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It’s not human.
It can’t be.
Sam’s heart is thudding, too loud, in his chest, and it feels like he’s being slowly strangled. Whatever air he had is gone, trapped, sucked out of him when he opened the door and saw that thing hovering over his child’s bed.
Johnny is only two years old.
Not six months, not like Sam had been, but there is a monster in his room and it’s standing over the crib and--
No.
Sam snarls, furious, stepping foward before he even realizes what he’s done. Johnny is two years (six months) old and Sam is not going to let this happen, not to his son, his baby--
The thing is shaped like a girl, like a child. But her eyes are pure, vivid white and her expression is filled with malice, and she raises her head and smiles at Sam.
“Hello, Sam.” She says.
“Get away from him.” Sam says, and his voice is barely a whisper. Johnny, he thinks.
“I was just looking.” She steps back, eyes flicking black and white and black again, no iris, always blank and empty. She looks like something soulless ought to look.
She steps back from the crib and then Sam sees what she’s holding in her arms, and he wants to vomit.
“Don’t worry, Sam,” the thing in the girl’s body says, soothingly. “He’s not what I’m here for.”
In her arms, Lailah is pale and limp and her eyes are open, glassy, staring at Sam with unseeing eyes--
No, Sam tries to say, but the word won’t come out of his mouth, he’s frozen in horror and the thing in front of him is smiling, smiling like his revulsion is something to be proud of. No, Lailah, she’s just a baby, she’s just a little kid.
“I’ll be out of your way, then.”
“Let her go,” Sam can’t feel his mouth move, but he feels the words as they leave. Steely, hard, like a person he’s all but forgotten how to be. He sounds, for a moment, like his father.
Her eyes flick white again. “You don’t want to get in my way, Winchester.” She purrs.
“Let her go, or I’ll kill you.”
Sam doesn’t have a weapon, a knife, or the Colt, or so much as a line of salt on the ground. He doesn’t have a single goddamned thing, but the thing (demon, his mind whispers, it’s a demon) flinches.
“I’m not here for the boy.” It hisses. “I haven’t touched your family, Winchester, but--”
“She’s family,” Sam says, and only then does he realize it’s true. Lailah might be Castiel’s kid, might be no blood relative, but she’s still family. “Let her go-- I will kill you, I swear I will.”
“No, you won’t.” She replies. “Not yet, Sammy. But you will.”
He concentrates.
His head hurts and the lights in the room all blow out, a sudden flash of white and a shower of glass and sparks, and he can feel the pressure building in his skull, like a wave. This might kill him.
It probably will.
But the demon screams at him, wordless, and then disappears in a flash of emptiness that leaves Sam falling to his knees, crawling over the floor to where Lailah is lying motionless.
He’s taken the class every year, memorized the steps, but Sam never thought he’d be in this situation, never wanted to have to use his knowledge. Lailah isn’t breathing.
“Come on,” Sam mutters, pressing his hands over her heart. “Come on, come on--”
She’s not breathing.
He counts. He breathes for her. He starts again.
--
Dean is there, behind him. Comforting Johnny. Saying the ambulance is on it’s way. Asking Sam if he wants to stop, it’s okay, Dean can take over for a little while.
Sam ignores him.
--
It takes forever, but Lailah takes a breath. And then another. And another.
And then she’s screaming, her back arching and feet kicking hard against the floor, and Sam has never in his entire life been so fucking happy to see her react in terror at the sight of his face.
He catches a small fist to the eye before he can get out of the way, and then Lailah lurches upward, eyes wild, and launches herself at Sam with her whole body. He’s only half-heartedly trying to fend of the attack, too relieved to care if she wants to punch him again, when he realizes that Lailah isn’t actually attacking him.
“Sammy,” she cries, and Sam belatedly understands that this isn’t an attack, this is an awkward, frightened hug. “Sammy, she hurted me--”
“Shh,” he whispers. “Shh, baby, I’ve got you.”
