Just as a reminder: There is much more in this 'verse available under "tolakasa" at AO3, LiveJournal, and Dreamwidth.

Unto Us

The phone buzzed.

Dean slapped the alarm clock twice before he realized the noise was coming from his phone, and then he tried to answer it before his brain kicked into gear and recognized it as the text notification. The screen blinded him, and was bright enough that it pierced Marcy's sleep and made her roll over.

It was a text from Sam. He squinted at the screen, trying to force sleep-fuzzed eyes to focus on those fucking tiny letters. It was the glare and small size, of course, he was not getting old enough to need glasses.

Hospital not false alarm this time let you know when here.

Well, that woke him up.

His niece was on her way.

He pushed himself up to look at Marcy's clock. 2:07. "Good luck, Sammy," he whispered. He did not envy his brother right now.

He had a thought, and reached for his phone and squinted at the screen again. Saturday. Great. That meant the kids would be at home, so he'd be putting up with questions all day. Just what he needed, another round of "But how did the baby get in Aunt Hannah?" He was still on probation from the last time he'd tried to answer that question.

Hannah had decided that she didn't want anybody with her but Sam—and then, in that stubborn-ass Reynolds way, she'd put her foot down. Hard. The plan was that Anne and Third would be there for moral support and backup in case Hannah did something drastic to Sam, but nobody else was supposed to show up at the hospital until they got a call inviting them, which wouldn't be until after the kid arrived. Even then, Dean had the impression that nobody but him, Marcy, and Firth was getting immediate visiting privileges. There had been mutterings from some of the sisters, but it made perfect sense to him. He sure as hell didn't want to visit during the big event. After, sure, and if Sam had asked, he would've lingered in the waiting room to provide moral support, but being in the delivery room? He wasn't even sure he'd want to be in the delivery room if it was Marcy. He would, because that was the husband's job, but want to?

There were perks to not getting the kids till after they were toilet-trained, that's all.

He was just glad she'd gone early instead of late. Much longer, and Sam might have actually gone insane.

Since Christmas, it had been rough—and not just on Hannah and Sam. Sam had spent so many years trying to have as little contact with the Reynolds family as possible that he just wasn't comfortable enough yet to risk venting at anybody other than Dean, and the calls—usually when Sam was out exploring, trying to find the targets of Hannah's latest cravings—were getting desperate. And since he wasn't bright enough to let a sleeping argument lie, he'd wound up sleeping over here a couple of more times.

Granted, that was pretty normal. More than one of Dean's brothers-in-law had wound up sleeping here a night or two; even the tiniest of their spare rooms had a real bed and was more comfy than Firth's couch, which had been the only option before Dean and Marcy built this place. And Dean and Marcy didn't ask questions when an in-law showed up needing a place to sleep—unlike Anne or the sisters, who tended to interrogate first, then give blistering lectures on "Supporting Your Wife During Pregnancy: You're Fucking Up." Even Deb had wound up here once, when Ally was pregnant with Emma, and why that hadn't taught them both that Ally should never be the one carrying the kids...

Of course, Sam was the only one who'd wound up here after repeated fights over breastfeeding, but Sammy always did have to be special.

It had been funny, something else to tease him over—and then, last week, Sam had said, "You don't know how lucky you are, not having to put up with this shit."

Dean hadn't disconnected a call that quick since the time Kara managed to get into the bottom drawer of his office desk and tried to make herself a screwdriver. If he hadn't—

If he hadn't, he would have said something that would have reduced his and Sam's relationship to something less than Sam and Marcy's. Maybe even less than Marcy and Sean's.

Luck didn't involve watching the woman you loved torture herself over what she'd never have. Luck didn't involve baby-shower-induced nightmares so bad she woke up screaming and flailing, something he hadn't seen in ten years of marriage. Then, when she was finally awake, she just huddled in on herself, as uncommunicative as she used to accuse him of being, for hours.

She'd gotten through the first one, somehow, but probably more because it was the day before Christmas Eve than anything else; she'd had the Christmas madness to distract her. The second...

He'd had to keep her out of work for a week after New Year's, even though it meant reading Sean the riot act and shouting down Mike and Third and Firth, just because he couldn't pry her out of bed, let alone trust her to drive in. He'd finally had to set the Stooges on her, which was not something he did lightly to anybody.

And when he'd finally gotten her to talk to him, it started all over again, the convincing: that it didn't matter to him, that he didn't care that she'd never give birth, that adopting was all he needed, that he wasn't going to suddenly want to play daddy to Ally and Deb's brood just because of some DNA, that he was not and would not ever be like her bastard ex. Things he'd thought they'd dealt with years ago.

Luck? Luck had nothing to do with it.

Even these days, Dean could hold his own against ghosts and poltergeists. Maybe even vampires. But this fight was against old scars and nightmares of abandonment and dead babies that made Sam's old demon nightmares look positively easy.

Demons could be exorcised. Grief and trauma, not so much.

It was a fight Dean intended to win, because nothing hurt his family and got away with it—but the thing hurting his wife was family. He hadn't exactly been trained for this.

There had been nightmares and crying jags before, every time a child was born into the family, every time one of her sisters became a mother again. Much as Marcy might want to pretend, only her physical wounds were pale neat scars; the deeper ones were still half-healed, at best. It wasn't that she didn't love the kids—their own, or the nephews and nieces—or even that she wanted a different life. There was just a lot of grief in there that she'd never, ever been able to get over.

That it was Hannah, her baby sister, the sister she loved a little bit more than the rest, wasn't helping. And, as she'd said so many times, Hannah was the last, entering some kind of sisterhood Marcy never could. Before they'd met, she'd lost more than a few friends to the circumstance of being the last woman childless. Something else to add to the pain.

So what that Sam was having to scour Charlotte in the middle of the night for mint chocolate chip ice cream and a specific brand of fake bacon bits? He lived in town; he wasn't more than a few minutes from a 24-hour grocery store. It wasn't hard, just inconvenient. Dean's wife was in the middle of a fucking emotional breakdown. The only way Marcy could maintain the façade of thrilled aunt-to-be was to completely let go in the sanctuary of their room. It would be different after the baby was born, it always was, but now? It was killing both of them.

If he'd dared—if it wasn't Sam, if it wasn't Hannah—he would have arranged for a month-long vacation, someplace warm and semi-educational. They could have spent January on a sunny beach somewhere, watching the kids terrorize the natives. No trips to the maternity floor of the hospital, with everything she'd never have rubbed in her face. No gaggles of relatives exchanging baby advice and labor horror stories.

No fucking baby showers.

