Hey SPN Fam! My apologies if you got a notification yesterday followed by a bunch of gobbledegook- still no clue what happened there, and I was at work before I saw it so I couldn't repost. ANYWAYS- hopefully it's all fixed now and we're good to go!
This one is for Bella Winchester who has been patiently asking to read this story for quite a while now. It is co-written by the incomparable Jenmm31, and it sat in the vault for years. Special thanks to the both of your for your kindness, patience, and support.
In this story, Natalie is four. This is part 1 of a 2 part story. Enjoy!
Part 1
It was the beginning of an incredibly rare do-nothing day in Sioux Falls. The Winchester Brothers were taking a well-deserved break from hunting, after having been on the road for 2 months solid this time. At Bobby's place, Natalie finally had freedom to run out all the energy that was pent up in her little four-year-old self. She was a big fan of running, especially up and down the stairs, and she was doing everything in her power to make the house as loud as she possibly could.
Bobby had finally admitted to himself this morning that having the boys and the kid around was making him very conscious of all the things that were currently wrong with the place. Between always looking up lore for a myriad of hunters and the phones that never seemed to stop ringing, a lot of home improvement projects had gone by the wayside since he'd been confined to his wheelchair again. He was currently struggling with his latest attempt at a repair- the defunct stove. He lost his grip on the pliers for the third time in the last ten minutes, struggling with a stubborn bolt. "Dammit!" he hollered. Just then, Dean wandered into the kitchen, heading for the fridge, but stopped when he heard Bobby yell.
"Problem?" he asked.
"Can't get this damn bolt loose," Bobby answered, trying to grip the offending bolt again.
Dean took a step forward to see better. "You want me to give it a shot?" he asked.
Bobby leaned back in his chair, raised the visor of his trucker cap, and wiped the sweat from his forehead, tossing the wrench on the counter. "Knock yourself out," he grumbled. Just then, Natalie came racing in from the junkyard, covered with dirt and grease.
"Here, Pops, I found these! Will these help you fix the stove?" She held her dirt caked hands out towards him. They were full of old knobs and switches that she had pilfered from the cars rusting out in the yard. She realized that Dean was there too, and turned to him, her smudged face alive with delight. "Look, Daddy, I'm helping!"
Seeing his four year old's hands full of greasy and grimy junk, Dean made a face. "Does nobody bathe you?" he asked, arching an eyebrow.
"Nope!" she answered happily before holding her hands out to Bobby again. "Where do you want this stuff?"
Ignoring her question, Bobby focused on Dean. "She volunteered her help," he said dryly to Dean. "Wasn't that nice of her."
"Well, I'm volunteering my help too. If I can fix a car, I can fix a damn stove," Dean said, his alpha male side going strong. Natalie nodded vigorously, immediately on his team.
"Yeah! He can fix a damn stove!" she said in agreement. Dean chuckled. He loved it when she swore. It was hysterical. "Here Daddy, you can start with this," she said, dumping the junk on the floor at Dean's feet, clearly believing herself to be in charge of the entire project. "I'll go get more!" she shrieked excitedly, before turning around and taking off again outside. Dean looked down to the floor and considered the pile of garbage Natalie had dumped in front of him before turning upstairs and yelling.
"Sam! Get in here and clean up the mess your niece made!"
The answer came back immediately. "Your kid. You clean it up." Dean pinched his lips and shook his head. Sam was so lazy sometimes. He turned his attention back to Bobby.
"Get the bolt loose on the stove and then what's next? What's wrong with the thing?"
Bobby was looking at the back panel, one eye closed. "I think it's the power converter. There's power comin' from the plug, but it ain't making its way to the stove." He thumped the appliance in frustration. "Piece of crap." Just then, Sam wandered into the kitchen.
"Hey Dean," Sam said, eying the huge pile of junk on the floor, but choosing not to comment for the moment. "I need to borrow the car. I wanna run to the hardware store and pick up a couple extension cords for the laptops. They must have gotten fried on that last case," he explained. Just then, Natalie raced back in again from the yard, her arms full of pieces and parts, and even dirtier than before.
"Hi Unca Sam!" she squealed excitedly upon realizing that Sam had joined the party. "I'm helping!"
Sam eyed her smudged face and grease caked hands. "I see that," he remarked as Dean turned back to Bobby.
"There you go. Sam's already going to pick up crap. Problem solved."
Sam looked back and forth between Bobby and Dean. "What?" he asked. "You need something?"
Natalie interrupted abruptly. "Where are you going?" she asked excitedly. She loved an adventure and immediately wanted in. However, all the adults ignored her.
Bobby gestured to the stove. "Need a new converter. Wanna try to get this thing running again," he told Sam.
"Where are you going?" Natalie asked a little louder this time. Again, no one answered her. She pinched her lips together in frustration.
Sam shrugged. "Sure, I guess I can pick one up. Seems easy enough."
Fed up with being ignored, Natalie stamped her little foot. "Where are you going?" she demanded as loud as she could. That got everyone's attention- and not in a good way. They all turned towards her, but it was Dean's raised eyebrow and warning look that made her backtrack quickly.
