Archive of Our Own ^beta

When Anna was especially little, Sam tried to teach her how to pray.

It was cold and raining, but she and Sam were stuck in the back of the Impala together. Dad was acting extra squirrely about the hunt while Dean just acted even more Dean than usual– lots of jokes, lots of smothering, and a thousand cocky smiles.

Sam said something was wrong, and Anna believed him implicitly.

The night drew on, darker and cooler. The stars winked at them. Sam did his math homework with a flashlight in his left hand and a toddler half-asleep against his ribs. 

When his page was full of eraser shavings and sure things, he put it all aside and pulled Anna into his lap.

“Back,” Anna said sleepily. “Back doon?”

“Hopefully,” Sam told her.

“Dad?”

“Yeah, Dad will be back soon.”

Anna’s frown went deep, and she put a little hand against Sam’s face. “Dam dad.”

Normally Sam would have laughed at that, taking the opportunity to pretend she was dissing John. But he knew what she was really saying. “Yeah, Sam’s sad,” he admitted and hoped she wouldn’t remember this ten or twenty years from now. “Sam’s really sad, Anna.”

“It okay,” Anna told him. And Sam’s heart nearly broke when she imitated one of Dean’s cocky smiles. The confidence and swagger looked all wrong on such a small face. Baby fat and grown up lies all mashed together.

“I think I just need to be sad right now, Ladybug,” he told her. “I don’t need you to fix it, okay?”

“Fid it, ok?” Anna repeated. She was looking expressively at him, but Sam didn’t have the mental or emotional fortitude to even try to understand it.

“Okay,” he said instead. He leaned his head back against the bench seat and felt exhaustion sweep over him. A few years ago, he’d have gone to sleep. It was easier than wading chest-deep in anxiety for hours. But with Anna here, he didn’t have that luxury anymore.

“Dammy. Dad?”

Sam closed his eyes tightly and fought the urge to scream or cry or punch something. He was too fucking tired to answer his sister the right way. “No,” he lied instead. “I’m not sad, Anna. Okay?” He didn’t open his eyes, didn’t lift his head. And he realized before she did that he was acting like their father.

“Mad,” Anna spoke with certainty this time. No curiosity, no trepidation. “Dowwy, Dam.”

“No, it’s-” Sam’s head came up off the seatback, and he sighed heavily. “I’m sorry, Anna,” he told her and held her little hands in his big, clumsy ones. “What should we do while we wait?” he asked with false cheer, hoping to undo his mistakes before they had time to settle in.

“Dam pick!” Anna exclaimed joyfully, bouncing twice in his lap.

Except Sam didn’t feel like playing. So coming up with a game to distract his little sister wasn’t going to be the special treat she thought it was. Still, he smiled at the knowledge that she was intending kindness. “Okay!” he agreed readily, eyes full of happy energy that he didn’t feel. “How about… constellations. You wanna look at the stars?”

Anna nodded eagerly. She pressed her face against the window, breath clouding against the cold glass. The way she craned her neck and squished herself into the glass made Sam laugh in spite of himself. “ Found daws!”

“ Stars ,” Sam corrected without thinking about it. “S-s-s-stars.”

Anna didn’t repeat him, though. “Wish,” she said instead. “Daw wish.”

Sam frowned in confusion for a second. “Did Dean tell you about shooting stars?” he asked, trying to think of a time Dean would have had that chance. 

He realized then how much time he’d been spending on his own lately. The second Dean was around to take care of Anna, Sam tended to hide away to commiserate with the insides of his headphones or the walls of a crappy closet-esque bedroom.

“Daw may wish!” Anna explained to him in a tone that said she really thought he didn’t know about this phenomenon.

“Yeah, that’s super cool,” he encouraged. “You make a wish on a star?”

“Yeah, wish on daw!” Anna told him solemnly. This time when she smiled big at him, it was a more innocent parody of Dean. “Dupa coo.”

Sam laughed out loud. “Super cool,” he echoed.

The two of them were quiet for a little while. Anna pressed her cheek against the window and struggled to see as much of the night sky as she could without opening the door. Sam just rested his temple on the cool glass and absently let his eyes flick between Anna and the darkening heavens.

Out of the silence a few minutes later, a small voice said, “Wish back doon.”

Sam’s stomach churned. “You wish they’d come back soon?” he clarified.

Anna took her face away from the window. Her cheek was red where it had nearly merged with the window. “Wish back doon,” she said again, looking down to her lap in a clear expression of sadness.

“They will be,” Sam said, then caught himself. Fuck, but Anna wasn’t the only one who acted like Dean when she didn’t know what else to do.

He wasn’t Dean. Dean, it seemed, could will good things into existence. Or maybe it was just that he was an adult and had spent his whole life in charge; somehow he got good at squeezing the goodness out of an ugly world. Sam was the beneficiary, and that was all.

When Dean said, Dad will be back soon , he was the point of contact. He could call Dad and let Anna say hi. He could text and find out exactly how long it would be before making any promises. He never waited in the car, ironically immobile, which meant he could usually distract his siblings pretty effectively if need be– playground, Anna? – library, Sammy?

When Sam said, They’ll be back soon , it was all hope. Hope he rarely felt. Hell, in order to feel it, he had to– Oh. 

“Hey, Anna, lemme show you something.”

Anna perked up at the promise of a new activity. She shuffled in his lap, knees digging into his legs in the most painful way possible. “Show dumming?” she asked sweetly.

“Yeah,” Sam affirmed. He folded his hands in front of himself. “This is called praying,” he said. “You know what praying is?”