If Marcy ever even considered going to another one of those things, relative, friend, or stranger, he was going to lock her in the bathroom again, then call the other person and threaten them with dismemberment for thinking about inviting her. If they argued, it wouldn't stay a threat.

"Anything important?" Marcy asked drowsily.

"Just Sam. They're going to the hospital."

"Again?"

"He thinks it's real this time."

She tensed up. "Really?"

Damn it. She was awake now, he could tell. "What he said."

"Mm-hm." Acknowledgment, nothing more, and she rolled over onto her side. There was some movement, like she was rearranging her pillow, but then she drew her legs up.

Fuck. He recognized that position. An old stuffed cat, some legacy of her childhood, lived on her nightstand, and sometimes, when things involving babies hit her really hard, she pressed it into her stomach and curled up around it and tried not to cry at all the what-ifs.

Dean hated that thing. He'd throw it out, if he didn't know it would cause more of a meltdown than taking Mildred away from Nyssa.

Most of all, he hated that there was nothing he could do about it, nothing he could say to take the pain away. It's okay was a lie; it clearly wasn't, and never would be, not for her. It wasn't going to get better, any more than he was going to wake up someday and not miss Mom.

He slid his arms around her—carefully, oh so carefully, because in these last weeks, she'd been insanely sensitive about her scars. They didn't bother him, they never had, scars were just proof that you'd lived, but God knew what might happen if he accidentally brushed one now. "I'm here," he whispered, because that was all that was left, all that he could give her right now. "I'm here, Marce."

12:47 p.m.: 8 lb 3 oz 23 in 1213 pm room 307 wait til after 5

12:54 p.m.: U ow me 10 fkin niagra falls

12:55 p.m.: Hannah stole my phone. Wtf?

The door to room 307 was halfway open, with a soft murmur of TV voices drifting out. Nobody had gotten around to putting a name in the little slot beneath the number on the wall, but taped to the door was a large pink cut-out of a baby carriage with "Winchester" written on it. They must not have put that up until Hannah had been safely installed inside. The mere mention of pink had been enough to send her ballistic for months; even Aunt Myrtle had gotten the hint.

Some poor nurse was going to have a very bad evening when Hannah found out about that thing.

But at least he knew it was the right room and there hadn't been any last-minute switches. Dean knocked on the door. "Everybody decent?" he called out, wheeling in.

"No more than usual!" Hannah's voice sang out, and he grinned.

This hospital was larger and newer than the one Deb and Ally used, but the room was still fancy enough to surprise him; more like a hotel room—a Reynolds hotel, not one of the ones he and Sam had grown up in—than a hospital room. Floors that were either real hardwood or a very high-quality laminate, wood veneer on all the built-ins, hotel landscapes and pale green paint softening the walls, and more than enough room for him to roll around, even to right up beside the bed. At the other one, he had to park and limp around with his cane. Plenty of room for a small jungle of flowers and baskets, too, which had all been crammed in the corner under the TV.

Hannah had the upper half of the bed raised so that she was sitting up. Her hair was pulled back in a sloppy ponytail, and she still had an IV hookup in one arm, though no lines ran out of it. She didn't look so bad, all things considered; tired, a little puffy, maybe. Deb had been a total wreck when she had Caitlyn, and when Emma was born, Ally had looked like a zombie having a bad day. And that was the sum total of Dean's experience visiting new mothers. He supposed there had to be a few who took it obscenely well—and if there were, it didn't surprise him that Hannah was one.

"Aren't you supposed to be obsessing over the kid?" he asked. "Counting fingers and toes and all that?"

She snorted, and turned off the TV. "When the counts didn't change in the first two hours, I figured they'd stay the same. And I just put her down a little while ago. Fucking IV makes my arm cramp but they won't take it out till tomorrow. I can't even put my own damn clothes on," she added, picking at the front of her hospital gown. "Just in case they have to hook the fucking thing up to some other piece of shit."

"I see motherhood hasn't changed your vocabulary."

"Like that was ever in fucking question."

"You know Sam. Eternal optimist." She laughed. "So, I learned this lesson with Ally. You want the hug and mushy stuff, or is it okay if I stay over here and congratulate you with insults?"

"Oh, dear God, no more mush," she groaned. "I swear, I'm surprised my pancreas hasn't abandoned ship yet, all the saccharine shit people keep throwing at me. You and Marcy and Firth are my only hope for being treated normally."

"That bad?"

"The next person who tells me I'm beautiful gets kicked in the crotch," she said.

Oh, great. She had that post-birth combo of obscenely happy splashed with irritable. Reynoldses. "Even Sam?"

"Sam knows better."

"Uh-huh," Dean said. God, these two were weird. "Speaking of which, where is he? Getting something to eat?" Hannah pointed at the window. "He threw himself out the window already?"

"No, fuckwit," she said, "he fell asleep."

"Asleep?" Dean pushed himself up a little, and now he could see it. There was a built-in sofa underneath the window, and Sam had somehow managed to fit himself onto it, though one foot was propped up on the windowsill. He was sound asleep, and possibly drooling on a pillow.

"Just like his little girl." She gave him a wicked grin. "They've both had rough days."

"And you didn't?"

"I haven't been worrying myself into a frenzy over every little thing for the past month. One of the benefits of having all those sisters. At no point did I delude myself into thinking I had any control over this process."

She had a point. The Reynolds birth rate was high enough that even Dean had learned there was not a hell of a lot of control when it came to having kids, especially if you did it the old-fashioned way. Sam...not so much.

"Oh, and speaking of which—" Hannah held her hand out.

Dean dug out a ten-dollar bill, wadded it up, and tossed it to her. She caught it neatly. "How bad was it, really?"

She tucked the money into the nightstand drawer, since she didn't have a pocket at the moment. "Even if he hadn't been too terrified to cut the cord, he couldn't have. He was crying that hard. And you know how he cries. My fucking obstetrician took the time to shove a Kleenex at him so the poor pathetic baby wouldn't drown in his own snot—"

Dean did laugh, because he'd seen more than one woman have exactly that reaction to Sam in tears. "Oh, God, tell me somebody got pictures."

"I think Mama might have snagged one or two hundred," she said, and pulled a tablet out of the drawer. She tapped at the screen a few times. "Here you go."

"This isn't going to be embarrassing, is it?" Dean asked warily.

"She wasn't allowed to take any below the waist, I promise."

She held the tablet out, and he drove close enough to take it. Hannah was right; Anne had not stinted on the photos. The first two dozen or so were all the new family, the messy new baby on Hannah's chest and Sam leaning over—and she was right, he really was a wreck. In a couple of pictures, he even had his face buried in Hannah's hair—trying to hide all that emotion from Anne, maybe.

