A/N: Vivi here! Sorry for not posting last week. Writer's block and a lack of free time (and a surprise exam) kinda stunted my plot progress. However, I have kinda caught up with the three fics I'm working on. JB, ETW, and one that will come out soon (if I can ever get it done). So, again, sorry about last week.

Enjoy!

Previously on Enter the World:

Sam sighed. "We don't really have any other choice. Cas is down, Dean and I are still sick, we have no idea what Tristram even wants to do now that he's free, and we have no way of retaliating against him while he has his followers on call. We need time to come up with a plan."

"That's why we're going to the farm?"

"Got it in one."

"This place is really nice." I couldn't help but smile as we rolled down a winding gravel driveway, bordered on either side by decorative white fencing and fields of grass that were just starting to lose some color from the change in season. It was September, after all.

"They did a lot of work to make it look like this, or so I've been told. Bought the property cheap and fixed it up. Now they rent out the barn." Sam kept his eyes locked on the driveway, dodging the potholes that Bobby and Dean found and missed ahead of us. "I don't know why they want so many people to know where they live. It was the same way with the Roadhouse and we know how that turned out."

"You said they had some kind of warding in place?"

"They do now. We asked Bobby to put it in special to protect them from our new fanclub."

"Oh. Good." I shifted in my seat, uncomfortable with the thought that we were putting some of our fellow hunters in jeopardy just by being around them.

The feeling was quickly lost, though, as we crested a small hill and two big structures came into view. The larger was a very old looking barn with weathered wood panels for walls, a slate roof, and more windows than I thought a typical barn should have. Some distance away from it and to the right was a house. It was larger than any I'd ever lived in but not large enough to scream wealth and luxury. The siding was a quaint white wood with each window flanked by shutters made of the same wood as the barn siding. A gray shingle roof sat up top and a bright red front door welcomed its inhabitants from a large front porch. Airy white curtains shielded the interior from view. Each structure looked very natural with its companion, complementing the other and giving the property a homey feel.

"It's perfect." I whispered with a growing smile on my face.

Sam chuckled beside me. "Glad you like it. We'll be living here for a while."

"And they're okay with that?"

"We're free labor."

"Is this who I think it is?"

Sam had to pull me along towards the house. Meeting new people was never my forte and this was really pushing my limits; if I screwed up the first impression with these people, they might not let me stay. And this was the only safe place for us right now.

Bobby had already left his car and was standing on the porch, looking grumpy with his arms crossed, next to a woman with long brown hair. Next to her stood a woman closer to my age with beautiful blonde hair, who looked about as happy as Bobby. These were probably the mother and daughter I'd been hearing so much about. The Harvelles.

"What are we now? Chopped liver?" Dean grinned as he walked ahead of us up to the porch.

"Oh, shut up, Winchester. I've had enough of you already." The older woman smiled and hugged him. The younger woman broke her frown and play punched Dean when he opened his arms for a hug.

"Ellen, Jo, this is Ali." Sam tugged me up the stairs to the porch and put his arm around my shoulders when I froze up. "Ali, this is Ellen and Jo Harvelle. Family friends of ours."

"Hi." I said nervously, trying my best to smile while simultaneously leaning into Sam and trying to disappear.

"Sweetheart, we don't bite. I promise." Ellen smiled and moved to shake my hand. That action alone made me feel much calmer with the whole situation.

"This one might." Dean pointed subtly at Jo, who then turned and punched his shoulder again.

"Ass." She growled, blushing profusely as she crossed her arms again and glared at Dean. He just grinned and chuckled to himself.

"Dean, leave the girl alone." Bobby barked, sounding more like a father than I'd ever heard him.

"You should be tellin' that to Sam." Dean donned a shit-eating grin and looked directly at Sam.

Sam lost his smile, eyes getting wide as he shook his head and mouthed 'not yet'.

I could have sworn Dean stuck his tongue out just a little. He spoke in a sing song voice and I knew this wasn't going to be good. "Somebody's pregnant."

"Dean." Sam hissed. My mouth fell open and my hand whipped up to cover it. With innocent eyes, I looked to Ellen. Her reaction would determine whether or not I would ever feel comfortable staying there after that little outburst. Whether we would be allowed to stay at all.

"What? They had to find out eventually. Might as well get it over with now." Dean shrugged, not regretting his decision in the slightest.

