The Sun Only Shines When It's Raining

Note: Aahhh! I know I'm posting late at night again! I'm sorry!


Thank you so so so much for reading, voting, and commenting! I've been so happy seeing everybody's comments all week.


Nobody asked for this chapter, and I do have a request that I'm working on, but I didn't have much time and this idea has been floating around in my head for a while. Enjoy having a second fluffy chapter! Here, Anna is seven.



The Sun Only Shines When It's Raining


"Psst," Anna whispered, leaning down close to Sam's ear. She noticed a muscle in his face twitch, but he didn't wake up. "Sammy," she called softly. "Are you awake?" She watched him sigh and roll over onto his side. His face was only a couple inches from hers now, and she could see his eyes moving under the lids. She took it as permission to stop whispering and squealed, "Sam, it's raining!"


Sam's reaction was instantaneous as he shot up in bed, grabbing at the sheets on either side of him for purchase. He calmed quickly thereafter when the only sound left was rain coming down in sheets outside. "What- uh..." he rubbed his eyes with both hands and slouched tiredly. "What did you say, Ladybug?"


Anna grinned wide, careless that she was showing the gap where her front teeth used to be. "It's raining!" she squealed and jumped up and down excitedly. "Can we go and play in it? Please please please please please please please!" She clasped her hands together in front of her in an effort to contain her own energy when Sam made a face at all the noise and put a finger to his lips.


"Let's be quiet," he requested. "It's only-" He looked at the clock and groaned aloud. "It's five-thirty? Anna, I've only been sleeping for three hours."


"But Dean is in the shower and I need to play with somebody," Anna stressed. She bounced with energy, leaning forward with both her hands on the bed. "Can you just let me go outside and you can sleep? Please please please ple-"


"Anna, for the love of all things holy, please stop saying please."


Anna was confused to hear that coming from him. She never got what she wanted if she didn't say please, and never before had Daddy or Dean told her not to use her manners when asking for something. She stared at Sam like he had grown a second head, waiting for clarification on what he meant. He just sat there, rubbing his temples and yawning. "But can we go outside?" she asked hopefully.


Sam gave her a look that said he was annoyed, and she pouted as he looked around the room. He wasn't going to give her what she wanted, at least not anytime soon. "Where's Dean?" Sam asked.


"In the shower," she said shortly. "He didn't want to go outside. Can you let me? Please?"


Sam stared at her for a second in disbelief before chuckling. "Why don't you wait and ask Dean when he gets out."


Anna let her shoulders drop. "But it's raining so pretty right now. What if it gets slower?"


"You shouldn't be outside when it's raining this hard anyway, Anna. You could get sick."


Sensing that this was going exactly the opposite of where she'd wanted, Anna made a displeased face and trudged across the room to sit by the window. She picked up her stuffed frog which she'd left there a few minutes prior and plopped down, leaning close to the glass so that she could practically feel the rain through the window.


She remained there as Sam shifted around in bed on the other side of the room, and she suspected bitterly that he was going back to sleep. When the bathroom door swung open, she hopped up eagerly and watched as Sam went into the bathroom and Dean came out.


"Can we go outside now?!" She ran right up to her brother as he pulled a flannel on over his t-shirt and jeans. "Look how good it's raining!" She pointed excitedly at the window on the other side of the room, bouncing up and down on the balls of her feet. "I bet there's a puddle bigger than the ocean out there!"


With half a smile on his face, Dean crouched down in front of her. "Okay, Rugrat. You're excited, I know. But there're people sleeping around here, so you need to keep your voice down."


"Okay, but can we-"


"You got a one track mind," he cut her off and ruffled her hair before standing back up straight. "I'm gonna pick up some coffee and breakfast." He smiled amusedly at her. "And that's the only time I'm interested in going out in the rain, so put on your boots and jacket."


Anna cheered and raced across to the couch where she'd slept the night before. She hurriedly pulled the sleeves to her purple jacket over her arms and pulled out her rubber boots to slip onto her feet. She was back by Dean's side, holding his leather jacket out for him even though it was her size and a bit heavy, before he'd even finished pulling his own shoes on.


