Christmas Fic! A Midnight Clear (SPN, Gen PG-13)
For no one else would this fic be considered "slice of life" but for Sam and Dean, well, saving girls and seeing angels is all in a night's work.
Gen
PG-13
3,192 words
current canon
A MIDNIGHT CLEAR
The seal was under the floor of an old barn so no surprise the nut jobs trying to open it had hung their sacrifice from one of the beams. Blood ran down the pale skin of her arms from where the rope had cut into thin wrists, an oversized flannel shirt hung open off her shoulders, and her bare legs were scratched and bruised. Her back was toward them but even though her head lolled to one side, throwing the tangled mass of her dark hair over one shoulder, she was definitely still alive.
No point in sacrificing a dead girl.
Dean glanced over at his brother, saw a muscle jump in Sam's clenched jaw, and shook his head. He got it, he did; he wanted to charge in there as much as Sam did. It was killing him to leave the girl hanging there but there were six of the bastards and even for them those were crap odds. They had to wait until all six were closer together.
The picture Sam had found of the ritual showed a group prayer, hands on shoulders, letting the piece of filth they served know they were about to use the knife. According to the text -- and Dean checked Sam's translation, twice -- prayer came just after the fuckwads broke into pairs and fingerpainted their partners naked torsos with their own blood.
They'd been at the painting for a while now -- some glyphs he recognized, some he didn't. When the knives came out, cutting some of the glyphs deep, he clutched the shotgun so tightly the pain of metal and wood gouging into his hands distracted him from the memories.
They were almost done. And about fucking time as far as he was concerned. Southern Oklahoma was having a cold snap and late December was no time to be lying on the ground peering through cracks between barn boards and letting the frost seep in through his jeans. Frosty jeans, not on the top of his fun list.
Then Sam touched his arm and he realized art class for sado-masochists had ended. He nodded, rolled up onto his feet, bounced a bit of feeling back into his knees, and said, "Let's do this."
They kicked the door open together, stepped over the threshold, and let the fuckers have both barrels. Thing was, they were human. Twisted, psycho, murdering pieces of shit granted, but killing them wasn't an option. Four barrels of rock salt though, blown into six half naked bodies standing close together, well, that hurt like a son of a bitch.
And this was the thing about most people. They weren't used to pain. Or violence. A little quiet cutting was one thing; but two crazy guys shooting them? Froze them up faster than… well, frosty jeans. The rock salt wasn't intended to take them out, just slow them down.
The shotgun butts slammed in hard, butt to skull -- that was intended to take them out. Quick and clean. Bam. Bam. Bam. Three each, no waiting. While Dean bent to make sure all six were taking a well deserved dirt nap, Sam whipped out his knife and ran to cut down the girl.
"Dean!"
That didn't sound good. Maybe he'd been wrong about the girl still being alive. Maybe she was…
Pregnant.
Very, very pregnant; the round swell of her belly marked with the same glyphs the asswipes who'd taken her had been drawing on each other. Same medium too although they hadn't done any cutting.
"The sacrifice of the innocent," Sam murmured, sawing through the ropes.
Dean steadied her gently as she began to swing, erasing the pattern drawn around her with the edge of one boot. "I'm going go shoot those fuckers again."
"Works for me."
Then the rope finally split and she collapsed into Sam's arms. He scooped her up but when she began to struggle, he sank to the barn's floor and held her cradled on his lap. Moaning, she opened her eyes.
"Shhh, it's okay." Sam's voice had picked up the comforting tone he used for terrified witnesses, haunted civilians, and, apparently. rescued pregnant sacrifices. "We've got you. You're safe now."
She looked between then, first at Sam, then at up him, her eyes enormous in her thin face. "Are you angels?"
"Oh sweetheart, you don't want angels, trust me. I'm Dean." He dropped to one knee and pulled a flask from the inside pocket of his jacket. "And this, is my little brother Sam." When her eyes widened further, he grinned. "Yeah, not so little anymore. Here, drink this."