"Is that true?" Bobby's eyes were just as grumpy as they had been since he met us at the highway to show us the way to the house. And those grumpy eyes were boring two twin holes in my soul.

Had I been able to melt into Sam, or run away, or grab the keys and high tail it out of there, I would've. But none of those were viable options at the moment.

"Yeah." I breathed, letting my hand fall to trace the outline of my belly as if that was proof enough. As if they needed proof.

"Sam? That your doin'?" Bobby abandoned his attack on my confidence and instead looked to Sam, just as grumpy and shrewd as earlier.

Sam sounded about as confident as I had. I felt him pull me just a little closer. "Yeah."

A tense silence followed and I saw Dean's smile fade away. Yeah, you screwed up, asshat. Your timing sucks.

Ellen and Jo exchanged an unreadable glance before Ellen looked to Bobby for his reaction, both wearing perfect poker faces.

They're gonna kick me out. They're not gonna help us. I doomed us- there's gotta be somewhere else we can stay. Somewhere safe and inconspicuous-

"Never thought I'd see the day." Bobby said, a slow smile spread on his face. "All this time I thought one of you was gonna find out you were a daddy by way of snail mail from the little miss, but I can say I'm glad I was wrong. Now, I gotta ask. Both of you are in favor of this?" The smile faded, replaced by a stern but gentle expression.

"What?" Sam stammered, taken by surprise.

"Nobody's gettin' unfairly used here, right? Neither of you was guilted er tricked into this little arrangement?"

"No." Sam scoffed, looking between me and Bobby with offense on his face. "No, as soon as I found out she was pregnant, I knew I was gonna be right by her side the whole rest of the way. That baby is going to have a father."

"And you?" Bobby looked to me at that point, just as stern, just as patient.

"I mean… He wasn't exactly planned- that's a long story- but I was going to keep him whether Sam wanted a part in his life or not. I just… I just told him I was pregnant and he stepped up. No convincing, no guilt tripping, none of that." I said quietly, looking at the porch floor instead of meeting Bobby's disapproving gaze.

"It's true. I was there for the whole shebang." Dean moved to stand next to Sam, hands in his pockets. "No yelling or fighting or begging or anything like that. Hell, you can even ask Cas. He was there, too."

"Why was Cas there?" Bobby asked, confused. "Why were you there?"

"Long story." Sam squeezed my shoulder, no doubt trying to comfort me. It didn't really make a difference.

"I got time." Bobby sounded much more lighthearted after that. "We don't got an event to set up for until tomorrow, so you're gonna sit your asses down and fill us in." He motioned for us to go through the bright red front door that I'd forgotten existed.

"I'll make some coffee." Ellen smiled at Sam and I before turning and going into the house, holding the door open until Jo followed her. The daughter seemed to be in better spirits than her mother was, but she still didn't say anything to us until we were on a well-loved, green, plaid sofa in her living room.

"I'm Jo." She smiled and shook hands with me, taking the seat next to me before Dean could sit. He grumbled and plopped down on a mismatched loveseat across the room. "So you're showing already. Second trimester?"

I leaned into Sam and away from Jo, but tried to hide the action. "Uh, yeah. First week."

"You're only thirteen weeks? You shouldn't be showing yet." Jo looked me up and down, unconvinced. I worried that she thought I was lying to her.

"All pregnancies are different, Jo, honey. Some women show earlier and some don't show at all. Though being a skinny little thing like Ali here might help the former." Ellen returned from what I guessed was the kitchen. She took an armchair that sat next to the loveseat and smiled kindly. "I don't know how you live with these boys. Especially that one." She motioned over her shoulder at Dean, who looked offended.

He didn't get a chance to talk before Bobby arrived and sat next to him. "Angel's been checked. We've got an hour before somebody's gotta go up again. Let's hear that story."

"Oh, honey." Ellen looked upset when Sam finished telling them about the whole ordeal with Francesca. He kindly left out the part where the demon raped Dean and Cas in addition to himself. That part we'd agreed to withhold when we decided not to tell Bobby until we saw him face to face. For all the rest of them knew, Francesca just beat Dean and Cas within an inch of their lives. Dean was the one who suggested having them think that the kid was definitely, 100% Sam's and not maybe-Sam's maybe-Dean's.

