Note: Hey, Beautifuls <3 Thank you for the love 💜

This week's chapter was requested by @gkjnrtg who asked to see some stuff with Anna dealing with the boys first deaths/when they came back. This only one of those, but I hope to get around to writing more of them before too long. This is a tag to All Hell Breaks Loose Part I. Hope you enjoy this, Love!

Without further ado, Anna is eight.

That I May Forget

She wasn't even there.

()()()

Anna spent one whole day trailing behind Dean and Bobby, biting her fingernails down until they bled, before Dean decided she should stay with Ellen at the Roadhouse.

But the Roadhouse was gone.

No, it wasn't gone. It was rubble. And Ash was gone.

The smell of fire made Anna sick even before she realized what the sight before them meant. Ever since her father's pyre had burned out, she'd had a hard time with the scent of smoke. So she was barely out of the backseat before she was puking, her small body lurching over and over.

Dean knelt beside her, his hand warm and gentle against her back and her head. "It's okay," he murmured absently. "You're okay."

But that was the problem, Anna decided. She was okay, but... But Dad was dead. And now?

"Are they dead?" she asked sullenly. "Is Ellen dead?" She turned her head to look at Dean. His eyes were bloodshot and circled pink. He hadn't slept, but he'd made Anna sleep.

"Probably," he admitted softly, the corners of his mouth turning down.

Anna's face crumpled. "Forever?" she asked, trying uselessly not to cry. Her eyes were wet and burning, and her chin was dimpling. She bit the inside of her lip.

Dean looked confused at her question.

But she couldn't explain it to him. Anna didn't know why she would ask such a thing either. Obviously they were dead forever.

But Ellen, with her thin-skinned, gentle, work-roughened hands and her gruffly feminine voice and the smiles she pulled out of thin air just for Anna... It was hard to imagine those things being gone forever.

"Let's go," Dean said instead of answering her. He stood up and pulled her up into his arms. "We gotta go find Sammy."

Anna sniffled, he eyes fixed over Dean's shoulder at the remains of the Roadhouse. It was one of the first places she'd seen outside of Bobby's house after their dad had died. "How are we gonna find him now?" she asked and tears started to drip from her eyes down her chin. Her stomach hurt in a funny sort of way, and her head felt buzzy. Things just kept falling apart. Ellen and Ash were dead. The Roadhouse was destroyed. Sammy was still missing, and they didn't have a clue where to find him.

"We'll find him, Rugrat," Dean promised her softly. "I don't care what it takes."

"But they're dead."

Dean seemed to take that the wrong way at first. He looked taken aback. But then his expression softened. "We'll find another way. Don't you worry about it, okay? Sit in the car and do some coloring."

Anna let him bring her to the car. She pulled out her notebook and started to write.

Dear Daddy,

Today Ellen and Ash got killed by the demon. Sam is still gone. Dean said we are gonna find him no matter what. The roadhouse burned and it smells like you. I got sick from it. I keep on crying.

I miss you.

Love,

Peanut

When she was finished, she closed the notebook and looked out the windshield to see Bobby and Dean talking urgently. Maybe they had something.

When Dean dropped into the driver's seat, he didn't bother with pleasantries. He slammed the driver's door closed and said tersely, "We know where he is."

()()()

Her hands were cold and seemed to hum with their numbness. Her feet weighed a ton, planted firmly against the ground. Her head was too light to keep its place on her shoulders.

Sam was bleeding, Dean was holding him, and Bobby was running after somebody.

But Anna wasn't even there. She was outside looking in. She was watching her hands shake, watching them grow cold and pale, watching them curl into fists. She was watching the world through a screen door, watching it waver, watching it stand strong and steal another life.

"Sammy," she murmured, but the movement of her lips felt strange. It was like her own mouth didn't belong to her. "Sammy!" she screamed this time. Her throat burned raw with the sound she made, and it was almost inhuman in its ferocity.

But it wasn't her anyway. It was... it was coming from somewhere else. It was coming from her body, but her body wasn't her.

Sam's eyes were droopy and unfocused. He was limp against Dean's shoulder, and Dean was still murmuring frantic reassurances. There was blood everywhere. It was on Dean's hands, Sam's jacket, the ground.

Anna couldn't take it. But she didn't have to. She wasn't even there.

()()()

She didn't look at a clock. She was careful not to. Time couldn't possibly be passing anyway, she reasoned. Not with Sam dead and Dean empty.

She didn't look at a clock, not even just to confirm her theory. She knew they were stuck in the same minute of Sam's final breath, because she was there. Her body was buzzing and hollow exactly as it had been when Sam was dying. Her eyes were drooping in exhaustion but not even close to closing in sleep... just as they had been.

The world was static, and it had never been quite like that before. But it made sense, Anna believed, that outside of time, the world would look awfully different and very wrong.