Sam's brows went up when he recognized the flask that held the holy water not the whiskey, but he merely supported the girl's head and helped her drink. Right now, far as Dean was concerned, water was water and a hell of a lot better for someone in her condition than booze. He helped her hold the flask and frowned as he realized how cold her fingers were.
"Sam…"
"I know. Get a blanket, we'll wrap her up before I carry… Hey…" He brushed a bit of long dark hair back off her face. "What's your name?""
"Anna."
"Hi, Anna."
She actually managed a tentative smile back. Dean figured it had to be the dimples.
"My brother's going to go for a blanket," Sam continued. "And then I'll wrap you up and carry you out to the car. Okay?"
"Okay."
Somehow, Dean managed to resist stopping and putting the boots to the bastards on the floor on the way by. Once out of the barn, the wind chill dropped the temperature significantly and, by the time he got back with the blanket, it had started to snow. Hard.
"We need to get moving," he said, jogging back to Sam's side. "There's a storm brewing out there."
"Yeah, well…" Sam paused as Anna clutched at his jacket and whimpered. "…there's a baby coming in here. Her water just broke."
Dean looked down. Backed up a step.
"We need to find a warmer corner." With her belly hidden behind the blanket, Anna looked no more than fifteen as Sam rose to his feet. "Maybe some place with some straw so she's off the bare floor."
"No. Put her in the car. We drive for town."
"Dean, it took us almost three hours to get up here from Wedmore. The roads are crap, it's pitch black out and snowing, and I don't think…" He paused again while she writhed and whimpered in the cradle of his arms. "…Anna's got three hours."
"And Stanford had a midwife elective you never mentioned? You don't know crap about delivering babies!"
"I can count. And her contractions are too close together to risk it. It's safer here than in the back of the Impala while you're roaring down dirt roads at a hundred miles an hour in a blizzard!"
Dean opened his mouth and closed it again, unable to argue with that. "Fine. Stay there!" He grabbed one of the lanterns -- it had been a well lit sacrificial site and fucking yay for small mercies -- and headed for the shadows by the far wall. There was heavy door that opened into some kind of a storeroom and four box stalls. Three of them were empty.
"Sam! This one's got hay or straw or something!"
"How clean?"
"It's a barn for fucksake, how clean do you think," he muttered unlatching the half door and going in. He hung the lantern on a hook, grabbed the fork leaning against the wall, and flung the soiled bedding over into the next stall. The rest of it was relatively clean and when he brought the middle of the pile up on the top it didn't even smell particularly bad. "Okay, that's… Jesus Sam!"
"I told you," Sam slid sideways through the door. "Not much time. We need," he began as he carefully set Anna down but Dean cut him off.
"More blankets, more water, the medical kit, and to throw those fuckers behind a locked door so they don't interrupt. I'm on it."
The storm had reached blizzard status and it wasn't pretty. Visibility was down to about ten feet, maybe less.
By the time Dean had dragged the half-a-coven into the storeroom, stripped them down to their tighty-whiteys, added a couple of incidental bruises, and barred the door, Sam had Anna settled in a nest of blankets, the medical kit open and spread out for easy access.
Eyes adverted from the baby making parts, Dean slid into the stall. "What should I do?"
"It'll be easier for her if she's not lying flat. Get behind her and support her upper body."
"How the hell do you know that?" he asked, shuffling along the wall and climbing up onto the straw. Shit, Sam had been on his own for four months; who knew what he'd gotten his gigantic ass into.
"I read a lot."
Dean blinked and stared at his brother. "You read a lot? About this?"
"Yes, Dean, I have a copy of Emergency Obstetrics for Dummies in my duffle bag. Now si… Anna, don't push! You're not ready!"
Given that Sam had his head between Anna's knees and his gaze locked on… stuff, Dean didn't even want to know how he knew that. He sat down and slipped a leg to either side of Anna's body, tucking her up against his chest. She closed both hands around his right forearm and hung on.
Tight.
"Hurts," she moaned.
"I know," Sam crooned. "But you're not ready yet. Just hang on."
"Want to push!"
"Not yet."