Here was one of Sam, off to the side, clearly trying to pull himself together while the nurses did whatever it was the nurses did with newborns and new mothers—keeping one uneasy eye on the table where they were weighing the baby and the other on Anne and the camera, like he was afraid she was going to do something violent, like hug him.

And then the nurses were all done with the baby and one brought her over to Sam.

Sam wasn't looking at the camera. All his attention was focused on the blanketed little bundle the nurse was trying to give to him.

Key word, trying, because she wasn't having any luck. Dean hadn't seen that much pure terror on Sam's face since—um— Actually, he wasn't sure he ever had. Demons in clown suits probably couldn't inspire that level of terror. "This— Wait, is he actually arguing with the nurse?"

Hannah tilted the tablet down so she could see, and chuckled. "Yep. He has this insane phobia that he's going to drop her. I'm surprised he didn't pull out a PowerPoint."

"She's a Reynolds and a Winchester. It's not gonna hurt her."

"That's what I said."

"And?"

"I got a truly impressive bitchface in return. He better not teach that to the kid."

"I think it's— Wait, what happened to his fingers?" The index and middle fingers on Sam's left hand were splinted and buddy-taped. It was obvious once he was holding the baby, since she was cuddled in the crook of his left arm and his hand was more visible. "Hannah, did you break my brother's hand?"

"Oh, no." She was trying very hard not to laugh, and not quite succeeding. "That was all him. He somehow managed to slam them with the trunk lid."

"How the—"

"I was arguing about having to get in a wheelchair, so I don't know. They whisked him off to the ER for x-rays before I could even get my registration paperwork done. That's why he's got two bracelets—one's his patient bracelet from there, the other's his daddy access bracelet."

"Jesus." He'd figured something ridiculous would happen—Sam and Hannah seemed to attract the ridiculous—but like everybody else, he'd assumed it would be Hannah doing something to Sam, not Sam turning into a giant klutz.

Dean swiped through the other pictures, looking— There it was, the moment when Sam's terror turned into wonder and he looked down at the baby like he couldn't believe she was here and his. He didn't relax, not really, but you could tell that the nature of his reaction had changed. Less shock, more awe.

Finally. Dean smiled. There had been times he'd wondered if Sam would ever have a family of his own, or if somehow, along the way, Dean had just let him get hurt too much.

"I think Sleeping Beauty is starting to stir," Hannah said, and threw something in Sam's direction. "Sam! Dean's here!"

"Dean?" Sam asked. He pushed himself up and squinted blearily at Dean. "What're you doing here?"

"You invited me here, remember?"

Sam blinked, then raked his hair out of his eyes. It looked like it took a lot of concentration. "Oh. Right. Sorry, I must have fallen asleep—" He looked around. "Wait, who gave me a blanket?"

"Mama," Hannah put in. "She said to tell you you looked almost as adorable as the baby."

Dean snorted, and gave her the tablet back. "Come on, wake up," he said, driving to the end of the bed.

Sam just blinked at him. "Why?" he finally asked slowly.

"Because I came all this way to meet my niece, and the bassinet is next to you and my chair won't fit."

"Oh. Right." Sam shook his head, trying to clear it. "Sorry. Rough day. You came by yourself?"

"Anne caught us near the gift shop and sidetracked Marcy and Ananda. She's the only one we brought," he added quickly, seeing a flash of what could only be panic on Sam's face. "Kara and Nyssa weren't happy about it, but they stayed home." He sighed dramatically. "I think I owe Blake and Tori a kidney now." Hannah made a noise.

"You left them alone there with everybody but Ananda?" Sam asked. "You're going to be babysitting their grandchildren."

"It's good practice."

"It's going to make Blake get a vasectomy," Sam retorted, and pushed himself to his feet like every joint hurt. He started to reach into the bassinet, but stopped. "Dammit, her hat's off again—"

"Just leave it off," Hannah told him.

"But—"

"Sam, she keeps wriggling out of it. She's a freakin' newborn, she's not even supposed to be able to do that yet. I think we can safely say she doesn't like it. It's plenty warm in here."

For a second, Dean thought Sam was going to dig a thermometer out and actually verify that, but instead, he finally reached in and lifted the baby out of her bassinet, all protective and awkward and possessive. Eight pounds plus sounded huge—both Caitlyn and Emma had been under six—but in Sam's hands she looked incredibly tiny. Sam—

By that expression, Sam was convinced that the kid would shatter if he so much as breathed wrong. Dean had seen him use less care when handling century-old dynamite.

"You ready to meet Uncle Dean?" Sam asked the baby, in a soft little voice that Dean wouldn't have believed if he hadn't heard it himself. It was—well, to quote Anne, it was kinda adorable.

Then Sam added, "You really don't have to if you don't want to."

"Hey!" Hannah laughed. "Oh, enough out of you."

Sam came over and leaned over, letting him see the baby, but when Dean reached out, he actually pulled back. "Really, Sam? I came all the way over here and you're not going to let me hold her?"

"It's not— I mean—"

Dean rolled his eyes. "Was he like this with Anne?"

"No, but Dad had a little bit of trouble," Hannah said, grinning again. "C'mon, Sam, she's going to have to get used to Uncle Dean someday."

Sam actually looked like he might argue with that statement.

"I keep telling him he'll have plenty of time to hold her after visiting hours, but he won't listen to me," Hannah went on. "Sam. Dean is not going to break the baby."

"You don't actually know that."

Seriously? "I have held babies before, you know."

"Not newborns—"

"Yes, newborns. I held Caitlyn and Emma when they were younger than this." That was one of the things Ally and Deb insisted on. He was always the third family member, after them, who got to hold their kids, before any of the other aunts and uncles, even before Third and Anne. No amount of arguing changed their minds. Ally was a Reynolds, after all.

"Younger? She's not even six hours—"

Dean just gave his brother a look, waiting for him to finish doing the math.

"Jesus," Sam muttered, and shot Hannah one last desperate look, clearly begging for an intervention. He got a giggle.

"Now. My niece."

Sam was clearly trying to think of another reason he shouldn't have to hand the kid over, but Dean just sat there, arms outstretched, and Sam finally relented. "You have to support—"

"Dude, not my first niece," Dean interrupted, and proceeded to prove it. Sam's jaw dropped. "Honestly, Sam, have you not seen the birth rate in this family?"

"I tried to tell him."

Dean shared another eye-roll with Hannah—he was going to sprain something at this rate—then turned his attention to the baby. "Hey there, little girl," he said. He got a yawn. "You're a quiet one, aren't you?" He glanced up. "Are you sure she's Hannah's?"

Sam made a face at him. "They think there may be some leftovers from the epidural. Nothing to worry about."