“Paying?” Anna repeated. The concept certainly seemed new to her.

“Yeah. Like… like talking to God. You know who God is?”

Anna giggled, then tried to frown but couldn’t stop giggling. “Goddamn dunna-bitch!” Anna growled in a near-perfect imitation of Dean.

Sam closed his eyes and snorted as he tried to hold back his laughter. That was decidedly not where he had been going with this. But okay. Leave it to Dean. Dean, who would have found that hilarious and mortifying at the same time. “Okay, no,” Sam said when he’d gotten a handle on his reaction. Anna was looking cleverly at him, like she was ready to either make that her new favorite joke or never ever say it again– and her choice was dependent on his reaction. “No,” he said as sternly as he could. “You don’t say those words, okay? Those are… grown-up words,” he finished lamely. At Anna’s sheepish look, he added, “Okay?

She nodded, baby curls bouncing where they’d escaped her braid. “Ok. Gown-up. God id gown-up.”

“Well, God is for everyone,” Sam said clumsily. “God is… God is, like, a special grown-up you can talk to.”

“Oh,” Anna said. “Wike Dean.”

“Like Dean, but he can fix anything .”

“Dean fid innuh-fing,” Anna repeated in what she seemed to think was perfect agreement.

“Dean’s a person, though, Ladybug. Dean’s not God. It’s different.” Sam realized abruptly the debate he was trying to have with a two year old. “Oh my god.”

“God,” Anna said again, squinting at him in serious contemplation. “God gown-up, Dam.”

Sam took a deep, calming breath. She was fucking scolding him now? “Anna, I am grown up, okay? And that’s not what I meant. I meant… whatever.” He took another breath and sighed it out in frustration. “Just… listen. You pray when you’re worried, or when you need help. God can help anybody in the world. He knows everything. So if you’re scared, you can ask God to bring Dad and Dean back. Because he has the power for that.” 

Then it’s not your job to worry anymore, Sam thought. Then you’ve done something. And if you really try, you can believe it sometimes. You can believe that there’s someone really strong and definitively good who is looking out for your family.

“God bing Dee back doon?” Anna asked. And Sam couldn’t tell whether she’d missed the point.

“Yeah. Well, I mean…” It wasn’t really true that praying would influence the speed of Dean and Dad’s return. “Not really, but. I mean, it helps when you’re worried,” he tried to explain. “It’s for when you’re scared, Anna. It helps.”

Anna smiled politely at her floundering brother and said, “No fank you, Dam.”

And Sam was so goddamn surprised that he let the subject drop.

()()()

The first time Anna saw her brother drink demon blood, she didn’t know what it was.

Sam was drinking out of a flask, and he wasn’t hugging her like she wanted him to. She hadn’t seen him for two weeks, and before that he hadn’t said goodbye. He’d left her a note, and he’d run away. And Anna had spent the first two days trying so hard to be angry with him. But after that she’d just felt lonely.

“Drinkin’ in the daytime now, boy?” Bobby asked with his arms crossed over his chest, leaning back against the doorframe between his study and kitchen.

“You’re talkin’,” Sam told him and gestured at the many empty liquor bottles littered around the room.

Anna sat quietly on the couch, looking between the two of them. Sam didn’t usually talk to Bobby like that. But Bobby didn’t usually drink like he had been. And Sam didn’t usually disappear for two weeks at a time. Or maybe he did. Anna didn’t know what was true anymore. Never had, really.

Bobby looked mad. But all he did was shake his head and leave the room, mumbling about getting some air.

“Hey,” Sam said once he was gone. His voice was more energized than Anna had heard him since Dean. It felt wrong. The air around them was laden with sadness and stagnation. Sam was moving through it like a spring breeze. “How have things been?” he asked her more carefully. “You eating and sleeping?”

Anna shrugged, looking her brother up and down. He didn’t look the same. But she couldn’t name the changes, so it felt like she was the one who’d changed. It made her sad or angry or both. She wanted just to be mad at him, though, so that was the energy she attempted to give. “You left.”

Sam looked away from her. “I have to tell you something. But you can’t tell Bobby.”

At nine years old, Anna wasn’t exactly used to being given privileged information. She perked up and forgot to be angry. “Okay,” she agreed readily. “What?”

“I have a plan,” Sam told her in a near-whisper. “To get Dean back.”

Anna’s stomach flipped so aggressively that she nearly gagged. She couldn’t speak past the dryness of her mouth. But she had a hundred questions on the tip of her tongue. She felt her eyes well as she looked into Sam’s and tried to discern the truth of his words.

“It’s gonna take a little while,” he said earnestly. “And I need to do it alone. But I’m gonna get him back, Anna. I’m gonna save him.”

There was real conviction in her brother’s face. But to Anna he suddenly looked as little as her. Just because he believed it, didn’t mean it was true. She had never felt that way about Sam before. She started to cry and couldn’t decide whether to climb into his lap or go outside to get away from him.

Sam reached out and cupped the side of her face. He hadn’t initiated contact with her since Dean’s death. He’d been so far away that it was almost like he wasn’t alive at all. But now, with a flask in one hand, salvation hot in his stomach, he had his hand against her face. 

Sickly, Anna was grateful.

()()()

Dean was back, and Sam was still off, and something about it all was making Dean angry. Anna tried her best, but she couldn’t understand.

Castiel was an angel, a real angel from Heaven. But he wasn’t always very nice to Anna, and he was certainly not nice to Sammy. Still, Dean seemed to like him well enough. Or at least to not hate him, like he usually did when people were mean to Sam. Anna didn’t understand that very well either.