Her grip tightened as another contraction wracked her body.
"You've got to breathe, Anna." Dean shifted slightly, drawing her attention to him. "Like this." He fell into a Lamaze pattern and kept it up until she was breathing with him. As the contraction ended, he realized Sam was staring. "What? You read. I watch a lot of TV. You do know you're supposed to boil water right?"
"I think I can get things more sterile with the alcohol."
"And if one of us wants a cup of cof…"
Anna tensed.
"Here we go again!"
"No, this is it. Push Anna! I can see the baby's head!"
"No shit?"
"No shit! Push, Anna! Come on!"
Dean dropped his head and began to murmur encouragement into Anna's ear. Nonsense words, comforting words, anything he thought could help. He brushed her hair off her face with his free hand. "It's almost over, come on, you can do it."
Then Anna screamed, long and loud and Dean, who thought he'd heard every scream possible realized he'd never heard one like this. Pain, yeah, but pain wrapped in a promise to fight. A promise to protect. A promise from Anna to her baby that they'd get through this together.
"Got her!"
"Her?"
Sam lifted shining eyes to Dean. "It's a girl."
An indignant squall split the silence.
"A girl?"
"A girl." He picked something from the medical kit, did something Dean couldn't see, then straightened, the baby cradled in his hands.
Red and squirming, eyes squeezed shut, and making her low opinion of the situation plain, the baby was the most beautiful thing Dean had ever seen. "Look Anna." He kissed her damp hair. "It's a girl."
He felt the blood flow back into his hand as she released his arm and reached out. "My baby?"
"Dean, can you…?"
"Can I? Oh, right." He unfolded enough of the blankets that Sam could lay the baby on Anna's chest, then he wrapped them back up again., one finger lightly stroking the damp down on the baby's cheek. "Should I…?"
"No, stay put. I need to get the placenta out."
"Okay, dude, I'm a little freaked you know that."
The corner of Sam's mouth twisted up as he bent his head back between Anna's knees. "Yeah," he murmured. "Me too."
Dean watched the baby during the whole placenta thing, unable to take his eyes off her tiny fingers and her perfect nose and her eyelashes. Who knew babies had such amazing eyelashes? When Sam finally finished and cleaned things up, he touched that perfect cheek one last time, kissed Anna gently again, and slid free, allowing her to settle back on the sleeping bag cushioned by the straw.
She caught his arm before he could pull away. "If you're not angels," she sighed. "What are you?"
He glanced at Sam then back at her. "Hunters," he said softly. When she frowned, confused, he added, "We hunt the bad guys."
"You save people?"
"Yeah."
"Thank you."
He wanted to thank her because for the first time since he'd been pulled from Hell he couldn't hear the screams of the damned. She'd drowned them out, erased them with life refusing to be denied but he didn't know how explain that now, when he heard screaming, he'd think of her so he touched the baby's head, hair so soft and fine he almost couldn't feel it through the gun calluses, and said, "Thought of a name?"
Anna looked down at her baby and smiled. "I was going to call her Sarah, after John Connor's mother…"
Dean shot a grin at Sam who shook his head.
"…but now I think I'll call her Diana." When she looked up again, she didn't look fifteen anymore; just for a moment, she looked ageless. "She was the Goddess of the Hunt, you know."
"Yeah," Dean's voice was rough. "I know. You'll uh…" He cleared his throat and tried again. "You'll need something warm and soft to wrap her in." Shrugging out of his jacket and shirt, he pulled off his t-shirt, left it turned inside out as he opened the blanket and tucked it around Diana's body.
Anna sighed, her cheek against the top of Diana's head, and closed her eyes.
"That was your favorite Metallica t-shirt," Sam said softly as Dean stood by the edge of the box stall and pulled his shirt and jacket back on.
"Hey, only the best."
"Dean…"
"I'm going to go check to make sure those fuckheads are still locked up. Maybe take a look at the weather."
"Are you okay?"
Reaching out he closed a hand on Sam's shoulder and squeezed. "I'm good, Sammy." When Sam's hand closed over his, he linked their fingers together for a moment then pulled free.
