Stay With Me (Hold My Hand) ⋆ SPN

1. Unwanted Sibling Reunion

Despite the worn leather jacket wrapped around her shoulders, Abigail Winchester was still cold. To a passerby, she probably looked like just another kid, waiting for her parents to finish filling up their minivan with gas before they continued their vacation. But the minivan full of kids drove off, and Abby was still left sitting on the curb in front of a gas station in some town a few hundred miles south of her destination. Well, their destination.

As Abby watched the sun slowly begin to sink below the horizon, painting the sky pink and orange, she had the strange feeling of 'this isn't going to last forever.' Maybe there was a word for it, she didn't know. Despite what Dean might tell people, the books Abby read obsessively didn't make her a genius.

Voices of the man and woman standing outside the gas station and smoking filtered into Abby's ears.

"-are her parents?"

"...can't be more than ten."

Nine, actually. Abigail Winchester was nine, as of just a bit over a month ago. For her birthday, she'd gotten purple Converse from Dean, a size too big so she'd grow into them, and a whole stack of books that were marked 'from Dad' in Dean's handwriting.

Abby was suddenly very aware that the man and woman were looking at her, and very aware of how they were seeing her. She looked like a pretty normal kid, Abby was relatively sure of that,, with her jeans and a pink long-sleeve shirt that had a little flower on it. It was pretty normal kid attire. Sure, the leather jacket she was wearing was strange, but anyone could figure out that it wasn't hers. She wondered if the other people thought it was her father's. Probably. Though, to be fair, it technically was. Just now, it was Dean who wore it most of the time.

Abby's hair was long and brown and wasn't that tangled, so they couldn't be judging her for that. It was a little darker than Dean's, she wished hers had the same lighter parts he did. From pictures, she thought hers looked more like Sam's. Though all of those pictures were at least three years old, so who knew if he even still had brown hair. Well, they'd know in just a few hours, Abby supposed.

However, the characteristic of Abby that made people the most uneasy was usually the look on her face of someone much older. There was tiredness and a sadness that was buried deep in her bones and ran through her veins, in a way that, no matter how big she smiled, would never really leave her expression.

"Hey, Abs, ready to go?" Abby pulled her eyes from the setting sun and her mind from the man and woman. She nodded and beside Dean back to his car, glancing back once. The man and woman were watching her and Dean, not super intently, but still.

Dean's car was a '67 Chevy Impala with worn seats and more replacement engine parts than original, and a terrible nickname, in Abby's opinion. It was still pretty much the only home she'd ever known.

As Abby climbed into the backseat, taking her place behind the passenger's seat, Dean handed back to her a packet of trail mix, a plastic bottle of water, and a small bag of prepackaged cookies.

As Dean pulled out of the parking lot and navigated back to the highway, Abby ate her dinner. Thinking about Sam, and how close they were, made her stomach feel funny but almost in a good way. It was weird to think about how close they were to seeing him. Maybe Sam would say he didn't want to talk to Dean. That would probably be the smart choice.

"You might want to get some shut-eye before we get there," Dean said, but when he looked in the rearview mirror Abby's head was already resting against the window and her breathing shallow. Dean turned the music down, just a little, and tried to keep his mind off his younger sibling behind him and the one he was heading towards.

~

A little less than nine years before—

A muffled noise, almost a cry, woke Mary up. Or maybe it was the subsequent crying that ended her slumber. Mary didn't bother to turn on the night lamp, just padded out of the bedroom. As she entered the hallway, another door opened and an unkempt head of hair stuck out. "Sammy have another nightmare?" the teenage boy asked, rubbing his exhausted face with a hand.