"So she was 'with child' while I was still hangin' around that bunker?" Bobby asked, looking disturbed. A moment later, I watched him run through several emotions before he landed on anger. "She went into my overrun house pregnant?! That place was crawlin' with demons and shifters- how the hell could you let her do that?"

I flinched when he yelled and accidentally dug my fingernails into the back of Sam's hand. He's probably not going to want to hold hands for a while. He didn't pull away, for which I was grateful.

"Bobby, we didn't know then." Dean said, trying to talk the man down. "We didn't know for a while, actually."

"Did she know?" Bobby looked to me expectedly.

I took a deep breath and sighed. You knew what you were in for when you made Cas promise not to tell anyone. When you didn't tell anyone for way too long. "I knew the day Cas woke up." I said quietly, guiltily looking Bobby in the eye.

"So you knowingly risked the kid? For what?" Bobby asked sternly, not looking any less angry than before. "Were you tryin' to get rid of 'im?"

"No! I was- I was… I was scared."

"Scared of what?"

"Being alone again." My shoulders drooped and I couldn't look at anyone. I felt every eye in the room looking at me, judging me.

"What do you mean?" Ellen spoke softly. Not necessarily kindly, but the way she spoke didn't make me think she was judging me anymore.

Still, I couldn't bring myself to try and make them understand.

Sam took up the slack for me. "If we knew she was pregnant, we wouldn't have let her come with us on any jobs. She would have been alone at the bunker the entire time we were gone and she hates being alone. I mean, we left her all the time before we pulled the demon out the first time and she…"

Don't tell them I was suicidal. Please, Sam. I don't need that kind of pity.

"She didn't do well. It's our fault she felt like that." Sam frowned. "She didn't have a choice."

"There's always a choice." Bobby hadn't lost much of his harsh tone.

"What's done is done." I said bitterly, glaring at him. "I didn't put him in any situation where I wasn't confident that he'd be okay. And if he got hurt it would be my fault."

"But he did get hurt. And it was my fault." Sam said quietly. "We almost lost him because of me."

"Sam, for the last time, the siren almost killed the kid, not you. There was nothing you could've done." Dean said firmly, leaning forward in his seat and looking right at Sam. "I'm the one who let the two of you get poisoned in the first place."

"Okay, enough." My voice was starting to sound like Bobby's. "Dean, the siren poisoned us. Sam, the siren made you kick me. I'm the one who walked right into both of those situations knowing I was the only one responsible for the little guy. Can we just drop it?"

"Y'know, that sounds like a good idea." Ellen said quickly, before Bobby was able to butt in. "It's been an hour and someone needs to see to that angel. And I'm sure the boys and Ali would like to know where they're staying tonight."

Before any of us could agree or disagree, Ellen was ushering us up the stairs in the next room. "Cas is second door on the left. Boys, one of you will be in with him and the other with Bobby. Ali, you're bunking with Jo. First door on the left. Bathroom is first on the right, then Bobby, then me."

"Wait, I can't stay with Ali?" Sam asked, stopping dead in his tracks. Dean continued on into Cas' room without missing a beat.

"We don't have enough rooms, Sam. That, and Bobby has made it clear that he doesn't want any co-ed arrangements while he's under the same roof." Ellen shrugged with a smile. "I don't want to wake up to that either, tell ya the truth."

Sam and I blushed, which only made Ellen laugh. She went back downstairs and I started wringing my hands. "I don't even know Jo. How am I supposed to be roomies with her?" I asked Sam quietly, trying not to let my voice carry.

He pulled me into a hug and kissed my head. "It's gonna be okay, Ali. This isn't a permanent arrangement. We just need to stay here until we can come up with a solid plan to take out Francesca and Tristram."

"I don't like it. I want to stay with you."

"We don't own the house. We're guests, remember?"

We were not guests in Ellen's house. I found that out the next day, after one very uncomfortable night on a folding cot in Jo's room.

At the crack of dawn, Jo's alarm went off. That was okay; I was used to getting up even earlier than that. But then she told me what we were doing that day.

"Set up for the eleven am event by nine am, deal with the mother of the bride and the bridesmaids while they 'set up' for the eleven am event, serve hors d'oeuvres, brunch, alcohol, cake, and party favors, deal with the DJ they hired, keep drunk guests from destroying the barn, make the bride happy, and get everybody out by three so we can set up for the five pm event and do it all over again. Easy, right?" Jo's voice was so drastically more cheery than her words that I almost had whiplash.

