1. Alex Franco and Avery

Darkness. That's all I feel enclosing around me. It's all I see.

I'm dead, right? Death is just an abyss of black, right?

I test my body. I've got all of it intact. I do little wiggles. I feel a fabric on top of me, but it's not covering my entire body. It's almost like I've got a bedsheet on, like I'm tucked into bed or something. I know I'm not wearing clothes.

When I try to move my limbs, they bump into hard, cold metal. I frown, testing my area. My head is pounding fiercely, like someone is living inside and stomping their feet. I wince with every sharp throb that I feel up there.

Okay, okay. Breathe. Breathe. Figure out where you are. Start there. I keep bumping my limbs against the cold metal, and I figure out that I'm stuck in a cold metal box. Cold metal box? I start to panic, wiggle more now, out of fear than curiosity. Where am I? I need to get out of here. I don't belong here.

Right now, I don't know where I belong. I don't know a lot of things. I'm missing a lot of information, as though someone went into my head and dumped all of the files out, shredding the papers. My head isn't clear enough to try and piece together details, in it's a fog of fear of the unknown.

I start banging obnoxiously against my dark cage, feeling frantic tears down my cheeks.

"Someone help!" I cry. "Someone! Please! Anybody!" I jerk my head up, accidentally hitting my forehead on the cold metal. The back of my head drops onto the cold table I'm lying on, giving me a double dose of hurt. "Ouch."

I curl my hands into fists, punching the walls, hoping I get Hulk strength and bust out. I don't like this. I don't like being trapped. I don't like not knowing. I want answers.

"Someone!" I try again, louder. The panic isn't hidden in my tone. "Someone get me out of here!"

I cry out, seeing images flash in my head. Cries of agony, most that aren't my own. Nothing but red. Hot temperature. Rattling chains. I'm shaking now, because of what my brain is showing me. Are these clues? They're scary as hell, if they're anything.

I gasp, closing my eyes as a bright light suddenly covers me. The table and I are pulled out from the box, and now that my arms are free to move, I use them to cover my eyes.

"Hey, hey," says a rather deep voice. I fight the pull to get my arms off of my eyes. "Easy, easy. Come on, you're okay. You can trust me."

"Let me go!" I say, moving my arms wildly so these unfamiliar hands don't touch me. I squint, adjusting to the rather bright lights hanging above my head. The shadow helps ease the light on my eyes, but I'm still wary of him. I know it's a him just by the outline.

I slowly sit up and keep the sheet around my torso, because I'm fully aware I'm naked under this. I see dark hair pooling down past my breasts. Do I have dark hair? But that doesn't seem right. I wince as another image comes to my head: blonde hair. I'm a blonde.

So why do I have dark hair? Did I dye it?

As I open my eyes more, I see there are small doors in front of me. I look upwards and side to side to see there are a lot of them. My heart quickens.

Slowly, I slide my legs off the cold table, letting them dangle. I look at the floor, at how depressing the room really is. But...no...this...

I look down at the trembling hands that are supposedly my own.

"Hey."

I turn to the side, and I jump off the table, pulling the sheet close to my chest as I hold in the scream that's built in my throat. Normally, I wouldn't scream at a man. But, I don't see a man in front of me. I see his face, and his face is grotesque, something that can only be made in Hell.

"Get away from me!" I shout, looking around frantically.

"Shh!" he hisses, putting his hands out. "You need to be quiet!"

"No, I don't know who you are or what you are—"

The stranger jumps for me, and my scream is muffled by his hand. He holds my body against the metal behind me, waiting for me to stop struggling. "You need to listen to me, and listen to me carefully," he says. "I know what you see, okay? There's a reason why you can see me like this. But, you need to get past that. Close your eyes. Whatever you see will go away if you focus hard enough."

I glare at him.

"Now, I'm gonna let your mouth free. When I do, don't scream. I'm trying to help you."

"Help me?" I hiss under my breath. "You don't look like the helping type."

