A/N: I know. I'm horrible. Its been what, three months since I last updated? All I can give for a lame excuse is that it's been super crazy here. Bad writers block? I dunno. But I am seriously sorry. Winter break for me is about over and I made one of my resolutions to write and update regularly. Enjoy this shortish chappie!

Chapter 6: Smoke Rings

She'd thought that floating through oblivion would be black and empty and cold. But Madeline's oblivion was always blue. A dark blue. A cold and dark blue. Like sinking miles below the oceans surface. She thought she might have panicked. But she was utterly calm despite the screaming voices all around her.

She felt a blast of cool air on her face suddenly. She looked up into the empty blue above her and found a lighter blue spot. She focused on that. The spot grew lighter and bigger and she felt herself being pulled toward it. She traveled towards it forever. And then in an instant, the light completely swallowed her up and the pain began.

Madeline's eyes snapped open as the cold water splashed on her face. Her breathing deepened and was immediately quickened while she sat up in her place and quickly looked around her to see that she was sitting on the rough wooden floors of Bobby's living room. Sam and Dean were kneeling not two feet away from her with concerned expressions on their faces. She sat up quickly and skittered away backwards and pushed her wet hair out of her face.

"How long was I out?" She said panting for a reason that was unknown to her.

"Not long. You were burning up though. Had to cool you down," said Dean, leaning forward on his feet.

"Oh," Madeline said, unable to think of a clever response.

"You wanna tell us what the hell that was all about?" Asked Sam. His eyebrows were scrunched in an understanding, kind way. But Madeline would be no victim to the puppy dog face.

Everything started coming back to her. Making breakfast, sitting down with Dean and having an almost normal conversation. Deans face changing into one she hated more than anything. The face of a dead man.

She realized she had been having one of her hallucinations.

Her heart dropped as she thought of what she might have done.

She stood up and wrung out her soaking wet hair and said, "Not at the moment." And she walked out the front door, making sure neither of them followed.

Madeline surprised herself that the second she stepped outside, she started shivering. Normally, the mild climate of South Dakota wouldn't have bothered her. But her cold, wet hair and the fearful memory of the still-fading hallucination brought a physical and mental cold to her.

She stood at the edge of the front porch, leaning on her elbows of the creaky railing that ran around the whole house.

She felt around the inside of her thin sweaters pockets until her fingers rolled around a skinny cylinder. She pulled the object out of her pocket and held it by her two fingers and looked at it. Two-thirds white, one-third tan. She sighed out a frosty white puff of air and pulled out her lighter.

She hardly ever smoked. In fact, she hadn't in almost six months.

But right now she felt she had good reason to.

Madeline place the cigarette in her mouth and lit it up. She took a lingering drag and blew out a white puff of smoke. She coughed a few times, not used to smoking again. But after a few more puffs, she was perfectly fine. She even found it comforting.

Madeline's ears perked up at the sound of the creaky opening door. She didn't even have to turn around to recognize whose footsteps they belonged to.

"Seriously? Smoking?" She heard Dean say. Madeline turned around and blew a few smoke rings to show her lack of regard for what he thought of it and flashed her trademark smirk.

"Boy, you're just asking for a case of sneezy lung cancer, aren't you?" Dean said as he walked over to his sister and snatched the cigarette out of her slim fingers. He put it out by smashing the burning end of it against the rail.

"I'm counting on it. Pneumonia and lung cancer simultaneously? That's gotta be some kinda record," Madeline said sarcastically. Dean stood next to Madeline and looked out over the junkyard. A car cemetery. He shoved his hands in his jacket pockets to keep them warm.

"So what did you see that made you freak so much back there," he asked. Madeline scoffed.

"Your face."

"Hey, no smart-assery here. You know what I mean. I know a hallucination when I see one." Madeline stared straight ahead, a glassy look in her green eyes. The tip of her straight nose had turned pink. She gave a heavy sigh and looked down as she twiddled her thumbs.

"Oh, so you don't want to talk about it? Fine. Then let's chat about the smoking," Dean said with mock happiness. Madeline turned to look at him with one eyebrow raised. Her sleek, dark hair fell over one eye. For some strange reason, she felt like crying. But she willed them to freeze in place. She would not cry. Especially not in front of Dean. She would not appear to be vulnerable.

Unfortunately, Madeline had a tell whenever she was about to cry. Her nose twitched for a minuscule fraction of a second. So quick, it couldn't be visible to the human eye. But Dean caught it. Once he did, his stern expression softened. He reached forward with his hand after a moment of hesitation and tucked back Madeline's wet, dark hair behind her ear. His hand remained on the side of her face. Madeline shivered.