---
Sam never really understood it, what kind of grudge a god-damned baby can have against him. He's never done anything to make her hate him, but Lailah hates him with a determined fury, her face turning bright red, pinched and unhappy if he gets too close, has to touch her -- the one disastrous time he'd had to change her diaper.
But this, this he thinks is worse, because he's holding a three year old Lailah, and she's sobbing heartbroken against his shoulder, wet tears rolling down her cheeks and moistening the fabric on his shirt. He's not sure what to do with this, because for the first time in his life -- for the first time in Lailah's short life, she's holding on to him, and if he tries to put her down her little hands clench in his shirt and she howls, panicked, breath hitching in her chest.
Sam is really, really scared.
"It's okay," he says, rubbing little circles on her back, a little shocked because Dean is -- Dean is right there, he's in the room, and Lailah hasn't tried to go to him, hasn't rejected Sam for her favourite Winchester in the whole world. Lailah is still sobbing, but the volume is decreasing steadily, tears being replaced by hiccups as Sam feels useless and rubs circles on the kid's back.
Dean looks suitably impressed, which is to say that he's mostly coddling Johnny and shooting confused, slightly hurt looks towards where Sam is pinned to the floor by thirty-five pounds of squirming, crying dead weight in the form of a hysterical toddler. Lailah finally stops crying, hiccuping softly from where her face is buried in Sam's chest, and then her hands finally loosen in his shirt and Sam starts to feel like the world is collapsing around him.
Johnny, in the manner of two-year-old's who can never have enough peanut-butter-and-jelly-sandwiches, has bounced back from his trauma and is raiding Dean's pockets for change and candy, chattering amicably about how awesome his dad is (and it kind of makes his heart skip, that Johnny thinks his dad is awesome, that he loves Sam with all his heart).
Lailah lifts her head, barely, big watery blue eyes staring up at him for a minute, and then she tucks her head back in, limbs going loose and easy like she's passed out.
If it weren't for the fact that he can feel her hand, obviously still under her control, fingers curling gently and carefully over the skin of his arm, right underneath where the sleeve of his t-shirt ends, Sam would actually think she is unconscious, for now he'll take 'not hysterical or screaming in fury' if he can keep it, and he stands up carefully to double-and-triple-check that Johnny's still fine. Dean shoots him an irritated look, like of course Johnny is fine, you fucknut, and also kind of like what the ever-loving shit did you do, Sammy, but Sam's still carrying Lailah's dead weight and he's mostly just relieved that everyone in his family is okay.
"Right," Sam says, blowing air forcefully out of his lungs and trying to think practically, trying to force down the overwhelming emotional surge of thank fuck, thank fuck, I love them all so much--- and then he sort of stumbles his way into the kitchen, trying not to drop Castiel's kid as he tries to figure out what the fuck he's going to make for dinner when -- god, his brain just won't function, it's all -- what about Johnny's head, he hit his head pretty hard falling out of the crib, what if he has a concussion, and Dean's suddenly standing behind him, six inches too short for Sam to look up at him the way he wants to.
"Hey," he says, and he's carefully transferring a wiggling, squirming Johnny into Sam's free arm, "Let's just order pizza, okay?" and Sam huffs a relieved breath and agrees.
--
Castiel walks in the door like he's cloaked in fucking darkness, there's something awe-inspiring about the scowl on his face, the way he looks like he's going to kill someone. He holds out a hand, imperiously, and Lailah lets go of Sam for the first time in almost five hours, scrambling to her dad and accepting the hug he gives her.
Castiel doesn't ask what happened, he just nods at Sam, gesturing sharply at Dean to join him in the kitchen. Sam wants to feel left out, but to be honest he doesn't really care what's going on in there, not while Johnny and Lailah are still in the living room, watching The Lion King for the billionth time and still looking scared.
No doubt there's a serious, tense, and doom-filled explanation happening in the Hunters 'R Us conversation in the next room, but Sam is so not going there. He's retired. Let someone else deal with whatever the fuck kind of apocalyptic bullshit is happening now.