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."

Dean looked over at her, appearing slightly off put by how energetic she was so early. "Where does the day go?" he said good-naturedly and sat up, swinging his legs over the edge of the bed. He looked at Sam, who still stood there with their breakfast in his hands. "Did you get any sleep last night?"

"Yeah, I snagged a couple hours," Sam answered casually.

"Liar," Anna called bullshit quietly from the couch.

"She's right," Dean admitted. "Cause I was up at three, and you were watching a George Foreman infomercial."

"Hey, what can I say? It's riveting tv," Sam shrugged it off.

"When's the last time you got a good night's sleep?"

Sam shrugged evasively, his voice forced into sounding a little too casual when he answered, "I don't know. Little while, I guess. It's not a big deal."

"Uh, yeah it is," Dean retorted seriously.

Sam gave Dean a look. "Look, I appreciate your concern, but-"

"Oh, I'm not concerned about you," Dean asserted, ever trying to keep his reputation as a manly man. "It's your job to keep my ass alive, so I need you sharp."

"You got me," Anna chimed from the couch. Obviously she wasn't going to be relied on as a hunting partner, but it was as good a way as any to remind the boys that she existed and was bored.

Dean chuckled and waved her over. Anna skipped happily to Dean even as Sam shrugged and Dean spoke again. "Seriously, are you still having nightmares about Jess?" he asked, pulling Anna up and into his lap.

Sam took a seat on the bed across from them, and Dean reached out to pull his coffee off the tray. He also grabbed off the smaller cup and gave it to his little sister. She sniffed at the small opening in the plastic lid and knew it must be hot chocolate.

"Yeah. But it's not just her. It's everything. I just forgot, you know? This job, man, it gets to you."

Even though she didn't fight the monsters head on the way her brothers did, Anna couldn't help but silently agree with Sam. She had nightmares almost every night. They probably weren't as scary as Sam's, but she was just a kid, so they were just as scary to her as Sam's were to him. And most of hers did have to do with monsters and hunting.

Anna dropped Halloween on the bed and used both hands to slowly take a sip of her cocoa. She hated burning her tongue, but she couldn't resist taking a sip of hot chocolate. It just smelled so good.

"You can't let it," Dean told Sam. "You can't take it home like that."

"So, what? All this. It never keeps you up at night?" Sam asked with a clear disbelief in his tone.

Dean shook his head, and Sam looked disbelieving, but Anna wasn't surprised at all. This was Dean they were talking about. He was the biggest, strongest, coolest person to ever exist, aside from maybe their dad.

"Never?" Sam challenged. "You're never afraid?"

"Duh," Anna answered for him, and Sam gave her a look that sort of made her wanna punch him. It was one of those aww, cute looks that she hated so much, one of those looks she got from strangers more often than from her family. She couldn't wait to be old and stop getting those looks.

"No, not really," Dean affirmed, and took a nonchalant sip of his coffee.

Anna stared up at him with awe. She'd always known Dean was fearless, but it still impressed her. She wished she could be that brave, especially if it meant not having any more nightmares. She hated the bad dreams, the way they woke her in the middle of the night, left her covered in sweat and crying. She hated the way they invaded her head even at high noon, reminding her that things weren't okay, that there was still a lot to be afraid of, even with the sun shining.

Mostly it was her dad that made her worry. He'd been gone so much longer than usual, and he lived such a dangerous life. It was hard not to imagine him getting hurt or killed. It was even harder not to have nightmares about it.

Anna looked up at Sam when he leaned forward and pulled Dean's hunting knife from under his pillow. Dean reached out for it and put it back under the pillow, careful not to bring it anywhere close to his sister as she was still sitting in his lap.

"That's not fear," he told Sam firmly. "That is precaution."

"All right, whatever. I'm too tired to argue," Sam finally admitted. He took a sip of his coffee and made a face that told Anna he might have just burned his tongue. Pity.

Anna continued to look at Sam, and he did look pretty tired. She was startled by the sound of Dean's phone ringing nearby, but relaxed against him again as he answered it. "Hello?" There was a pause as whoever was on the other end of the line spoke. All she could hear was the wordless blurb of an unfamiliar voice.

"Oh, right, yeah," Dean said. "Up in Kittanning, Pennsylvania, the poltergeist thing. It's not back, is it? What is it?" There was another pause, and Dean met eyes with his brother. "Yeah," he answered and closed the phone. He set his coffee down on the nightstand with his phone and set Anna on the floor. "We're heading out, guys, come on," he said, grabbing his duffel off the floor.

Sam nodded slowly and put down his own coffee nearby.

Anna grabbed her frog off the bed and scurried back over to the couch. She grabbed the laptop and brought it over to Dean so he could pack it in his duffel. He never let her keep it with her own stuff.

"I'll get your stuff, Munchkin, just go change, ok?" Anna nodded at her older brother and went to get a clean set of clothes for the day. She settled on jeans and a purple shirt, hopping on one foot and then the other out of the bathroom while pulling mismatched blue and green socks onto her feet.

