Title: Endings & Beginnings Chapter Three
Author: Gillian Middleton
Characters: Sam & Dean
Rating: G
Total word count: 2600
Warning: A baby story. Angst.
Summary: Alternate universe story - Dean and Sam reunite after four years apart. Sam is burying his past, and Dean is holding his future.
Authors Note: I am still calling this story pre-slash - but Wincesters might find they have a long wait for the fun to begin. It's in my big picture, but it turns out the boys have a lot to sort out before they can even begin to think like that. Go figure. Long story short - this story will be Gen for the time being.

But All Endings Are Also Beginnings

Part Three

By Gillian Middleton

Sam tapped his knee against the dashboard impatiently, looking at his watch for the dozenth time. Outside the Chevy a patrol car pulled up and a group of cops walked down the steps of the precinct. Sam looked away, trying to come across as casual.

The baby gurgled and Sam glanced over his shoulder as she kicked her legs and squealed. The pacifier in her mouth rocked rhythmically as she sucked, her little fingers pressed against each other as she peered at them, eyes crossing.

"If the wind changes your face is gonna stay like that," he told her, remembering Dean saying the same thing to him, years before.

It was weird to think he'd once sat in a baby seat back there as well.

Maddy's head turned at the sound of his voice and she tried to focus on him, legs still kicking in her little romper. Sam studied her, looking for traces of his brother in her features. She had Dean's eyes, that was for sure, looking absurdly feminine in that little pink face. And maybe that bow of lips would one day look like his. Hard to tell from the rest of her though, her nose was a tiny button, and her hair was a soft golden fluff.

Dean was a dad. Sam had to admit the thought still freaked him out a little. He thought about his own dad and his heart twisted. Two years. Dad had been gone for two years.

Maddy squealed again, then spat out her pacifier and began to cry in earnest, arms and legs pumping, face turning red. Sam studied her for a moment, amazed that anything so small could generate so much noise. Then he sighed and climbed out of the front seat. He opened the creaking back door and braced himself on the side of the car, peering into the dim interior.

"I know you're not hungry," he said. "And Dean just changed your diaper. So, what's up?"

Maddy waved her arms and continued to wail, pink face screwing up alarmingly.

"Okay, okay." Sam gave in and unbuckled her, carefully supporting her head and butt as he picked her up and held her to his shoulder. Immediately her sobs tapered off and she wiggled enthusiastically.

Sam looked into her contented little face. "You're just a big pretender like your father, aren't you?" he accused, and Maddy gurgled and reached for his nose. He rolled his eyes and leaned back against the car, submitting to the thorough exploration of his face by damp, little fingers. There was something curiously comforting about the fragile weight against his shoulder, the gentle touch of tiny hands on his skin. Maddy's hazel-green eyes focused on his intently and she dribbled happily down her chin.

"I'm your Uncle Sam," Sam told her, meeting that direct gaze. He chuckled at the name. "Uncle Sam."

Sudden guilt assailed him and a lance of pain stole his breath. What was he doing? Standing out here in the sun, cuddling a baby in his arms. Laughing, like nothing had happened. When Jessica was...

Dean bounded down the steps of the police station and headed towards him, nodding amiably at a couple of uniformed cops. Sam turned, busied himself tucking Maddy back into her carrier, head averted as he bent to his task.

"Anything?"

Dean shook his head, pulling out his San Francisco PD badge and tossing it through the passenger door onto the dash. "Three mysterious fires reported in the last year. One factory, the detective thinks it was torched for insurance. One empty store where some homeless people started a fire that got out of control." Dean shot him a sympathetic glance. "And Jessica."

"I told you I would have heard if anyone else had died that way. It's the kind of thing I would have paid attention to."

"Old habits die hard," Dean agreed. he nodded at Maddy who was absorbed in her pacifier once more. "She okay there?"

"She was crying," Sam said defensively.

Dean slanted him a smile. "It's okay, Sam. You're allowed to pick her up if you want."

Sam shrugged and Dean lowered his voice. "You're even allowed to smile at her, you know?"

Sam just stared back at him stonily, guilt still flooding him. Dean didn't understand, how could he? He still had the person that mattered most to him.

But there was a sad knowledge in his brother's eyes as he gazed back at him, and Sam bowed his head, avoiding those knowing eyes.

"What next?" he asked flatly.

Dean looked at him a moment longer, then quirked a smile. "The store. I need diapers and formula. Seriously, Sam, it's cheaper to run a car than a kid."

666

"So, Madeline, huh?" Sam said thoughtfully. "It's nice - I like it." He pushed the brush down the barrel of the 12 gauge and pulled it back out a few times, checking the cleaning patch for oil.

"I told you, I didn't choose it." Dean clicked open a shotgun and peered down the sights.

