a/n: Thank you tremendously to everyone who has read these! This is the last section in the Disney Princess arc, but there will be more HFK ficlets coming afterward. If you want more stories about Emma and Claire, head over to my AO3, where I write under the same penname as here. Thanks again!

Warning: This is one of those cases where Dean's not always a good role model. You should not peel sunburnt skin.

The next morning, Dean turns over under the covers, cracks one eyelid open, and promptly groans and pulls the blanket over his head again.

"Oh my god," he mumbles. "I feel like a drank a liquor store."

"That's not funny," Cas mutters into his pillow. But he slides a hand across the mattress to Dean's arm. "You're hot."

Dean doesn't even have the energy to leer, just winces at Cas's touch. "I think I should've put more sunscreen on."

Cas sits up and eases the hotel comforter off of them. Dean can tell from the way his eyes go wide and startled that he must look pretty bad. He looks down at himself and sees the very clear line separating the pale skin that was covered by his t-shirt sleeve to the angry pink skin that wasn't.

Cas traces very gentle circles around his eyes. "I can see where your sunglasses were."

Dean groans. "Man, that's what the hat was for!"

Grumbling, he eases himself up and swings his legs off the bed to go take a shower. The digital clock on the nightstand says 7:04 a.m., but in the next bed Claire and Emma are already awake, their heads sharing a pillow as they intently watch something on the laptop.

"What, you guys didn't get enough Disney yesterday?" he teases as he hobbles past them for the bathroom.

"Sshh," Emma says without looking away from the screen. Dean huffs as Cas hides a smile and gets out of bed to start making coffee.

Bits of skin come off Dean's arms as he towels himself dry after a shower set to the very lowest water pressure available. He grimaces at them.

"Who wants to peel their lobster dad?" he says when he emerges back into the room a few minutes later, rubbing his hair dry. Claire's moved to the other bed with the laptop, where Cas slid back under the covers and is frowning as he looks at the laptop screen. He appears to be trying to give Claire a French braid.

"This is not as easy as the directions claim," he says.

"Keep trying," Claire says, patting his knee under the covers. She looks at Dean and wrinkles her nose. "Ewwwww."

"I'd think a girl in Godzilla pajamas could handle a little dead skin," he mutters, because Claire's wearing the pajamas she'd convinced Cas to let her get from the boys' section. Like many things about Claire, this decision had made him blink, but it's not all that much more unexpected than the bright pink Jonas Brothers nightgown Emma had decided to wear, so whatever.

He turns toward Emma. She looks intrigued despite herself, looking away from the cartoon now playing almost inaudibly on the TV. He sits on the foot of her and Claire's bed. "You just peel it, see?" He peels off a piece of the white skin. "Like this. It doesn't hurt."

Emma crawls out from under the covers to kneel behind him. "Doesn't?"

"Nope."

She goes to work, tiny fingers tentative. Sunlight is streaming through the thin curtains, and the digital clock between the beds says it's barely half past seven. Dean gets Cas to toss him the theme parks guidebook from the hotel lobby and leafs through it as the room sinks into a comfortable silence, quiet and peaceful like a cocoon.

"We could do Universal," he says. "It's got that new Harry Potter place, Sam'd shi-crap his pants if he found out we went without him, wouldn't he, Em? Or here's Sea World, with those killer whales, I bet you'd like those, Cas."

"Can we pet sting rays there?" Claire demands. Emma snorts at her, which makes Claire stick out her tongue. "Cas, Emma's being mean to me."

"Emma, be nice," Cas says absently, squinting at Claire's hair intently. He has a bobby pin held between his teeth.

Emma rolls her eyes over to Dean in a clear Are you going to let this unfairness stand? Dean ruffles her hair and goes back to leafing through the book. If they head to Tampa, there's a park with cheetahs and elephants and stuff, so maybe if they do Sea World today and then drive to Busch Gardens tomorrow-

His phone buzzes on the nightstand. He reaches behind him absently, wincing a little at the pull of his skin, and answers without looking at the ID. "Yeah?"

"Good news," drawls Portia's voice. "We found the reversal spell."

- o -

Cas closes the laptop when Dean lets himself back into the hotel room. The conversation with Portia was short, only five minutes tops, but Dean feels like he's aged five years, all of a sudden. He looks at Cas, and Cas slides out from under the covers. "Claire, Emma, please go brush your teeth."

Dean watches the girls look back at them curiously as they go to the sink set along the hotel room's back wall, Claire looking as apprehensive as Emma for once. Then he looks back at Cas.

"Portia and James called."

