"Is this the baby you lost last night?" the morgue tech asked lifting the green receiving blanket bordered with little yellow bunnies someone had covered the body with.

"Yeah," said a nurse sadly, "But the father is adamant, no autopsy. The mother became hysterical when I mentioned it so there's nothing for you to do but wait for some kind of arrangements to be made."

"It's a crying shame. She looks just like a little angel," the tech said and lowered the blanket, "Did they take it hard?"

"Well, of course they did," the nurse said snippily but she was not above gossiping, "When the priest came in to try and baptize the infant and to give her last rights the mother came unglued. She got out of the bed and lunged at him, screaming that it was all his fault. If the dad hadn't caught her I think she would have torn him limb from limb."

"Grief does strange things to people," the tech suggested, "So what happens now?"

"I go back upstairs and you get the paperwork ready," the nurse told him.

Before she could leave he asked, "Are they using Kripke's Mortuary?"

"Nope, no funeral home, no church service, just a private burial at Mt. Pleasant."

"Not St Michael's?"

"Not after the mom's outburst."

"Well, Mt. Pleasant's got a beautiful children's section," the tech recalled, "With all the pinwheels and the fat little cherubs."

"Yeah, and it's possibly the saddest place on earth," the nurse said with a sigh, "I'll talk to you later."

Watching the door close behind the nurse the tech sat down at a banged up metal desk and began searching for a release form when a scruffy looking man in a worn flannel shirt, jeans and a ball cap came through the door.

"Can I help you?"

"Yeah, I'm here...regarding...baby Winchester."

"Okay, I'm gonna to need you to fill out some paper work. Are you a relative or a representative of the funeral home?"

"Neither, I'm a friend."

The tech told him he couldn't authorize the release of a body to a friend, no matter how close, and Bobby pulled Sam's power of attorney from his pocket. After a minimal amount of time and with death certificate in hand the tech met Bobby at the morgue's back entrance and slipped baby Mary Elizabeth Winchester into a tiny wooden coffin in the back seat of Bobby's car.

"You do know that not embalming...will..ah, you know...dust to dust," the tech told him as he slipped into the drivers seat.

Bobby looked up at the young man and unsmiling, simply said, "Dust to dust, the way it should be," even though he knew that the best way to respect the dead was to burn the body so that it couldn't be taken over by a demon.

Sam had chosen burial over cremation because who in his right mind would disturb the final resting place of an innocent child.

"Please don't send me to hell," Dean whispered furtively to whoever or whatever might be listening in the dark as his spade sliced easily into the freshly turned earth. Each time he bent to scoop up the dirt he couldn't help but see the simple name etched into the surface of the granite headstone in the lantern's glow. And each time he read it, it carved out a piece of his heart just as his shovel carved out another chunk of earth in his unthinkable quest to breach the baby's final resting place.

Dean imagined he saw tears running down the faces of the cherubs resting atop the markers on the adjoining plots but he was determined to follow thorough and reveal all of Sabine's secrets. And if, by some chance, he were wrong only God and the devil would know what he'd done.

The blade of the shovel finally struck the tiny coffin, marring the smooth finish, and he cursed aloud and thought he heard laughter as he got into the hole and down on his knees to finish the rest of the work by hand. A few minutes later he lifted the coffin up out of the dirt and onto his knees. Brushing it off he reached up and placed it onto the grass then jumped out of the hole.

He knelt by the small box and tried to catch his breath as he stared at the plain pine box, hurriedly but still lovingly constructed by Bobby Singer. His breathing never returned to normal as the wind moved softly through the trees and Dean listened, sure his secret visit to the graveyard in the dead of night was the stuff such whispers were made of, and he slowly lifted the cover

Dean sucked in a breath when he saw the tiny body dressed in a frilly dress nestled in the padded white silk lined box, her eyes closed as if she were just asleep, a sight that should have brought him to tears but in reality only chilled him to the bone. Pulling his knife from his belt Dean's hands shook as he placed the blade to the infant's chest and, swallowing the lump in his throat, he pushed.

Instead of feeling small bones break and separate the knife sank easily into the tiny body. Tearing the dress that bound it, the baby's body split wide open with a hiss, like a nail puncturing an inflated tire, and soft red tissue oozed out of the rupture. The beautiful casing collapsed in on itself. There were no bones or organs inside to keep the shape of the baby girl and, moping the sweat from his brow with the sleeve of his shirt, Dean stood up and bent over at the waist and promptly threw up.

Even from inside his garage Bobby could hear the Impala as it pulled into the drive and, wiping his hands on a handy rag, he wondered how Dean could even show his face. The boy hadn't gone to the hospital, hell; he hadn't even gone to the cemetery, a fact that had hurt his brother badly and now he was walking into his shop as if nothing had happened.

"You've got some nerve showing up here," Bobby said.

The hunter's voice was calm but Dean could hear the anger in it. "I went to the cemetery," Dean told him.

Bobby saw the dirt smeared all over Dean's knees and his shirt and the dark smudges on his face and he went ballistic. "Tell me you didn't, you son of a bitch!' he shouted and took a swing that connected with Dean's jaw.

"Wait a minute. It's not what you think," Dean said in his defense, "Okay, it is but..."

Bobby clocked him a second time and pushed him up against the wall of the shop.

"What did you do?" he demanded, his forearm pressed up against Dean's throat.

Pushing the older hunter away and gasping for breath Dean tried to explain. "Okay! I went to the cemetery and dug up the coffin..."

"You desecrated your brother's baby's grave?"

Bobby was on him again shoving him hard toward the door and Dean tried again to explain. "It was never really a baby!" he shouted, "It was like a piece of Sabine's tail broke off and formed a fetus. It had some kind of awful smelling bloody pulp inside but no bones, no organs, nothing human," and, when Bobby stared at him incredulously, he begged, "You gotta believe me. It wasn't a mistake of nature. It was an abomination of evil."

Bobby either wouldn't or couldn't hear the truth in Dean's words and, giving him one final shove, yelled, "Get the hell out of here before I kill you myself!"