Dean looked down at the baby. "Your parents are very strange people, and I promise you, you can always run away to Uncle Dean and Aunt Marcy when you need to get away from them," he told her, and was rewarded with a solemn, sleepy blink. Her eyes were that indeterminate newborn color, but they were a darker shade of it than Caitlyn's had been; they might end up turning dark, like Hannah's. Her hair was dark like Hannah's, too, and there was a lot of it, all sticking straight out. "Poor thing," he said, "she got Daddy's bedhead. No wonder she doesn't like the hat, trying to cram all that under there."

Hannah snickered.

"Dean!"

Dean ignored Sam's outrage. "So now can I—" There was a flicker of a flash and a telltale snick. "Sam!"

Sam grinned, and stuffed his phone back into his pocket. "Marianne, meet your Uncle Dean."

Dean very nobly refrained from reaching over and smacking him. "Hello, Marianne. Your parents are also very superstitious. They've been calling you the fetus for the last nine months."

"We called her other things, too."

"Yes, it's very parental to refer to your unborn child as 'the nuclear reactor.'" Newborns didn't laugh, but he could have sworn Marianne found that funny.

"Fine, next time, you have the hot flashes," Hannah said.

Dean raised an eyebrow. "So there is going to be a next time?"

Sam, meanwhile, had reached back into the bassinet. "Here, hold her still." He reached down to put the hat back on Marianne, who greeted this sign of fatherly love by scrunching her face up and starting to cry unhappily.

"Seriously, man, she doesn't like that hat."

"She'll get cold."

Marianne was whimpering now, and batting at her head, as much as she could through the blanket and poor motor control of a newborn. Dean finally reached up and pulled the hat off. Marianne immediately settled back down. "Yeah, she is totally anti-hat." He tossed the thing in Hannah's direction. "Tell me you at least tried a different hat."

Sam blinked, like it had never once occurred to him that there was more than one hat in the universe.

"I'll get it," Hannah said, her voice shaking with what Dean was forced to assume was suppressed laughter.

"You stay there," Sam snapped when she started to throw back the covers, "I know where they are."

"You know, they said I could get out of bed."

Sam retrieved a dark blue and white knit hat from a bag in the bottom half of Hannah's nightstand, and ignored the remark. "Here." He slipped the hat onto Marianne's head. This hat was softer and considerably thicker, but also bigger than the hospital-issue one, and she wriggled a bit but didn't protest otherwise. Maybe she just didn't like the standard one.

There was a giant "9" on the front. "Andy?" Dean guessed. That looked like a car number, and if he remembered right, it was the one that made Andy swear the loudest when it wrecked.

"Andy," Hannah verified. "I swear he bought a case of those and just hands them out whenever somebody gets knocked up."

"For some reason, I'm not surprised." He touched Marianne's hand, and she clutched at his finger. Good grip. "Look at those long, skinny-ass fingers. You are definitely my niece."

"Dean!" Sam hissed.

"What? You had the same kind of skeleton fingers, I remember that much."

"Can we not cuss at the baby?"

Dean just looked at him. "You have met her mother, right? Do you seriously think there's anything I could possibly say that she hasn't been hearing since her ears finished developing?" Hannah snorted.

Sam didn't—quite—flinch. "One day of delusions? Please?"

"Dude, you have so many other things you need to be worrying about. Isn't that right, baby girl?"

"Dean, quit cooing at my daughter. It's disturbing."

"I am not—"

"Yes, you are!"

"Well, if I'm cooing, you're hovering! Back off!"

"Boys," Hannah said mildly, "if I have to get out of this bed, I will kick both your asses."

"Hey, now," Dean warned, "my ass belongs to Marcy."

"Then I'll get her to do it, but your ass will get kicked."

Sam rubbed the bridge of his nose. "Why do I put up with you people?" Dean heard him mutter, but before he could say anything, something thudded against the door, and then it was pushed open. A bundle of balloons staggered in—all colors of balloons except pink, including a big blue it's a boy! one that had a piece of paper taped over "boy" with GIRL! written on it in bold black marker.

"Gee, Marcy, leave some helium for the rest of the hospital," Hannah said.

Marcy growled, poking her head around the tangle of ribbons to look for a place to put them. "Nothing but the best for Uncle Sammy," she said, and Dean snickered. "She's so scrawny she nearly floated away, which is why I have them. And then Mama caught us outside the cafeteria and talked Ananda into going with her for some kind of crazed Grandma plan, so—" She gave up and just shoved the balloons at Sam. "Your niece says congratulations."

"At least they're not pink," Sam muttered, dropping the weight somewhere in the corner behind the plants.

"I do have some sense," Marcy said tartly, and then her eyes landed on Dean, sitting there with the baby. The look on her face—

He'd expected her to take longer to get up here. Anne had completely failed him.

Marcy, being a big sister, didn't have to ask nicely; she went over and gave Hannah a hug. "You look obscenely good. Court is going to have your hide when she finds out."

"Then maybe she should've tried the wonders of modern painkillers instead of—what was the last one? A wading pool and chanting in Sanskrit?"

"I think it was Navajo, actually."

"Lakota," Sam corrected, and they all looked at him. "What? I didn't know Hannah was going to be so—"

"Hannah?" Marcy suggested, and got whapped on the arm.

"Oh, go look at your niece," Hannah grumbled. Marcy just grinned at her, and came over to where Dean was sitting.

She put her hand on his shoulder, the way she almost always did. Sam and Hannah would think nothing of it—but they couldn't feel the strength of her grip. Like she was holding herself upright. Like she was barely holding on.

"She's gorgeous," she said, and her voice was almost—almost—even. And then, because even the worst trauma couldn't quite overcome decades of ingrained sibling snark, "She doesn't look like either one of you."

Sam's mouth fell open. He looked like a kicked puppy. A kicked puppy whose own puppy had just been kicked.

Hannah only laughed. "As long as she doesn't take after her aunt," she retorted.

"She should be so lucky."

"I didn't say which aunt."

"Uh-huh. Why is she wearing a NASCAR hat?"

"Andy," Hannah, Dean, and Sam said in unison.

"I told you not to open that package."

"What, you think he wrapped it? It was the wrapping! It had a toy car in it!" Marcy laughed.

Sam was starting to fidget, and Marcy's nails were starting to hurt. "Okay, back to the hovering giant," Dean said. Sam glared at him, and he couldn't resist adding, "You'll learn to call him Daddy." Sam practically snatched Marianne away.

"It's going to be so much fun the first time you bring her to Sunday dinner," Marcy said dryly. "I don't think Sammy here is ready for the Reynolds baby-go-round."

