"Okay." Dr. Robert said, rubbing the monitor on Hannah's belly, "Just need a minute to find our little Nephilim here."
"What's a Nep—nephil—il—" Dean stumbled over the big word. He didn't like big words. Big words were hard and they never came out of his mouth right.
"It's…what happens sometimes when an angel and human have baby together." Sam explained awkwardly, before shooting the doctor an aggravated glare. They hadn't explained the concept of Nephilim yet, because aside from being a bit over the toddlers' heads, plus, they were afraid it could lead to other questions.
"It's what happens sometimes when an angel and human have a baby." Sam explained, glaring daggers at Dr. Robert.
"Are we Nep—nep—nepill—" Cas stammered out. He didn't like big words any more than his brother did.
"No." Hannah cut him off, "You're an angel and Dean's a human."
The adults knew what was coming next.
"Why?!" The boys asked in unison.
Fortunely that was when Dr. Robert found the baby. "And there it is. Or I should say rather, there she is."
It took them a minute to realize what the doctor was getting it. "It's a little girl?" Hannah asked.
"It's a girl?" Sam repeated, almost in a sate of shock and awe.
Dr. Robert nodded.
"We'se gonna have a baby sister?" Cas asked looking up at them.
Dean, however, had a slightly different reaction. "Are you sure?"
Dr. Robert smirked to himself. "Yes. I'm sure. You're having a little girl. And still looks perfectly healthy."
The parents barely heard him, staring at the screen. "Sam," Hannah began, "Do you see her?"
"Yeah, I do." Sam confirmed, still processing.
An hour later, Serena Joy was at her apartment, cutting out shapes of sugar cookie dough and signing along to the radio. "I sure do like those Christmas cookies, sugar. I sure do like do like those Christmas cookies, babe. The ones that look like…" He voices trailed off as the phone rang, and she picked it up. "Hey, Hannah."
"Hey, Serena." Hannah began, sitting at the table with a glass of milk, pad of paper, and a baby name book, "We, ah, we found out the gender today."
Serena Joy dropped the cookie cutter and turned off the radio. "And? Come on, angel girl, don't leave me in suspense here."
"It's a girl." Hannah told her.
Serena Joy grinned. "That's amazing. Now they only outnumber you by one over there."
"I never thought of it that way." Hannah responded, "I've started looking at names now that we know, but I'm not…there's so many of them." After a beat she asked, "Is 'Lolita' a good name?"
Serena Joy froze a moment. "Ah…where did you get that from?"
"I found it in the Ls." Hannah explained, "It's a Spanish diminutive for Delores. It means 'sad'. It was pretty popular in the 50s." After a beat she caught the change in demeanor, "Why do you sound like that?"
"Hannah the reason that name lost its popularity was because of this—well, this novel." Serena Joy awkwardly explained, "And ah…look, there's this blog called Rejected Princesses, Lolita was one of the first entries, look it up on that sight specifically," she was afraid what Hannah might find otherwise, "And then talk to Sam."
Later that day, Reason brough Maudie over for the afternoon. As he watched her set Maudie down, Cas just came out with it. "We'se gonna had a baby sister."
Reason looked at the child parents, who were both present. "A baby sister?"
Sam and Hannah nodded.
She let out a joyous shriek like a happy pterodactyl. "That's awesome guys!" Reason declared, "Congratulations."
"What's so great 'bout another girl?" Dean spoke up.
"Well, another boy would've been great, too." Sam told him crouching down, "But a girl's still something to be happy over."
"But what are we supposed to do with a girl?" Dean protested.
"Well, what do you do with Maudie and your friends?" Hannah countered. It suddenly occurred to her that maybe Dean might be feeling a bit outnumbered himself.
Dean seemed to think on that for a moment before he asked, "Maudie's a girl?"
What Maudie said next, they would never figure out where she got it from. "You just figuring that out now?"
The adults couldn't help themselves and the room filled with laugher.
Later on, Sam was in the bedroom, taking a moment, staring up in the ceiling, thinking something similar to what Dean had asked.
What was he supposed to do with a girl?
With the boys it was a little a weird because they use to be adults, and he had known both of them as adults, but—well, Sam had been a little boy too once. He could take a guess at what they would like, what they would be interested in. But a girl? Some days he was still trying to figure out his own wife—granted his wife was also a different species, but still. How did he interact with a little girl? What was he supposed to do?