"Where are you going…please?" she said in a much calmer tone, hastily tacking the last word on. Dean nodded once in approval, then finally answered her question.
"Your uncle is going to run some errands at the hardware store."
Excited by the prospect of something new, Natalie began wiggling with gusto. "What's running errands? Please?" she asked, remembering her magic word again.
"An errand is something you have to go do. Like Sam for instance. He has to go pick up this crap," Dean answered, slapping Sam on the back. Sam just rolled his eyes. Natalie began jumping up and down excitedly.
"Can I go with you? Please pleeeeeeeease?" she begged as she continued jumping. Bobby gestured towards her.
"Take her, for god's sake. I could use a little quiet around here," he said gruffly. "I could take a nap since there ain't been ten seconds of quiet that's not suspicious since you three got here."
"Daddy, you can come too then!" Natalie said with a squeal of delight, convinced the situation required full family participation. "Pleeeeeeeeeeease?" she begged, sticking out her lower lip pathetically and giving him the big bambi eyes.
"Yeah, yeah, I'm coming along," Dean said with a grin. She was so damn cute when she did that, who was he to deny her what she wanted? He turned to Bobby. "Make a list of the crap we gotta get why I find this one's shoes."
"Yaaaaay!" Natalie squealed delightedly, doing her own little victory dance. Sam walked over and plucked Natalie off the dance floor, setting her on his hip.
"You find her shoes, I'll get her cleaned up," he said to Dean, turning away. But as he was exiting the room, he threw the next words over his shoulder. "And you can clean up all the junk on the floor too."
"It's not junk, Unca Sam!"
"What did you do- roll in it?"
A few minutes later, Dean had a pretty long list of items they needed. Natalie suddenly came tearing down the stairs, jumping the last three steps to the ground. Her face and hands had been scrubbed clean, as well as clothing changed, but her feet were still bare.
Bobby turned towards the loud thump with a glare. "What did I say about running down the stairs?!" he hollered for at least the tenth time today, even though she couldn't see him from his current location in the kitchen.
"That if I did it again you'd sell me to the monkey house!" she yelled unabashedly from the front door.
"Dean, drop her off at the zoo, would ya?"
Dean scoffed a laugh at the old man and began making his way towards the front door. Upon hearing her father approaching, Natalie turned to Dean, bouncing up and down excitedly. "No! Don't sell me to the monkey house!" she giggled. "Sell me to the tiger house! They're more fun!" Dean chuckled. Leave it to his kid to want to hang out with something that could kill her.
Just then, Sam came back down the steps. He made eye contact with his brother, and gently chucked a balled up pair of tiny pink socks at him. He shrugged apologetically. "She made her getaway when I was looking for socks. Sorry," he said.
Dean rolled his eyes again, and leaned down to assist his kid with her footwear. Natalie had other ideas, though. She hopped away from Dean as he stretched for her foot.
"Monkeys don't wear socks and shoes!" she giggled again, thinking this was a FANTASTIC new game to play. Knowing that his daughter would pull this crap all afternoon if he let her, Dean brought out his own parenting strategy.
"Come on, Natalie," he said evenly. "We gotta put on socks and shoes and get going soon otherwise we can't pick up pizza for dinner." He let the clear and obvious bribe hang in the air for a moment. It worked like a charm. True to form, any Winchester could be persuaded with food. She immediately stopped jumping around, plopped down on her butt, and reached for her socks. In her haste, she shoved her feet into the wrong shoes and jumped back up eagerly. Dean chuckled.
"Hang on there, monkey," he said, picking her up and crossing over to the couch. He sat her down facing him and switched her shoes, and did up the laces.
"What kind of pizza are we getting?" she asked, wriggling around excitedly as he finished the bows.
"Behave yourself and I'll let you pick."
"Skittles Pizza!"
"Interesting choice. Let's get moving."
She scrambled off the couch as fast as she could, tearing over towards the front door. "DADDY! UNCA SAM! WE GOTTA GO!" she hollered anxiously, ready to start this new quest. All three men cringed a bit at her volume.
"Stay out as long as you want to," Bobby commented dryly.
*SPN SPN SPN*
About twenty minutes later, they made it to the big box-chain hardware store in downtown Sioux Falls. Natalie was so incredibly excited that she hadn't stopped babbling the entire way there. She was wriggling around so much in her car seat that Dean wasn't sure the straps were going to make it. After they parked at the store and Sam released the Tasmanian devil from her car seat, she was so wound up that she darted beneath his hands and took off like a shot. "Whoa!" Sam yelled to his brother, who was heading around the other side of the car. "Dean, catch her!"
Without missing a beat, Dean jumped forward and scooped his wayward daughter up. "Hey!" he scolded loudly, giving her a little jolt. "You know better than to do that. You don't run in a parking lot and you know it, little girl."
Natalie's eyes went wide upon hearing Dean's stern tone. "I was excited," she said contritely. When Dean's expression didn't change one iota, she knew she was in big trouble. Her insides went from wiggling in excitement to wiggling in nervousness. "I'm sorry, Daddy," she mumbled, biting her lip. She looked into his eyes, pleading for forgiveness.