"The what?"

"Everybody wants to hold a new baby, Sam," Hannah explained patiently. Her eyes darted to Marcy, but she didn't amend it to almost everybody. "And if you try to stop them, well, they outnumber the fuck out of you."

Sam looked down at the baby. "Hawaii or Tibet?" he asked. "Have a preference?"

"Wouldn't Tibet require hats?" Hannah asked innocently, earning a growl from her husband.

Then Sam abruptly remembered his manners. "Marcy, do you want—" he began, clearly prepared—if not exactly ready—to surrender Marianne to her for a few minutes.

Marcy went white, and her fingernails dug deeper into Dean's shoulder. He was going to have bruises. Maybe even nail-marks. Assuming she didn't tear through his shirt, which would be all kinds of awkward. "Not right now," she managed, in a voice that was close enough to normal that Sam wouldn't know the difference.

He did. And he could tell that Hannah did. The last time he'd seen Marcy this tense—

The last time he'd seen Marcy this tense was in the waiting room while Deb was in labor with Caitlyn. And those had been particularly awkward circumstances.

The thing was, if it was just him and Hannah, this wouldn't be a problem. They both knew and understood, and Marcy knew that.

No, the problem was Sam. Their relationship had thawed considerably since he moved down here, but—

Marcy really wasn't the hardass she liked to pretend to be. And she was way more fair than Dean ever had been. But if you screwed up, you were not getting forgiveness—publicly or privately—until you apologized. She wouldn't make you grovel; it wasn't about humiliation. She just demanded an acknowledgement that something along the way had gotten fucked up.

Sam had never once apologized for how he'd reacted to the wedding. Not in eleven years. Not to Marcy. He'd made a few noises in that direction to Dean, but Dean had never really needed Sam to apologize to him anyway.

And because of that, there was no way on Earth Marcy was going to let him see her break down. Reynoldses were as hard-headed as Winchesters.

Hannah met Dean's eyes, and she gave him a slight nod, understanding. "Sam, did you happen to see a vending machine while you were getting dragged everywhere? Closer than the cafeteria, I mean?"

Sam glanced over at her, clearly confused. "There's one in the family waiting area, I think. Why—"

"Your wife demands a Coke."

Sam sighed, and handed the baby over. "Is that an actual Coke or a Southern Coke?"

"Whatever the machine's got. Preferably with—"

"No caffeine until the doctor says you can have it," Sam said firmly, and headed for the door. Dean wheeled after him. Sam waited for him to get into the hall and pulled the door closed. "I don't need help—"

"I thought I'd get Marcy one."

"I can—"

Dean counted to ten. It didn't help, no matter what Sam always said about it. "They need a minute," he whispered. "Where—"

"It's down that way." He pointed towards the elevators, which were well down the hall from here, towards the middle of the floor.

"Gotcha." Dean headed that way and counted silently.

He made it to three before Sam asked, "Why do they need a minute?"

"I don't suppose you'd believe me if I said it was a sister thing."

"Considering that she's still debating whether or not Courtney gets put on the hospital banned visitor list, no."

"Marcy— Newborns are hard for her, Sam, that's all. Really hard. And with Hannah being the last one but her—"

"The last one to what?"

"To be a mother."

"But Marcy's a mother already," Sam said slowly, confused. "She's a great mother."

Dean grinned. "I'm telling her you said that."

That earned him a glare, but Sam just went on. "Hannah's the last, not the next to last—"

"Depends on how you count."

"Pretty sure sixth out of six is—"

"It's not about having kids, it's about— Well, it's about actually having the kid. Giving birth, I mean."

Sam frowned. "That's what's bothering her so much? I don't understand."

Dean sighed. "Honestly? I don't either. Not completely." It made his wife cry. That was all he needed to understand. "Maybe it's something men can't understand, I dunno. They just need a minute alone where she can meet the baby without the pressure of—" you "—everybody watching, telling her how she should react, and then the worst will be over, okay? So we go get some drinks and give 'em their minute." And tonight, he'd deal with the fallout, and hopefully, this time, maybe...

"Okay, now I really don't get it. Why did you two even come? If she's this touchy, walking into a maternity ward has to be hell for her."

Sometimes, all those brain cells got tangled up with the hair. Or something. It was the only explanation Dean had for Sam's rare but spectacular bouts of utter cluelessness. "Are you kidding me? You're my brother, Sam, and Hannah's her sister."

"I know that, but— We'd understand if you didn't, that's all."

"This is what family does."

"I know that's how you think, but—"

"Sam, I love you, but do you think I'd be dragging her ass into a hospital like this if she didn't insist on it?"

Sam sighed and pushed his hair out of his eyes. "I never want to hear you bitch again about how me and Hannah are a matched set." He jumped ahead to wrestle with the heavy security doors that separated the actual maternity rooms from the elevator banks so that Dean could get through easier.

The waiting room was tucked in on this side of the elevators. Like the rest of the floor, it was way fancier than Dean had expected, more a lounge than a waiting room, complete with a microwave and vending machines with food as well as drinks, including one that seemed to be dedicated wholly to ice cream. None of the damn painful plastic chairs from downstairs, either, but very nice, very high-end, very comfortable-looking couches and armchairs. Things must be slow at the moment, because nobody was in here.

Sam fed a dollar and some change into the appropriate drink machine, and Dean, eager for a change in subject, asked, "So, did you ever get the middle name straightened out?"

Sam's fingers slipped, hitting the button for regular Coke. "Dammit," he muttered.

"Give it here." Dean dug into a chair pocket for his stash of spare change, and they swapped. He dropped the Coke into another pocket. "Well?"

Sam deliberately looked away as he shoved coins into the machine again. "Marianne Jessica Winchester."

"Jessica?" He hadn't expected that. With the way Hannah felt about Granny, he'd expected "Allene."

"I tried to talk her out of it. My other choice was worse."

Dean thought on that. "Ariadne?" he guessed. Sam looked at him sharply. "It's the worst name in the family. Everybody agrees on that, and you know how bad it has to be if Marcy and Sean agree on something. And I'd be really surprised if naming her for Marcy hadn't come up once you covered both grandmothers, especially with the godmother thing. Just— Why Jessica?"

"I'm not sure." Sam punched the correct button this time. The whole machine shook. "It is for Jess, not just because she likes it, she was very clear about that."

"She never even met—"

"Name an argument, Dean, we've had it."

"Of course you have. The two of you don't do anything but argue so you can have make-up sex."