Until she heard the fight.

She’d woken up in an empty bed even though she distinctly remembered crawling in next to Dean after another wretched nightmare. Worried about the sureness of reality, she’d waited– wide awake– for her brothers to come back. If they didn’t…

But she was alarmed when Dean came inside and turned on all the lights. He didn’t ask her why she was up. He didn’t ask why she had been crying. He didn’t look at her long enough to notice. He just said, “Get your stuff, Rugrat. We’re leaving.”

Anna rubbed her eyes, trying to keep up. “It’s still dark,” she said softly and sniffled. But she scooted to the edge of the bed and threw her blanket off her shoulders, shivering in her Aladdin nightgown.

“Yeah, well,” Dean said with forced patience. He looked up from the duffel he was packing and gave her a tight smile. It was probably meant to be comforting but really just reminded her how messed up things had been lately. “We gotta get going, so get ready, okay?”

“Okay,” Anna murmured and started the search for a pair of socks.

Just as she was about to ask where he was, the motel room door opened a second time and Sam appeared. He took one look at the bag on the bed and said, “Dean, what are you doing?”

To Anna’s surprise, Dean completely ignored their brother. “We gotta go, he said,” she told Sam.

Sam’s eyebrows popped up even though he had to have pieced that information together already. He looked from Anna to Dean. “What, you’re just gonna take Anna and leave?”

“You don’t need me,” Dean drawled in a bitter, almost mocking tone. “You and Ruby go fight demons.”

Anna shrunk a bit where she knelt by her bag. Ruby. She’d known Sam was buddy-buddy with Ruby. But he’d told her that Ruby was helping him get Dean out of Hell. Dean was here now. Yet something was wrong? She had so many questions, but the tension in the air kept her from asking any of them.

“Dean, hold on, man,” Sam tried, moving over to stand in his peripheral vision. “C’mon, let me explain.”

Dean’s fists were clenched by his sides as he looked at Sam and nearly snarled. “If Anna wasn’t in the room right now, I would clock you one.” 

From the tension thrumming through his body, Anna thought he meant it. She stood up, ready to push her brothers apart if she needed to.

“Do you even know how far off the reservation you’ve gone?” Dean demanded, stepping in closer to their brother. His fists were unclenching, but his expression was iron.

Anna watched with wide eyes, still worried about the possibility of things getting physical.

Sam looked anxiously at her, and she stood a little straighter, ready to offer whatever he needed.

“What’s the matter?” Dean snapped. “Don’t want her to know? Is this really what you’ve been doing while I was downstairs? You left Anna at Bobby’s so you could hone your demon powers ?”

Anna looked at the floor. “He was trying to save you,” she whispered toward the dirty carpet.

“Well, he did a bang up job of that, didn’t he.” Dean spoke casually, but the words were scathing.

Sam’s eyes looked suddenly wet, and he didn’t seem to have anything to say in reply.

“I thought…” Anna frowned, green eyes welling with tears as she realized something. She looked at Sam, startled to see his own sad eyes fixed on her face. “I thought you saved Dean.”

Sam looked away, looked hard at the wall past Dean’s shoulder. “Castiel got to him first,” he admitted, but his voice was small and garbled.

Anna stared at him. He looked sad. But Dean was angry with him. Beyond angry, really. Dean was being mean . But Dean didn’t act mean for no reason. So Sam had done something pretty bad by meeting with Ruby and trying to get him out of Hell. 

No wonder Dean liked Castiel. The wonder was why he hated Sam all of a sudden. What had Sammy done? How far off the reservation had he gone?

()()()

One day, while Dean was gone, Ruby showed up at the motel of the week.

“Where’s your brother?” she asked Anna without any further acknowledgement.

Anna didn’t have to answer as Sam stepped out of the open bathroom door and said, “Ruby. Hey.”

“I thought you aren’t supposed to hang out with Ruby anymore,” Anna said cautiously, looking anxiously between Sam and his friend.

Sam sighed. “She’s helping me, Anna.”

“But Dean said-”

“Wow,” Ruby purred, “Dean’s word really is gospel around here, isn’t it.”

Anna frowned, not quite understanding what Ruby could mean by that. “Sammy…”

Sam looked at her and bit his lip for a second before saying, “I need her, Ladybug.”

It was hard to comprehend the very idea of Sam needing something that Dean didn’t want him to have. But Anna looked in Sam’s eyes and could see the conviction there. He was telling her the truth. But Dean said Ruby was bad news. So Sam needed something that was bad?

“Dean doesn’t like her,” she said dumbly. 

“Dean doesn’t have to know everything,” Sam retorted. He looked at Ruby and asked simply, “You got it?”

Ruby held her hand out, and Sam put his flask there. He glanced nervously toward Anna. “Not here,” he requested, shuffling his feet and rolling his shoulders. “Do it outside.”

Ruby snorted but moved for the door. She looked derisively at Anna. “You’re a regular mini-Dean, aren’t you, Peanut?”

Anna’s eyes filled unexpectedly at the nickname. Ruby couldn’t know that John used to call her that. But that didn’t make it sting any less to hear the word again. “Screw yourself,” she said coldly, hoping to indeed sound like a mini-Dean.

Ruby actually smiled at her then, and it was almost warm.

Anna didn’t understand.

()()()

Castiel was around more and more. 

