remember Meg? Fell out of a seventh storey window and walked away?"

"Yeah but this time I think we should use tranquilizer darts. The host body will shut down and there's nothing the demon can do about it. If the host can't function then the demon can't function." It had made perfect sense to Sam when he had thought of it earlier, but now, as he recited the idea to his brother, he didn't feel the same certainty that he previously had. In fact it sounded kind of lame and a bit naïve.

Dean took his eyes away from the road to give his brother a dubious look. "You're kidding me? You don't think the demon could push through a little tiredness?"

"It's more than tiredness Dean. It's a chemical interference with the nervous system that causes it to shut down." That sounded better. Maybe it could work.

Dean didn't look convinced. "I think we'd be better off shooting the host through the head."

"No!" Sam replied quickly and gave his brother an imploring look. "The host is just some poor innocent shmuck Dean, we can't kill him. All we need to do is buy ourselves some time so we can get away."

The older hunter considered the plan and grimaced. Nice idea, leaving the host unharmed, but its practicality was questionable. "How about we carry a tranquiliser gun and a handgun? If the tranquiliser doesn't work then we shoot the shmuck through the head"…..if we get the chance went unspoken. Sam nodded reluctantly.

The likelihood of having an opportunity to take two shots at the demon was pretty low. Which is why Dean would have preferred to take the head shot. He didn't want to kill an innocent person, but in an us or them situation, he would rather go with the more aggressive approach. How long would a tranquiliser dart take to work? Even if it was only five minutes, that was still enough time for the demon to slice them up badly.

"We could douse the darts in holy water, that would slow the demon down," Sam suggested, thinking out loud.

"Hmm," Dean replied, weighing the idea. The sting of holy water on a demon was only fleeting, but it may be enough to get them and the girl out of the diner. Could work.

Dean understood his brother's need to protect the innocent. Especially in light of all the dark side talk that had come up as a result of Dean revealing their father's secret plea to kill Sam if he couldn't be saved. The inference that Sam was going to become evil made Sam even more conscious about doing the right thing, protect those who were blameless. For this reason only, Dean decided to give Sam's tranquilizer dart plan a try, but he felt a real trepidation about what might transpire should they meet the demon. Demon versus dorks with tranquilizer darts. Dean knew who he'd put his money on.