Sam raised a curious brow, laying the gun aside and picking up his .45. "Didn't you want to name your own daughter?"

"Yeah, well, the thing with that?" Dean said dryly. "When her mother told me she was pregnant, I basically tossed her a couple of hundreds and told her to get rid of it. I figure I gave up any right to tell the woman what to name her kid after that."

Sam grimaced. "Ouch."

Dean shrugged. "Told you I hit rock bottom."

Sam glanced at Maddy asleep in her carrier between the beds. Her belly was rounded again after her feed and she was sucking on her fingers, eyelids flickering. "But Maddy's mother obviously didn't get an abortion. And you're here for the baby now."

"Somebody had to be," Dean said tartly, then he huffed out a breath and shook his head. "No, that's not fair," he amended. "She did try, Sam. It wasn't in her nature, but she tried. I have to give her that."

"And she just left?" Maddy snuffled in her sleep and Sam shook his head in disbelief. "How could she do that?"

"She had her reasons, I guess," Dean dismissed, and Sam recognized a subject closed sign when he heard it.

"So, what next?"

"I don't think there's anything to find in Palo Alto," Dean stated. "This thing is long gone. I do have an idea though."

"Yeah?"

"Caleb is holding onto Dad's truck. There was a bunch of stuff in there, books, research, papers. His journal."

Sam nodded soberly. Their father never went anywhere without his journal. Everything he knew about every evil creature he'd ever hunted was in there.

"So, Caleb's place?"

"I guess."

666

Some time in the depths of the night Sam stirred awake to the gentle rumble of Dean's voice. He blinked and focused on Dean in his familiar spot on the side of the bed, Maddy curved in the corner of his arm. Outside a car horn honked and raucous laughter echoed down the street. Sam idly wondered what time it was as he watched Dean touch the milky teat to his daughter's lips.

All day long Sam had been watching Dean take care of Maddy. Choose her formula and mix it up. Change her diapers with deft, practiced hands. Confidently rest her against his shoulder and rub her back until she burped.

But now, for the first time, he saw his brother completely unguarded with his daughter. Maddy suckled, long lashes casting shadows on her face as she gazed trustingly upwards. And Dean gazed back, touched his lips to her wavering hand, leaned over and pressed a soft kiss to her forehead. Suddenly Sam felt his grief rise up within him again, as sharp as a knife blade in his heart.

He missed Jessica. He missed the soft sound of her breath as she slept next to him. He missed the unwavering love in her eyes when she smiled at him. He missed the dreams of the future she'd shared with him. The awe he'd felt when he realized she meant a future with him.

Hopes and dreams and possibilities.

Maddy had dozed off and Dean pulled the bottle from her pursing lips, nestling her against his shoulder and laying his cheek on her downy head. Sam closed his eyes as tears seeped slowly into the pillow. Yesterday Sam had buried his past, walked away from it, left it behind. The future was an unknown road, stretching out before him.

But Dean could hold his future in his arms, cradle her close, convince himself that he could keep her safe.

Sam's arms ached, and he turned his face into the pillow and sought the oblivion of sleep.

666

"Bad night?" Dean asked lightly.

Sam shrugged. His head felt like it was stuffed with cotton wool, his eyes scratchy and tired. "I'm okay," he dismissed.

Dean shot him a quick glance, then fixed his attention back on the road. "Yeah. Right."

"I'm okay, Dean," Sam said quietly. "I just need to be doing something, that's all."

Dean looked up into his rear view mirror. "Yeah."

666

Sam pulled the tarp off the truck, turning his head and grimacing at the dust that billowed up in a cloud. He tossed the canvas aside and jingled the set of keys in his hand. Dad's truck.

Dean hadn't said much since they arrived, hanging back with Maddy's carrier in one arm and his duffel bag over the other. Their father's old friend had greeted them both with a handshake and a smile, then showed them to his spare room

Caleb Brewer had started out as a hunter of animals, and graduated somewhere along the line to the other sort of hunter. His house still boasted a wall full of trophies. Deer and elk and cougar heads gazed down with glazed, glass eyes.

He kept his less public trophies in the basement.

Dean gazed around the spare room, studied his wide eyed daughter in her carrier, and proceeded to throw towels and pillow cases over the grisly trophy heads.

"This kid is gonna be traumatized enough," he said shortly as Sam watched him work. "She doesn't need to grow up with a morbid fear of Bambi."

Once the baby had dozed off they didn't have an excuse to put it off any longer, and Sam unlocked the truck door and took a deep breath of stale air.

It still smelled like Dad.

The space behind the front seat was crammed with books, the glove box boasted fake ID's from all over the country. And on the dashboard sat the old leather journal, bristling with paper and yellowing newspaper clippings. Sam lifted it down, just holding it in his hands for long moments, a thousand memories playing in his mind. As a child he'd thought this book held the answer to every question there was. As an adult he could only hope there was an answer here somewhere.