It's not a question. Dean leans back against the dinky table between the bed and the window, examines the way his worn boots look against Cas's bare feet on the dark carpet.

"They found a way to reverse the spell?"

"Yeah." Dean pushes away from the table, can't help looking back at the sink where Claire and Emma are on their tiptoes against the counter to examine Emma's teeth in the mirror. "But look, Cas, I was thinking-maybe we should just wait for the spell to wear off normally."

Cas is frowning. "Is the reversal dangerous?"

"Well-no. But..would it really be so bad for them to stay like this a little longer? I mean-we haven't even gone to Sea World yet, or taken Emma to one of those dumb Plucky places with the ball pits-"

Cas is still frowning. "You said those places were dangerous and unsanitary."

"Yeah, well-that doesn't mean everybody shouldn't still go in one once!" Dean says. "It's a rite of passage, man. We shouldn't flip the spell until we've taken them at least once."

Castiel studies him for a moment. "Dean."

Dean doesn't look at him. Looks at the girls instead, at Claire showing Emma how to give herself a toothpaste beard with the foam from her toothbrush.

Cas reaches up to take Dean's hands. He pulls Dean to where he still sits on the edge of the bed. Dean goes unwillingly, letting himself be pulled onto his knees between Cas's, lets his eyes be drawn back to Cas's. Still watching him, Cas weaves their fingers together. He presses them to his knees and brings his forehead to Dean's. "If we waited until we could give them all the things they missed out," he murmurs, "they would never grow up."

Dean closes his eyes. He tightens his fingers around Cas's. When he pulls away a moment later, Emma and Claire are watching them from the foot of the other bed.

He pushes to his feet. "You guys figure out what's happening?"

"You're turning us back." Claire's face is solemn, like she's already started turning into the Claire she was, that she will be.

"Do you want to?" Cas asks gently.

Claire looks at Emma. Emma looks back.

Claire turns around. "We're ready."

Cas goes to his suitcase to find the spell powder he confiscated from James. Claire goes to crouch next to him, side pressed tight against his as he puts a palm gently to her head.

Dean looks at Emma. She's staring back, and he walks to her, crouches to take her hand and curl it into a fist inside his.

"Don't forget," he says, eyes searching hers, not sure how much she is going to remember once the spell is reversed. "Okay?"

She stares back. For a minute it feels like they're memorizing each other, feels like watching Sam in those last moments before the Hell Hounds tore through the doors in New Harmony.

"Not forget," she finally says. She takes her other hand and puts it over her chest. "In here."

Dean looks at her a moment. Then he pulls her into a bear hug. "No more Disney movies for you," he says into her hair. "You're getting cheesy."

She bites gently down on his wrist, the way she'd done to Benny. "Try stop me," she retorts, and that's his girl.

- o -

Reversing the spell is pretty simple, when it comes down to it. Dean draws a design on the floor with the spell powder as Cas coaxes the girls into the center of it. Emma's got her chin up, staring down at the lines of powder like she's daring them to spring up at her so she can kick their ass. Claire stands close to her, and after Cas steps out of the circle, she clutches Emma's hand so tightly their hands turn white.

Dean stares at Emma. Feels like the question is burning out of his eyes. Are you sure?

Emma nods.

Cas takes Dean's phone, and reads the spell Portia texted them aloud.

- o -

Claire coughs into Emma's shoulder blades as the pale blue smoke billows up around them. Emma blinks against it, feeling her own eyes water as she squints through it. She feels the vessels inside them itching to shift to let the blood into the vessels that will turn them yellow, help her see through the smoke; blinks it away, and a moment later, the smoke has dissipated like cotton candy dissolving on her tongue, and Cas and Dean are standing at the edge of the spell design, looking at them. Dean's face is guarded, Cas's as composed as ever, and Emma looks away from both of them, looks at the TV with its Danny Phantom cartoon still playing instead.

Behind her, Claire's still coughing. "Oh my god," she says. "What did you guys do?"

"Us?" Dean crosses his arms. "Try again-how many years do you guys think you're gonna be grounded for this stunt?" He glances back at Cas. "What do you think, Cas? Fifty? I'm thinking fifty."

"What are you talking about?" Claire presses her fingertips to Emma's shoulder blade before she moves away, a wordless let me handle this. "What happened? Where are we?"

Dean eyes her. The indecision is clear in the furrow of his brows-is Claire faking it? Or do she and Emma really not remember what happened after the spell was cast?

"Nope," he says finally. "I've got your number now, Claire. You're a sneaky little ninja when you wanna be." He's breaking into a smile, though, like that's a good thing, and it's only as Claire relaxes that Emma realizes she had even tensed at all.