"Thanks, Runt." He snorted and reached out with one hand to untuck her hood from the back of her jacket and flip it over her head. "Zip up."


Anna tinkered with her zipper for a minute, and was thrilled to see Dean tucking his wallet into his pocket when she finished. They could go! She raced to the door and bounced up and down again waiting for him to come outside with her. She was tempted to run out ahead of him, but that would end in a lecture which she didn't want.


Dean took his sweet time walking over, and she knew he was messing with her by the smirk on his face. "Dean, come on," she urged impatiently. The second he was within reach, she grabbed his hand and tugged him toward the door.


"Alright alright. Hold your horses," he teased and finally opened the door. "Be free," he quipped and watched her run outside.


Anna leapt full force into the first puddle she could find and giggled delightedly at the splash of dirty water all around her. The rain fell torrentially on her head and she grinned up into it, face directed to the sky, the gap in her teeth showing, before turning to Dean with an expression of pure joy. He was standing just past the threshold of their room, inside, giving her time to play in the rain before he stuffed her in the car and they went to get breakfast.


Spinning in circles until she got dizzy, Anna crouched low to the ground and reached out with both hands to touch the cold surface of a puddle. She watched the droplets of rain disrupt the smooth surface, ripples moving from the crash site outward. She stepped slowly into the center of the puddle and jumped with her face turned down so she could watch for the same ripple effect, magnified.


She laughed out loud when she saw it, ecstatic, and turned to see if Dean was enjoying the rain like she was. He was closing the door behind him, though, and locking it, so she knew she was running out of time. Crouching low again, but still in the center of the puddle, Anna swished the water back and forth with her hands, shivering with how cold it was. It was dirty, so she couldn't see the bottom, and it was a good deep puddle. She would have loved to stay and play all morning in it. The rain began to come down just a smidge harder. She stood up and kicked her way around the little pool of water, grinning wider and wider until her brother's shadow stopped in front of her.


"Come on, kiddo. I don't want to get wet," he requested.


Anna relished the feel of rain on her face as she skipped alongside Dean to the car. He swung her door open, waited just long enough for her to get in before closing it again, and moved about as fast as she'd ever seen him go to get into the driver's seat without getting any more rain-soaked.


"The upholstery's getting all wet," he grumbled and turned the key in the ignition.


"That's okay. The whole world's getting all wet," Anna said so profoundly that Dean didn't have the heart to tell her it wasn't raining in every town on Earth.


()()()


"You think it rains a lot here?"


"It does," Sam said distractedly. "We're in Nebraska."


"This is the stormy place too, right?" Anna clutched Halloween in one hand and let the other rest at her side as she leaned back against Sam's chair and his knee so she could watch the rain still coming down outside the window.


"Mhm."


"You think it'll thunder?"


"Forecast says there's a chance of it tonight," Sam told her. "Why don't you go watch some cartoons while the TV still works."


Anna shrugged. "I don't really wanna," she said. She spent another moment just watching the rain silently, then she swung Halloween around in circles a few times and sighed. She strolled slowly around the table until she came to Dean's side and rested her arms on his leg. "You can't hunt in the rain, huh?" she asked him, a serious little frown on her face.


Dean glanced down at her before returning to the paper in front of him. "Could if we had to," he said. "But the spirit in town's not killin' anybody yet, so there's no reason we should go out." He used one arm to lift her up onto his lap and let her squirm until she was comfortable with her back to his chest. He picked up the newspaper on the table again and pointed to a small article on the side of one of the pages for her to see, and Anna tilted her head back against his shoulder as she listened to him talk. "See, this innkeeper down on Main says somebody's stealin' from him. They think he's goin' crazy because his security cameras don't show anything, but he's got missing inventory to prove it, and a couple of guests at the Inn have been hurt, so we're just gonna check it out and get rid of whatever's haunting the place."


"What if there's no ghost there? Then does that mean he's really crazy?"


"Could mean a lot of things," Dean acknowledged. "But we're pretty sure there's a spirit hanging around."


"Then that means there is one prob'ly."


Both boys snorted. "Thanks for the vote of confidence, Munchkin."


