Note: Thank you to everyone who has commented or even just read this fic. Every kind of feedback is encouraging. In this chapter, Anna is eight years old. It's kinda short but hopefully sweet enough to make up for that.

Pretty Dream

Anna's small feet raced soundlessly across the ugly orange carpet in the motel room of the week. "Sammy." One tiny finger moved slowly to poke him in the temple, then next to his eye, then in the cheek a few times in a row. "Psst. Sam. Wake up." A hand landed palm-down on his cheek and rocked his head back and forth. "Sammy!"

Sam opened his eyes in resignation. She wasn't going to give up and go back to bed. He rolled over just in time for her poking finger to get him in the eye. The pain had him sitting up in a rush. "Sh-" he started to curse but stopped himself, blinking several times to clear the stinging in his eye. "What, Anna?" he asked more harshly than intended.

"I had a dream," the little girl said seriously, undeterred by his sour mood.

Sam's expression softened even as his right eye continued to water uncontrollably. "A nightmare?" he asked.

"I don't think so."

Sam gave her a confused look. "Then what's wrong?"

"It was a funny dream. You have funny dreams." She didn't say funny like her dreams were comedic, though. She said it like they were strange, like she was confused. "Right? You have funny dreams?"

Sam nodded when he realized he had yet to answer her, that she was getting insecure. "I have all kinds of dreams," he said softly. "What happened in your dream?"

"Um," Anna shifted from foot to foot nervously. She then stepped forward suddenly and put both her hands on one of his knees to lean forward and whisper, as if their conversation could get more private.

Dean was out getting a drink, and probably some company, at a bar somewhere. It was only the two of them in a quiet room in a motel where few people ever checked in because there was a four star hotel just on the other side of town.

"It was a lots of colors," Anna confided, then pressed her lips together seriously for a moment. When Sam said nothing, she continued. "There was all this red, and there was a big fluffy cloud of white and there was a lot of purple. Plus there was blue and green. But the colors didn't make anything. They just blended all together."

Sam raised an eyebrow. Okay, that was kind of strange. If he had a degree in psychology, maybe he could translate that into something comforting or something that meant Anna had been traumatized by the mess that was their lives. He didn't have a degree, though, and if he had gotten one, it would have been in law. "Red, white, purple, blue, and green," he repeated.

"Yep. They looked all bright. You think it means I'm bad?"

Sam frowned deeply. "What?" he asked in disbelief. Had she said that? Was he hearing things? Anna was never supposed to feel the way he felt, know the fear he knew. She was eight years old. How could she think a question like that.

"My dream. You think it means I'm bad?" she asked again.

Sam reached out and lifted her to sit on one of his knees. "No, Anna. It doesn't mean you're bad. It means your brain got bored and decided to make a painting while you were sleeping."

Anna tilted her head and squinted at him. "That sounds like a made-up answer," she challenged.

"It's not," Sam said. "Some people think dreams mean big important things, but some people who study dreams for their job say that they're completely random."

"Your dreams ain't random."

"Aren't," Sam corrected reflexively.

"Uh-huh."

"I know mine aren't always random, Ladybug, but sometimes they are. The dreams I have that aren't random are dreams where people die. And I have them because of something supernatural. You don't have those kinds of dreams. You just have the random ones."

Anna studied his face with a very serious expression on her own. "You think Dean gets random dreams too? Or does he get important ones? I bet he gets important ones."

Sam smiled softly at the statement. He'd seen Dean as the only good hero once, too. He used to think Dean was the one who had the power to change everything, make the world right whenever things went wrong, and therefore everything about Dean must be important, even his dreams. It was adorable and heartwarming that Anna could still see the people she loved with that kind of brightly colored innocence. Sam still looked up to his older brother, because there were so many ways in which Dean was important and powerful and admirable, but he knew Dean was flawed, and he knew Dean was a human being who experienced the world just like other human beings did.

"He gets important ones," Sam said. "But he also gets random ones."

"He does get bored a lot," Anna said thoughtfully. "I guess his brain probably gets bored a lot too."

It was simple logic and Sam didn't have any desire to argue with it. "Is that enough talking for one in the morning?" he asked. "Or do you wanna sit here and talk about Dean's brain all night?"

Anna hopped off his lap, but instead of turning to go back to her own bed, she grabbed his knee again before he could lay back down. "Sammy?"

"Yeah, Ladybug?"

"Your dreams doesn't make you bad either," Anna said with the kind of misguided certainty only children can exhibit.

Sam didn't even bother to correct her grammar. He couldn't think of anything to say at all. So he didn't, just stared at her for a second and felt his heart swell with something he couldn't identify. There was so much she didn't know. That made her comment less meaningful and more meaningful at the same time. It meant she didn't have the proper information to make the claim valid, but it also meant she was seeing him at his most authentic. She was seeing him stripped of the labels forced on him since the night Jessica died, or maybe since the night he turned six months old.

Anna didn't seem to mind his silence. She patted his face once with her right hand and then walked back to her own bed and laid down with a sleepy, contented sigh. "It was a pretty dream," she decided out loud a second later. Then her head shot up off her pillow and she looked mournfully over at him. "Sorry I poked you in the eye."