The storm continued to rage maybe a hundred, hundred and twenty feet away but around the barn there was about four inches of brilliant white snow covering the ground, the sky was clear, the stars were so bright he could see the Impala parked under the trees, and there was an angel standing just outside the door.
"You're a little late," he sighed. "It's all over."
Castiel turned to face him and smiled. For the first time since Dean had… well, in all honesty Dean couldn't say he knew the spooky s.o.b. but for the first time since he'd shown up in Dean's life the angel's smile wasn't bemused or befuddled or sanctimonious -- it was joyous, pure and simple. "On the contrary," he said, "it's just beginning."
"Beginning?" It took a moment, then he frowned. "Diana? You're here for her? She's special?"
Castiel's smile actually broadened. "She is exactly as special as every baby born. She is a child of infinite potential. At this moment, on this night, the page of her life is blank and she is free to write whatever she desires upon it. That is the gift my Father gave you, Dean. Gave to you all. The chance to decide who and what you are to be. We…" He touched his chest lightly, the joy clouded. "…can only be what He made us, but to you, He gave the chance to make yourselves. When you are great, when you are wise, when you are kind, when you are brave, when you are just -- it is because you chose to be."
"And when we're sadist sons of bitches?"
"That too is your choice."
"Yeah," Dean snorted. "That's what I thought. You're wearing one heck of a pair of rose colored glasses there, Cas. Baby girl in there, she's got a rough road ahead of her and we are, all of us, what the world makes us."
"You have it backwards, Dean. The world is what you make it. Diana's world begins in Glory..."
"Glory? Dude, that's some messy idea of glory. Have you ever seen a baby born?"
"Just once."
And there was suddenly with the angel a multitude of the heavenly host praising God and saying, "Glory to God on the highest and on Earth peace and goodwill toward men."
Ears ringing, Dean wiped streaming eyes and muttered, "I bet you could see that shit from space."
"Dean?"
When he could see again, Dean wasn't at all surprised to find Sam standing in the doorway, Castiel and the choir nowhere to be seen. He swiped his cheeks with the palm of one hand. "It's fucking bright out here."
Sam's brows rose up under his bangs but he knew enough to keep quiet. Smart boy, Sammy. After a moment, he moved close enough to bump Dean's shoulder with his. "Weird weather."
Dean watched the wind whipping the snow horizontally through the trees just past the Impala. "Little bit, yeah."
"What do you think's holding it back?"
"Angel wings."
Sam made a non-committal noise then added, "That's more useful than they usually are."
"Apparently, they like babies. In fact…" He raised his voice just a little. "...I'm betting that they like babies so much we'll be able to get all the way back to the county hospital in Wedmore no trouble at all."
The wind split the snow just far enough that reflected starlight revealed the rutted track they'd drove in on.
"You sure you want to risk it?"
Dean thought about Diana curled against her mother's chest, wrapped in an old blanket, lying on used straw in an isolated stable and yeah, points for symbolism but he'd rather see them tucked into a nice clean hospital bed with a hot nurse bringing them a bowl of orange jello. Actually, he wanted to see them in a house of their own with a white picket fence and a puppy and Diana growing up happy and strong, uneffected by the way she'd entered the world, but he'd start with a nice clean hospital bed. "Yeah, I want to risk it."
"Okay." Sam turned to go, turned back again, and bumped Dean's shoulder one more time. "It's after midnight. Merry Christmas."
"That's it?" The sigh was mostly for effect. "Last year, there was boozy egg nog and porn."
"You're driving. Maybe later."
He looked up at Sam and smiled. "We have boozy egg nog and porn?" His turn to bump shoulders. Knocking Sam sideways was almost incidental. "Merry Christmas, Sammy."
A moment later, as he went flying into the snow, he remembered why he'd stopped trying to knock Sam over.
Sam grinned down at him. "I'll get Anna ready to go."
"Good idea." He got to his feet, dusted off his jeans, and frowned as he straightened. Was that star over the barn bigger and brighter than the rest? "Move it, Sam," he called, following his brother inside. "We need to haul ass before three wise men show up..."