"You're welcome!" Anna chirped and wriggled her way off her brother's lap. She wandered across the room and sat down on the floor beside her duffel so she could dig through it in search of something to do. She pulled out her sketchpad and crayons but didn't feel like using them and so soon put them back. She pulled out her box of legos but didn't feel like using those either and so put those back too. Before long, she'd given up and walked back over to the table. "You wanna play Hide 'n Seek?" she asked Dean, leaning against his leg again.


His answer was a minute coming, but before long, Dean made an accepting face and said, "Why not." He stood up and thwacked their brother on the shoulder. "Come on, Sam." At the expression Sam made, he raised both eyebrows. "This is important business, Sammy. Hide and Seek. Come on. You can count first."


Sam gave Dean a bitch face but he sat back in his chair, closed his laptop and his eyes, and started to count slowly aloud.


Anna scrunched her face up excitedly. It wasn't often that both her brothers stopped what they were doing to play with her. She followed Dean's quiet footsteps with much louder ones, and he put her in the little cabinet under the bathroom sink with a reminder to be quiet so Sam wouldn't find her.


"Ready or not, here I come!" Sam called from the next room. Anna curled up tighter in place and waited for him to come and find her. She wondered where Dean had hidden, and she didn't have to wait long to find out that he'd done a bad job picking his own hiding place.


She heard Sam laughing outright, and Dean said, "Shut up." She was just about to open the cabinet door to try and see what was happening when she remembered to stay quiet and not move too much. She didn't want to give away her hiding spot.


Sam's exaggerated wonderings of where she might be hiding had her struggling not to giggle too loud, so she clasped both her hands over her mouth to try to stifle the sound. It took only another minute, though, for him to swing the cabinet door open with a, "Found you!" and make her erupt into a fit of laughter.


Each round after the first got a little more ridiculous. Hiding places were scarce in a motel room, so Sam curled up under one of the beds and showed Anna how she could grab onto the bottom and hold herself up whenever Dean came to look under the bed so that he wouldn't be able to see her. She wasn't very good at it because she had the upper body strength of a seven year old, so Dean could easily see her every time he looked, but he didn't call her out. He didn't have the heart. Instead he waited for her telltale giggle to give her away. There were a couple of lazy rounds where they just hid under the covers on one of the beds or crouched behind the curtain in the shower. Creatively, Anna spent one round crouched under the chair Dean sat in to count, and Sam teased him as he checked all their previous hiding spots three times before finally spotting her.


After playing for nearly two hours, re-using old hiding spots again and again with only the rarest new one finding its way into the game, they all finally quit and piled into the car to go get lunch.


At the diner, which was mostly empty due to the rain still pouring from a plot of gray clouds above, Anna remained plastered to the window, chattering away about rain stories and songs and how pretty it was outside. "Look, Sammy, isn't it pretty?" "It's gonna be even prettier with thunder and lightning, right, Dean?"


After lunch, the sky seemed to spit rain on them in thicker curtains. Anna dawdled on her way to the car and then on her way from the car to their motel room.


"What time is it?" Anna queried as she stacked some blue and red legos together into no particular shape.


"Almost two o'clock," Dean replied after a minute. "You tired?" he asked. It would be a rare occurrence for her to willingly admit to being tired, but after the long game of hide and seek they'd played earlier, it might not have been so surprising.


"No," Anna laughed as if he'd only been teasing. She abandoned her little pile of legos and snatched her stuffed frog off the couch she'd been playing next to. "Is the TV still broken?" she asked, climbing up to sit on the couch.


"It's not broken," Sam corrected. "There's just no signal because of the rain. It probably won't be working again until tomorrow."


Anna sighed. "I'm bored, though."


"Well, sorry that the weather doesn't yield to you," Sam laughed. "Play with your toys."


"I'm bored of legos. Let's play Hide 'n Seek again."


Both boys groaned at the mere thought. "There's gotta be something else we can do," Sam said to Dean. "I can't spend another five minutes crammed under the table waiting for her to find me, man, I can't."


"What did we used to do?" Dean asked him a little sentimentally. "On rainy days like this when Dad was gone?"


Sam frowned thoughtfully, but a moment later his face filled with nostalgic peace. "We used to make blanket forts," he said. "And you told me ghost stories that were probably very real in hindsight."


