This is a tag to 9x04 "Slumber Party" and was written for Otorisosa-kan's December Prompt Challenge. As you may have guessed, it was a Christmas/holiday-themed story this month. The bonus challenge was to somehow include a robbery, and while I didn't pull that off in a literal sense, maybe it works metaphorically? That'll be up to you.
Just Like Heaven
It is warm beneath the covers, and she doesn't much feel like moving, but something must've woken her, and Charlie gets the impression that it was something important. She shifts so that she is lying on her back, looking up at a ceiling painted rich, oaky brown. The walls surrounding her are Floradale Isle green, and she knows this because it was the closest thing to the nonexistent "Shire green" she'd been searching for when she'd picked out the paint colors for her room a few years ago. (Only four years ago, right? After her mom had finished reading her the last Lord of the Rings book. Seems like longer than that, but four years must be right).
The sun has barely begun to rise outside her window, but Charlie's eyes have adjusted to the semi-dark, and she can see the outline of the intricate pattern of leaves and vines that wind their way up along each wall like moss clinging to an ancient structure. Her mother's hands had painstakingly traced out each individual leaf, had painted in each small, white flower that blossoms around them. Charlie smiles at the memory of finally getting to see her finished room and of hugging her mom tight, telling her that, yes, it did feel like she'd stepped inside her very own Hobbit Hole.
Charlie shifts again beneath the sheets, running a hand through tousled, red hair and finally adjusting herself so that she is sitting up against an array of green pillows.
And that's when she smells it. The thing that must've woken her.
Charlie is out of bed in an instant, feet sliding into the owl-shaped slippers she'd gotten as a birthday present two years ago. She always sets them in the exact same spot on the floor every night, so she finds them without looking now, toes curling into the soft fabric. She rushes to her closet next, pulling her favorite sweatshirt swiftly over the graphic t-shirt she'd worn to bed. Charlie bursts through her bedroom door like there are hellhounds on her tail (and what a strange thing to pop into her head right now), slippered feet finding purchase on the carpet as she finds the stairs, practically stumbling down them. Her steps slow as she reaches the swinging door to the kitchen: the room that holds the source of that smell, an aroma that only touches her nostrils once a year. Charlie is quiet now, glad for the extra padding on her feet that prevent her from making too much noise. She slides deftly into the kitchen, eyes searching for the sight that matches the smell. She finds it a moment later, sitting on the counter beside the oven: the mouthwatering double chocolate fudge cake that her father bakes just one day out of every year. She remembers begging for it on her eighth birthday two years ago (two years ago?), but her father had laughed and ruffled her hair.
"Well then it wouldn't be quite as special anymore, would it?" he'd said. "The reason you love it so much is because you don't get it all the time."
"But daddy," Charlie had said, "I get you and mommy all the time, and I love you guys the most!"
Charlie imagines baking his special cake that day was one of the only exceptions her dad had ever made in his life. He was all about schedules and rules, treating time like a gift not to be wasted, and treating Charlie and her mother like the most important things, the things he wanted all of that time to be spent with. All the more tragic, then, that he didn't have as much time as he thought he would…
And what a strange thought that is, because Charlie is just about to reach out and take a swipe of frosting from that delicious cake when she hears his familiar, booming voice behind her.
"Not yet Charlie, honey! Don't want to spoil your daddy's handywork, do we?"
Charlie turns around and crinkles her nose. "I wasn't gonna touch it," she fibs. "I just wanted to see!"
Her dad chuckles and shakes his head in amusement, and Charlie can't help thinking she misses that sound. Which is weird, because she's pretty sure he laughed yesterday too, when she'd told him about how Evan Jacobson was giving her a hard time at recess, so she punched him in the nose. Her mom hadn't been as amused, insisting that her teacher Mrs. Dofferty was quite serious about a week without recess.
But her mother is smiling now as she walks into the kitchen, her short brown hair sticking up in curled tufts, framing rosy cheeks.