666

Sam trekked the dimly lit hall to the book stuffed study, pushing open the door with a soft creak and studying his brother, bent over a pile of books as he had been all week.

"Any luck?"

"Yeah," Dean said, not looking up from the page. "That's why I'm jumping for joy."

"You need to get some sleep, man."

Dean rubbed his eyes tiredly. "That's rich coming from you, Sam. Have you slept more than a few hours a night all week?"

"I don't have a daughter to look after."

Dean slammed the book closed and glared up at him. "Yeah, well, that's what I'm trying to do here. Look after my daughter. Find some answers." He looked back down at the book under his hand and then suddenly shoved it off the table. "Dammit!" he swore as the heavy tome hit the ground and papers fluttered. "There's nothing here. Twenty years of hunting and there's just nothing here."

"I know," Sam agreed. They'd searched every book Dad had. Read his journal from cover to cover.

"Witches, ghosts, poltergeists," Dean said bitterly. "Curses? We got 'em. Demons? Up the wazoo. But the damn reason he got into this business in the first place? Nothing. It's like it just disappeared off the face of the earth."

"We knew this wasn't gonna be easy, Dean," Sam said, trying to be reasonable. He was as frustrated as his brother, and Dean was right. He hadn't been sleeping. He'd barely been eating. If it wasn't for the fact that one of them needed to be looking after Maddy, he doubted whether they would have left this study in days.

"What am we supposed to do next, Sam?" Dean demanded. "This thing came for Mom, it came for Jessica. There's a part of me that knows it's coming after Maddy next, and I just don't know what the hell to do. If we only knew why," he said desperately. "Why November the second. Why your nursery, your girlfriend."

Sam stiffened.

"You were exactly six months old. Did that even mean anything?" Dean wondered aloud. "Is it even Maddy's six month birthday we should be worrying about? Or next November the second?"

"Or me," Sam interrupted quietly.

Dean frowned. "What?"

"Well, you said it, Dean. My nursery, my girlfriend. My mother."

"She was my mother too, Sam. She was Dad's wife. This isn't just about you."

"Really?" Sam said bitterly. "Then why wasn't Maddy's mother burning on the ceiling, Dean? Why Jessica and not her?"

"Because I didn't love her!" Dean snapped. "Okay? The woman had my baby, and I didn't give a damn about her."

Sam blinked, shocked into silence by the blunt outburst.

"Don't you get it, Sam? Dad loved Mom. You loved Jessica. And Maddy... She's..." Dean drew in a ragged breath. "This thing. It takes away the ones we love. That's what it does. And we can't stop it."

Sam closed his eyes against the raw, naked pain on his brother's face.

All his life, all his memories of Dad. Sam knew now. The man had been broken. He felt it inside himself, since Jessica. He understood it as he never had before. To love someone that much. To take them into yourself and become a part of them. And then to watch helplessly as they suffered and died. It broke something inside of you. Something irreplaceable.

Dad couldn't have seen it coming. Sam had been warned and he hadn't understood enough to heed the warning.

But Dean had to live every day with what might lay in wait for Maddy. And every day he wrapped his arms around that fragile, little life he'd help create, and faced the fact that he might be destined to lose her. No wonder he was breaking in front of Sam's eyes.

"No," Sam said, not even knowing he was going to speak until the word was out. "That's not gonna happen."

"Damn straight," Dean shot back. "But we're not gonna find any answers here. We have to try something else."

"I think I know what," Sam said, drawing in a deep breath. He'd been holding this inside him for weeks, but now it had to come out.

He wasn't looking forward to it.

"What?"

"We have to face the fact that we're not gonna do in a few weeks what a hunter like Dad couldn't do in twenty years," Sam said starkly. "I mean, you know that. Right?"

Dean set his jaw and nodded.

"So maybe we should stop hunting it, and concentrate on finding a way to kill it."

"Which does us zero good if we can't find it," Dean pointed out.

Sam just looked at him.

Dean blinked, and then shook his head slowly. "No," he said in disbelief. "No way."

Sam stared back stonily.

"Sammy," Dean said incredulously. "Tell me you're not talking about using my daughter as monster-bait?"

"She's already bait, Dean," Sam said harshly. "If this thing is coming for her, then she's already marked."

Dean shook his head, looking stunned.

"But if we can find a way to kill it-"

"That's a big if. We don't even know what it is!"

"Then we have to find something that will kill anything."

"Oh, simple as that," Dean said sarcastically. "And once we find this magic-mojo, then what? Stake her nursery out every night? If we don't find it, we don't know its timetable."

Sam swallowed hard, heart pounding in its chest. "There might be a way."

Dean stared at him. "What?"

"Before Jessica died," Sam began hesitantly. "I had these dreams..."

Continued in Part Four