Dean grinned. "You want to make a blanket fort?" he asked Anna.


Her face positively lit up, the gap in her teeth making a reappearance. "Yeah!"


They tore the cushions of the couch and the blankets and pillows off the beds to assemble all their resources, and there was only a little bit of a tickle war somewhere in there, a tickle war that Anna totally didn't lose.


"Okay, okay, the key is a good foundation," Dean started, tossing pillows into an array on the floor.


"What's a foundation?" Anna asked, mimicking his serious voice.


"In this case," Dean explained, "It's just where we're gonna sit once we get the blankets all set up.


"Well, shouldn't you be putting the pillows in a place where we have good anchors for the blankets?" Sam contradicted.


Dean turned his head so he could lock eyes with Sam and the two just looked at each other for a minute. "Where would you suggest we put them then, Mr Fort Master?"


Sam shrugged and looked around. "If we moved the couch over by the beds and set the pillows up between them, we could find a way to tie the blankets to the bedposts."


Dean narrowed his eyes at his brother and looked around the room as if mentally mapping out Sam's plan in the space. "That could work," he admitted slowly.


Sam rolled his eyes. "Here, Ladybug. Lay the pillows out and we'll move the couch."


Anna raced back and forth moving all the pillows, thrilled to have a job to do. On the way back with the last pillow, she inadvertently hit Dean in the leg with it as she passed him. As soon as he'd finished setting down his side of the couch, he swiveled and crouched to her level. "You did that on purpose," he accused playfully, leaning into her face with a mock snarl on his face.


Anna laughed, "No, I didn't."


"You did too. You so did," he argued and started to tickle her sides.


With a squeal, Anna tried to wriggle away, but she was helpless with laughter. "Sammy!" she managed to gasp out, and was rewarded when Sam swung a couch cushion to hit Dean in the side of the head. Astounded and delighted, she watched as Dean snatched up the second couch cushion and swung it back at Sam. The two duked it out for a minute before Dean grabbed Anna around the waist and lifted her up to use her as his human shield.


"No fair," Sam laughed. "I can't hit her."


"Exactly," Dean said with a little evil laugh. Anna mimicked him, and it made him genuinely laugh before he struck out at Sam again with the pillow. When Sam managed to dodge, he threw the whole cushion, only for Sam to dodge again. The stray cushion hit a lamp on one of the bedside tables and sent it flying spectacularly, but the cord attaching it to the wall caused it to fall limply to the floor before long. The thin paper lamp shade crumpled, and the cheap lightbulb inside smashed to smithereens.


All of them stilled, stunned into silence.


"Good thing Daddy's not here," Anna finally asserted, and the stillness of the room shattered like the glass of the lightbulb from a moment before.


After clean-up, they went about setting up the fort, which collapsed in on itself several times before Anna finally suggested putting chairs inside to make the ceilings higher. Helpful input from her was long overdue considering that she'd spent the last hour of construction repeatedly crawling into the fort prematurely, each time inevitably getting her foot caught in a blanket or anchor and bringing the whole thing down on herself.


It was five o'clock by the time the fort was fully built and functional.


They all crawled inside with a flashlight and a couple of books, but the books weren't used anyway.


Curled under a low-hanging patch of blanket, Anna let her head rest in the crook of Dean's arm and hooked her knees over Sam's stomach. The dim light of their motel room peeked at her through the thin, scratchy yellow of a motel bed's top sheet.


"So you know what Dad did?"


Anna tilted her head back to see Dean's face as he told the story. "What?" she asked eagerly.


"He torched the bastard."


"He torched the bastard," Anna repeated solemnly, as if this were some sort of initiation. And maybe it was. In the warmth of their own little cavern, the Winchesters took shelter from the storm as the first roll of thunder sounded from the darkening outside world. "Know what?" Anna whispered into the dim light of their fort.


"What?" the boys asked together.


"I like the rain even better now."


"Me too, kiddo," Sam admitted on one side.


"Me three," Dean said from the other.


Then, silenced by the beauty of the sunniest rainy day any of them had ever seen, they just stayed there, warm and at peace.


La Fin

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