"We've got something else for you to see first, honey," she says, beckoning for Charlie to follow after her. The three of them walk back out the swinging door of the kitchen and around the other side of the staircase, into the living room. Charlie's mouth drops open when she sees the giant tree that stands before her, covered in twinkling lights and candy canes and ornaments that shimmer in the soft glow of an already burning fireplace. She can't remember the last time she saw a tree like this with so many presents sitting beneath it; pretty bows and wrapping paper decorated with Christmas hats and reindeer. She frowns.
But that had to have been last year.
The last time she would've seen a tree like this, with all the presents around it, would've been the Christmas after she turned ten, right? Because she's eleven now, and all she'd wants this Christmas is a Gryffindor scarf and a Wizard's Chess Set, and maybe a Hermione bobblehead to match the Ron Weasley one already sitting on her desk upstairs.
Right?
Charlie's parents are smiling down at her, and Charlie wishes she understood how something so perfect could seem so strange. So off. This is exactly where she wants to be, right here in this moment, and yet it is as if there is something pulling her in the opposite direction, a force she can't quite put her finger on.
"Merry Christmas!" her parents say in unison, guiding her towards the tree with the presents beneath it. Despite the urge she feels to turn and sprint the other way, Charlie lets her slippered feet guide her closer to the tree. There is a tickle at the back of her neck then, a soft breeze that pushes past her shoulders and swoops down to flutter along the tips of her fingers, numbing them with a sudden chill. Startled, Charlie stops walking and turns to face her parents.
They are still smiling, faces seemingly frozen in anticipation as they wait to watch their daughter unravel her Christmas gifts. But all around her, that subtle breeze has begun to pick up. She watches as her mother's long, red robe flaps around her ankles and her father's loose t-shirt whips around his torso. And suddenly the room has become the site of a tornado touching down. Or perhaps it is a hurricane. Charlie tries to scream, but she is frozen in the eye of this storm, and all she can do is watch. Behind her, the Christmas tree flies towards the far wall, disappearing into thin air before it makes contact. The presents surrounding the tree sink slowly into the carpet, and Charlie turns to watch a red box with a golden bow melt into the floor. Somehow, she knows this was her Hermione Granger bobblehead.
Horrified, Charlie turns next to the still-smiling faces of her parents. They begin to shift and shimmer before her, a mirage that soon becomes an enormous, swirling pool of light and color and...nothing. They are gone. Erasing, erasing, erasing. Everything is disappearing before her eyes, and Charlie can't help but think that this has already happened once before, years ago on a slippery road with blinding headlights and spinning tires and a crash so loud she thought she heard it, even though she wasn't there.
Instead, she was sitting on the couch at a friend's house, waiting for her parents to pick her up from a sleepover she no longer wanted to be at.
The room is still moving and twisting around her, chairs flying into oblivion, Christmas stockings and decorations ripping apart at the seams. Charlie is still frozen in the middle of what used to be her living room. She closes her eyes as the small chandelier above her head disappears, taking the last of the light with it….
Charlie gasps awake seconds later, rocketing into a sitting position, and she knows exactly where she is. Her parents are long gone, a distant memory that is held in dreams and memories such as the one she'd just had- a forgotten last Christmas together before a car accident took them away from her. But those days are long gone.
And right now, she is sitting on Dean Winchester's bed, inside the bunker that he and his brother now call home. Monsters are real. Dorothy of Oz is real. And they are hunting down the Wicked Witch. These ridiculous facts fall seamlessly back into place, and Charlie accepts them as the bizarre truths that have become her life now. She watches as the dream fades from her mind the way that dreams tend to do.
Charlie knows she is too late, but she says the words anyway:
"Merry Christmas."
I have come to the conclusion that I am actually incapable of writing a happy story. I don't know why. Anyway, I hope you all have a wonderful holiday (whether or not it has already passed, fellow Hanukkah celebrators) and a Happy New Year! Please leave your comments if you have time.