A/N: This week kicked my ass, ngl, and so today's chapter is bite-sized. But it was written for a request over on Wattpad for Sam and Dean giving Anna "the talk." So have fun with it, because I most certainly did ;)

Also thank you so so so much for all your reviews last week. They mean the world to me, especially since the chapter that went up last week hit so close to home

Scientifically

Anna is ten

"Why does Dean look like that?" Anna asked innocently, shuffling to stay out of Sam's way as he set two shopping bags down in the backseat. She watched their older brother retreat into the gas station/convenience store Sam had just come out of. "He's sweating."

She was surprised when Sam actually laughed. He straightened and closed the back door. "He's nervous."

"Nervous?" Anna repeated doubtfully. She'd never known Dean to get nervous over… well, just about anything. "Why is he nervous? Is it about a hunt? I thought we were on vacation."

"We are. It has nothing to do with hunting, Ladybug. He's nervous because he's gotta do something important, and he doesn't know how."

Anna shrugged. "He'll figure it out." He was Dean. He could figure anything out. He always did.

"He's gonna have to," Sam replied, glancing back toward the storefront.

Anna beamed as Dean walked back out, but when he looked up and saw her face, his eyes instantly flicked down to the keys in his hand. He didn't look at her again until he got to the car. "What's the matter?" she asked. Sam was definitely right about Dean being nervous. She got the same way when she was apprehensive about something- she couldn't look people in the eye, and she got jittery- like when she was in trouble.

Dean looked at Sam, then at her, then at Sam again. "I don't know what you're grinnin' about. I'm not doin' this by myself."

Anna looked up at their brother just in time to watch Sam's smile disappear into horror. "What? Why? You don't need my help for this, Dean. You're more than capable of explaining…" He glanced cautiously at Anna before choosing the word, "everything… by yourself."

"You have to explain something to me?" Anna frowned, shaking her head a little. Why would that make Dean nervous? He explained things to her all the time. He had to. She was a kid, so there was a lot she didn't know. This was nothing new.

She watched Dean swallow and crack his neck. Another nervous tic. "Get in the car," was all he said. But she and Sam both obeyed.

There were some times when she could ask as many questions as she wanted and get all the answers in the world. There were other times when she could repeat just one question a million times and never get a straight answer. It was fast becoming clear to Anna that this was one of those days where she needed to just stay quiet and accept that she wasn't supposed to have the information they weren't giving her.

To her surprise, they only drove for about ten minutes, long enough to get out of town and a decent way down some back road. But Dean pulled over at the first turn off and parked there. "You're kidding," Sam mumbled.

"If we're doing it, we're doin' it now. I can't keep thinking about this crap. My head'll explode." Dean turned in his seat, resting his elbow over the seatback, and Anna was almost startled when he looked right at her, determined. "Meet me outside, Rugrat. We gotta talk about some real life crap."

Anna wrinkled her nose and curled her lip in confusion. But she watched Dean get out of the car and then scrambled to open her own door and follow. She heard Sam's door open, but he was moving much more slowly. She rushed around to the front of the car where Dean was leaning on the hood.

"C'mere," he invited, patting the hood beside himself.

The nervousness she'd seen in Dean earlier found its place in Anna's stomach, and she shifted from one foot to the other. But if Dean was pushing through it, she had to do the same. Her eyebrows tugged inward as she braced herself and hopped up to sit on the hood beside her brother.

"Let's talk birds and bees."

Anna frowned. She'd heard that phrase on TV before, but she didn't know what it meant, just that it was usually followed by a laugh track. She looked up in nervous curiosity at him, and Dean ruffled her hair.

"See, Rugrat, you're gettin' older, and…" He cut himself off with a hard swallow and looked away from her. "Uh- And with- with that- with getting older there's…" He cleared his throat.

"There's what?"

Dean glanced down at her and then up at Sam over her head. "I can't do this, man. Look at her. She's so innocent."

