Disclaimer: I do not own these characters. They are property of Warner Brothers, The CW, Eric Kripke, and anyone else who has worked to created and produce Supernatural. I am making no profit from this. It is for entertainment purposes only.
The People Who Keep On Giving
I.
Knowledge
A book of spells. Tattered, torn, and bearing the names of thirty three prior owners; it was thrust into her hands with a smile and a nod and a flash of hazel eyes.
The Men of Letters, it read on the inside cover. We are preceptors, beholders, chroniclers of all that which man does not understand.
"Keep it safe," he said to her as they wandered through the library. "It will tell you everything you need to know."
This was the first gift that Henry Winchester gave to Josie Sands.
II.
Beauty
A crown of lavender. Woven hastily, pulled together neatly, handed over with pride in a spare time stolen between one unpredictable moment and another. Henry put it over her hair, a smirk curling at the edges of his mouth, and muttered some sarcastic drivel about a crown for a princess.
The sun glinted off his wedding band, and the crown of lavender suddenly felt like a crown of thorns, pressing down on her.
She never threw it away, though.
This was the second gift that he gave to her.
III.
Safety
A silver dagger. Sharpened to perfection, tossed to her in a moment where the world seemed to slow. Where to drop the weapon would mean to die. She smiled and gripped the soft leather hilt.
When all was said and done, he told her to keep it.
"It's a family heirloom," he said. "You are more than worthy of it."
Her stomach clenched at the word family.
In the end, she never again left the bunker without the dagger tucked into her belt or her boot, and she let its presence comfort her.
This was the third gift Henry gave to her.
IV.
Joy
A photograph. Badly developed, lacking color, featuring Henry laughing and a bundle of joy held tight in his arms.
His bundle of joy.
"You took it," he reminded her, as though she could forget.
"You looked happy," she answered. Those moments are so rare now, she didn't add. I worry about you, she bit back.
It wasn't her place to say those things.
She tucked the picture beneath her mattress that evening, and when she felt lonely she would take it out and remember. Remember the pure, unadulterated joy of a father holding his child.
Remember him.
This was the fourth gift that Henry gave Josie.
V.
Trust
Divorce papers. Drawn up on a typewriter, citing marital disagreements. Giving full custody to the mother, signed in a firm hand by one Millie Winchester, née Baker. Affirmed in a shaky hand by one Henry Winchester. Dotted and smudged with the tears he was not quick enough to catch.
"She ended it," he said in a brittle voice, "and now I will never see my boy again."
Josie knew Henry Winchester loved only one person more than anything else in the world, and it was his son.
She held him as he cried.
They later burned the papers, watching the orange flames lick and tear at the parchment until it was nothing but ashes and dust lost to the past. Until all that remained between them was a dying fire and an unbreakable honesty.
This was the fifth gift that he gave her.
VI.
Freedom
A milkshake. Bought on a stolen evening out, in a small-town diner, across the lake where it felt like no one in the world could reach them.
Where it felt safe.
"Can you believe we're halfway finished with initiation?" he asked.
"I'm glad," she said. Don't leave me, she thought.
He smiled at her over the rim of his glass, one of his first in months.
She smiled back.
The two wanderers stayed out until dawn, drinking more milkshakes than their stomachs could hold and laughing while the stars glittered overhead.
This was the sixth gift Henry gave to her.
VII.
Memories
A film camera. Silver, chunky, and the most beautiful thing she had ever seen, wrapped in baby blue paper dusted with gold.
"Henry," she chastised. You shouldn't have.
"You like it?" he asked. He tucked his hands away, into his pockets, before she could catch them twisting together nervously, but she smiled.
She had already seen.
"Thank you."
She filmed everything: herself, him, trials enacted by Men of Letters. Every roll of film she developed painstakingly, deep in the belly of the bunker; some she handed over to be filed, and others she kept by her bed to watch in the dead of night, when she knew not a soul would find her out.
Hours of the most mundane moments, captured on a few rolls of plastic film.
Immortal.
This was the seventh gift Henry gave to Josie.
VIII.
Hope
A necklace. Cheap silver, a pendant in the shape of a cross, nothing but a part of their last mission. Their most dangerous mission.
He clasped it together in the back, brushing her hair aside gently.
When he stepped back and looked at her, her heart moved painfully and the moment seemed to hang in the balance, exempt from the laws of time.
If they survived, she swore she would keep this fading, thrift store necklace forever, as though she could bottle up his touch and his air and his life and that moment and keep them all tucked safely inside this gift.
She knew she could not.
They began to walk, side by side.
Danger approached, and she clasped her fingers around the cross.
This was the eighth gift Henry Winchester gave to her.
IX.
Courage
A gun. Simple, average, filled with engraved bullets that could take down this monster once and for all. It skidded across the floor from where he lay, bloodied and bruised, and even as the monster continued to speak, to gloat, the pair locked eyes.
Hazel, blue.
She waited for her time, then gripped the gun tightly in her hand.
It was still warm from his.
She thought of his strength, his goodness, of all the things he had given her over the years that had made her into who she was in that moment. The memories, the joy, the courage.
"He doesn't love you," the monster hissed.
Josie raised the gun and put a bullet through Abaddon's head.
Because even she knew that that was a lie.
And this was the ninth gift Henry Winchester gave to Josie Sands.
X.
Love
A touch. Something she couldn't save, a fleeting gift that could not be maintained. But when Henry stood, blood weeping from beneath his eye, and crossed the room to her, Josie could think of little else.
Sun caught the two of them as they stood, facing each other.
Frozen in time yet again.
"Josie," he said.
"Henry," she whispered back.
And when their lips met, she felt the love she had been holding back for years bubbling to the surface, pushing them together.
Refusing to let them fall apart.
This touch was the tenth gift that Henry ever gave to her.
And its meaning was one that would stay with them until the day they died.