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Most people don't remember the day they were born. But Jack Kline is not most people. Jack remembers the moment he entered this world. There was a flash of golden light, then it was dark. Quiet. He remembers wondering where his father was? He was supposed to be there. He remembers leaving the dark room and going to the room where his mother had painted his name so carefully across the wall. Alone, cold and scare, he crouched in the corner and waited for his father to come.
But it was not his father who came. He remembers when the tall man with brown hair and soft eyes found him. Jack was not sure if he was his father. But he was not. He remembers feeling confused and unsure. The tall man spoke in a low soothing voice that helped put Jack at ease. Until the angry man came. He shot Jack. Jack remembers the fear that coursed through his body, engulfing his insides. He screamed to try to let it out. He remembers the two men floating slowly in the air before his very eyes as he screamed. Then he stopped and they were jettisoned backwards in to the wall. They fell to the floor and did not move. Jack remembers being terrified by what he had just done and wanting his father to comfort and protect him. He needed him. He had to go find him.
Jack remembers walking outside. The feeling of dirt, rocks and grass beneath his feet. The warm sun on his naked body. He remembers going to the building with the man outside dressed like a pirate. Maybe he was his father. He was not. Jack remembers Sheriff Barker. She had a gun, like the angry man, but she did not take it out. She spoke gently to Jack and said she wanted to help him. He wanted someone to help him. Jack got into the back of her police car. She drove with him in the back and a young man she called Clark in the front beside her. He must have been her son because he called her mom. Jack remembers hearing this and the feeling of sadness and longing he had, wishing that he could he hear that lovingly tender voice he had heard so often while still inside his mother's womb telling him how much she loved him. Now it was silent.
He remembers what it felt like to wear clothes for the first time. They were warm and soft. The shoes had felt kind of strange though. He remembers Sheriff Barker asking him about his mother. His mother's face and voice flash in his mind again and he can feel his heart break a little. He knew his mother was in heaven. She asked about his father. Where was he? He had to find him. Sheriff Barker said she would try, put ink on his finger, and left. Jack remembers Clark asking if he was stoned. He was not stoned...he was hungry. Clark took him to the machine that gave him candy. He remembers the first time he tasted it. It was sweet and soft in his mouth. It made him truly smile for the first time in his life. He liked nougat. He told Sheriff Barker this and showed her how the machine gave him candy, smiling the entire time. But then the voices came. Jack remembers how scared he was of the loud angry voices filling his head, making it feel like it would explode. The fear consumed him once again. Sheriff Barker was saying something somewhere behind him but he could not hear it. She touched his shoulder. His hand shot out and the power the fear brought surged outward into her, slamming her into the candy-giving machine. He did not mean for that to happen. But he had to get away from the voices in his head. He went down a hall, vaguely aware of the lights shattering above him, and came face to face with the angry blond man with the gun. Not again. He felt the power surge rising in his body again. But before he could let it out, Jack remembers the hot pulse of electricity that had burnt his back and then everything went black.
Jack recalls waking up in the jail cell with the tall man. He knew Jack's name and spoke in the same soothing manner as he had during their first encounter. He said his name was Sam. Jack talked about the voices he heard, about his mother, and about his father. Where was he? He was supposed to be there protecting him. Jack remembers Sam had said that was not what Lucifer does. Lucifer? No. His father is Castiel. Where was Castiel? Sam had told him he was dead. Jack remembers the feelings of grief and disbelief that overwhelmed him in that moment. On this day, that he had been born, his mother had died. His father had died. He was all alone in this world with no one to care for or protect him.
Jack remembers the angry man, whose name was Dean, coming in to talk to Sam in the cell but running back out to the other room after the cry for help. He recalls the bad angels busting out the metal door across the room outside of the cell that contained him and Sam, Sam putting himself protectively in front of Jack. The angels' eyes lit up and the voice exploded in his brain once more, the pain bringing him to his knees. One angel tried grabbing him while the other beat on Sam, making blood drip from his mouth. Jack tried to fight and resist the angels. He did not want to go with them. But the agony in his head made resistance futile. He remembers Sam shouting at the angels and slamming his hand over the blood on the ground. The bad angels vanished in a flash of light, dropping Jack to the ground. An uncomfortable energy had coursed up his neck but subsided quickly. He remembers the third bad angel coming and standing just outside of the cell in front of Jack. She plunged her knife into his stomach. Jack remembers his shock at this, not knowing what to expect. He sank to his knees. He had been even more surprised by the fact that it had done nothing to him. He was fine.
Jack recalls sitting outside the police station alone on a bench, watching an injured Clark being loaded into an ambulance. His mother was by his side the entire time, telling him everything was going to be alright, just as a mother should. Loneliness and fear of what was going to happen to him settle into Jack's bones again. Sam and Dean sat on the bench across from Jack, talking. Then Sam came over to him and told him they were taking him with them. Jack remembers feeling hope for the first time in his short life. They ere taking him home. He would not be alone. He got into the back of the Impala and went with Sam and Dean to an unknown future that lay ahead.
Jack remembers going back to the house he had been born in some hours ago. On the day he was born, Jack had watched as his mother and father burned and they had said goodbye. And Jack remembers, on that day, he was sad and scared
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That was four years ago. Today, Jack is sitting at the kitchen table in the bunker next to his father. Castiel is smiling as he looks at Jack with eyes filled with love and pride. Jack's other two dads are there too. Sam, wearing his silly party hat, is grinning broadly at Jack. Dean proudly places the cake he has made in front of Jack and pats him fondly on the shoulder. The cake is lopsided. There is a thick uneven coating of blue icing covering it and sprinkles scattered haphazardly across it's surface and on the plate. HAPPY BIRTHDAY JACK is written in squiggly letters, and there is a crooked 4 in the center. It is the most perfect cake Jack has ever seen. He looks at his family, who he loves, and smiles. Jack will remember this day for the rest of his existence. And Jack will remember he is truly happy.