Anna's face scrunched in confusion, but her eyes were still wide and curious as she turned to Sam. "Did someone die?" she asked.

"No," Sam assured her in a hurry. "No. No one's dead. Well, I mean, obviously, there are dead people, but I mean not recently. Not… anyone we know."

"You're nervous too, huh, Sammy?" Anna asked sympathetically.

Sam sat on the hood beside her, and it completed the setting, but things didn't usually feel this awkward when it was the three of them gathered together on the Impala's hood. "Guess I am," he said.

"Alright," Dean said, seeming to steel himself. He clapped his hands in front of him. "Puberty," he announced.

Suddenly the whole thing made perfect sense to Anna. Her confusion turned to horror. "What?" she mumbled. All she wanted in the next second was to get as far from that conversation is possible. So she slid off the hood of the car, shaking her head, and tried to make a getaway, though she didn't know where exactly she would go.

Unfortunately her route around the car put her in an easy place for Sam to grab her, and he caught her by the arm. "Anna-"

"Please don't make me," she begged, pulling as far away from him as she could while he was holding her arm. She stared pitifully up at him.

Sam opened and closed his mouth a couple times before finally coming up with something to say. He turned on Dean with a glare to beat all glares. "Nice going, Dean." He shook his head and pulled Anna back over to the front of the car. "We have to talk about this stuff."

"Why?" Anna whimpered. Her eyes suddenly widened and she looked over at Dean. "Is it because I said the word blowjob? I won't say it ever again. I promise!"

"Anna, it has nothing to do with that," Dean assured her, though she saw him shudder at the memory. His reaction in the moment had been priceless enough that she'd almost said it a second time just to see how he would take it. But she would never have said it at all if she'd known it would mean having the world's most awkward sex talk with her two older brothers. "This crap is important. You'd have had to hear about it eventually anyway. It's just… well, the fact that you know the word blowjob kinda says we gotta do it sooner than later."

"I said I wouldn't say it again," Anna reminded him, hoping against hope that she could still convince him to put this idea behind them all.

"That's not the point, Rugrat. Listen, we'll talk for ten minutes, get the basics, and then… you know, the rest we talk about as we need to."

Anna swallowed, wringing her hands. She felt small, standing in front of the car and her brothers, and her face was already burning with embarrassment even though nobody had said anything intense yet. "Fine," she said. "But hurry up, okay?" Sam snorted at that, and she sent him a scathing look. Just a second ago, he'd been acting like more of a wimp about it than she had.

"Okay," Dean agreed. "Sit," he said, patting the hood between himself and Sam again.

Anna climbed back up and settled there. "Kay," she said and took a deep, calming breath. "Lay it on me."

"Okay, so, uh-" Dean cleared his throat. "So, you, as a girl," he nodded as if affirming that this was true, and Anna nodded too because she wasn't sure what else to do. "Girl. Yes. Your body…" The word body had never felt so strange to her as it did coming out of Dean's mouth in this context. "There's gonna be changes."

"Off to a great start, Dean," Sam said cynically.

"Well, you try explainin' this crap to a ten year old."

Sam took a deep breath. "Just make it clinical," he said.

"Don't look her in the eyes," Dean suggested, officially passing the baton to their brother. "Makes it a little easier."

Anna looked innocently up at Sam, blinking a couple times to add to the torture. Maybe if she really put on the Bambi Eyes, they would forget this altogether. She had no such luck. Sam was taking Dean's advice, looking at the ground in front of them rather than at her. Anna straightened her shoulders and tapped her foot restlessly against the bumper. If Dean hadn't been preoccupied, he'd have thrown a fit.

"Have you heard the word period?" Sam asked.

Anna was about to answer, but she heard Dean make a sort of pained noise behind her in reaction to Sam's words, and she turned, startled. "Are you okay?" Dean had his teeth grit and seemed to be trying really hard to stay quiet, but he hummed a yes, and Anna turned back to Sam. "I guess I've heard it. But I don't know what it means. Not in… you know… this context."