Gen
PG-13
3,192 words
current canon
A MIDNIGHT CLEAR
The seal was under the floor of an old barn so no surprise the nut jobs trying to open it had hung their sacrifice from one of the beams. Blood ran down the pale skin of her arms from where the rope had cut into thin wrists, an oversized flannel shirt hung open off her shoulders, and her bare legs were scratched and bruised. Her back was toward them but even though her head lolled to one side, throwing the tangled mass of her dark hair over one shoulder, she was definitely still alive.
No point in sacrificing a dead girl.
Dean glanced over at his brother, saw a muscle jump in Sam's clenched jaw, and shook his head. He got it, he did; he wanted to charge in there as much as Sam did. It was killing him to leave the girl hanging there but there were six of the bastards and even for them those were crap odds. They had to wait until all six were closer together.
The picture Sam had found of the ritual showed a group prayer, hands on shoulders, letting the piece of filth they served know they were about to use the knife. According to the text -- and Dean checked Sam's translation, twice -- prayer came just after the fuckwads broke into pairs and fingerpainted their partners naked torsos with their own blood.
They'd been at the painting for a while now -- some glyphs he recognized, some he didn't. When the knives came out, cutting some of the glyphs deep, he clutched the shotgun so tightly the pain of metal and wood gouging into his hands distracted him from the memories.
They were almost done. And about fucking time as far as he was concerned. Southern Oklahoma was having a cold snap and late December was no time to be lying on the ground peering through cracks between barn boards and letting the frost seep in through his jeans. Frosty jeans, not on the top of his fun list.
Then Sam touched his arm and he realized art class for sado-masochists had ended. He nodded, rolled up onto his feet, bounced a bit of feeling back into his knees, and said, "Let's do this."
They kicked the door open together, stepped over the threshold, and let the fuckers have both barrels. Thing was, they were human. Twisted, psycho, murdering pieces of shit granted, but killing them wasn't an option. Four barrels of rock salt though, blown into six half naked bodies standing close together, well, that hurt like a son of a bitch.
And this was the thing about most people. They weren't used to pain. Or violence. A little quiet cutting was one thing; but two crazy guys shooting them? Froze them up faster than… well, frosty jeans. The rock salt wasn't intended to take them out, just slow them down.
The shotgun butts slammed in hard, butt to skull -- that was intended to take them out. Quick and clean. Bam. Bam. Bam. Three each, no waiting. While Dean bent to make sure all six were taking a well deserved dirt nap, Sam whipped out his knife and ran to cut down the girl.
"Dean!"
That didn't sound good. Maybe he'd been wrong about the girl still being alive. Maybe she was…
Pregnant.
Very, very pregnant; the round swell of her belly marked with the same glyphs the asswipes who'd taken her had been drawing on each other. Same medium too although they hadn't done any cutting.
"The sacrifice of the innocent," Sam murmured, sawing through the ropes.
Dean steadied her gently as she began to swing, erasing the pattern drawn around her with the edge of one boot. "I'm going go shoot those fuckers again."
"Works for me."
Then the rope finally split and she collapsed into Sam's arms. He scooped her up but when she began to struggle, he sank to the barn's floor and held her cradled on his lap. Moaning, she opened her eyes.
"Shhh, it's okay." Sam's voice had picked up the comforting tone he used for terrified witnesses, haunted civilians, and, apparently. rescued pregnant sacrifices. "We've got you. You're safe now."
She looked between then, first at Sam, then at up him, her eyes enormous in her thin face. "Are you angels?"
"Oh sweetheart, you don't want angels, trust me. I'm Dean." He dropped to one knee and pulled a flask from the inside pocket of his jacket. "And this, is my little brother Sam." When her eyes widened further, he grinned. "Yeah, not so little anymore. Here, drink this."
Sam's brows went up when he recognized the flask that held the holy water not the whiskey, but he merely supported the girl's head and helped her drink. Right now, far as Dean was concerned, water was water and a hell of a lot better for someone in her condition than booze. He helped her hold the flask and frowned as he realized how cold her fingers were.
