Disclaimer: Still own nothing.

Author's Note: I feel like I owe you all so much more than this rather short and dinky little chapter, but too bad it's all you get. Ugh, I'm trying, I swear...that stupid muse just doesn't seem to want to hang around much anymore. But I promise, I'm trying.



"Why don't I have any grandmas?" she asks simply, pulling her little girl body up and into his lap.

She's been asking questions lately, too many questions, and though he can vaguely recall this particular stage from when Rachel went through it, partly remembers how difficult and irksome it had been with her, he can't for the life of him remember how he dealt with it or how long it had lasted.

"Dad," she draws out, annoyed by his silence, as she paws at his chest with her tiny hands. "Why?"

He looks down at his youngest daughter, all dark hair and dark eyes, wide pink lips set in a stern line as she awaits his response. He gazes deeply at her and says, "I don't know," soft and sullen, an unrealized lie.

The dreams, he'd thought they'd gone away completely, forever. Even before Maya's death they had dwindled and nearly stopped all together. The mere fact that he had no vision or inkling even of what was to come in those days, hours, prior to his daughter's suicide had cemented within him the idea that his awful gift was gone for good.

But lately…lately they've been back. Different, no longer migraine inducing, mind numbing visions, or odd snippets of things to come. Now they were simply dreams, memories of times long ago forgotten, memories of Maya being the child he adored instead of the one he would forever mourn. Memories that, he was sure, were triggered by more than just some sort of grieving process, some deeply buried, subconscious need to see his daughter.

It's one memory in particular, one dream that continues to occur that cements this idea in his head.

"I don't know," she says, shuffling her feet nervously, directing her eyes across the room rather than at him.

"It means something though, right?" he asks, a hint of childlike hope to his voice. "Like she's…here, trying to tell me something."

Ava merely shrugs.

"What?" he asks, studying her almost pained expression. "What?" more annoyed than imploring.

She shakes her head slowly before finally turning to look at him. "Sam, it's just a dream."

"I know that. But it's a dream I keep having. It has to mean something." He rises from the unmade bed, turning his back on his sister-in-law as he says, "All this has to mean something."

She pulls the sheet tighter around her, wraps it round her frame as she too stands. "Maybe it's just because you're so used to dreams having some kind of deeper meaning, because they used to…for you and me, and Maya. But things are different now, you know?" She moves across the room, harsh berber hotel carpeting scraping at her soles, and lays her hand on his shoulder, her head against his back. "Maybe it's time to stop looking for meaning in everything," she whispers into his flesh.

"I don't think I can do that," he mutters harshly before pulling away and quickly dressing.

"Why don't you know?" she asks pointedly, even at nearly four, she's tenacious and quick to see through lies and condescension

"Well," he starts, unsure of where to go. "Well, technically you have grandmas, two of them. It's just, neither of them are here."

"Why not?"

"Because they're both," he catches himself sharply, stumbles over the word dead and sputters out, "gone," instead.

"Gone where?"

"Gone to Heaven," he says, words falling from his lips before he even realizes they're forming in his mind. She quiets for a moment, drops her inscrutable gaze, and he pulls her closer to him, takes in her sweet scent of innocence, and tells himself that any lie is worth a feeling like this.

He hasn't talked to Dean much lately, not since their most recent and most definitely final hunting trip a few months back. Part of him is still angry at his brother for blowing up at him, inadvertently informing his daughter of a secret he would have gladly kept from her all his life.

Part of him is furious, madder than he ever thought he could be with Dean, at those words he had spewed in his direction, "You should have told me." As though he'd done him some sort of disservice in trying to keep a truth his other daughter had died protecting, died to prevent, from being shared and known by all.

Mostly though, mostly he hasn't talked to Dean lately because he can't stand to look him in the eye.

And so, when he has the dream again, for the sixth time inside of two months, he wants to call Dean, talk to his brother about their mother, about his daughter, about anything that will remind him of who he is – not the jilted husband, but the loving brother – and who they, together, once were – a team united against everyone and everything else, since no one but the other could be trusted.

He wants to tell him that he thinks he knows what the dream means, at least in part. That he thinks, somehow, there's a connection between their mother's death and Maya's. That the connection they all seem to have with the yellow eyed demon, with evil in general, began with Mary and not him. He wants to tell him of the dream he had long ago in that tiny old western town Azazel had taken him to, where he saw his mother, their mother, look at the pair of glowing eyes in the dark of his nursery with unmistakable recognition.

But he can't say anything to Dean, not now, not while he's busy lying beside his wife, trying desperately to fall asleep as she strokes his back, hoping endlessly that once he does he'll have that dream of his little girl on his lap, snuggled tight against him. That dream where his little girl rises from her ashes and whispers to him through erstwhile memories. Why don't I have grandmas? Why don't you know?

That dream that only comes when he lies spent and broken and guilty after fucking his brother's wife.

"Where is Heaven?" she asks gently, never pulling her head away from his chest.

"I'm not really sure."

"Can I go there?"

He shifts uncomfortably, not wanting to say no, not able to say yes. "Maybe, one day."

"Aunt Ava said that Murphy's in Heaven. Doggy Heaven. Is that different?"

"A little," he says with a crooked smile as he begins to rock his girl back and forth. "Not really, though."

Her voice is heavy and light all at once, sleepy. "She said that if you're good you go to Heaven."

He feels her body slump a bit more, one missed nap taking its toll, and he says, still slowly rocking, "That sounds about right."

Her breaths fall into a steady, thick rhythm and he knows she's asleep, gone to the world, so he picks her up in that easy way – toddler bodies being just light enough to carry, big enough that he doesn't fear them slipping through his too large hold – and crosses the room to lay her in bed.

Rachel claims she's too big to be tucked in, and with how independent Maya is already, how much more so she becomes every day, he knows it won't be too much longer 'til this little ritual is outgrown. So he takes his time in pulling the covers around her, takes care in finding just the right stuffed toy to fold into her sleepy embrace

It's not until he's almost out the door, that he hears her stir, turns to look at her curled form in the dark, and sees, by the barely there glow of the light filtering in from the hall, Maya's large round eyes looking up at him.

"What is it, baby?" he asks softly.

She cocks her head at him, gaze unwavering as she says, words careful and drawn and entirely unfamiliar"Not everyone who's gone is gone to Heaven, Daddy. Some of us go…somewhere else."

He wakes in a cold sweat, feeling spent and dirty and scared.

He cries in the shower, huge wracking sobs the likes of which he's never felt before, keeping him from even feeling the pulse of the water.

And he cries on the drive home, ragged breaths blanketing over the sounds of his cell as Ava keeps desperately calling, dialing and redialing.

And he cries, words barely decipherable through the tears, as he lays his head in his wife's lap and spills all his secrets, all at once. All too much for him to bear.