"Right, sure, good. Um, so kids, when they hit a certain age, uh, they start puberty. And it's- it's different for girls than boys."

"Duh."

Sam snorted. "Okay, so when you-" he cringed at his own choice of addressing her directly. "When girls are eleven, twelve, thirteen, sometimes a little later, I guess… they start- they start their period."

If she wasn't trying to take in all the information, Anna might have laughed a little at how much Sam squirmed as he spoke. "Which is…?"

"So, what happens, scientifically," he tacked the word on, and it seemed to make him feel a little better, "is that there's… there's eggs."

Anna's jaw dropped. "What?"

"Hang on," Sam rushed, putting a hand up as if to physically hold back the barrage of questions he had to know were coming. "Not like… eggs, like, chicken eggs-"

"Yeah, you're makin' it worse," Dean said. "Forget the eggs, Rugrat. Essentially, that's what they call the woman's reproductive cell. Anyways, once a month, one of these eggs shoots down," he flattened one hand and made a straight line through the air with it. "So it's ready in case you want to, uh, make babies. But since no one's gettin' pregnant every month, most of the time the thing just goes to waste, and when it does, you bleed."

Through most of his explanation, Anna had worn a thoughtful, slightly concerned expression. But at his last words, her horror returned full-force. "What?"

"Out your, um-" He pointed down vaguely toward his own crotch area, caught himself doing it, and moved his hand back until it was behind his neck. "V- V- uh… your-"

"Vagina," Sam said quickly.

"Yeah," Dean agreed, relieved. He gave Sam a grateful nod.

Anna was staring down into her lap in horror. She was going to bleed out of her vagina? Every month? "Why?" she breathed.

"Well, the whole egg thing," Dean told her.

"But… philosophically," Anna said. "Why?"

"Good question," Sam said, giving her a comforting pat on the back. "No one really knows."

"Why just women? Why don't guys bleed?"

"It's called menstruation. And it just doesn't happen to guys. But we can talk about what happens to boys some other time, okay?"

Anna looked down at her shoes. They'd gone still against the front of the car. She felt like a changed woman. "How long do I got?"

"Shit," Dean murmured, then she felt him put a hand on her head. "It's not a bad thing," he said. "You're supposed to be happy when it happens. It's- it means you're a woman."

"But… it sounds gross."

"I know," Dean said with understanding. "But, you know, sex sounds gross too, and sex is…" He made a face of pure ecstasy.

"So, what do I do… when it happens?"

"Well, you come tell us and then we'll, uh, we'll get you some of those things girls use. Tampons and shit."

"What's a tampon?"

"It's-" Dean made a hand gesture as if he was holding a stick of some sort and moved his hand up. "You put it inside, and it soaks up all the blood."

Anna's horror only increased. "Please tell me there's another option."

"Yeah, they've got p-pads," he told her. "You just… you know I actually don't know. I think it goes in your underwear."

"We'll get you a book," Sam said, shooting Dean a look and shaking his head. "You can read all about it, and then if you still have questions, come see us, okay?"

Anna nodded. Getting a book sounded good. This whole thing was still all around pretty horrifying, but at least she would be able to read at her own pace. And her questions would be answered in a little neater fashion, maybe.

"Any questions right now?" Sam offered.

Anna wrinkled her nose, "Is it over?"

"Yeah," Sam chuckled. "Yeah, it's over."

He and Dean both breathed out giant sighs of relief. Dean hopped off the hood with energy and turned around to grab her and swing her in a circle, making her squeal with laughter like she used to do so often when she was smaller. "Go back to bein' a kid, Munchkin," he encouraged, setting her down and ruffling her hair.

Anna shrugged. She'd thought she'd feel different. But she didn't, not really. She climbed back into the back seat, and the boys got back in the front, and Dean started the car. He turned the music up, something by Queen, and Anna kicked her shoes off so she could put her feet up on the seat. It was just like any other car ride.

La Fin