()()()

Four days later, Anna climbed into the front seat when they were stopped at a gas station. Sam was taking one of his rare turns driving so Dean could sleep in the passenger seat, which meant Sam was inside paying for gas. Anna knelt beside her oldest brother and poked his face a few times.

"Dean." She poked his temple, then his cheek, then his nose. "Deeeeean. Dean." Dean reflexively turned his head away from the offending finger, wrinkling his nose in irritation. "Dean."

Dean finally gave up and opened his eyes thinly. "What?"

"Did you have a funny dream?"

"What?" he repeated, this time baffled instead of annoyed.

"Did you have a funny dream?"

"Rugrat, did you just wake me up to ask me if I was dreaming?"

"Uh-huh." Anna paused and frowned at the expression on her brother's face. "Is that bad?" Dean gave her a dull look that said yes very clearly. "Sorry," she said dejectedly. Her head popped back up quickly, though, just as Dean was starting to settle more comfortably against the passenger door again, arms folded over his chest. "But since you're 'wake now, did you have a funny dream?"

"Why do you have to interrogate me, huh? Ask Sam."

"I already asked Sam. He says he has a lots of kinds of dreams."

Dean squinted, wondering if his brain was being sluggish or if that sentence had been as choppy as it sounded. "So do I," he said once the meaning of the statement had registered.

"Deeeean," Anna whined. "I want a really good answer."

Dean snorted and squinted at her again. "Then ask me when I'm willingly conscious."

"Please," Anna begged, putting both hands on his arms and leaning in with dewy eyes.

"Damn Sam for teaching you that," Dean muttered. He opened his eyes more widely. "What was the question?"

"Do you get funny dreams?"

"Funny haha or funny weird?"

"I don't know. Weird, I guess."

"I get weird dreams, Munchkin. I don't get funny dreams. Why? You havin' weird dreams?"

"I had a pretty dream."

Dean chortled, then caught himself at the hurt look on Anna's face. "Sorry," he said. "I, uh," he cleared his throat awkwardly. There really wasn't a way to explain that reaction away. "You had a- a pretty dream, huh?"

"Yep with a lots of different colors. I thought it was bad, but it wasn't. It was just random 'cause my brain got bored. That's what Sammy said. Does your brain gets bored?"

Dean frowned at the glaring problem with that sentence. My brain is bored of this conversation, he wanted to say. My brain is tired and would like to go back to sleep now. My brain is literally begging me, as we speak, to let it be unconscious. "Yep. All the time."

"Do you get pretty dreams?"

Dean immediately felt a flare of macho indignance which he forced himself to stuff away. "Not recently," he said.

"Just kids get 'em?"

"Exactly," Dean said tersely. "Adults get boring dreams."

"But Sammy gets nightmare dreams and special dreams."

"Sammy's dreams are different."

"I know," Anna said defensively. "But it don't matter. You have to get a funny kind of dream."

Dean sighed, wondering if honesty would be too much in this case. He dared to hope that if he tried it out, he would be able to go to sleep after. "You wanna know what kind of dreams I have?" he asked, not unkindly. Anna nodded fervently, and Dean pulled her into his lap with a sigh. "Don't tell Sam," he said seriously.

Anna nodded again, eager to be let in on a secret. "I won't," she promised, holding out a pinky. "Pinky swear."

Dean internally rolled his eyes but reached out his pinky, feeling about as undignified as he ever had. "Sometimes," Dean said. "I get dreams about things I wish could happen."

"Like daydreams."

"But when I'm sleeping," Dean said. "I see my Mom alive and Dad back with us and I see all of us living together in a big house and having birthday parties and barbecues. I see Sammy graduating from college and marrying Jessica and having kids. I see you growing up living in one town with a best friend your own age, having sleepovers and whatever else normal kids like. I see all of us happy and just living."

Anna smiled brightly at her brother and put her hands on either side of his face. "That's a pretty dream," she said definitively with a serious nod. "It's the prettiest dream I ever heard."

Dean couldn't help the smile that spread over his face, even though her comment had made him feel ridiculously warm and gushy inside. If Sam said something like that, Dean would punch him in the arm and tell him not to be a girl. It sounded so innocent coming from Anna's mouth, though. It sounded right. And he had to admit, it was a beautiful wish he held onto, and if his subconscious was the only part of him willing to dwell on it, he would take it.

"Can I go back to sleep now?" he asked exaggeratedly, tickling her sides.

Anna giggled and pushed his hands away. Outside of the car, Sam was still pumping gas. "Think Sammy has pretty dreams?"

"Everybody has dreams about things going different than they did," Dean asserted. "Most people don't talk about 'em. But they keep you going."

"It's good our brains get bored," Anna said decidedly.

"Sure, Rugrat," Dean said and set her on the seat beside him. "Let me sleep now, okay?"

"Okay," Anna said and climbed into the backseat again, very nearly doing a whole body flip in the process. When she'd safely landed in her designated seat, she leaned her forearms on the seatback in front of her and watched Dean settle in to go back to sleep. "Have a pretty dream, Dean," she whispered.

La Fin