Anna liked his trenchcoat and his messy hair. But she didn’t really like him otherwise. Except for how he’d gotten Dean out of Hell. She had nothing but gratitude for that.

On the day Sam and Cas met, there was another angel. His name was Uriel, which Anna couldn’t quite say right. But that was okay, because he wasn’t there to talk to her. In fact, he didn’t spare her a glance.

“Sam Winchester,” Castiel said. “The boy with the demon blood.”

And Anna didn’t understand why he’d said that, nor did she know what it meant. 

But what she did understand was the look of utter devastation on Sammy’s face. His body language was instantly changed. He looked small, somehow, and lost. He gave up on trying to shake the angel’s hand.

Anna grabbed the back of his pant leg and held on, hoping to bolster him somehow. She fully expected Dean to come to Sam’s defense. And when he didn’t, she frowned so hard it ached. What was going on with her family? No one was right anymore.

The angels had demands. They made threats. It sounded like they were planning to kill a lot of people. 

They were bad.

But they spoke for God, and they told Dean that Sam was bad, and he believed them.

Anna didn’t understand.

()()()

She was suffering from constant headaches and stomach aches by the time Dean sat her down on Bobby’s couch and crouched in front of her.

“Listen, Munchkin,” he said. “We need to talk about what’s been going on.”

“You mean about Sammy?” Anna asked earnestly, picking at a hole in the knee of her leggings.

“Yeah, Sweetheart, about Sammy,” Dean affirmed and took a deep breath. He tapped the underside of her chin with a knuckle and asked, “Why don’t you tell me what you know, and we’ll go from there.”

Anna shrugged and sighed. “I don’t think I know anything,” she told her brother tiredly. “He’s doing something bad because he wanted to get you out of… there. And he’s friends with Ruby, but you hate Ruby. And the angels don’t like him even though he prays.”

Dean’s frown was pained. “It’s, uh, pretty complicated stuff, huh, Rugrat?”

Anna’s eyes were damp. “Yeah,” she sniffled. “I don’t get it, Dean. I feel stupid.”

“You are not stupid,” Dean promised her, leaning a little closer to see into her face as she ducked her head. “Hey,” he said and cupped her cheek until she looked at him. “You’re just a kid, Anna. This is really grown-up stuff. It’s hard to understand, even for me and Sammy and Uncle Bobby, okay?”

Anna pursed her lips and sniffled, trying to keep from fully crying. “Really?” she asked and chewed on her lip. 

“Yeah,” Dean breathed. “Really.” He sat down on the floor in front of her, groaning as his knees cracked. “Look, Sweetheart, I’m gonna try and explain this, okay? But be patient with me, cause I don’t really know how to do this.”

“Okay,” Anna agreed, voice soft. She wiped her eyes discreetly with her hands, feeling a little more steady just by the calmness of Dean’s voice.

“Okay,” he said in an equally soft voice. “Okay,” he said again, this one more of a mental check. “So, when I was gone, Sammy left you at Bobby’s. He did that because he thought he could get me out of Hell.” Dean was looking at her seriously, but he was so present that it was the most comforting thing Anna had seen from him in a minute. “He met with Ruby, and she told him that if he used his psychic mojo, he could save me.”

“I thought he could,” Anna interrupted in bafflement. If Sam couldn’t save Dean, then why had he believed he could?

“I know, kiddo, hang on.” Dean breathed deeply again, itching absently at his flannel-clad left arm. “Ruby’s a demon. You knew that?”

“Yeah,” Anna said, though she’d forgotten until now. It was hard to remember things that she’d learned over a year ago and seen no evidence of in the meantime.

“Well, demons are bad, Anna.”

“I know.”

“And sometimes they’re really manipulative. You know that word?”

Anna frowned, “Kind of.”

“It means they trick people. They make you think they’re doing something nice, but it’s just because they want something from you. I don’t know what Ruby wants from Sammy, but she’s got him thinking she’s nice when really she’s not. You understand that?”

“I think so,” Anna said carefully. “Is it like in Looney Tunes when Bugs Bunny pretends to be someone else? And so Elmer Fud doesn’t notice it’s him?”

“Sort of,” Dean said with half a smile on his face. It faded almost immediately, though. “See, Rugrat, Ruby told Sam he could get me out of Hell if he listened to her. And then she fed him…” Dean hesitated, scratching harder at his arm as he seemed to struggle with something he didn’t want to say.

“What?” Anna asked in a small voice. She wasn’t sure she wanted him to say it either. Even if a part of her already knew.

“Demon blood. Ruby fed Sam demon blood.”

Anna’s eyes went wide, her mouth falling open. “How?” she asked after a minute passed in near silence.

“What do you mean, how?” Dean countered, tilting his head slightly and then clenching his jaw as he seemed to understand her question a second later. “Ah,” he stammered before she could answer. “Well, ah, you see, that’s the thing, Anna. She told him he needed to drink demon blood in order to help people. And Sammy wasn’t exactly in his right mind, so he… he drank it.”

“Oh,” Anna uttered, feeling completely sick to her stomach now.

“Yeah,” Dean said, staring at the ugly carpet underneath him. And for just a moment, it felt like they were on even ground. Like Dean was just a kid in this too. Like he really had meant it earlier when he said he didn’t understand the things that were happening in their family. But then he looked up at Anna, and he had a fiercer expression. “She manipulated him, Anna. And he went for it. But now the angels are saying that Sam is going down a dark path. So I gotta save him. You get it?”

Anna nodded quickly. “I’ll help you.”