He rolls his eyes. "Just do what I say."

He's still too close for comfort, but for some reason, I do as he says. I let my eyes close, and I breathe in and out. Maybe I'm dreaming. Maybe when I open my eyes, I'll wake up. But when I do open my eyes, I know I'm not dreaming. I no longer see the ugly face that I'd seen before, though.

In fact, the face I see now is ruggedly handsome: short hair, facial hair, deep blue eyes. He's dressed in nurse scrubs. His veins stick out on his arms.

"What do you see now?" he asks, waiting.

"I see...not whatever the hell I just saw."

He smiles. "Good. You're learning already."

"Who are you?"

"One question at a time. We need to get out of here first. And...you're going to need to change. You're not walking out like that."

I look down at just the sheet wrapped around me. I feel hot tinge my cheeks. "Wait a second...why should I even listen to you?"

"Because, I can help you. You just need to have a little trust in me."

"Can you at least tell me where I am?"

"A hospital. The morgue to be exact."

The morgue. I look around, see all the examination tables. The other tables used for equipment to examine the dead. I feel bile rise in my throat. I feel like I want to be sick. Wait. It makes sense now. The cold box...this sheet...

"Am I...dead?"

He chuckles. "Not exactly. I'll explain once we get you out of here." He tosses me scrubs. "Change and we'll make our getaway."

"Fine. Turn around, then. Or better yet, hold this sheet and don't peek." I turn my back and unravel the sheet, holding it out so the stranger can hold it like a curtain. He tosses the scrubs over my head, and I quickly shrug them on. I pull the curtain down and face him. "You know a way out of here?"

"I do."

"Got a getaway car?"

"I'm still figuring that part out."

We exit the morgue (thank God) and begin to try and blend in as best as we can in our hospital escape. My mind is in a whirl with all of these questions. Who's this guy? Why am I able to see...whatever I saw? Who am I? How did I land in a morgue?

"Just act normal," he mutters out of the corner of his mouth.

I keep my breathing calm and try not to tremble as we continue our escape. Will anyone realize a walking corpse leaving the hospital? What if someone notices? What then? "What if someone figures it out?" I whisper. "I mean, if I was in the morgue..."

"We'll figure out something. Just follow my lead."

My eyes go everywhere, focus on every little detail they can take in. The receptionist sneezing, a passerby going to the bathroom to wash the vomit out of their scrubs. I watch the small cameras warily, just waiting for something of a lockdown to start.

"Ease up," he tells me. "It's not like we're doing a prison break."

"We might as well be." I shift a little to my right as two nurses and a doctor walk by. Words I don't care about fly over the intercom. "Do you work here?"

"The human whose body I just inherited does."

I look at him, wide-eyed. "Won't someone notice him?"

"This place is way staffed, and big. Small chance."

"If you're wrong..."

"I'll work my way out of it."

We find a hospital directory first and find that we need to get to the ground floor. With guidance, we find the elevators and hit the "G" button. It's just us two, and I breathe easier as the doors close. The contraption moves under our feet slowly.

"How am I not exactly dead?" I ask in the silence.

"You've taken over a dead host. Their soul is gone, so you have complete control. Beats having to deal with the guy I'm dealing with in here." He has his hands in front of him, one hand clamped over the other wrist. "He's got the mouth of a sailor."

"What are you?"

He smirks. "The same thing as you."

But just as he's about to tell me, the elevator pings open. We exit and make a rather easy getaway out of the hospital. I grimace as I feel the clingy humidity of the night.

"Do you know which is his car?" I ask. "Since apparently you're having a wrestling match for control in there."

"He's not giving it up." He frowns. "We'll just have to do things the hard way."

And by hard way, he means carjacking and hotwiring. I'm his lookout. Thankfully, we don't run into any trouble. When he gets the engine going, I climb into the passenger side, and he takes off.

"Okay, anything you got, spill, now," I say a little impatiently.

"I don't know how well you'll take to it," he says carefully. "But, for starters, you're not dead. You just inhabited a dead meat-suit."