Sam graced that with Bitchface #21 and retrieved the precious can of caffeine-free Coke. "She said something about Jess being part of what made me me, maybe even more than Mom, all things considered, and..." He let the words trail off, and shrugged. "Just... Ariadne, Dean. Marcella or Deanna or Allene or even some feminine of Edward wouldn't have been so bad, but Jessica and Ariadne were the only choices she gave me once we'd settled on Marianne."

"Deanna? Aw, Sammy, I'm touched."

"Stuff it, jerk."

"You and your broken fingers are welcome to try and make me, bitch." An elderly couple coming into the waiting area, probably expectant grandparents, gave them a shocked glare. Good thing they weren't where they could hear any of the mommies-in-progress.

Sam stopped and looked at one of the food machines, then pushed a button to make the display rotate. "You did eat today, right?" Dean asked.

"Yeah. Hannah packed snacks, and then Third brought in some sandwiches once we got into a room."

Dean eyed his brother and the way Sam was staring into the vending machine, and decided to rephrase the question. "Did you eat enough today, Sasquatch?"

Sam rolled his eyes. "You've met our mother-in-law, right? What makes you think Anne didn't already nag me?"

"Fair point."

"And then Third did."

"And you escaped?"

"The kitchens make a great milkshake. Especially with a board member telling them what to do."

Dean chuckled. "So why—"

"Nothing." Sam leaned back against the machine. "It's—stupid."

"Of course it is. Spill."

"It's just— When Third first held her, I couldn't help thinking how unfair it was. That our dad wasn't here to see her." He took a breath that sounded a little ragged. "It's stupid, I know, God knows I never got along with the man, but— Is it completely hypocritical? To wish he was here?"

"I guess that depends on whether you want to punch him or hand him the baby."

"Oh, for—"

"Punch him while he's holding the baby?"

"Dean!"

"What?"

Sam rolled his eyes. "Seriously, though— Don't you ever wish they were here? To see all this? To...know?"

"Yeah," Dean admitted, "I do." He thought about Mom more than Dad, but maybe that was just natural, the way Sam didn't think about Mom being here because he couldn't remember her. And there was that one question that would never be answered, about his kids as opposed to Sam's—things John had said after particularly frustrating hunts involving child spirits or run-ins with social services... When it came to Mom, at least, Dean could safely believe that she would have thrown herself into grandmotherhood with as much enthusiasm as Anne, regardless of how she got the grandkids. "Every time we finalize, to be honest."

"Really?" Sam's voice was pathetically eager.

It would have taken a stronger man than Dean to not offer that voice reassurance. "I think it's just natural. Here you are, about to jump off a cliff, and theoretically, they've already made the jump and can help you stick the landing, right?"

"I guess."

"And since I've made that jump, can I give you some advice?"

Sam shot him a suspicious look. "Like what?"

"Calm the fuck down." He lowered his voice so it wouldn't carry to the easily offended granny-to-be. "We killed a damn demon, Sam. You and me. And a lot of other shit, and survived crap most people couldn't imagine. You can handle a baby."

Sam came away from the vending machine. "It's not the same, and you know it!"

"I also know that if you don't, you're going to be dead of an ulcer before Marianne even gets her feet under her and learns how to backtalk you. Besides, if you use up all your panic now, you won't have any for when she starts driving."

Sam considered that. "Or picks a college six hours away?"

Dean shuddered. "She's not there yet."

Sam grinned. "She has early admission and the money to go anywhere she wants and it's the same college Marcy went to. Maggie's not staying home, no matter what you bribe her with."

"I still have a semester and the rest of the summer to knock some sense into her."

"Which one of us is going to kill himself with an ulcer again?"

Dean opened his mouth to retort, but got drowned out by "Uncle Sammy!" closely followed by a small purple blur.

Sam was getting better at this; he managed to scoop Ananda up before she slammed into his legs. Maybe there was some hope for him after all. "Hey, Parasite," he said, getting her weight settled.

She flung her arms around him. "Grandma said you were sneaking me in to see the baby."

"She did?" Sam glanced across the room to where Anne stood in the door, giving them a bland smile. Dean snorted—he knew better than to trust that look—and Sam sighed. "Well, she's right. Kids your age aren't supposed to be up here unless they're brothers or sisters. But you're a special case."

"Because I'm your parasite."

Sam had clearly given up trying to explain. "Because you're my parasite," he said, and Anne laughed.

Marcy was sitting on the couch when they came back in, and Marianne had been safely stowed in her bassinet once again. Marcy's eyes were a little reddened, though she gave Dean a smile that he could tell was supposed to be reassuring. It wasn't, but combined with her sitting that close to the bassinet, it meant the worst was past. He waved the Coke at her, and she came over to take it.

"Hi, Aunt Hannah!"

"Look who's here," Hannah said. "I wondered how long that would take."

"I brought you something!"

"More than the balloons?" Ananda nodded. "Wow. Bring it here, then."

Ananda tugged at Sam's neck and pointed. It took everything Dean had not to burst into laughter. Sam sighed, and put Ananda on the bed next to Hannah.

"You're so well-trained, Sammy," Dean said, earning a glare.

"Grandma said you could have these now," Ananda said, and Anne's evil plan was exposed as Ananda dug a bag of plain M&Ms out of a pocket.

Marcy snorted and Dean damn near choked. Sam opened his mouth to argue, but only managed a strangled noise. Anne laughed and pulled a Butterfinger out of her pocket.

"And this is why you are my favorite niece," Hannah told Ananda fervently, giving her a quick hug, and tore open the packet.

"Hannah—" Sam began.

"My blood pressure's fine, Sam."

"It could still—"

"It's an M&M, Sam, not a caffeine IV!" Defiantly, she popped a handful of candy, then offered some to Ananda.

Sam rounded on Anne. "You know she hasn't been cleared yet!"

"Oh, breathe a little, Sam," Anne said, breaking off a piece of her Butterfinger, and when he opened his mouth to argue, she stuck the candy in. "There's only five milligrams of caffeine in the whole packet. If I'd given her a gallon of coffee, then you could argue."

Sam chewed the candy—he really didn't have much choice if he wanted to continue breathing—and just glared at her.

"You do realize that her blood pressure is probably going to go up higher from arguing with her about it than it will from that smidgen of caffeine, right?" Anne asked.

"Dude, give up," Dean advised. "When Anne starts using logic, you've got no chance."

Ananda's voice cut through the argument. "Your stomach's not big anymore," she said to Hannah.

"That's because nobody's in it anymore," Hannah said, clearly trying not to smile, and tossed back some more candy.

Ananda just looked at her, then leaned closer and whispered something.

Hannah laughed. "Oh, honey, I said all the bad words. Having a baby is hard work."