“No,” Dean told her shortly. “I mean, thanks, Rugrat. It’s sweet you wanna help. But no. This is angels and demons. It’s a holy war. And I know you don’t know what that means. But it’s too big, Honey.”

“But-” Anna’s expression was pinched as she struggled to come up with a convincing reason that he should let her become a bigger part of this mess. “But he’s– Dean, he’s Sammy.”

Dean looked sickly but clenched his jaw even tighter. “Yeah, I know he is. But the thing is, Anna, that he ain’t on the right side at the moment.”

Anna frowned, worried about what Dean might be insinuating. “He’s on the us side,” she argued. “Aren’t we good?”

Dean hesitated for a second, which she’d not been expecting. It made Anna feel like throwing up. “Of course, we’re good,” he said, though. “But Ruby isn’t. And she’s using Sammy to do bad things.”

“But he’s smart. You always said he’s smart.”

“Smart don’t really make a difference in this context, Anna,” Dean admitted. He scrubbed a hand over his face and looked world-weary and just plain tired when she could see him again.

“But he’s good. You always say Sammy is too good for his own good.”

“Yeah,” Dean said more shortly. “Yeah, that’s kinda the problem here, Runt.”

For once, the nickname almost felt like a jab. Like he was calling her small, too small to understand. Maybe he was tired of explaining things to her that he didn’t even fully understand himself. Maybe he shouldn’t have to.

Dean took another deep breath, and the hardness in his face seemed to ease. “Sammy’s an easy one to manipulate. You tell him someone’s in danger and he can help, he jumps on board, no fucking concern for himself.”

“Oh,” Anna murmured. But she didn’t understand. 

How could helping people ever be bad? Wasn’t that what Dad and Dean had both died for? Wasn’t that the entire purpose of all their lives? Wasn’t helping people all they were? Were they not good?

“Yeah,” Dean said. 

He seemed to think she understood. Anna let him.

()()()

Anna was exhausted from all the thinking she’d been doing when Sam asked her if she’d like to go to the playground. So she said no. 

“Uh… what?” he said in utter shock, pausing on his way to the door. He’d been so sure of her answer, and he’d been wrong. What else was he wrong about?

“I don’t feel like it,” Anna said defensively. She was sitting on the floor in Bobby’s study, surrounded by legos that she’d dumped out and barely touched.

“You don’t feel like going to the playground ?” Sam clarified.

“No, not really,” Anna repeated impatiently. “I just wanna do legos right now.”

“Uh… okay,” Sam allowed. He started for the door again, then paused again and turned around. “Out of curiosity, Anna. Are you feeling okay?”

Anna sighed shortly and looked up at him with bags under her eyes. “Are you?” she demanded.

“Yeah,” Sam told her, and this time he was the defensive one. “Why are you asking me that? What the hell did Dean say about me?”

Anna wrinkled her nose in anger at the slightest dig against their oldest brother. “He didn’t say anything about you,” she lied. “I just don’t wanna go to the playground with you.”

“Oh, you don’t want to go with me ,” Sam said more calmly but with a bitter sense of understanding in his tone. He was nodding, arms crossed over his chest and a cold look on his face. “But Dean didn’t say anything about me,” he said dubiously. “Alright, Ladybug.”

Anna grit her teeth. “I thought you saved him,” she said, remembering how Sam had looked the first time she’d said that to him. She wanted to make him sad, and she knew the second after she spoke that it was sick that she’d wanted that.

Sam didn’t look sad this time, though. “I tried,” he snapped at her. “I tried harder than you will ever know, Anna Grace. And I’m sorry that I couldn’t fix everything for you. But maybe it wasn’t about you.”

Anna’s lip wobbled. She stared at Sam’s eyes, darker than normal, pupils blown. She couldn’t place the changes, but she knew something was wrong with him. “You mean because it was about you.”

Sam looked taken aback, his arms falling away from his chest. “Anna, what did Dean say to you?” he asked again. This time he sounded hurt.

It took her a minute to decide, but she eventually relented. “He said Ruby mapulated you or something, and you believed her because you wanted to help people,” she confessed. “But Ruby is a demon, Sammy. And demons are bad.”

“Things aren’t that simple,” Sam told her, rushing to sit across from her, nothing but a pile of legos separating them.

And where Anna had thought Dean’s explanation too complicated, Sam was telling her he’d oversimplified things.

“But he said you drank demon blood,” Anna whispered in fresh horror. “That’s bad, Sam. That’s really bad.”

“It sounds like it,” Sam admitted. “I know it sounds bad, Anna. But what it does is good. It helps me get stronger so I can take down the bad guys. I’m gonna get Lilith by drinking it.”

“Who is Lilith?” Anna asked impatiently. She rubbed her eyes on her sleeve as they were burning and slightly teary again.

“She’s the demon that killed Dean,” Sam told her quietly, though his voice was brimming with rage. “And if I do this, I’ll be strong enough to take her out.”

Anna looked at the legos in front of her, small pieces that looked like nothing all come apart this way. “Dean’s back, though.”

“But he spent forty– He spent four months in Hell, Anna. And look what it did to him.”

Anna wrinkled her nose again, this time trying not to cry. She’d been careful not to confront the changes in Dean. The way he disappeared into the bathroom more and more often, woke up sweating in the middle of the night breathing like he’d just run a marathon, and was always scratching or pressing on his arms like there was something underneath his sleeves driving him crazy or grounding him. Dean wasn’t right either. Dean was scared. All the time scared, and she wasn’t sure she’d ever seen him that way before.

“This isn’t just revenge, Anna. Lilith is trying to do something really bad.”