That was when Hannah stepped into the doorway, "The kids found the boxes with the ornaments. They were wanting to—hey, are you okay?"
"Yeah, I'm just—I'm thinking." Sam told her, somewhat afraid to admit his reservations. He didn't want Hannah to think he didn't want the child because her sex.
Hannah sat down on the edge of the bed next to Sam. "What were you thinking about?"
Sam decided to just come out with it. "Don't get me wrong, I'm—I'm happy we're having a girl, but…. what if I can't connect with her? How do I—we—raise her? I mean, and I suppose to shit there with a shotgun to scare off boys?"
"Considering she's still in uredo I think that's a bit pre mature." Hannah told her, "And possibly not legal. As for the other, you already have experience connecting with girls. Or need I remind you—" Hannah reached out and took off one of the boots, then the sick, revealing his pale pink painted toenails.
Two weeks before, Reason's jar of nail polish someone got accidently brought to the bunker, and Maudie got in in her head that she wanted to paint fingernails, for starting with Sam because, in her semi-sensical toddler's logic, his were the biggest. Sam had convinced her just to do his toes, not realizing that polished actually stayed better in longer on toenails, so a fortnight later, all three Winchester males had pink toenails—she had convinced the boys to go along with it too. Hannah's came off in two days because it was on hers was on her fingers and therefore got chipped constantly.
"Oh." Sam responded, looking at the toenails, "Right?"
"So, tree?" Hannah asked.
Sam sat up. "Give me second to get my sock back on."
The three had already been sat up a couple days before, when Sam had gotten everything down from storage, but with everything going on they hadn't actually got a chance to put it up, so the boxes just sat there, now with three small children standing over them.
"Okay guys," Sam began, "Give me a little room here." He opened the box, revealing a hog pog of ornament.
One of the ornaments in the box was blue ball with sliver designs. "Pretty!" Maudie explained, going in and grabbing it.
"Ah, ah, careful." Sam cautioned as the little girl ran over to the tree, and just starred up at it, crunching her face. The she turned around and held out her arms, "Up."
Sam leaned down and pick Maudie up. "Okay, Maudie, where do you want it?"
"There." Maudie answered, pointing about halfway up.
Sam happily obliged, leaning in and helping her to carefully attach the glass ball to the branch. By the time he sent Maudie down Dean had ran up, holding a green glass pine cone. "Me next! Me next!"
"Okay." Sam complained, lifting it up. Maybe boys and girls weren't that different after all.
Hours later that evening, the family plus Maudie were on the couch, all the kids curled in a pile, half asleep watching Rudolph the Red nosed Reindeer.
"I still don't understand what's everyone so worked up about." Hannah whispered over to Sam, "I mean, they live in a land with elves, talking deer, and a yeti that runs around terrorizing everyone, and red glowing nose is where they draw the line?"
"I always thought they were just bunch of bullies." Sam commented.
"I mean—Coach Comet's wearing a hat and they don't send him into exile." Hannah continued, the after a beat, changed the subject, "What do you think about Clarice? For a girl's name?"
It took a minute to figure out what Hannah was talking about. "You want to name our daughter after a Claymation reindeer?"
"Well, there's also that FBI agent from the one film." Hannah reasoned, "You know, the one with the cannibal therapist?"
"Yeah, yeah, I know what film you're talking about." Sam told her.
Hannah took out the baby name book and flipped through it. "It says here Clarice means 'insightful'."
"You…you already started looking?" Sam asked. It wasn't the idea hadn't occurred to them it seemed somewhat odd, naming someone you hadn't even met yet. What if she didn't look like whatever name they picked out?
"Would you like to see the list?" Hannah asked. She had meant to share it with him anyway.
"Ah, yeah, sure." Sam replied.
Hannah handed a folded piece of paper and Sam began to read. "Ah, Hannah, there's something I should probably tell you."
"I learned about the name's cultural significance from a blog post after I wrote it down." Hannah explained, "That's why it's cross off. With some of the interpretations out there I'd rather not have that be the thing people think of when they hear our daughter's name."
"Me neither." Sam agreed, glad they were on the same page, then continued reading, "Mary?"
"I thought you might want to use your mother's name." Hannah explained, "Or maybe a variation like Marie or something for a middle name, if we decide not to use it for the first one."
"I think I like that idea." Sam nodded, "Ah… but what's with this you have in parthesis? 'Sea of bitterness, Mother of Christ'."