Marcy's eyes narrowed, and she shot a sharp look at Dean. He gave her the barest nod, acknowledging that he'd caught it, too. Ananda was coming out with things like that more and more, things that a child who saw the future shouldn't know. She wasn't reading thoughts like Missouri—at least, she wasn't yet—so he had no idea what was going on.

Psychics were rare enough, psychics who saw the future clearly even more. A psychic who could see the future and read thoughts— He didn't even want to try to calculate the odds on that. Or on their odds of keeping her sane. Psychics normally became active in adolescence for a reason.

"She even made a few up," Sam said to Ananda, and she giggled. "Wanna meet your cousin?" She nodded and slid down from the bed.

Sam picked Marianne up and sat down on the couch. "C'mere."

She went over, then just leaned against Sam's arm and stared at the baby, long enough for Sam to shoot Dean a worried look. This wasn't the reaction they'd expected, not the way Ananda had been acting the last month or so. Ananda couldn't have been more excited if this was her little sister being born, which had annoyed Kara and Nyssa and made Dean's life even more exciting. She should be demanding to hold Marianne, or at least wanting to know if she could. It was all she'd been talking about.

Finally, Ananda reached out hesitantly to touch the baby's hand.

She jerked away like the baby's skin burned her, frozen in place like a deer in headlights.

"Parasite?" Sam asked. "What is it?"

Ananda looked up at him, green eyes gone dark and wide—

And then she turned and hurled herself at Marcy, sobbing for all she was worth. What the—

"Ananda, what is it?" she asked, glancing at Dean. He shrugged. "Honey, what's wrong?" Ananda just shook her head and cried harder. "I'm sorry, guys, I don't know what—"

Sam handed Marianne to Hannah and knelt beside Ananda. "What is it, Parasite?" he asked gently, but for the first time since she'd met him, she actually refused to go to him. She just tightened her grip on Marcy.

"Let me take her outside," Marcy said quietly, picking Ananda up. "Maybe—" Sam just nodded, and she vanished out the door, Anne right behind her.

"What was that?" Hannah breathed as Sam pushed himself to his feet. "I've never seen Ananda pick Marcy over Sam."

Dean forced himself to take a steadying breath. "She probably saw something."

Sam and Hannah exchanged glances. Sam edged protectively closer to the bed, Hannah held Marianne a little more tightly.

"No, don't panic," Dean said quickly. "Think about it. If you were five and saw somebody dying—even if they were a hundred years old, in their bed, surrounded by all their loved ones—"

"Oh," Hannah said, relaxing. "That makes sense. She's so precocious sometimes, it didn't occur to me."

"She's too young to understand half of what she sees yet."

"Hell, I was twenty-two the first time I saw something, and it scared me shitless," Sam added. "At five..." He shook his head. "Should I— I mean, would it help if I—"

"I don't know." Ananda had run away from Sam. If she had seen something, it could have been about Sam as much as about Marianne, and that thought was going to give Dean nightmares. He glanced at the door, and only then realized his hands were on his rims, like he was about to wheel after them.

"Go," Sam said suddenly.

"What?"

"Leave. Take care of Ananda. You've got plenty of time to corrupt Marianne."

"He's right, Dean," Hannah told him. "Marianne won't even know if you were here today. Ananda will remember if you were there for her."

"But—" They weren't here for Marianne, not directly; they were here for Sam and Hannah.

"We're not going to blame you, you idiot," Sam added, like he was reading minds now. "And if you really feel guilty, we'll take it out in babysitting. Go."

Ananda disappeared as soon as they got into the house—an easy enough trick, really, as everybody but Rissa was pressing close demanding pictures and details. When Dean finally got the chance to look for her, she wasn't in any of the usual spots. Nor was she with Kara and Nyssa—they were in the playroom, and they were very grumpy about the fact that their sister wasn't helping them destroy this week's Lego monument.

He finally found her in, of all places, the dining room, sitting under the table. He supposed that with all the chairs, it made an excellent cave, and honestly, nobody ever came in here except for meals and the occasional family conference, so it was actually the best place in the house for some privacy after dinner. "This is kind of a weird place for some alone time, isn't it, munchkin?" he asked anyway.

She raised her head. Her eyes were red. She'd been crying. "Kara an' Nyssa wouldn' leave me 'lone."

Right. Kara and Nyssa were resigned to losing Ananda's attention whenever Sam was around, assuming they couldn't join in on the fun of the day, but when he wasn't... "Yeah, little sisters are like that." Little sisters, little brothers, they were all little and all annoying, right? "Think you can come out of there? My neck's starting to hurt."

Ananda grudgingly unfolded herself and crawled out from under the table—and then just stood there, looking miserable. "C'mere, bright eyes." Ananda promptly climbed into his lap and flung her arms around him. "Wanna tell me about it?"

She had her face buried in his shirt, so her voice came out a little muffled. "Is Uncle Sammy mad at me?"

"Mad at— Of course he's not. Why would he be mad at you?"

"I was s'posed to be happy."

"Weren't you?"

"I was till I saw—" She choked that off and buried a sob in his shirt.

Dammit. He'd hoped he was wrong, but that sounded vision-y. "What did you see, sweetheart?"

She just shook her head and tried to burrow deeper. Her whole body hitched in a sob, and then she was crying again, for all she was worth, clinging to him like she had to Marcy earlier, like she usually did to Sam or her bear.

He just let her cry herself out. When the racking sobs finally subsided, he reached into the chair pocket for the Kleenex and wiped her face, then settled her on his leg so that she wasn't facefirst in the wet spot on his shirt. "That better?" She nodded. "Wanna know a secret?" Another nod. "You can't tell anybody though. Not even Uncle Sammy." Her eyes went wide, but she nodded again, quite solemnly. "I see things too sometimes. Things that haven't happened yet."

"You do?"

"Yep. First time I met your mom, I saw us getting married. I only knew her name. And remember when Nyssa went to the hospital? I saw that it wasn't just a bellyache. That's why I took her to the doctor so quick."

She pondered that a moment. "Do you ever see anything scary?"

"Sometimes." The Denver plane crash still gave him the occasional nightmare. Even though he'd kept Marcy off that flight, he hadn't been able to save the other three hundred people on board, and he would always carry the guilt for that. "Did you see something scary about Marianne?"

"Maybe." She leaned back against his chest—probably so that she didn't have to look him in the eye—and twisted his pendant, the way Kara liked to. "She was okay. It was an important day. But Uncle Sammy wasn't there and you were."