"Sam…"
"I know. Get a blanket, we'll wrap her up before I carry… Hey…" He brushed a bit of long dark hair back off her face. "What's your name?""
"Anna."
"Hi, Anna."
She actually managed a tentative smile back. Dean figured it had to be the dimples.
"My brother's going to go for a blanket," Sam continued. "And then I'll wrap you up and carry you out to the car. Okay?"
"Okay."
Somehow, Dean managed to resist stopping and putting the boots to the bastards on the floor on the way by. Once out of the barn, the wind chill dropped the temperature significantly and, by the time he got back with the blanket, it had started to snow. Hard.
"We need to get moving," he said, jogging back to Sam's side. "There's a storm brewing out there."
"Yeah, well…" Sam paused as Anna clutched at his jacket and whimpered. "…there's a baby coming in here. Her water just broke."
Dean looked down. Backed up a step.
"We need to find a warmer corner." With her belly hidden behind the blanket, Anna looked no more than fifteen as Sam rose to his feet. "Maybe some place with some straw so she's off the bare floor."
"No. Put her in the car. We drive for town."
"Dean, it took us almost three hours to get up here from Wedmore. The roads are crap, it's pitch black out and snowing, and I don't think…" He paused again while she writhed and whimpered in the cradle of his arms. "…Anna's got three hours."
"And Stanford had a midwife elective you never mentioned? You don't know crap about delivering babies!"
"I can count. And her contractions are too close together to risk it. It's safer here than in the back of the Impala while you're roaring down dirt roads at a hundred miles an hour in a blizzard!"
Dean opened his mouth and closed it again, unable to argue with that. "Fine. Stay there!" He grabbed one of the lanterns -- it had been a well lit sacrificial site and fucking yay for small mercies -- and headed for the shadows by the far wall. There was heavy door that opened into some kind of a storeroom and four box stalls. Three of them were empty.
"Sam! This one's got hay or straw or something!"
"How clean?"
"It's a barn for fucksake, how clean do you think," he muttered unlatching the half door and going in. He hung the lantern on a hook, grabbed the fork leaning against the wall, and flung the soiled bedding over into the next stall. The rest of it was relatively clean and when he brought the middle of the pile up on the top it didn't even smell particularly bad. "Okay, that's… Jesus Sam!"
"I told you," Sam slid sideways through the door. "Not much time. We need," he began as he carefully set Anna down but Dean cut him off.
"More blankets, more water, the medical kit, and to throw those fuckers behind a locked door so they don't interrupt. I'm on it."
The storm had reached blizzard status and it wasn't pretty. Visibility was down to about ten feet, maybe less.
By the time Dean had dragged the half-a-coven into the storeroom, stripped them down to their tighty-whiteys, added a couple of incidental bruises, and barred the door, Sam had Anna settled in a nest of blankets, the medical kit open and spread out for easy access.
Eyes adverted from the baby making parts, Dean slid into the stall. "What should I do?"
"It'll be easier for her if she's not lying flat. Get behind her and support her upper body."
"How the hell do you know that?" he asked, shuffling along the wall and climbing up onto the straw. Shit, Sam had been on his own for four months; who knew what he'd gotten his gigantic ass into.
"I read a lot."
Dean blinked and stared at his brother. "You read a lot? About this?"
"Yes, Dean, I have a copy of Emergency Obstetrics for Dummies in my duffle bag. Now si… Anna, don't push! You're not ready!"
Given that Sam had his head between Anna's knees and his gaze locked on… stuff, Dean didn't even want to know how he knew that. He sat down and slipped a leg to either side of Anna's body, tucking her up against his chest. She closed both hands around his right forearm and hung on.
Tight.
"Hurts," she moaned.
"I know," Sam crooned. "But you're not ready yet. Just hang on."
"Want to push!"
"Not yet."
Her grip tightened as another contraction wracked her body.