"That's what Mary means in Hebrew apparently." Hannah explained, "I—I wrote all the meanings of the names now by them, if they had them in the book."
Suddenly Sam got a wild hair. "Hannah, can I see that book for a minute?"
"Sure." Hannah replied, handing him the book, wondering what he was going to do with him.
Sam flipped to the Hs in the girl's section, and, when he found what he was looking for, broke out in a grin, chuckling. "Well, that's on the nose."
"What is?" Hannah asked.
"Hannah literally means Grace in Hebrew." Sam told her.
"Really?" She asked, grabbing the book back to look.
As she looked through the book, Sam read the next name. "Caroline?"
"She was one of the people who convinced me to accept my feelings for you and has been disturbingly alright with the current Nephilim situation." Hannah reasoned, "It's the least we can do to honor her."
"Yeah, but…didn't you say a while back that you were starting to think Rawls might think you're actually Caroline?" Sam pointed out.
To be fair, they didn't have much to go on for that. The month before during a date Rawls got unusually tipsy and when he gets drunk he starts blurting random things out and he told Serena Joy that he knew what they had about portions of Sam's past being 'misunderstandings' but if he and his wife actually decide to go into a life of crime—"well, back into on in C-Anna's case" (he normally did not get this drunk, and it showed)—that they would be very good at it and he it was a good thing people can change. Serena Joy called them to let them know about it, just in case, but when nothing came of it, they decided to let it drop. They had enough problems.
"That's why she suggested an alternative." Hannah responded, pointing to the next name down on the list, "Coraline. Means country girl in American."
"And the literary reference is less…disturbing." Sam added. At least that's what he thought. He had never actually read either book.
"There's a book character with that name too?" Hannah asked surprised.
"Yeah, but it's ah, a grade school book." Sam assured him.
Hannah breathed a sigh of relief, finding what she was looking for at that moment. "It says here, Samuel means 'man who heard God' or 'prophet' in Hebrew."
"Really?" Sam asked, momentarily distracted.
Hannah nodded.
"Well, maybe there's still hope then." Sam quipped.
After some flipping through the book, Hannah added, "And apparently Dean is English for 'Calming'."
Sam glanced over to Dean, who wasn't paying attention much to what the adults were saying, trying to stay awake and in the world of talking reindeer and misfit toys. In any form, 'calm' was not a word he would use to describe him.
Hannah flipped from the 'Cs' in the boys half of the book. "I can't find Cas' names anywhere."
"Well, I'm pretty sure we're the only ones with a kid name Castiel." Sam pointed out, "But, um, back in the day I was researching angels, and Cas in particular, because, well, he was the only name we had at the time. Couldn't find much, just, a name on an apocryphal list of angels that only really told what he was supposed to be the angel of—Thursday new changes and travel, sometimes solitude and tears, by the way—but I think it might be 'Shield of God'."
"Oh." Hannah responded.
Moving on, Sam looked at the next name on the list: Raquel.
Sam didn't have to ask about that. Raquel had been her best friend of Heaven, one of her friends that she saw killed. Of course, she considered naming their baby after her. And there was a human name that was close. He deiced not to comment on that one, since there was no need to.
The next one, however, caught him by surprise.
"Okay, I get your reasoning behind all the other ones, but, what about "Jacqueline?""
"I just thought it was pretty." Hannah told him.
Sam thought a moment. "Yeah, it is."
"Are there any names you were thinking of?" Hannah asked.
"Not really." Sam admitted, "Hard to guess the name for someone you haven't met yet, of you know what I mean."
"Yeah, I do." Hannah responded.
"Although, we could add one to list." Sam suggested.
Hannah handed him a pencil and he wrote down, Clarice. "Maybe she'll look like a serial killer fighting cartoon reindeer."
Hannah giggled a little at that.
With that, the couple leaned back, soaking in the moment and going over the names on the list, glad they still had some time to work it out.
AN: Yeah, I think my obsession with name meanings got a little more into this then I meant it too.
So, I'm going to do something I don't usually do. I'm having a really tough time deciding what to name this kid, so it there was a name here anyone liked more than the others, please review or PM me, and whatever is picked the most by the time she's born will be the name. (If it's a tie I'll cross that bridge when I get it.)
In case you need a recap, the choices are Mary, Marie , Caroline, Coraline, Raquel, Jaqueline or Clarice.
Thanks!