Note: Hey, guys! It's a bit on the short side again, and it's late-ish again.

I have exams this week and I work tomorrow and things are just weird and busy and you know. Life. But I'm trying. And I should have a lot more time to write once exams are over and I'm officially done with the semester.

In the meantime, this was requested by no one, and it's just a bunch of relatively normal, day-to-day type moments. Promise I'll be back to requests as soon as I can, and everyone who's waiting, even it's been well over a month (I know it has been for some of you), I appreciate your patience more than I can say, and I will write the chapter asap, I promise you <3

Anna is two, seven, ten, fourteen, and nineteen

Garden Variety

Sam closed his eyes and took a deep breath. The air smelled clean, like earth, and it was a welcome change from the kind of environment he was used to inhabiting.

"Sammy, look!" Anna's little, happy voice called.

Sam opened his eyes and looked to his left. Anna was standing at the edge of the front lawn, her hand in Dean's, pointing at something across the dirt road. Sam followed her finger and saw something that made his eyes shine with excitement and curiosity almost as much as Anna's. The field had been empty-nothing but grass, clover, and flowers - when they first arrived. But now there were several cows there, flicking their tails and grazing.

It was rare that they ever got to stop somewhere for something other than a job, but Sam was turning eighteen, and for once their Dad was actually hanging around for a birthday. He'd even offered to go somewhere of Sam's choosing for a day off. Sam had perused the local places, hoping t0 find a not-touristy place that they could spend a day at as a family, and he'd stumbled across the website of a farm run by a guy and his wife and two teenage kids. It had seemed like it would be a nice change of pace, and the second the Impala had pulled into the yard, Sam had known he'd made the right call. Anna had been bouncing in her carseat, and even Dean and their dad had looked excited.

Sam hurried over to stand by his siblings, watching two of the cows bump heads. Anna let out a delighted squeal and hopped up and down. "De, I see!" she begged loudly, drawing the attention of several of the cows, all of whom looked wary at the sight of the little ball of energy that was Anna. Dean let go of her hand and reached down to scoop her up and give her the vantage point she'd asked for. Anna grinned big and started to wave at the cows, many of which jumped back, startled. "Hi, cows!" she squeaked, the word coming out as 'tows' instead.

"You gotta speak the language, kid," Dean told her. Sam smiled a little watching their brother point at the cows. "They don't talk like us, remember? What's a cow say, Munchkin?"

Anna, who had listened to everything Dean said with a serious look on her face, suddenly turned back to the cows. "Moo!" she yelled at them. A couple glanced up at her, appearing bored, and a couple of others took a few steps back. "No talk...." Anna told Dean, pouting sadly.

"They'll talk back," Sam assured her. "They just need a minute."

"Yeah, Rugrat, I bet you have a hell of an accent. They're probably still processing."

Dean set Anna down when she started squirming, and she surprised both her brothers by suddenly plopping down in the grass. Sam marveled for a second at the green beneath them. It was almost stupid how energized all of this made him feel. But they weren't often surrounded by this much nature, except when they were hunting deep in the woods, and that was an entirely different experience.

Sam dropped down beside her. "What is that?" he asked her, watching her smooth the palms of her tiny hands over the blades of grass all around them.

"Is g'ass!" Anna exclaimed, plucking up a few tiny pieces of it to shove in Sam's direction. "P'itty g'ass."

"It is pretty," Sam agreed softly, hearing Dean snicker above them. "What color is that?" he prompted, tugging a few blades of grass up himself and holding them out in front of his sister.

Anna dropped the grass she'd been holding and reached out to curl her chubby fingers around the ones he had. "G'een," she said, lifting up her fistful of grass. She only had two little pieces of grass by now, but it didn't seem to bother her. Once she'd shown Sam, she looked up at Dean, who was still standing beside them. She held up her little fist, a tiny bit of grass poking out. "G'een!"

"Yeah, wow," he played along. "That's the coolest grass I ever saw, Munchkin." He squatted down beside his siblings, gently ruffled Anna's curly hair, and reached over to tug the strap of her yellow overalls back up over her shoulder. "Where the hell's Dad?" he asked, looking over her head at Sam.

"I dunno," Sam shrugged one shoulder. "He said he was gonna talk to the guy who runs this place so we could see everything."

"Well, I'm bored," Dean griped.

"How can you be bored? There's a field full of cows right there."

Dean rolled his eyes. "Not all of us are nerdy enough to stare at cows for ten minutes."

"Cows!" Anna squealed again. She pushed herself up to her feet and started toward the little dirt road but Dean caught her with an arm around her waist.

"We're gonna watch from here, Rugrat."