She wished Dean would be there. She felt so cold and disconnected, stuck inside and outside of herself at the same time. She was in pain and numb, and she wanted her brother. But Dean looked like the world– static and wrong.

So she clung to Bobby instead.

He carried her inside. She lay still against his shoulder, her cheek resting against the cool, ratty fabric of his vest. She could see the hairs on the back of his neck standing messily on end, and she could smell the exhaust and whiskey on his clothes and skin. It was home-y, but it wasn't Dean.

"Crap, Button, what you been eatin'?" Bobby teased gently. He adjusted his hold on her when Anna didn't say a word.

She hadn't figured it out yet– how to speak when your body isn't yours anymore.

"Let's get you inside, huh?" Bobby rambled. "Maybe you can take a shower. Get out of them dirty clothes. Put on some pajamas."

Anna still didn't speak. She couldn't.

"I'll get you somethin' to eat."

Anna sprung up, her hands pressed against Bobby's shoulder. She looked over his head at the Impala. Dean had gotten out, and he was looking down at Sam in the backseat.

No. Not Sam. Sam's body. His corpse.

"Make Dean come too," she requested, her body buzzing again. Her fingers and toes were cold, but her stomach was overheated and twisted in knots. And all of it was observable to her, but she couldn't seem to feel it. Not all the way.

"Ain't a soul on this earth can make that boy do anything he doesn't wanna do, Darlin'." Bobby set her down on the porch and swung the screen door open for her.

But Anna couldn't move. She felt– as she stared at Dean, who was staring at Sam's body– as if she were looking Medusa in the eyes. Her body was hardening, feet first, decomposing and then reconstructing itself, turning slowly into stone. And she couldn't stop it, couldn't control it. She'd chosen to look, and the rest had been inevitable.

She remembered Dean kneeling in the dirt, his hands stained so red that she was able to see it even from a distance. She remembered the raw sound of his voice when he shouted their brother's name. She remembered the feeling of her own freezing cold hands clamping over her ears, trying to block out not only the sound but the memory of it and the way it made her shiver.

"Anna."

Those hands were over her ears again, but that didn't seem strange to Anna. Time had stopped at that moment. Of course she was still blocking out the scream, because it was still happening. That scream would always be happening. Her hands would always be cold. The air would always smell like sulfur.

There was no time.

There was only Cold Oak, the weight of Ash and Ellen's death toppling with the force of Sam's.

Strange, because she hadn't even been there. But now she couldn't leave.

"Anna. You hearin' me?" Bobby's hands weren't so cold as they covered her small arms. He was careful when he pulled them away from her head. "You ain't there now," he said huskily. "You're here with me, Button. Ain't a thing in the world can hurt you here."

Anna knew that wasn't true. Maybe she was here. Maybe she was with Bobby. But she was there too, in Cold Oak.

She was there, and Sam was dying. Or she was here, and Sam was dead. There was no version of this story that didn't hurt, no version of it where she was safe.

"Sammy's dead," she whispered. She was so weary that she couldn't even open her eyes all the way. They burned with the longing to close and never open again. "Uncle Bobby, Sammy died."

"I know," Bobby told her, his voice barely more than a whisper. He gently touched the side of her face, and Anna was surprised at the wetness she felt there. She hadn't realized she was crying. "I know, Darlin'."

Anna turned her face to the ground, felt the cool air cling to the tip of her nose and her cheekbones.

"Let's get inside."

()()()

She was sitting on the porch, wearing a t-shirt that belonged to Dean. It was so big on her that it went past her knees and hung off one of her shoulders. But Anna couldn't have cared any less about that if she'd wanted to.

"You're gonna see Dean today, right?" she asked vapidly.

Bobby crouched beside her, his knees audibly popping with the action. "I am," he said. "You don't have to come with me, Anna. I don't expect you to."

"I don't want to," Anna said. "Sam is there."

Bobby was quiet for a second. Anna didn't look at him, but she suspected that he wasn't feeling so good. She had been really bringing down the atmosphere in his house the last couple days. It had to have been wearing on him. "Then you stay here. But don't you leave this house or talk to strangers or touch anything you ain't supposed to, you hear me?"

Anna nodded sullenly. What would she touch, where would she go, and who would she talk to? She didn't want to do anything but sit and breathe. Maybe cry.

She got up on her knees and wrapped her arms around Bobby's neck. He was so warm, and he was the only one there to touch her. On the worst days of her life, she'd always had somebody to hug. Usually that someone was Dean. Sometimes Sam. And rarely was it Bobby.

But today it was Bobby.

"Tell him I miss him," Anna said shakily. She didn't specify which brother she was talking about. The message was for both of them.

She curled her hands into fists, Bobby's jacket caught in them. Her fingers were going numb just thinking of where he was going.