“What?” Anna pushed. “What can she do worse than you’re doing?”

Sam made a face of utter frustration. “What I’m doing isn’t bad, Anna. Dean feels that way because he won’t listen to me explain it. But Dean’s not God, and he’s not Dad. He just acts that way.”

Anna couldn’t even speak past her shock. She’d never heard Sam talk like that, certainly not about Dean and certainly not to her. It felt like proof that he’d changed. Or proof that Dean had. It was like she lived with a couple of strangers, and Anna felt suddenly so afraid and so alone that all she wanted was her father. Her eyes welled with tears once again.

Sam breathed measuredly and then said tersely, “I’m sorry, Anna. I know you’re probably confused. But what I’m doing is helping people.”

“How?”

“I’m exorcising demons,” Sam said. “I do it with my mind, and it doesn’t hurt the vessel.”

“What’s a vessel?” Anna asked, tired and impatient and sounding just like her brothers even to her own ears.

“The person who’s possessed.”

“Oh. I guess that is good.”

“Yeah.”

“But it’s demon blood.”

“Yeah, and it helps. It gives me strength, so I can keep helping people.”

“And so you can kill the demon that killed Dean,” Anna inferred.

“To stop her from ending the world.”

Anna’s stomach dropped. “Ending the world,” she repeated in quiet terror.

Sam swallowed and leaned forward, reaching for Anna’s hands. But she pulled back, afraid of him for just that second. “She won’t do it,” he promised eagerly. “I’m gonna stop her, Ladybug. I won’t let anyone hurt you or Dean ever again.”

A memory came to her unbidden. A helpless feeling and an image of a shooting star. Another town, the spirit of a priest, and Sam begging Dean to believe in angels. I do pray everyday. 

“Why don’t you pray anymore, Sam?” she asked quietly. “Didn’t it work?”

Sam swallowed hard and looked at Anna’s legos in tense silence.

“You used to pray,” Anna pressed, scrambling up onto her knees. Suddenly she had to know. “Why did you stop?”

Sam looked at her, and his pupils looked smaller, more normal. “I guess, I realized who I was praying to,” he said finally. “No one looked out for us, Anna. We had to look out for ourselves.”

“Dean did.”

“And who looked out for Dean?”

“We did,” Anna fought, tears spilling from her eyes. She stood up and clenched her fists at her sides.

“Anna…” Sam hung his head. “That’s exactly the point.”

And she didn’t understand. But Anna didn’t think it mattered one way or the other.

()()()

There were promises and lies as the months wore on. Anna turned ten, and Dean had fewer dreams. Sam stopped drinking demon blood but he and Dean still butted heads at every turn. Castiel seemed to be a permanent addition to their lives.

Nobody was happy.

Then one day, Anna was coloring a picture of Pikachu when Bobby came in and asked her to go upstairs. She didn’t care to ask why, especially since she could tell there was something a little weird going on. So, Anna just put her crayons away and carried them and her coloring book up to her room. Not five minutes later, the Impala pulled in the yard, and she was racing back down the stairs to greet her family.

Bobby was waiting halfway between the stairs and the front door and waved her away. “Get back up there,” he insisted, pointing sternly toward the upper floor.

Anna looked at his grizzled face for half a minute before she caught a whiff of fear in his eyes. “What happened to them?”

“Nothin’ that concerns you,” Bobby told her and took a few steps toward her, still pointing up the stairwell. “Get back up there.”

“They’re mine ,” Anna snapped back at him. She came off the bottom step and balled her hands into fists. “Everything concerns me.”

Bobby didn’t react outwardly to her new tone or sass. All he did was let his arm fall to his side and fidget tiredly with his cap. “Can’t say I didn’t try,” he finally mumbled and turned toward the door as it opened.

Dean and Sam came inside, and Anna noticed the hasty change to Bobby’s posture. He looked casual where a moment ago he’d been tense.

Dean took one look at Anna and seemed to know she wasn’t supposed to be there. And suddenly she understood. He’d told Bobby to send her away. Something really bad was going to happen. Something Sam didn’t know about but everyone else did. Everyone but Anna. 

She felt lonely and cold again, like she used to when they were kids and Sam dozed off in the back of the Impala. She couldn’t move, but she wasn’t putting on any kind of mask, either. She got the distinct feeling that she was going to ruin something. She wished that feeling wasn’t so familiar to her.

“Thanks for shakin’ a tail,” Bobby said easily and nodded toward the basement door across the room.

“Yeah,” Sam said. “No problem. What’s goin’ on?”

“Easier if I just show you,” Bobby said and led the way toward the stairs. 

Dean trailed behind them both and took Anna’s arm when he got close enough. “Upstairs. Now,” he told her seriously. He looked scary. He looked like Dad. 

So Anna nodded mutely even as her eyes grew wet. 

She had the thought, sudden and unbidden, that Bobby and Dean were going to kill her brother. But she watched the basement door close and didn’t do a damn thing to stop it. She couldn’t move to go upstairs or down, couldn’t think past the possibility that she would never see Sam again, couldn’t breathe deeply enough to stop her head from spinning. She froze there, fingers and toes gone numb, waiting for a gunshot that never came.

Instead Bobby came back up a couple minutes later, and Anna could hear Sam’s shouts for the moment that the door was cracked. But she couldn’t make out any words.

“You oughta be upstairs,” Bobby told her tiredly on his way to pour himself a glass of whiskey. When she didn’t move, he sat heavily at his desk and just watched her for a minute. “Take a breath there, kid. Your brothers’ll be alright.”