"You've got to breathe, Anna." Dean shifted slightly, drawing her attention to him. "Like this." He fell into a Lamaze pattern and kept it up until she was breathing with him. As the contraction ended, he realized Sam was staring. "What? You read. I watch a lot of TV. You do know you're supposed to boil water right?"
"I think I can get things more sterile with the alcohol."
"And if one of us wants a cup of cof…"
Anna tensed.
"Here we go again!"
"No, this is it. Push Anna! I can see the baby's head!"
"No shit?"
"No shit! Push, Anna! Come on!"
Dean dropped his head and began to murmur encouragement into Anna's ear. Nonsense words, comforting words, anything he thought could help. He brushed her hair off her face with his free hand. "It's almost over, come on, you can do it."
Then Anna screamed, long and loud and Dean, who thought he'd heard every scream possible realized he'd never heard one like this. Pain, yeah, but pain wrapped in a promise to fight. A promise to protect. A promise from Anna to her baby that they'd get through this together.
"Got her!"
"Her?"
Sam lifted shining eyes to Dean. "It's a girl."
An indignant squall split the silence.
"A girl?"
"A girl." He picked something from the medical kit, did something Dean couldn't see, then straightened, the baby cradled in his hands.
Red and squirming, eyes squeezed shut, and making her low opinion of the situation plain, the baby was the most beautiful thing Dean had ever seen. "Look Anna." He kissed her damp hair. "It's a girl."
He felt the blood flow back into his hand as she released his arm and reached out. "My baby?"
"Dean, can you…?"
"Can I? Oh, right." He unfolded enough of the blankets that Sam could lay the baby on Anna's chest, then he wrapped them back up again., one finger lightly stroking the damp down on the baby's cheek. "Should I…?"
"No, stay put. I need to get the placenta out."
"Okay, dude, I'm a little freaked you know that."
The corner of Sam's mouth twisted up as he bent his head back between Anna's knees. "Yeah," he murmured. "Me too."
Dean watched the baby during the whole placenta thing, unable to take his eyes off her tiny fingers and her perfect nose and her eyelashes. Who knew babies had such amazing eyelashes? When Sam finally finished and cleaned things up, he touched that perfect cheek one last time, kissed Anna gently again, and slid free, allowing her to settle back on the sleeping bag cushioned by the straw.
She caught his arm before he could pull away. "If you're not angels," she sighed. "What are you?"
He glanced at Sam then back at her. "Hunters," he said softly. When she frowned, confused, he added, "We hunt the bad guys."
"You save people?"
"Yeah."
"Thank you."
He wanted to thank her because for the first time since he'd been pulled from Hell he couldn't hear the screams of the damned. She'd drowned them out, erased them with life refusing to be denied but he didn't know how explain that now, when he heard screaming, he'd think of her so he touched the baby's head, hair so soft and fine he almost couldn't feel it through the gun calluses, and said, "Thought of a name?"
Anna looked down at her baby and smiled. "I was going to call her Sarah, after John Connor's mother…"
Dean shot a grin at Sam who shook his head.
"…but now I think I'll call her Diana." When she looked up again, she didn't look fifteen anymore; just for a moment, she looked ageless. "She was the Goddess of the Hunt, you know."
"Yeah," Dean's voice was rough. "I know. You'll uh…" He cleared his throat and tried again. "You'll need something warm and soft to wrap her in." Shrugging out of his jacket and shirt, he pulled off his t-shirt, left it turned inside out as he opened the blanket and tucked it around Diana's body.
Anna sighed, her cheek against the top of Diana's head, and closed her eyes.
"That was your favorite Metallica t-shirt," Sam said softly as Dean stood by the edge of the box stall and pulled his shirt and jacket back on.
"Hey, only the best."
"Dean…"
"I'm going to go check to make sure those fuckheads are still locked up. Maybe take a look at the weather."
"Are you okay?"
Reaching out he closed a hand on Sam's shoulder and squeezed. "I'm good, Sammy." When Sam's hand closed over his, he linked their fingers together for a moment then pulled free.
