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Family had been a foreign concept to Rowena for a very long time.
She’d had one, once upon a time- two little sisters constantly underfoot, a baby brother, a father who drank and a mother who’d died too young. The memories are distant now, hazy with time and grief, and Rowena rarely indulges herself with thoughts of a tannery and children’s laughter and the smell of Scottish highlands.
Then there had been Fergus- a son born to a girl too young, too ambitious, too naïve. She’d found magic and it made her hungry, hungry for things she’d never had before and suddenly craved beyond measure. She’d left her son when he needed her most in search of a life that offered her better things with just the snap of her fingers with barely a thought, just the faint sense of nausea curdling her belly as he slept, none the wiser, beneath the quilt she’d sewn herself while pregnant with him.
For centuries she’d been alone, chasing luxury and knowledge and power. And that had been enough for her for a long time, until a longing kind of ache began to nudge its way beneath her breastbone, becoming more and more insistent as time passed. Slowly, she reached tendrils out- little hesitant brushes of curiosity.
And then she finds Fergus, nestled inside the Russian nesting doll that was Crowley, King of Hell, and something inside her…shifts. Settles, for the first time in nearly three hundred years.
In contrast, family had been drilled into Sam for as long as he could remember. Dean had always filled in the gaps John had left behind, in the spaces Mary no longer occupied, and eventually just the two of them had been all the family they’d needed, as broken and in desperate need of repair as they were at times.
When Rowena began to spend more and more time in the bunker, essentially joining Team Free Will (even if she would never admit it aloud), it rubs her raw, how deeply and easily they care for one another. She hides behind snark and razor sharp wit, but Sam sees through it easily- sees the way fear sits like a stone between her ribs. Fear that allowing herself to sink into the affection offered before her will make her weak; will limit her, somehow.
It isn’t until she’s up late- insomnia plagued her, pushing her from beside a slumbering Sam to pad the halls, ending up curled up with a mug of tea in a chair in the library- and Castiel sinks down across from her. They don’t speak, just sitting in silence together in the late night. It’s comfortable, and Rowena dozes off in the chair, empty mug against her chest, safe with Castiel in the room with her.
It's a slow, gradual shift- scotch with Dean on Saturdays, picnics with Jack at a local park on Sunday mornings, excursions to the local tea shop with Castiel. When Claire visits, she and Rowena go shot for shot until they’re giggling messes, Sam hauling Rowena over his shoulder to bed while Dean takes Claire to her room. Eventually, Rowena inhabits space in the bunker that feels normal- natural. Like she belongs.
And it isn’t until years later, in the house she and Sam had picked out together, with one daughter asleep on Sam’s chest, the other two curled up against either side of her, Dean and Castiel making quiet conversation in the kitchen as they cleaned the dinner dishes, Jack and Claire at the breakfast bar with bottles of beer, that Rowena realizes how deeply rooted their family had grown in her heart.
She links her fingers with Sam’s, squeezing gently, and smiles at him over their daughters’ heads.