CHAPTER TWO

Disclaimer: I do not own any part of Supernatural or Buffy the Vampire Slayer, unfortunately smarter people beat me to the punch, now I'm simply letting my imagination run wild with their property.

I just want to say thank you to few of you who reviewed, sorry this has taken so long for me to update, Copper (my muse) has been very fickle lately and doesn't like to work on stories that I've already started preferring instead to start new ones. *shakes head* I don't understand him some times. Anywho here are those thanks I would like to offer. Princesakarlita411: im glad you think it's awesome, every little thing helps with making Copper cooperate, CompYes: it makes me happy that you find it engaging, this was my first try at Supernatural/Buffy, Nikki: I'm working on continuing, but to be honest, I don't know where Copper is planning to go from here, so it may be a while. L, QueenoftheSlayers: always glad to see a review from you and I hope this chapter doesn't disappoint everyone. Alright, here goes nothing.

"Okay," Sam says, climbing back into the car, oblivious to all the emotion. "I got two rooms." He hands one key to Dean. "I'm assuming you two will be sharing." he smirks at Dean, who simply shrugs.

"Got a lot of catching up to do. If ya know what I mean." Dean wiggles his eyebrows suggestively causing me to giggle.

"Eww." Sam cringes good naturedly. "They're next to each other, so keep it down, okay?"

"I can't promise that Sammy." I tell him. "One of us is a screamer."

"I'm ignoring that." Sam says, Dean opens his mouth to say something but Sam cuts him off. "The rooms are over there."

With a chuckle Dean puts the car in drive and finds a parking space in front of our two rooms. We get out of the car and I stretch my muscles while the boys grab all of our stuff. I'd forgotten just how uncomfortable it got sleeping in a car, but given may most recent decision, I had better get used to it again. Who knows how long I'm going to be hunting with them maybe after we find and exorcize the yellow eyes demon, I would stay. If I ask him to, Spike will stay with Dawn until I'm ready to go back.

Just then my pocket vibrates followed quickly by The Ramones "I Wanna Be Sedated", causing both Dean and Sam to glance around the trunk of the car to watch me answer my phone. "Hey Spike."

"Slayer, where the 'ell are you?" Spike yells at me. "I get back from a mission with the most annoying person in the universe," I hear Andrew protest in the back ground, but Spike ignores him. "to find the slayer gone with two strange scents following her and all Faith will say is 'Call Buffy' and nobody else will even make eye contact. So explain before I kill everyone, soul be damned."

I laugh without humor and turn to follow Dean into our room. "Where would like me to start?"

"Why aren't you here? This is your battle Slayer."

"They didn't want me there." I tell him, sitting at the foot of the only bed in the room, watching Dean pull out his arsenal and set it on the table in the corner, trying to give me privacy. "They tried to kick me out of my own home. I was about to tell them all just where exactly they could stick that suggestion when Dean called and I decided a different course of action. They needed my help so I packed a bag, told everyone that I expected them all gone, with the exceptions of Faith Dawn and you, as soon as they defeated the First Evil. Now I'm somewhere in Nevada. Tell me about he mission." I can hear him growling and the girls in the background shriek. "Spike." I warn him. "Tell me what you found."

The growling stops and I hear him take a couple of deep breaths before he talks. "Preacher man is protecting something, a weapon, that belongs to you."

"What?" I ask, slightly confused.

"Carvings in the monastery say there's a weapon that only you can wield, my guess is he's keeping it, from you, at the vineyard." he explains to me, his voice less angry and more excited. "You were right."

I sigh. "Too bad that does me no good now." I look around the sparse room and have to smile when I notice the quarter slot next to the bed, Dean's going to love that.

"Slayer," Spike says, his voice filled with a mixture of excitement and anxiety. "we need you here. We gotta gather the troops and storm the vineyard. Take back what's rightfully yours!"

"I can't go back. I've got a more important mission now." I tell him, now watching Dean steadily and knowingly disassemble and clean one of his guns, his favorite if I remember correctly, pretending to not be listening.

"More important than the end of the world?" Spike asks, surprised.

"Some people mean more to me than the end of the world." I watch Deans face twitch only slightly, but I know his heart rate just jumped and his eyes filled with gratitude.

"We need you here. You're the leader. They're just emotional right now but they're gonna realize they need you." I can hear Andrew agreeing whole heartedly with him.

"Spike, they don't need me." I tell him, and before he can disagree I continue. "Faith can lead them and they have you to help them. Plus if it gets down to it, Angel knows the situation. There are plenty of people who are capable of keeping the world from ending. Now you need to talk to Faith, tell her about what you discovered."

"I don't want to." Spike pouts. "I want you to come back and make them all regret what they did to you Love."

"I'm needed here." I say, still watching Dean. "and I need to be here, with people who love and trust me. With people who don't look to me as their superior, but as their equal. I will come home when I'm ready Spike." my voice is sad.

"Fine." He concedes easily, always so perceptive of my emotions. "I will team with Faith and we will save the world, but keep in touch Buffy." he uses my name, letting me know that he's talking to the person, not the warrior.

"I will Spike. Keep Dawn safe for me until I come home."

"'Till the end of the world Love." Spike says, sighing. "Already promised you that."

"I know." I look down at my feet, my eyes tearing up. "just needed to hear it again. Good bye Spike."

"Bye Slayer."

With an emotionally exhausted sigh I close my phone and fall against the pillows, letting it drop on the bed next to me. Listening to Dean methodically clean his weapons, I think back to when I met the Winchesters, just after I'd been called.