Dean was going to be so still and empty. He was going to look so wrong.

Sam was going to be worse.

()()()

It was another whole day before she saw Dean.

Anna looked slowly up from the legos she was playing with.

He looked white as a sheet– paler than some of the ghosts she'd seen. He had purple rings around his eyes, like he'd been beaten up. And he had been, she knew. But not by fists. By Sam's eyes and their vacancy.

When he saw her, he went for a smile, but he almost started to cry. She knew because his mouth turned so far down for a second that his chin wobbled. But he recovered quickly, and he looked more like her Dean when he finally got a smile to appear.

"Hiya, Rugrat," he rasped. He walked slowly over and crouched beside her. He set a gentle hand on her back, and it was cold, but it was Dean.

Anna turned around and threw her arms around his middle. There was still some warmth there for her, and she huddled in it for almost five minutes before Dean finally drew back. He wiped at his own face and then at hers.

"What you buildin'?" he asked casually as if it wasn't the strangest, most painful thing in the world for him to be crying in front of his little sister.

Anna blinked a few times, breathing hard with the effort to keep her remaining tears inside. Her mouth was turned far down, but she looked over to her lego project and swallowed. "It's a pyre," she said.

Dean made a choked sound and stood up.

Anna did the same, afraid for a second that she'd made him want to leave again.

"You don't need one," he told her, though. He put a hand on the top of her head and crouched to her level. He grabbed her upper arms in both his hands and looked her in the eyes. "I'm gonna get him back, Honey. I got a plan to get Sam back."

It was almost more frightening than the prospect of Sam remaining dead.

Almost.

()()()

She only answered the door because she was on autopilot. Otherwise she would have left it for Bobby.

But when she opened it, she went numb all over. Her extremities hummed with energy, and her forehead went cold. It was Dean. And it was Sam.

She couldn't move enough to initiate the hug, but Sam picked her up anyway. He made a slight sound of pain as he straightened with her in his arms. "Sorry I scared you, Ladybug," he said. Instantly, Anna began to cry, her breath hitching. Ladybug. She'd thought she would never hear it again. "But, hey, I'm all healed up now, right?"

Anna wasn't even hearing him anymore. She was just feeling. His shoulder was cool, and it was safe, and it was changing the color of her mind. For days she'd felt like she was living the color gray. Gray, which was so dull and distant, so much more nothing than black or white, so much more difficult to escape.

But there was a green color invading that now. Green, which was so vibrant and close, so much more alive than gray, so much more free.

()()()

Already he wanted to leave.

Sam was hurting, that much was clear. He kept making these little sounds every time he bent the wrong way, and every single time, Anna had to look sharply over at him for fear that he would die when she wasn't looking.

He never did, but the threat still felt real.

She sat across the table from him, swinging her legs back and forth, nibbling on a slice of pizza. The boys were eating too, both of them still pale and looking rail-thin and sickly.

"We need to figure this thing out, and fast, Dean," Sam said critically. "Who knows how much time we even have."

"Sam, you just got vertical," Dean argued, waving one hand in frustration. "Just sit down and eat for a minute, will you?"

"I'm done," Sam said and set his pizza aside. "Let's get to work. Please."

He made that face that always made Dean give in, and Anna still couldn't believe when it worked and Dean said, "Fine."

"No!" she snapped, standing up on her chair. She threw her own slice of pizza down on the table. "You can't leave until you're better!"

Sam was shocked into silence at her outburst. He looked nervously to Dean communicating that he was out of his league here.

Anna wasn't done, though. She put her hands on her hips and leaned down with her angriest face on. "What if you get hurt again, huh?" she asked in a very Dean-esque voice. "What if that stupid guy gets you again? You can't fight as good when you're hurt!"

"Anna," Sam tried calmly.

"Sam, no!" Anna shouted and stomped her foot against the seat of her chair.

Dean made an irritated sound and stepped over. He grabbed her around the waist and pulled her off the chair to set her on the floor. "You do not talk to him like that," he reminded her firmly.

There were still remnants of the exhausted man she'd seen before Sam's return in Dean's face, and Anna didn't know how to navigate all the worry lines, so she backed down. But she was breathing heavily, trying to regain her composure and failing.

She finally grabbed Dean's shirttail and pulled him down until he bent so she could speak into his ear. "I'm scared," she said. "Don't let him go. Please."

Dean turned his head so he could look at her. There was sympathy in his eyes now. But he didn't say anything. To her or to Sam. He just picked her up again, carried her over, and set her down smack in the middle of Sam's lap.

Anna sniffled once and looked up at Sam. "Please," she said, and her lip wobbled.

"Anna," Sam said, his eyes wet and cold. "I have to."

She didn't say anything when they left.

She couldn't.

She wasn't even there.

La Fin