"Pitty cows," Anna told him with a grave nod. She turned to Sam to give him the same serious look and repeated herself, "Pitty cows." She was still saying cows like 'tows,' and Sam wrinkled his nose and smiled at how cute it was. He also felt like he should try to teach her better though.

"Cow," he enunciated. "C-Cow."

Anna turned to look at him, eyes fixating on his mouth as she watched him repeat the word. This was becoming common practice for her. She was learning new words seemingly every day, and every time she figured out how to say something new, she would run around repeating the word to her dad and brothers over and over until even she was tired of hearing it. Planting her hands on Sam's knee, she leaned in, her mouth moving silently around the word like his did. "Gow," she came out with. She seemed to think she'd done a spot-on impression of what Sam was saying. She straightened and clapped her hands. "Gow, gow, gow!"

Sam laughed but didn't have the heart to tell her that wasn't quite right.

Anna turned back to look at the cows, and Dean's hand went out automatically to her shoulder in case she decided she wanted to get closer again. But she wasn't moving toward the road. She just jumped up and down. "Hi, gows!" she squealed. "Oh," she exclaimed then. Correcting herself, she said, "Moo, gows!"

()()()

"One, two, three, swing," the boys said in tandem. Anna giggled loud and tugged on their hands-- each of them holding one of hers-- so that they would do it again. "One, two, three, swing," They swung her in an arch in front of them and let her feet land on the ground again.

She laughed hysterically. "Again, again!" she squealed through her giggles.

"We're almost there, Ladybug," Sam said through a smile, trying not to crack up watching her. "Just one more time, okay?"

Anna nodded eagerly. "Higher this time," she begged, her eyes bright with excitement.

Dean grabbed her hand a little tighter, adjusting his grip. "You heard the lady."

"One, two, three, swing!"

Anna squealed with laughter again, and even when they let go of her hands and turned to go up the walkway to the house of the family they needed to talk to, her smile didn't fade.

()()()

"Do you think they would give me ice cream?" Anna asked, kneeling on the booth seat beside Dean and sitting back on her sneaker-clad feet.

Sam snorted. "At seven a.m.?"

"Nobody serves ice cream this time of the morning, Rugrat. And even if they did, you wouldn't be eatin' it for breakfast."

Anna made a face. "You let me eat it for breakfast last week."

At the look of anger and disbelief on Sam's face, Dean glanced from him to Anna and shoved a menu in front of his sister. "Sam wasn't here last week. Order something that isn't pure sugar, and stop spillin' all my secrets."

"Tell me this is a joke."

"Come on, Sam. You can't live with a stick wedged up your ass all the time."

"Well, excuse me," Sam said, not at all sorry. "But someone has to worry about her diet. She's ten, Dean!"

"Exactly. She's ten. Sometimes you gotta let a kid have some fun, Sammy. And sometimes having fun means eating ice cream for breakfast." He smiled that smile that was immature but somehow also said I'm right and you know it and this conversation is over.

Sam sat back in his seat, picked up his menu, and shook his head at Dean over it. "You're unbelievable," was all he said.

Anna smiled behind her own menu. "Pancakes is basically like having ice cream for breakfast."

"No, it's not," Sam said.

"It basically is."

"Pancakes have flour, eggs, oil, and milk in them. Ice cream is just milk-fat and sugar."

"So it's like if pancakes tasted better," Anna decided.

Sam just fixed her with a look. "They're different," he told her seriously, then looked up to Dean with an unimpressed look. "But just for the record, you shouldn't be ordering pancakes every morning either."

"But they're on the menu, and you just said they're not as bad as ice cream."

Dean ruffled her hair. "You gotta let him win every once in a while, Munchkin, or he'll make that face forever."

Anna looked thoughtfully at Sam. He looked like he was sucking on a lemon. "I'll get scrambled eggs if we can have ice cream after lunch."

Sam didn't look pleased as he was still giving Dean that same irritated expression. But he sighed and looked at Anna again. "Yeah, okay. But you're getting a kid's size, and you have to get something healthy for dinner too."

Anna shrugged. "Okay."

()()()

"How'd you do?"

Anna shot Sam an annoyed look. "I missed you for the last seven hours too, Sammy. How's your day been? Great? Great. Mine too. Thank you for asking. It's awesome to know you care so much about my day-to-day existence on this shitty-"

"Hey."

"-planet." Finished with her spiel, Anna slid her backpack off her shoulders and dropped it on the table next to Sam's laptop. She tugged open the zipper and pulled out her math test, which was a little wrinkled but not totally crumpled like half the other papers in her bag. She handed it to him face-down but watched him turn it over.

"Are you kidding me?"

"Yep. I failed as a joke," Anna said in such a serious tone that it had to be sarcasm. "I don't see why you're not laughing. Gotta be one of my best bits ever."

"Stop the smartass routine."