Anna tried her best to get herself under control. She breathed in through her nose and out through her mouth like Dean used to make her do when she got upset. But she couldn’t feel her hands or feet, and her brain was like a mass of sludge inside her cranium.

“Anna,” Bobby called, standing back up to help. “You know where you are right now?”

She thought, Uncle Bobby’s, and the thought was so slow and stretchy that it felt a bit like it would never end. But the room was warm. She focused her eyes on the wooden floor covered in ugly worn carpets and dust. She smelled mothballs and whiskey. She turned her head toward Bobby and didn’t say anything but meandered toward his desk until she could sit with her back against the side of it.

Bobby just sat back down in his chair and watched her for the few minutes it took before Dean emerged from the basement.

Anna scrambled upright when she saw her brother. For one thing, he was the person she could pester for information. For another thing, he’d told her in no uncertain terms to go upstairs and she had not obeyed him. She watched him nervously. 

But when he looked at her, Dean just appeared tired. He gestured for the whiskey and drank two shots in quick succession. Anna was reminded again of their father.

“Take it easy,” Bobby told him when Dean gestured for a third drink. “You got a little girl here who deserves a couple answers.”

Anna looked gratefully at him and then warily at Dean. He wasn’t normally someone she was afraid of upsetting. But he was different lately, harder to read.

Dean sighed and pivoted his chair so he could look at Anna. “You remember what I said about Sam. That he was done drinking demon blood?”

Anna nodded sullenly. She knew what was about to be said.

“He lied. He’s been sneakin’ around, lyin’ to me, suckin’ down more blood. Him and Ruby against the world.”

Bobby cleared his throat, but when Anna looked over, he was looking at Dean. And he didn’t look pleased. “That ain’t the whole of it,” he said firmly.

“Yeah, well, it’s enough for now,” Dean said tersely and got out of his chair. He paced away from them both. He ran a hand through his hair, leaving it mussed. “I’m goin’ to get some air. Anna, listen to Bobby.”

Anna sighed shakily and watched the front door slam shut. Her chin wobbled, eyes damp. But there was no sense in crying. Instead she made for the basement. And Bobby didn’t stop her.

The panic room Bobby had introduced them to shortly after Dean returned from Hell had, it seemed, become Sam’s temporary prison cell. The window was barred and stood a foot above her head. But Anna could hear Sam’s frustrated speech through the door. So she knocked cautiously and waited for him to recognize the sound.

“Anna?” Sam asked in a rush before footsteps came quickly toward the door. His voice was soft and careful when he spoke again, “Hey, Ladybug. What the hell are you doing down here?”

Anna sniffled. She wanted to see Sam’s face. He sounded so much gentler than Dean right now. So much more like her brother. She missed her brother. She missed everybody. “I wanted you,” she said childishly. “You always explain better than Dean.” 

True when it came to math and reading and science. But a lie about most other things. Dean spoke Anna’s language with a little more literacy. But Sam spoke all the others and made a damn good translator.

“Anna, let me out,” Sam requested after a few seconds of silence. “I don’t belong in here. You know that.”

Anna’s heart ached. She came so close to unlatching the door. But she trusted Dean and Bobby just a little bit more than she trusted Sam at the moment. So she backed away from the door. “I can’t,” she said in a tiny voice. “I’m sorry, Sammy. I miss you.”

“Let me out, Anna,” Sam pleaded. “I’m right here. You just have to let me out.”

Anna stared miserably at the iron between herself and Sam. She could hear his desperation and didn’t have a clue what to do with it. But the basement door slammed above them, and Dean shouted her name down the stairs. Anna scurried for her oldest brother, recognizing the anger in his voice.

“Did you open the panic room?” Dean demanded as soon as she reached him.

“No,” Anna snapped at him. “I’m not as stupid as you think I am.”

“Hey,” Dean called after her as she headed for the sanctuary of Bobby’s backyard. “I never said that.”

Anna scoffed loudly enough that she felt sure Dean could hear it. But she didn’t slow down until she was sitting in the grass outside.

Then she looked up at the clouds, watching them drift patiently across the sky. She wondered if the clouds ever felt helpless. If they got to choose which way to go. If they even wanted to live in the sky at all.

Anna looked at the sun for as long as she could stand it. She thought about asking God for help. 

But she knew three things with renewed and tender certainty:

Sam was in agony. Dean was not God. And there was no one big to pray to who would save them.

()()()

It felt like weeks that Sam stayed locked up in the basement.

But Anna thought it couldn’t have been more than a day or two. She couldn’t stand to sleep or play knowing he was stuck down there. So she brought her pillow and blanket down and lay outside the door.

Once, she heard him make horrible choking sounds and had to run for Dean and Bobby. When they came down, they said he might be faking it. But Anna begged them to go in and help. Dean didn’t hesitate for much longer.

She had to cover her eyes when they held Sam down and put a belt in his mouth. She ran upstairs and threw up in the bathroom sink until she was dizzy and her ears were ringing. It was hard not to abandon her post after that. But it was harder to leave Sam unsupervised.

So Anna sat against the wall for hours, dozing off now and then. Dean brought her juice and poptarts, and tried to convince her to come upstairs. He apologized for being a dick too. But Anna wouldn’t say much to him. 

It wasn’t that she blamed him for this exactly. It was just that she didn’t understand why he was focused on her while Sam was talking to himself and crying.

Dean and Bobby had a fight upstairs. Their hundredth one in the last 24 hours. Dean went outside again, and Bobby came downstairs to check on things.