"Not a ninja, Dean," and in her voice is a hint of that plaintive five-year-old who had dragged Emma around by the hand and stuck ketchup in her hair. "A knight, remember?"

"Right." Dean's still smiling. "A knight, I forgot. Sorry. Make a man out of you and all that."

His smile slips as he looks over at Emma. Emma realizes she's made the mistake of watching them and quickly flicks her eyes away again, catching her own reflection in the mirror. The nightgown her little self had been wearing had made the transition with her, and now she's wearing a pink nightgown with puffy sleeves and ruffles all along the bottom. Her hair's matted but still in the sloppy braid Dean had put it in the day before, as he'd picked her up and set her on the bathroom counter before combing gently through her hair with his hands, and it's stupid how badly she wants that again.

"Now that you are back to normal size, I imagine you will be needing your normal clothes again," Cas says. "Claire, would you help me bring your duffels in from the car?"

Claire heaves a long-suffering sigh and goes to follow him out the door, pulling a flannel from Dean's bag on over her uncomfortably-tight-looking Godzilla pajamas as she goes. Neither she nor Cas look back at Emma as they head down the breezeway down the stairs to the parking lot, Claire saying something in a low voice that Cas responds to just as inaudibly, and Emma doesn't realize she's fingering her gums uncomfortably as she watches them until Dean's voice says from behind her, "They feel okay?"

She turns, confused, before seeing his eyes are on her mouth. Her hands drops. "Oh. Yeah. They're fine." Falls silent, then adds belatedly, "Thanks."

Dean pushes his hands into his pockets. "I didn't really do anything. Cas and Benny found the lavender stuff."

Emma nods. "Yeah." Turns back to face the window and watch Cas and Claire opening the Impala's trunk. Then she rubs her elbow, sucks in half a breath. "Sorry. Guess I was kind of a crybaby when I was little, huh?"

Dean's quiet for a minute, coming up beside her to look down at the parking lot too. Then he says, "Nope," and leans his shoulder to hers. "Bravest kid I ever met."

Emma snorts, squeezing her elbows hard. Her mouth is trembling, and Dean slides an arm around her, pulling her head under his chin. She leans into him, and in the ghost of her shaky breath against his neck he can feel the little girl she was, the one he knew and the one he never got to.

"There's a reason I left," she tells his shirt. "When I-you know."

Dean smoothes a hand down her hair. She still smells like ketchup and sunscreen and the blackberry tea he'd wiped her face with, and he wants to hold her like he did then, cradle her face in his hands and tell her how proud he is of her.

But after a minute, she pulls away, clearing her throat. "Anyway, um-"

"I got you something."

She looks up. Dean shrugs a little, self-consciously, and moves past her to the plastic Disney bag sitting at the little table near the radiator unit. It's dumb, really, a gold plastic crown with a stupidly fake-looking jewel in the middle of it. "I was going to give it to you while you were still little."

Emma sniffs and hitches on a smirk. "Probably would've fit better then," she says as he pushes it into her hair. It's too small, meant for a little girl, tilting off her head.

"Nah, looks dashing this way," he says. "Like a pirate."

Emma perks up. "Pirates have tattoos."

"No."

"But-"

"Nope."

"Deaaan," she whines.

"Emmaaaaa," he mimics.

"Looks like things are back to normal, Cas," comes Claire's voice, and they look up to see she's coming in the door with her duffel over her shoulder. "They're bitching at each other again."

"Oh good," Cas says, deadpan. He hands Emma her duffel. He pauses in front of her for a moment, studying her, then reaches out with one hand and straightens the plastic crown on her head. "It suits you."

Claire cocks an eyebrow. "Where's my crown?"

"Godzilla doesn't get a crown," Emma says.

"That's because Godzilla takes his crown," Claire says, and her smirk is the only warning Emma gets before she lunges. Emma shrieks and vaults onto the bed, scrambles off it again as Claire grabs for her, races around Cas and then into the bathroom, slamming the door shut and throwing herself against it as Claire tries to shove it open.

"No!" she wails in laughter as Claire makes growling sounds.

Dean grins at Cas. Cas's mouth hooks up at the corner back.

Eventually Claire tires of ramming the door with her shoulder, leans against it and looks at Cas and Dean instead. "Well?" she says. "Did you like it?"

"My birthday gift?" Cas sits on the edge of the bed, taking a sip from the coffee from the machine on the nightstand. He's still in his pajama pants and t-shirt, pulls his leg under him to sit on. "It was the best I have ever had. Thank you, girls."