Dean leaned his head forward, touching his forehead to hers, and looked her right in the eye. "You do it again, and you won't get off with just a warning. You hear me?" he said in that soft but firm tone. Natalie gulped.
"Yes, sir. I'm sorry," she whispered, looking him right in the eye so he knew she meant it. She didn't want to spoil her fun family adventure by getting in trouble right off the bat. Satisfied that he got the point across, he gave her a little kiss on the temple to let her know that all was forgiven. But he held on tight, not letting her get down, until they got inside the store. Once inside, Sam grabbed a shopping cart. They both knew from past experiences; trying to get Natalie to sit still in one was impossible, so Dean set her down, but gripped her hand tightly as she looked around in abject wonder.
"Wow," she said breathlessly, her excitement returning. "This is the biggest insides of a store I have ever seen!" Dean realized with a smirk that she was only used to seeing gas station stores, so this had to be like its own Disneyland to her. She was holding tight to Dean's hand, but twisting all around to try to see everything at once. She pointed to the large, inflatable Christmas lawn decorations that were up in August, for some damn reason. "What are those?!" she asked, her voice going up about fourteen decibels in sheer excitement.
"Those are…things that Bobby needs to have in his front lawn," Dean said, a shit-eating grin spreading across his face. He fished his phone out of his pocket, handing it to the little girl. "Take pictures so you can show him when we get home, and you can practice how to convince him to buy you one. Okay?" Natalie squealed in delight, snatched his phone, and immediately began clicking away. With another grin, Dean turned to Sam. "Alright. Let's shake a leg here. I got beer waiting for me."
"It'll be faster if we split up," Sam said practically. "I'll go for the hardware. You can take the stuff on the list that you actually understand- like tape and batteries." He smirked at his big brother.
"Fine by me," Dean said unexpectedly. He smacked Bobby's list against Sam's chest.
"I'll go get those two things, and YOU get everything else." Before Sam could retort, Dean spun on his heel. "C'mon squirt- we gotta go get duct tape." He took off towards the adhesives aisle.
"Okay!" Natalie shrieked, her eyes never leaving Dean's phone as she trotted behind him happily. The phone- the only thing that could possibly have distracted the child from the giant Christmas decorations and her explosive enthusiasm. Sam just sighed and turned his shopping cart towards hardware, not wanting to think about all the articles he'd read on the dangers of too much screen time.
Dean located the duct tape relatively quickly, but the battery aisle was proving to be a little more challenging. He kept looking behind him to make sure Natalie was keeping up, but she was right behind him, eyes glued to the game she was now playing on his phone. He finally found the aisle, but the sheer number of batteries was overwhelming. Grumbling under his breath, he began the search for the 3 different kinds Bobby told them to get.
After a minute, Natalie got bored with standing in the same space and plopped down on the floor to continue her game on Dean's phone. She was looking down as Dean was pawing through hanging packages. Neither of them noticed the tall man walk into the aisle with them, about Dean's height, wearing a flannel shirt, who stopped next to him. An employee walked into the aisle as well, and Dean quickly latched onto him, done with trying to find the stupid things himself. The employee said he'd take him to the proper aisle.
"C'mon Squirt, let's move," he threw over his shoulder, bound and determined to get this over with. Natalie, however, was too absorbed in her game to pay any attention. She looked up just enough to see what she thought was Dean in her periphery, and, satisfied that he was still in front of her, went back to the game.
The employee led Dean to the correct batteries a couple aisles away, and after a bark of triumphant joy and a rant about why all the batteries couldn't be together that the employee listened to patiently before walking away, Dean turned around. "Well, squirt, how about that…" he said, trailing off as he suddenly realized there was no mini Winchester there. "Natalie?" he said, his head whipping back and forth down the aisle. "Natalie?!"
*SPN SPN SPN*
Sam had just finished putting the last item in his cart when Dean suddenly sprinted into his view. "Whoa, whoa!" he said as his brother made a mad dash towards him. "What-"
"Sammy, I can't find her," Dean wheezed out. "I can't find Natalie."
"What?! What do you mean you can't find her?!"
"I mean I can't find her! She was right behind me and I turned around and she just wasn't there! Someone took her!"
"Whoa, Dean, hold on, you don't know someone took-"
"Sam, she wouldn't have just wandered off, you know that! Someone took my kid!"
"Hey, calm down," Sam said, trying to keep Dean on the ledge. He always jumped to the worst conclusions, especially where Natalie was concerned. "I'm sure she's fine. Where is the last place you saw her?"
"In…in the battery aisle, but I already checked, and she's not there, Sam. Gimme your phone."
"Why?"
"Because she has mine and we can track it and find whatever asshole took her and kill him," Dean growled, frustrated at Sam's lack of immediate action. "C'mon, cough it up!" he barked, getting more panicked by the second.
"Dean," Sam said quietly, knowing his next words were going to make his brother's head explode. "We took those apps off our phones on the last hunt, remember? When we discovered-"
"-The damn thing had electrokinesis," Dean growled angrily, finishing Sam's thought. He turned to Sam. The pain in Dean's eyes nearly knocked Sam off his feet. "Sammy. We have to find her."
Part 2 coming tomorrow!
