She never could stop counting the ways John Winchester died.

The poor man had died eighty-one times now, and still, she counted. The first death had been uninspired. John had stumbled into the wrong place at the wrong time, asking the wrong questions, and was rewarded with a bullet shearing through the insides of his mind. The second death had come to Millie as a bullet through her own mind. Just as quickly as her spurt of daydreaming had come, she'd seen John miscalculating the monster he was hunting, and bringing the wrong gun to the fight.

Dead.

The last quivering breaths of his life had grown more creative after that. She could practically hear his rattling lungs in her ears as he struggled to breathe with a knife in his gut, could practically smell the mustiness diffusing from his corpse where he lay in a ditch.

This was a years-long habit of Millie's.

Each time her father would leave her and the boys to their own devices, he himself going off on a hunt, she would draw an image in her mind of his death of the day. It changed often, depending on where he went, which monster he went to fight, and who he went with.

Sometimes she even pictured him dying while he was sitting right next to her, because her fear had never stayed quiet in the presence of comfort. Comfort only served to remind her fear of why it seeked to wreak terror. To destroy. It reminded her of what she had to lose.

At the moment, John was running from his death. She imagined him not quite dead, the outsoles of his boots imprinted themselves in the mud beneath, leaving lines and divots where his size thirteen feet had been.

'John Winchester is here', she imagined the ground whispering, words squelching in accordance with each new footprint. 'John Winchester is here and this step may be his last.'

Millie was mentally sketching the demon behind him when screeching tires fractured her concentration.

"Again? Come on, Dean."

The annoyance in Millie's voice persevered as she said, "How many times can you go to the bathroom in a six hour drive?"

Dean only paused for a second after he shifted the Impala into 'park' before he yanked on the door handle. "So far, three." He shrugged. "It's not my fault I have a small bladder. If you have a problem with it, take it up with Dad."

Millie rolled her eyes and opened her door. The joints in her legs groaned, stiff from the trip, though not as stiff as they would have been if Dean hadn't had such a 'small bladder'.

"Shut up, Dean." Her words were a tired bark as they left her mouth. "We've only been driving for three hours. You just wanted to stop for more snacks."

A bell sounded quietly when Dean opened the gas station door. The inside of the store was much like the outside: everything was a faded white color, a contrasting medley of individuals stood scattered across the space, and the walls had a barely noticeable layer of grime. The grime might have been concerning had Millie not seen many worse places - had not stayed in many worse places - during her adventures with her brothers and her father.

Her father.

John Winchester had been missing for a number of days, hence the fatal caricatures of him that lived more routinely in Millie's mind. She and Dean were on their way to Stanford Law School to find the third Winchester sibling, Sam, so they could all search for John together. Just the two of them had not borne any success on their hunt thus far.

She supposed that was why Dean had stopped so frequently on this trip. Did he really have such a desperate need for the bathroom or snacks, or did he have a more desperate need to delay the meeting between them and Sam?

Millie couldn't blame him. She snatched a family-size pack of Peanut M&M's from a rack of candy - her third of the day - if only to offer Dean a companion in his game of postponement.

She paid, shoved the chocolate into her jacket pocket, and made her way back to her spot in the passenger seat. The inside of her wrist emitted a shivering sensation when she shut the door, and she frowned. A thread on her sleeve was frayed, and it often brushed her wrist just softly enough to tickle it.

The crawling sensation was on her elbow now, and her frown deepened. The corners of her lips pulled further down as each second passed, because with each tick of a clock, goosebumps planted themselves further up her arm, until they began to settle into the skin on the back of her neck.

"Ah!"

The scream was hasty and rough against her throat, and she clapped her hands atop her ears. A ringing sound like the droning of a high school bell sliced into her eardrums, and it was coming from...

Millie's eyes snapped up and every muscle in her body froze, as if every drop of moisture in the air had seeped through her pores and, at the touch of the bitter terror in her bones, turned to ice.

A ghost stood before her, an unusual haunting at the sun's peak in the sky. It - she - was standing ten feet away at an ATM, her fingers brushing the buttons on the machine, her eyes locked on the Winchester girl's.

Millie was not sure how she knew it was a ghost. Apparitions did not appear as this one did, with her hair and skin practically glowing a warm yellow rather than lacking any tone at all. Even so, the bumps on her limbs would not leave her, and so she knew.

Stillness lingered in the air between the two, seconds passing until Millie realized she should be doing something about this creature. Hunters weren't supposed to ask questions or hesitate or wonder if a supernatural being was deserving of death. They were just supposed to act.

"Millie, you out here?"

"Dean!" Millie shouted, fingers fumbling with the plastic handle that would grant her escape. "Dean, watch out!"

She jumped from the car and successive thuds sounded, nearly as loud to her own ears as the frantic beat of her heart. Suddenly, she found that her hands were grasping the car's trunk.

"Millie!" Dean's hands gripped hers, pain streaking through each tendon as he pressed down, too hard for her to be able to open the trunk from beneath. "Stop it! Look where we are!"

Millie shook her head, bewilderment like a fog at the edges of her mind. She needed the salt, the guns, the salt guns, any weapon she could get her hands on. What was he doing, stopping her, when a ghost stood in the middle of a populated area?

When she continued to pry at the edges of the vehicle's bumper, Dean whisper-shouted again, "Are you trying to show everyone here that this car is loaded? Do you want them to call the cops?"

"I feel..." she huffed and yanked her hands back, the stinging in them too great. "I feel like it's a little more important to shoot her than it is to hide the guns, Dean."

He clapped a hand over her mouth. "Her?"

"Yeah, her over there..."

Millie faltered at the look in her brother's eyes. His line of sight was frantic, dashing across all four corners of the gas station, each pump, and each parking spot. Seconds passed, and she knew he must have scrutinized every square foot of the place, but he still seemed lost. She pointed at the ATM to help direct him, but when she followed the line her own finger made, her chest deflated.

The ghost was gone.

AUTHOR'S NOTE:

Welcome to Millie's side of the story! I'm SO excited to see where this goes and so excited to see her one day meet the rest of my 'Supernatural' characters...and you know...whoever that 'ghost' is...

 Also, if you're new here: I love to interact with you guys! Please don't be shy & comment! I will 98% of the time answer, and it will 100% of the time make my day! Thank you for reading!

( opening gif at the top of the chapter is by -voidlegends )