The storm continued to rage maybe a hundred, hundred and twenty feet away but around the barn there was about four inches of brilliant white snow covering the ground, the sky was clear, the stars were so bright he could see the Impala parked under the trees, and there was an angel standing just outside the door.
"You're a little late," he sighed. "It's all over."
Castiel turned to face him and smiled. For the first time since Dean had… well, in all honesty Dean couldn't say he knew the spooky s.o.b. but for the first time since he'd shown up in Dean's life the angel's smile wasn't bemused or befuddled or sanctimonious -- it was joyous, pure and simple. "On the contrary," he said, "it's just beginning."
"Beginning?" It took a moment, then he frowned. "Diana? You're here for her? She's special?"
Castiel's smile actually broadened. "She is exactly as special as every baby born. She is a child of infinite potential. At this moment, on this night, the page of her life is blank and she is free to write whatever she desires upon it. That is the gift my Father gave you, Dean. Gave to you all. The chance to decide who and what you are to be. We…" He touched his chest lightly, the joy clouded. "…can only be what He made us, but to you, He gave the chance to make yourselves. When you are great, when you are wise, when you are kind, when you are brave, when you are just -- it is because you chose to be."
"And when we're sadist sons of bitches?"
"That too is your choice."
"Yeah," Dean snorted. "That's what I thought. You're wearing one heck of a pair of rose colored glasses there, Cas. Baby girl in there, she's got a rough road ahead of her and we are, all of us, what the world makes us."
"You have it backwards, Dean. The world is what you make it. Diana's world begins in Glory..."
"Glory? Dude, that's some messy idea of glory. Have you ever seen a baby born?"
"Just once."
And there was suddenly with the angel a multitude of the heavenly host praising God and saying, "Glory to God on the highest and on Earth peace and goodwill toward men."
Ears ringing, Dean wiped streaming eyes and muttered, "I bet you could see that shit from space."
"Dean?"
When he could see again, Dean wasn't at all surprised to find Sam standing in the doorway, Castiel and the choir nowhere to be seen. He swiped his cheeks with the palm of one hand. "It's fucking bright out here."
Sam's brows rose up under his bangs but he knew enough to keep quiet. Smart boy, Sammy. After a moment, he moved close enough to bump Dean's shoulder with his. "Weird weather."
Dean watched the wind whipping the snow horizontally through the trees just past the Impala. "Little bit, yeah."
"What do you think's holding it back?"
"Angel wings."
Sam made a non-committal noise then added, "That's more useful than they usually are."
"Apparently, they like babies. In fact…" He raised his voice just a little. "...I'm betting that they like babies so much we'll be able to get all the way back to the county hospital in Wedmore no trouble at all."
The wind split the snow just far enough that reflected starlight revealed the rutted track they'd drove in on.
"You sure you want to risk it?"
Dean thought about Diana curled against her mother's chest, wrapped in an old blanket, lying on used straw in an isolated stable and yeah, points for symbolism but he'd rather see them tucked into a nice clean hospital bed with a hot nurse bringing them a bowl of orange jello. Actually, he wanted to see them in a house of their own with a white picket fence and a puppy and Diana growing up happy and strong, uneffected by the way she'd entered the world, but he'd start with a nice clean hospital bed. "Yeah, I want to risk it."
"Okay." Sam turned to go, turned back again, and bumped Dean's shoulder one more time. "It's after midnight. Merry Christmas."
"That's it?" The sigh was mostly for effect. "Last year, there was boozy egg nog and porn."
"You're driving. Maybe later."
He looked up at Sam and smiled. "We have boozy egg nog and porn?" His turn to bump shoulders. Knocking Sam sideways was almost incidental. "Merry Christmas, Sammy."
A moment later, as he went flying into the snow, he remembered why he'd stopped trying to knock Sam over.
Sam grinned down at him. "I'll get Anna ready to go."
"Good idea." He got to his feet, dusted off his jeans, and frowned as he straightened. Was that star over the barn bigger and brighter than the rest? "Move it, Sam," he called, following his brother inside. "We need to haul ass before three wise men show up..."