"You've only had like two birthdays," Claire says. "It's not like we had stiff competition in the Best Present Ever category."

Cas smiles. "That changes little." He leans into Dean when Dean plops down on the bed next to him. "I am curious, however. What were your initial intentions for the spell?"

Claire pushes away from the bathroom door, glancing back at it as Emma cracks it open to peer out. "I thought it'd be nice for you guys to get a chance to be kids. Cas never got the chance, and..." She glances back at Emma again.

Emma opens the door the rest of the way, leaning her cheek against the door jamb as she avoids all their eyes. "Sam said Dean didn't get much of one either."

There's a whole Sarlacc pit of angst there that Dean's going to jetpack over. He leans back on his hands. "I'm exactly was gonna take care of kid!Dean and Cas?"

The girls' expressions turn positively wicked. "Only the best and most qualified babysitters in the country, of course," Emma says.

"What, you two?"

"No way," Claire says, wrinkling her nose. "Jody volunteered. But Garth called first dibs."

"Krissy wanted a weekend with you, too," Emma adds. "She said something about tea parties?"

Dean groans. "Krissy was in on this, and she didn't try to stop you?"

"Charlie did," Claire says. "But when we promised her she could dress you both up at Stormtroopers and tape it, she supported our decision."

Dean shakes his head to hide his grin. "Of course she did."

"Charlie has a tattoo," Emma says pointedly. Dean ignores her.

"Speaking of," Cas says, and crosses to his suitcase, pulling out another Disney bag. "I procured something for your next Moondor campaign, Dean."

Emma and Claire burst into laughter when they see what it is: a blonde Tangled wig, so long it drags from Cas's arm onto the carpet.

"For the Queen's favorite handmaiden," Cas says solemnly.

"This handmaiden is gonna kick your ass," Dean says, he but inclines his head forward so Cas can fit the wig onto his head. He tosses the long tresses over his shoulder, hamming it up, until Claire and Emma are both red and crying with laughter, and Cas's smile is the huge irrepressible one that shows his gums.

"Wait, wait!" Claire cries, running to Cas's suitcase in the corner. She pulls out Cas's Viking helmet and plops it on his head as Emma dives for her phone, managing to click a photo of princess!Dean and Viking!Cas and text it to Sam before Dean manages to wrestle the phone away from her, bellowing that she's grounded for the next five hundred years and desperately trying to figure out how to un-send the message, which only makes Emma and Claire laugh harder.

- o -

The dads go to pick up breakfast while the girls take showers so that they can check out of the hotel and be on the road by eleven. When Emma comes out, rubbing a towel over her wet hair and trying to figure out if she still smells of ketchup or it's just her imagination, Claire's at the sink, combing out her own wet hair.

She hands Emma her brush, but doesn't let go when Emma takes it. Emma glances away from her reflection to see that Claire's looking at her wrist.

She lets go of Emma's brush and turns Emma's hand over. The Mark of Harmonia is back to being a raised pink-white scar, not the angry red brand it was when they were younger. Claire doesn't say anything, just looks at it.

Emma shrugs, a little. "Guess you were right about being the older sister," she says with a little smile.

Claire finally looks up. Then glances away, to her own reflection in the mirror. "I was like the brattiest kid ever." She sounds a little amused but mostly displeased, frustrated with herself.

"I thought you were pretty awesome," Emma says. Hitches her shoulder a little, awkwardly, because she can remember it more clearly than she should be able to, the trust; how it had felt to look over and know that Claire was there, every time, talking or eating or tricking people into giving Emma milkshakes. It kind of feels like Claire's hand had barely let go of hers that whole time, and now her fingers keep flexing, palm too empty and dry without a sweaty palm holding onto it.

Claire breaks into a rare smile. "Eh. I guess you were an okay little sister."

Emma grins back. "Fuck you, I was an awesome little sister."

"You wouldn't let me stick fries up your nose."

"You put ketchup in my hair!"

"I did worse than that," Claire says in satisfaction. "I let Dean put you in a Jonas Brothers nightgown."

"I've changed my mind," Emma says. "You're not Nicholas Cage, you're that lame prince in The Little Mermaid who couldn't even recognize the awesome chick who rescued him."

"I'm sorry, are you casting yourself as the princess who wore clams on her boobs?"

"At least my boobs aren't so small clams could cover them."

"What a short memory you have, Emma, I think you're forgetting who knows where a picture of you in the Jonas Brother nightgown is." She holds up her phone.

Emma stares at the picture on its screen in horror.

Claire smirks. "Look at that. Did I clam you up?"

Emma punches her in the boob.