It was after I'd set the school on fire. Merrick had died, Pike disappeared somewhere in LA and my parents were getting divorced. So I'd left. Just got on a bus and ended up in Vegas, where I was attacked by demons pretty much as soon as I'd stepped off the bus. I dispatched of them, with help from a stranger, who later introduced himself as John Winchester.

He took me under his wing in a way. I was basically adopted by him and his two teenage sons, Dean seventeen and Sam fourteen. I spent from may thru august traveling the country with them, John becoming my surrogate watcher and father. When I finally returned home just before the move to Sunnydale, I respected John more than I'd ever respected anyone in my entire life, and I kept in contact with him and the boys through e-mail for two years.

After I killed Angel, and I ran again, I once more ran into a Winchester at the bus station. This time it was a nineteen year old Dean, hunting alone, having left Sam with his father and gone off on his own. I spent the summer falling in love with Dean Winchester. He was like no one I'd ever met before and he understood me in ways on one else could, but I knew nothing could ever become of it besides flirting and innuendoes, I had to go home sometime and face all my mistakes. So we'd kept it platonic and casual, never defining ourselves, just making each other happy. It was harder to leave Dean, leaning against his beautiful car looking like a god, than it had been to leave Sunnydale. We kept in contact for the next two years via phone and e-mail, but then I'd died and come back and couldn't bring myself to tell him about it, so I hadn't heard from him, Sam or John in just over a year. And now here I am, in a room with just him and all of our unspoken questions.

"You wanna talk?" I hear Dean ask me from the foot of the bed, his eyes sad and concerned.

"What do you want to talk about?" I ask, sitting up far enough o lean on my elbows.

He lays next to me on the bed, propping himself up on his right elbow facing me. "Tell me where you disappeared to the last couple of years. I didn't think you would answer tonight, like you've been doing for the past year." his eyes never leave mind, watching my every thought pass through them, I've never tried to hide from Dean.

"I'm sorry for that." I tell him, dropping my head in shame. "I shouldn't have avoided you guys like that."

"Hey," he says, lifting my chin up forcing me to look at him. "I'm not mad or disappointed, I just want to know."

I sigh deeply and roll over on my side mirroring his position. "Well, I died." I watch his face closely but there was no need to, his fear wasn't hidden.

"What!" his voice is deep and low. "Explain that before I explode."

"I died. That's it." I tell him, looking down at the bedspread.

"How, when, why? There's more to it than 'I died' and you're going to tell me." he's not trying to mask the terrified quiver in his voice.

"I jumped off a tower to save my sister and the world because a hell god opened a portal to another dimension using Dawn's blood and only mine could close it." I say, in a big of a rush to get it all out.

I hear Dean take several deep breaths trying to calm himself and I look up. His eyes are closed, but his face is the definition of pain and his hands are tightly balled in front of him. Silently I lay my right hand on top of his two hands and kiss his furrowed brow. "It's okay," I tell him quietly. "I'm here. I'm okay."

After a minute he opens his eyes again, the pain still very evident in eh brown depths. "How are you here? Did someone make a deal?"

I shake my head. "No. willow, my friend the witch, did a spell. They brought me back." I shrug. "that's it. No deals, no possessions, no souls exchanged. Just a spell."

"Why didn't you call?" he asks me, his voice even quieter now. "Why did you avoid me and Sam?"

"I wasn't right for a very long time." I tell him. "When Willow brought me back, she'd torn me from my heaven. It took me almost a year to make myself right again. By that time I'd made a lot of really stupid dangerous decisions and I couldn't make myself face you with them hanging over my head." I blink back the shameful tears that well up in my eyes. "I hated myself for a very long time, it's only been recently that I've stopped."

Dean gently pushes my hair behind my ear and I look up into his eyes. There's no anger or hate only understanding. He gets me in ways one else ever will. "Annie" he says my name softly, the way only he ca. "I get it. When you hate yourself, the last people in the world you want to face are the people who will never hate you, not matter your mistakes." he grins at me and I can't help but return it. "Now, who the hell is Spike and how did the two of you get so close?"

I chuckle. "There is no easy way to describe who Spike is. Mostly because he's always changing. " I have to smile when he skeptically raises his right eyebrow. "Okay, Spike is… my friend. My newly re ensouled vampire tried to kill me for years friend." This time both his eyebrows shot up.

"That, you're going to have to elaborate on."

I sigh deeply, "It's a long story, you sure you wan to hear it?" he slowly nods his head. "Okay, well Spike showed up six years ago and spent the next three and a half years trying to kill me and my friends. He was captured b a secret military operation that put a computer chip in his head that kept him from harming humans. He started fighting with me and my friends, he fell in love with me. I died. I came back and he was the only person I could talk to, our relationship got, complicated. Some thing's happened, he left and got a soul. He came back, went through a crazy period and now he's my best warrior, my closest friend and one of two people I trust with not only my life, but Dawn's life as well."

"Hmm." he sits there, apparently stunned beyond words. Which I'm pretty sure is a first for me.

"Is that all you got?" I tease him, pushing on his shoulder gently getting a small smile out of him. "Come on," I say getting off the bed and walking to my bag to pull my pajamas out. "Lets go to bed. I'm exhausted."

"Anything you say Annie." He tells me, climbing off the bed after me and pulling down the comforter before taking off his shirt and jeans. He always was one to sleep in his boxers. Never too embarrassed to make sure he could make himself comfortable. After changing into my most comfortable pink piggy pj bottoms and tank top, I climb into bed next to him, molding myself to his side he throws his arm around my waist and buries his face in my hair and I'm asleep only minutes later.