An important day. Kids didn't rank those the same way adults did. It could be a birthday, a picnic, a freakin' kindergarten graduation. There were plenty of things that a child would consider important but weren't really important enough for Sam to attend, even if it was important enough for Dean to be there. And there were plenty of benign reasons that Dean would be there when Sam wasn't—assuming that he actually was missing the event and wasn't just late or out of the vision's sight-range. Why had Ananda gone instantly to disaster, to something so frightening that she'd actually turned away from Sam for the first time since she'd met him? Some subconscious clue in the vision? "There could be lots of reasons for that, you know. Maybe he got a new car and it wouldn't start." That got him a giggle, because they both knew the Impala would start. "And you wanna know something else?" She nodded. "Most times, what you see? No matter how real it seems, it's only something that could happen. Not something that will happen."

She thought on that—very hard; he knew her well enough to recognize her "concentration" face. "You mean it could change."

"Exactly."

"Can we make it change?" she asked in a small voice.

"We can certainly try," he said. "In fact, there are people out there who think just knowing about it will change it."

"Other people?"

"Lots of people see things, Ananda. They're just too scared to talk about it. They're afraid people won't understand."

"Like Uncle Sammy," she said sadly.

"God, no, sweetheart. If anybody understands, it's your uncle, okay? A long time ago, he saw things too."

"But he doesn't anymore?"

"No."

She peered up at him, her eyes gone dark. "You see instead. He used to see but now you do."

They were definitely going to have get Missouri out here. That was fucking close to mind-reading. "That's it exactly. That's why you can't tell him."

"Oh. Okay."

That easy, apparently. Just what he needed: a logical child. They were doomed. "About ready for bed? You've had a rough day."

She looked up at him. There was fear in her eyes. Fear. On his little girl. Dammit, what had that vision actually been? "Can I stay here a little while?" she whispered.

"As long as you want," he promised, and she curled up in his lap, one hand still on his pendant.

"At least Ananda was easy to get into bed," Marcy announced, coming out of their bathroom.

"The other two?" Dean asked, quickly shoving that damn stuffed cat of hers out of sight. He should have picked a better time to try to hide it. Or done it before he checked his feet.

Marcy's amused expression told him he'd failed miserably at trying to be stealthy. "I suspect we'll be seeing all three of them before daybreak." She turned back the covers on her side of the bed, pointedly pulling that ratty old thing out from under his pillow and setting it on her nightstand. Dean managed his best I'm really very innocent smile, and she chuckled. "At the very least, all three of them are going to wind up crammed into one bunk, and I just hope it's Kara's or Nyssa's and not Ananda's because I do not want to have to explain to anybody why all three of them fell out of bed and broke their arms."

"Eh, maybe they'll land on Mildred."

"I don't think Mildred is enough padding to save us a trip to the hospital." She sighed. "Did you get anything out of her before she fell asleep? About what it was?"

"Not a lot," he admitted. "Important day, Sam wasn't there. Nothing that should have made her panic like that."

"What kind of important day?"

"That's all she'd say. Important."

"Well, that's wonderfully vague."

"I know. I was kind of hoping the damn shining would kick in and give me a hint, but it was too busy telling me about the leftovers going bad in the back of the fridge."

That earned him a laugh. "You have the absolute weirdest visions. Did you toss them?"

"Leftovers, yes. Visions, I tried, but they just won't go." She crawled into bed. "Are you okay? With...everything?"

The answer was surprisingly calm. "I'm fine."

"But—"

"I've done this a few times now, Dean," she pointed out, with a little bit of a smile. "The anticipation is the hard part. Once the kid arrives, it's about being a mother, not how you got there. With decent people, at least. And Hannah's mostly decent, but never tell her I said that." She hesitated, then propped herself up on one elbow. "Are you all right?"

"Huh? Why wouldn't I—"

"Dean, you mentioned your father three times just on the trip back home. About how proud he'd be and how you wished he was here to see Sam with the baby."

"Isn't that—"

"Would you like the count on how many times you mentioned your father the day Maggie's adoption was final?" Marcy asked dryly. "Because I promise you, it was less than one."

"It's just— Sam said something about how he wished Dad was here, that's all. I guess it just got him on my mind."

"Is that all?"

"Marcy, we've been through this. And today isn't about me. You—"

"I'm okay. If I weren't, I'd already be in that three hundred dollar bottle of whiskey you hid in the nightstand two weeks ago."

Dean stared at her. "How the hell—"

"I was looking for the nail clippers. And I love that you thought about it that much, don't get me wrong, and who knows, I may need it yet, but... I'm okay right now, and I think this might be hitting you...not how you thought it would."

"You scare me sometimes." She just gave him one of those Reynolds looks, and he gave in. "It's just— Do you think he'd approve?"

"Your dad? Of Sam having a kid? Sam's got his issues, but I don't think—"

"Not Marianne. Ours."

"Ah." She shot a glance at the nightstand, like she was contemplating digging out the whiskey, but then pulled up the covers and settled into a more comfy position. "Because they're adopted?"

Dammit. She always did know how to get straight to it. "Yeah. You know it doesn't matter to me," he added quickly, "but— I just wonder, that's all."

She was quiet for a minute. "There's always going to be what-ifs hanging over our heads," she finally said. "It's human nature. It hits me every time—" She bit that off. "But, from everything I know—"

"What?" In his head he could hear that rant again, kids are better off dead than adopted. Usually, he could forget it, but today...

"Your dad would love every one of our kids just like he'd love Marianne."

He flinched. "Marce, this isn't the time for a comforting lie."

"Who's lying? Have you ever seen Maggie around a Winchester? She had you wrapped around her finger in five minutes and turned Sam from 'it's Sam' to 'Uncle Sammy' in sixteen hours flat, and for nine of those, she was asleep."

"But—"

"And if that wasn't enough, Johnny kept 'John' just so he'd be named for him, remember? Any other foundling would have insisted on picking out a real name. And now he wants to be a Marine just because Grandpa Winchester was? Dean, any man that wouldn't be melted by that wouldn't be fit to be a grandfather."

"You don't think he was fit to be a father."

"I never said that," she corrected sharply. "I said he could have made better choices and that he shunted too much responsibility onto you. Those are two different things."

"I guess." He looked up at the ceiling. "I think about Mom, when I think about it," he finally said. "But Sam didn't know her, so all he has to wonder about is Dad, and... Well, when it comes to Dad, mostly I don't let myself wonder. There's no way any of this—you, the kids, anything—would have ever happened if he'd lived."

"Oh, I would have fought him for you."

"And probably kicked his ass."

"Well, if Granny could do it at eighty-five, I certainly could."

That made him laugh. "There's that."

"Besides," she added, snuggling in beside him, "you're overlooking one very important detail."

"I can't wait to hear it."

"If your dad was still around, and he ever once said anything to you about our kids being less Winchester than Sam's? I'd fucking shoot him in the balls."

the end