"It's one test, Sam. It's fine."

"It's not fine," Sam argued. "I know you didn't want to go to public school, Anna, but you have to put a little effort in."

"What makes you think I'm not putting effort in?"

"This grade." Anna rolled her eyes and picked up her backpack, but Sam's chair scraped against the floor, and he followed her out of the library and down the hall, still talking. "You're smarter than this, Anna. We both know you are. If you put half your best into this class, you'd have an A-."

"I don't want an A-."

"Well, you need at least a B-."

Anna turned around to fix her brother with a confused look. "What I need is a 65. That's passing. That's how I graduate in four stupid years."

"What you need is a B-," Sam argued. "Until then, I'm gonna need your phone."

Anna's smug, unbothered expression fell away. "What?"

"Your phone."

"Are you kidding?"

"Yeah, I'm taking your phone as a joke. Why aren't you laughing? It's gotta be one of my best bits."

Anna pulled her phone out of her pocket and slapped it into his hand, resisting the urge to call him something uncharitable. Stealing her phone and her sarcasm? Sam was stepping up his game.

()()()

"You wanna explain Josh?"

Anna's eyebrows popped up when a bag of fast food was dropped aggressively onto the table in front of her and then Dean's shadow washed over her. "Sorry?"

"Josh. Who the fuck is he, besides a barista, and why did he ask about you?"

Anna huffed a confused laugh, shaking her head, and then remembered the coffee shop cashier yesterday morning and her face fell in realization. "Oh. Uh, no one. Yeah, no, he's just... no one."

"That was the worst lie you've ever told."

Indignance rocked Anna. "He's no one," she repeated more sturdily, standing up from her chair. She moved around her brother and toward the bathroom where she could-- hopefully-- avoid finishing this conversation. No such luck, because Dean stepped back into her path. "Okay, chill out," she told him, watched his eyes darken, and realized that had been a poor choice of words. "I promise he's no one. Okay? And if he was someone, it wouldn't really be anything for you to yell at me about since I'm an adult, and I've been in relationships before," she added, voice hardening.

"No, see, because the relationships you've been in before have been with people your own age, Anna."

"Yeah."

"Rugrat, that guy's gotta be pushing thirty-five. At least. Your past relationships don't exactly prepare you for gettin' manipulated by thirty-something dudes named Josh."

"What makes you think I'm that easy to manipulate."

"Don't turn this into that," Dean said, pointing a finger at her, eyes sharp. It reminded her of every time she ever broke curfew or said a bad word when he was already pissed at her. It reminded her of being a kid in trouble. "I'm not sayin' you're stupid. I'm sayin' you're nineteen. Barely."

Anna bit the inside of her bottom lip. "What did he say?" she asked.

"He asked if the blonde chick was with me."

"That's it?" Anna scoffed. He'd come in here ranting at her over that?

"He said you two had a 'thing' going."

Anna rolled her eyes. "Oh for the love of God."

"Tell me he was lying."

Easy. "He was lying." Maybe she'd answered too fast. Whatever the reason, Dean looked a little disbelieving. It pissed her off. "Creepy assholes stare at me all the time, Dean. They compliment me when I didn't ask for it, and I try not to piss them off, and they think I'm flirting with them, and I try to get out without doing any damage if I can, and sometimes, because they're creepy assholes, their deluded little minds decide I'm interested. And sometimes, the creepy asshole is named Josh, and he works at the coffee shop."

Dean took a step back, his expression clearing of accusation. Anna just held his eyes, letting him realize that he'd blown up at her without knowing what had happened and what she'd been thinking or what she'd even done. He'd assumed, like when she was a kid, that she didn't know what was best and would just make the worse choice in every situation because she didn't know any better.

The silence reigned for almost a full minute before Dean finally cleared his throat. "Sorry," he said quietly.

Anna smirked a little. "Considering how rarely that word comes out of your mouth, I guess I kinda have to forgive you, huh?"

"Yeah," Dean snorted with a slightly annoyed look on his face. He didn't look light-hearted. He grabbed her arm when she went to walk back to the table. "You know, if you ever want me to punch any creepy assholes noses into their brains..."

Anna gave him a slow, small smile. "I wouldn't be too disappointed to find out Josh's face had been rearranged, but I don't think he really means any harm, so... leave him alone, okay?" She waited for her brother's reluctant nod and then sat down at the table, noticing peripherally that Dean hadn't moved. She guessed this was a weird, painful moment for him... realizing there was something out there he wasn't protecting his sister from-- not that he never had, because Dean was quick to scare off cat-callers and other givers of unwanted attention. But he probably hadn't realized just how often she dealt with that crap. It wasn't every day. Wasn't even every week. But it was often enough that Anna thought guys like Josh were pretty much garden variety.

La Fin