"How long?" He asked.

"Smoking or hallucinations," she questioned.

"Start with the hallucinations."

"Two years," she said. Dean didn't know how, but he knew she was telling the truth. Perhaps it was the clear, puppy dog-like look in her eyes. He dropped his hand from her face to his side. Two years is a helluva long time to deal with hallucinations. Especially with ones like Madeline's from what Dean could tell.

"And you haven't offed yourself?" He asked in surprise. Most people Dean knew that had suffered from that severe kind of mental torture usually committed suicide within six months or less. The fact that Madeline had lasted two years proved that she was smarter and stronger than Dean had thought.

"Clearly," she said plainly.

"How the hell do you live like this?" Dean asked. Madeline shifted around in her standing position an involuntarily shivered. She wanted nothing more than to just sit down, so to remain upright, she placed a hand on the rail to steady herself.

"Because I control most of them. Mostly the smaller ones. Sometimes a few big ones. But this one I couldn't control no matter how hard I tried to." Madeline's eyes had glassed over.

"What do you mean, you control them?" Dean asked.

"I mean, if I can, I sometimes feel hall-hallucinations coming on, I can control them so they're not so real, or even so that they go away."

Dean couldn't think of anything else to say. She clearly did not want to open up about this. But at least on some level, she did.

Dean must have had a soft look on his face like he felt bad for her or something. He uncrossed his arms and outstretched one to Madeline. But in response, she stepped back.

"If you try to hug me, I'll break that pretty-boy face of yours," she said as she walked passed him and into the house.

"Wasn't gonna," Dean mumbled as he followed her inside.

"See her?" The demon spat as she slammed up a photo of a girl with wide green eyes and the darkest hair you can imagine on the blood spattered wall of the abandoned shack.

The demon paced up and down in front of the wall then turned to face the small group of demons among her.

"The kid? What about her?" Spoke up one of the demons.

"Name's Madeline Devereaux. She's the sister of Sam and Dean Winchester," said the demon in charge.

"And?" Piped up a demon whose vessel was that of an older mans who had several tattoos up and down his arms and a white handlebar mustache.

"She's a hunter. Some say she's even better than the Winchester boys themselves," said head-demonness.

"Not getting it. So, she's a hunter. Big whoop. We kill her and we go out for a few drinks after. So?" Pondered the old man demon.

The demoness slammed her hands on the table that the old man demon was sitting behind.

"SO?!" She shouted. "Word on the street is the angels are calling her 'The Instrument of the Apocalypse'. We are not going to kill her."

"Why not?! She's a hunter, and if the angels are talking about her, she's fighting for them. We kill her," said said a chubbier demon next to the old man.

"The angels don't know what side she's on. Heaven or Hell. No one knows. Not God, not Lucifer. No one. Hell, she doesn't even know," said the demoness. "So we need her. We need to talk her into joining us."

"And if she doesn't?" Asked a random demon.

"Then we kill her. She dies screaming for mercy."

"I'm not a schizo," said Madeline, her head in her hands. She was sitting in a plush, worn leather chair in Bobby's living room with Sam and Dean sitting across her on the couch, both eyeing her with both suspicion and worry.

"You said you're an insomniac. That you've got the meds and everything," stated Sam.

"So?" Asked Madeline. She was rubbing her left temple with two fingers in circular motions, her head still aching from her last unfortunate episode.

"Do you take them?" Dean asked. Madeline figured there was no point in lying about her medicine.

"On occasion," she confessed, which was still a lie. She wasn't ready to tell the entire truth. She didn't think she ever would be. "Doesn't matter though," she elaborated. "They don't help. I still don't sleep."

"Is that why you have hallucinations?" Asked Sam.

"I'm not a schizophrenic, if that's what you're asking," Madeline snapped.

"I wasn't asking," Sam said. Madeline nodded and looked over a Dean.

"But he was," she said as she glared at him.

"Only because you went all Beautiful Mind on me over breakfast," Dean retorted.

As if on cue, a shiver went down Madeline's spine. The hair stood up on her neck and she snapped her neck around. She heard faint footsteps against the creaky floorboards growing closer and closer. They grew deafeningly loud, yet no one appeared with them. Then came the voice. Or not a voice really, she thought. A whisper.

A whisper blew through her ears like an ice cold breeze. Whether it was the voice of a woman or a man was indecipherable. It whispered only one word.

Kill.

She tensed up and gave her all not to shudder. But the whisper came again.

Kill both of them.

Shut up, Madeline thought. She pressed her two fingers against her temple hard, so hard that her nails dug into her skin and let out a prick of blood. She suddenly felt the coldness in the room disappear.