“Can’t stay down here forever,” he told Anna calmly just before he left the basement.

Anna tilted her face toward the iron door of the panic room. “Neither can you, Sammy,” she whispered. She could hear Sam’s fevered mumbling and groaning still. She teared up at the sound. 

More and more, she found herself unable to care about what Sam had done or believed or said. She didn’t think it mattered. She didn’t think there was anything in the world that her brother could have done or said to deserve to suffer like he was.

Dean had said once, a while ago, that Sammy was easy to trick because of how badly he wanted to be good. Sam had said to Anna that he was doing everything to save her and Dean and other people too.

Anna stood up in a rush of determination and unlatched the panic room door. “Sammy?” she called nervously. She shivered as she pulled the heavy door wide open. 

Sam was lying on a cot that was entirely too small for him, his feet bare and hair greasy. He looked downtrodden and sick. Sick like people got when they were about to die. 

Anna stepped inside the room, frowning briefly at the devil’s trap as she crossed into it. She smelled sweat and urine but didn’t let it deter her. She reached her brother’s side and put her hand on his quivering stomach, cringing at the sweat coating his t-shirt and the heat still coming through it. “Sammy, come upstairs,” Anna begged, her hand shaking against his stomach. “I’ll help you feel better.”

Sam blinked at her, eyes hazy and depressed. “Anna?” he breathed like he didn’t totally believe she was there.

Anna nodded. “Yeah, Sammy,” she said gently. “It’s me. Come upstairs, okay?” She moved her shaky hand to his arm and tugged until he started to sit up. 

The ceiling fan above them cast miniscule light in the darkening night, but it was enough to create shadows of its own blades. Anna watched them tornado over her and Sam’s feet, the symbols of the devil’s trap falling in and out of shadow.

“Come on,” she encouraged her brother. “Come on, Sammy.”

He leaned into her shoulder for a minute, then seemed to bolster himself. He held his own weight as they walked upstairs. Nobody was in the study, for which Anna was grateful. She wasn’t sure she could have explained herself very well. And Sam was in no shape to speak for either of them.

“Here,” Anna said and pushed her brother gently into the couch. She chewed nervously at her lip, wringing her hands behind her back. She shifted her weight from one foot to the other and watched Sam rub tiredly at his red-rimmed eyes. “I can make tea,” she offered. “Tea is good when you’re sick.”

There was something heartwrenching in Sam’s eyes when he looked up at her.

“Okay,” Anna breathed shakily. She headed for the kitchen and started water in Bobby’s tea kettle. She dug through the cupboards until she found some teabags. They were expired by six months, and she didn’t know what the hell kind of a flavor Lady Grey was, but Anna figured tea was tea. She tapped her foot restlessly as she waited for the water to boil, glancing anxiously toward the doorway every so often.

Finally the kettle whistled, and Anna hastened to pour it over the teabag in a chipped blue mug from Bobby’s cupboard.

“I don’t know if I did a good job,” she narrated as she carried the mug carefully into the living room. But she stopped at the sight of an empty couch. “Sammy?” she called. She turned back and set the tea on the kitchen table. “Sam!”

In a moment of panic, Anna raced upstairs to check all the bedrooms. She looked in the panic room again, searched the whole ground floor of the house, even looked under the freaking coffee table. Finally, she let her face crumple. Sam had ditched her.

She ran outside to find Bobby or Dean, knowing damn well that she was going to be in huge trouble. But what she found was more devastating than a lecture by a million miles.

Sam stood, barely vertical, with Bobby’s shotgun pointed at his stomach. “You can’t do it,” he said, though his voice was so unsteady it was unclear if he believed what he was saying.

Bobby shook his head in pure sadness. “We’re tryin’ to help you, Sam.”

Anna stepped closer, unsure if either of them even knew she was there. She watched Sam grab the barrel of the gun and pull it higher so that it settled directly over his heart. She stumbled closer and tried to form the words to stop what she feared was about to happen.

“Then shoot,” Sam told Bobby with his face downturned.

The strangled sound that Anna made was entirely involuntary. But it made both men turn and acknowledge her. She felt tears drip down her face– tears she hadn’t known were forming.

Sam couldn’t die like this. Sam couldn’t want to die like this. Sam was sick, and she was going to make him better. She’d made him tea. She’d let him out. 

Had she let him out only to watch him die? 

Sam looked right at her, and his eyes filled. He gave her a big, watery smile. “It’s okay, Anna,” he promised in that same shaky voice. “Everything’s gonna be okay.”

Anna looked from him to Bobby, who was now meeting her eyes. He shook his head minutely at her while she just begged him silently not to hurt her brother. But while neither of them was looking at him, Sam yanked on the shotgun and was quick to bash Bobby’s temple with it.

Anna shrieked as she watched Bobby fall to the ground. She looked at Sam with renewed fear and backed away from him a few steps. She would never have believed he could do that to Bobby. Maybe he was the monster Dean had called him earlier. Maybe even monsters felt pain.

“I’m not gonna hurt you, Anna,” Sam told her sadly. He shook his head at her and looked regretfully down at Bobby. “Take care of Uncle Bobby, okay?” he asked and waited for her frantic nod before he jogged away from the both of them.

Anna stared at Bobby’s prone form on the ground. She looked at Sam’s retreating back until the darkness swallowed him. She looked up at the stars, blinking and burning in the beautiful sky. 

“Come back soon,” she said her bloody prayer and waited.

La Fin