The Runt of the Litter

Ode to Halloween

Note: Alright, I know I just posted yesterday, but I've been really inconsistent for the past several months, and I figure I owe you guys about a hundred thousand updates. Plus, I'm pretty sure it's been a while since we saw little Anna, and I just finished rewriting this scene I originally wrote ages ago.

Thanks for all of you being so amazing and sweet and loyal <3 I promise I'm hanging in there, and I hope you guys all are doing alright too

Anna is seven, and this chapter takes a bit of dialogue from episode 1.04 Phantom Traveler.

Ode to Halloween

Anna lay quietly on the couch in the Winchesters' most recent motel room, waiting patiently for her brothers to get up-- Dean-- and back-- Sam. Sam had opened his laptop for her and pulled up her online classwork before leaving to get breakfast half an hour ago. So there she lay, laptop propped against her knees, trying to pass a unit test in math. She wrinkled her nose in frustration when she got a problem wrong and the tutorial she'd watched earlier popped back up for her to re-watch.

"I think they gotta learn that one mistake don't mean I don't understand how to do math, Halloween," Anna told her stuffed frog who was sitting on her lap facing the screen. "You know what I'm sayin'?"

Dean was snoring lightly on the bed nearest the door, laying on his stomach with one hand tucked under his pillow. Anna looked over at him as she let the tutorial play muted on the screen in front of her. The program wouldn't let her move on without rewatching it, and she wasn't interested in seeing it again.

"Wow I'm so bored," she grouched, tempted to toss the computer aside and pull out her legos instead. She resisted the urge. They'd already finished their case in this town, and they were probably going to head out today. If she made a mess with all her toys, she would just have to pick it up when Dean woke up.

"Hey, Halloween, wanna mess with Dean?" she asked with a hint of excitement in her eyes. But when she looked at the frog's face, he seemed unimpressed, not having twitched a muscle. "Yeah, I guess you're right," she said resignedly and turned back to the laptop screen. "It does sound like a lot of work."

She stared boredly at the tutorial as it finished playing over the next minute. "Thank you, Dummy McDumbface," she told the computer, feeling rather satisfied with her own insult. "Now, can I continue?"

A new problem of the same variety appeared on the screen, and Anna set to work on it. She had it figured out-- correctly this time-- in a couple minutes. "At this rate, Halloween, I'll be done so fast and I won't have to do anymore homework for the rest of my life." She liked to get ahead on her work all at once so she could forget school even existed for a week or two at a time. Except sometimes she got ahead and Sam took it as an invitation to find her harder schoolwork or print out extra homework sheets for her. So she figured it would be best to keep it a secret this time and hope he'd forget.

She heard the door to the room open and figured Sam must be back. She'd noticed his bed was empty when she woke up half an hour prior. Anna could also see Dean tense up just a little, his hand gripping something under his pillow as his eyes opened to little slits. It made her nervous, 'cause he didn't know it was Sam out there. It would totally suck if Dean stabbed their brother.

"Morning, Sunshine," Sam greeted as he turned the corner. He was holding a tray with two large coffees, a smaller hot beverage, and a bag of pastries.

"What time is it?" Dean groaned and rolled over. He wasn't holding the knife anymore. Crisis averted.

"5:45!" Anna chirped from the couch, now kneeling on the cushions and leaning over the back of the couch to face her brothers. Halloween hung from her left hand down the couch-back, looking rather bored despite his precarious position held loosely in her small fist. "In the morning."