"So...am I a spirit? A ghost?"

"No. You're a demon."

I look at him strangely. "A...demon?"

"Yeah. It's why you saw my true face like you did. I can see yours too."

"How'd...How'd you know how to find me? Have we...met before?"

"We escaped Hell together."

My frown deepens. "I don't remember that."

"You wouldn't. We barely escaped with our lives." He chuckles. "Is anything coming back to you?"

"Some things." I rub my head. "Just flickers, really. Nothing major yet."

"Well, for now, until you get better, you're staying with me."

I snort. "Just because we escaped together doesn't mean anything."

"Look, you don't know what you're capable of. I can help you."

"Like, what? Teach me the ways of the Force?" I joke.

He snorts. "Something like that."

"All right, then, Obi-Wan Kenobi, you got a place to go back to?"

"We're just gonna drive until we find something."

I lean back into the seat. "Sounds like a plan, I guess." I close my eyes.

"Oh, yeah, one other thing about being a demon: we don't sleep."

I open one eye. "Never?"

"Never. You'll get used to it after a while. All those sleepless nights in Hell, it just...it just becomes a thing." He shrugs. "You did at some point, you just don't remember."

I shudder. "I might not want to remember."

"You got a name, young Padawan?"

What is my name? I haven't thought about it much. I feel the gears in my head working overtime. I probably have steam coming out of my ears. I'm grasping for a name, anything that stands out, that probably points me in the right direction.

"You do have a name, right?" he asks me. I'm still floundering for one. Nothing has come to mind.

I nod. "But I don't remember it."

"Try to remember something. If not, I'm giving you a name, and you might not want that to happen." He smiles teasingly.

I think long and hard, try to dig through the deep corners of my memory to find something. I can only find flickers of the bad place I was just in. Hell. Nothing but red and black. Endless cries of agony and endless suffering. The smell of burning flesh and rotting corpses. I remember white-hot pain, endless nightmares. I don't think I even slept in that awful place. The stranger watches me expectantly, waiting. Pull something out of your ass. He won't know the difference anyway, I think. But I try to dig a little bit still.

Then, out of nowhere, a name comes to mind. It doesn't feel like a ringer, but it's a straw I can hold onto.

"Avery," I murmur. "Call me Avery."

"Well, Avery, it's nice to put a name to your face. Alex Franco."

"Is that your meat-suit's name or your own?" I ask.

"My own."

"Someone sounds rather proud of himself."

"You might want to keep that mouth in check, Avery. I'm the one who offered to help you. I can just easily leave you to figure stuff out on your own."

"I thought demons aren't the helping type?"

"They're not. But, you need help. You need to be reminded of what you are. Not to sound braggy—"

"Sounds like it," I interject.

"I'm more the expert on being a demon than you are right now. You want answers, I can give them to you. You need to let me help you."

I cross my arms under my chest that's not really my own. I know he won't be able to answer the new burning questions in my head: where's my original body? How come I landed in this one? Because I know at this point, since I woke up in a morgue, I have to assume that this is not the body I've grown into. It feels...off. Like I fit, but I don't quite belong to this body, nor does it belong to me.

**So...yeah. When I said things have changed, I wasn't kidding. She's got a fuzzy memory, she's got a new body, and she's grasping at straws for her life back. Oh, and not to mention she's got a demon of all things helping her out.

Well, I guess your kind has to stick together, right?

I wasn't sure where Jo's story was going to take her when I wrote 'Rogue'. I didn't realize it was going to take such a dark turn. (Well, part of the reason is why I had a tough time with the casting choice, and I really like Jaimie Alexander, so I wanted to incorporate her in somehow. This was the product of that.) Nothing says Supernatural fanfic like the darkest of turns.

Oh, and "Avery"? You'll learn the significance of that name in a few chapters; she didn't pick it just for the hell of it.

At least she didn't remain dead. She's got to live to the last book, after all. Then again, few characters ever do with this show...**