Dean was setting their duffels on the bed nearest the door and grabbing the keys while Sam was pulling his shoes on. They made it to the car within ten minutes of having ended the call.

It was twenty minutes later, after they were already on the highway, that Anna suddenly unbuckled her seatbelt and jolted forward in her seat. "Halloween!" She cried out dramatically.

"Jesus Christ." Dean slammed on the breaks instinctually as his sister scared the absolute crap out of him. Sam spluttered on the coffee he'd been drinking. "What's wrong with you?" Dean questioned his sister harshly as he pulled over to the side of the road. He whirled around in his seat, and Anna had to cower a little upon meeting his wild eyes.

But she was growing more hysteric by the second, and his anger couldn't stop that. "Dean, we have to go back! I forgot Halloween. He's all alone back there."

Dean sighed, his anger seeming to drain away. But he didn't look happy. He looked exhausted. "Anna, we can't just turn around," he said, rubbing his forehead. "We've been driving for almost thirty minutes. We'd lose an hour."

"But, Dean, he's-"

"Alone. I know. Anna, it's a stuffed frog."

"No, he's my best friend," Anna argued indignantly. "You'd go back for Sammy."

Dean gave her a look. "Sam's a human being. Not a stuffed frog." Sam looked rather baffled and slightly offended to have been compared to the toy. "We're not going back."

"Fine," Anna huffed determinedly. "Then, I'll get him myself."

Sam and Dean shared a surprised look at the show of familiar Winchester stubborness in their baby sister. Then, a small, amused smile broke out on Sam's face. It only made Anna feel more determined. She wasn't the baby they always seemed to think she was. "You think you're gonna walk back to the motel, huh?" Sam challenged.

Anna crossed her arms stubbornly and jutted her chin out. "I don't think it. I am gonna."

"You know the way?"

"I'll find it," Anna answered vehemently without the least bit of concern over the problem. Decision made, she grabbed the handle to open the back door. That elicited a response.

Sam's expression shifted to panic, and he quickly reached into the backseat, grabbing her arm. She tried to shake him off, but he was pretty strong, and she couldn't get him to let go. "Anna," he scolded her. The tone was so foreign coming from Sam that it actually made her give up pulling away.

"Kid, you're not walking on the highway. You're gonna get hit by a car," Dean told her. His tone communicated that he was unimpressed, and his eyes narrowing at her in the mirror showed his frustration.

The determination fell from Anna's face when she realized they weren't going to let her go back on her own, nor were they going to drive her back.

Her heart broke at the thought of Halloween sitting abandoned on the couch in the motel room. She couldn't believe she'd left him there alone. What kind of friend was she? She was a terrible friend. She didn't deserve Halloween anyway if she was so awful that she would leave him behind. How could she have forgotten him? She turned wide, wet eyes to her oldest brother and resorted to the final option. Begging.

"Please, Dean. Please. He's all alone. You wouldn't leave me back there, would you?"

"Anna, I told you, humans are different than stuffed animals," but he was clearly having a hard time looking at her sad face and maintaining his tough exterior. "Come on, Rugrat," he pleaded, a ditch effort to get her to cheer up and forget the frog.

But Anna loved Halloween. She wouldn't forget him as long as she lived, and she would never ever forgive herself for leaving him behind like that. She was such a bad friend. She sniffled, rubbing her eyes with the backs of her hands.

It took another moment of tears and a sniffle before Sam spoke up softly in her support. "Dean, come on. Let's just go back. It'll only take an hour to get back to where we are."

A resigned look crossed Dean's face and he grumbled as he turned the engine back on and pulled out onto the road again. He did a u-turn, and Anna cheered.

It was nearly half an hour later that they pulled up outside the motel. Anna immediately had her seatbelt unbuckled and was prepared to get out of the car, but Dean snapped at her to sit down and let him get the 'damn frog'.

A few minutes later, the driver's door creaked open and a flash of green sailed into the back seat. Anna thanked Dean over and over until he told her to shut up. But he wasn't doing a very good job of hiding his smile, and Anna didn't care anyway. She had someone else she needed to talk to now.

She lifted Halloween to her chest and squeezed him tighter than she ever had. "Geez, Halloween, I'm so so so sorry. I mean it. Like, so so sorry. I shouldn't have left you. I didn't mean it, I promise. I hope you can forgive me. But if you're still mad, I get it. I mean, it was like a whole hour you were alone. I'm really sorry, man."

She heard a chuckle from the front seat and looked up indignantly. She was trying to have a serious moment– not to mention a private one– with her friend, and here the boys were laughing at her.

"What?" she snapped.

"Nothing," the boys said in chorus. Sam raised his hands in surrender.

Anna looked back down at Halloween in her lap. "I missed you," she whispered, and she hugged him tight again. "I'll never leave you ever again, I promise."

The fact of it was, Anna knew what it felt like to be left behind. But she also knew what it was like to have one person that you could always count on not to ditch you. And she wanted to be that for Halloween. Even if he was technically not a person, he was still her best friend.

La Fin