"So, uh, what exactly is my role in all of this?"

Free labor.

Over the course of the next two hours, I put tablecloths on fifty tables- set up by the guys because I wasn't allowed to lift more than ten pounds apparently-, set up fifty two centerpieces because the mother of the bride was bringing a special tablecloth for the head table, put out who knows how many plates and forks and knives and spoons and salad plates and cups and wine glasses and napkins folded like swans and dessert plates, and swept the dance floor. Ellen and Jo were working on the food. Bobby was decorating the driveway and putting out signs for the venue. Sam and Dean had finished restocking the bar from crates upon crates of drink from the back room in record time, so Dean was now busy setting up chairs, repairing minor damage from previous events, discarding décor left behind from last week's festivities, and checking on Cas every once in a while. Sam was on a ladder hanging white fabric from the rafters; some kind of new fad for weddings, I guess. It was taking him forever, but every time Dean complained about it Sam asked him if he wanted to take his place and every time, Dean paled a bit and stormed off, mumbling something about 'better things to do'. I'm sure it had nothing to do with the thirty foot ladder.

By three, I was exhausted.

By five, I was ready to kill.

Sam finally told me to go back to the house and watch Cas so Dean wouldn't have to leave every hour to check on him. Dean was, in all honesty, doing much more at the events than I was. He'd already stopped two drunken groomsmen from smashing a champagne bottle on the hardwood floor, restocked the bar mid-rush singlehandedly, and settled a dispute between four or five party-goers who were none too happy at being seated at the same table.

I felt terrible when I realized that he and Sam were working their asses off to keep us under a safe, warded roof while I was glaring at tipsy bridesmaids and getting champagne spilled all over me by an older blond woman who had too much to drink but denied that fact several times before passing out.

So by five thirty, I was feeling guilty and bored out of my mind sitting on a folding chair in the room Cas was sharing with Sam. When, early that morning, I asked why they decided Sam should be in with Cas and not Dean, I was told that Bobby wasn't exactly thrilled that Sam 'knocked me up' at such a bad time. Dean didn't want Sam to get chewed out for something that wasn't his fault, and because Bobby had no qualms with Dean at the moment, he was the obvious choice. I noticed that Sam had the same kind of cot I did. My back hurt just thinking about it.

I hadn't seen Cas since the incident at the grocery store. The guys told me what happened and what I should expect so I wouldn't panic, but it was still quite a shock when I walked in and saw two massive wings still stained with blood and splayed haphazardly over half of the small room. I could barely even tell Cas was under them; apparently Bobby laid him on his belly when he brought Cas back, thinking that it would be more comfortable for his wings that way. All I knew was that the leg shaped lumps under the blanket were Cas' legs and the tuft of black hair barely visible from behind one of the wings was his, too.

"How's it goin', Cas?" I asked quietly, my words falling on deaf ears. A deep, miserable sigh left me before I could continue. "I'm sorry this happened to you. It's my fault. All of this is my fault." I let my face fall into my hands. "Why am I such a pain in the ass?"

Light snoring was his only response.

"This is Ali, by the way. In case you didn't recognize me. I'm okay. So is the baby. Tristram… uh, he held me hostage for a few days so now he has Francesca. The guys traded her for me. But we're all okay, and we're at Ellen's house. The Demon Team don't know where we are so we're safe for a while. Bobby and Ellen and Jo think the baby is Sam's, no doubt, so, y'know, if you could play along with that, I'd appreciate it. I don't want everyone giving Dean and I their opinions on what we should do with the fact that he might be Dean's and not Sam's. That's need-to-know stuff."

More snoring.

"You comfy? Are you warm enough?" I leaned over and tried to see if he had a blanket covering him under his wings. I couldn't tell. "I bet those wings are great insulation. Are they like bird wings? Bird feathers? Will you… will you have to molt when you wake up because your feathers are so damaged? I mean, Bobby said he didn't know how to clean them so they're still all bloody. I think he was worried about hurting you more than helping you."

One particularly deep snore was followed by what I would normally consider a relaxed sigh.

That brought a small smile to my face. "I'm glad you're finally getting some rest. You've been so busy for so long – I was worried you were wearing yourself out. Maybe now you can slow down, take a break for a while before you try to jump back into it."

His left wing – the one closest to me – twitched. I jumped, but that was no big news. Bobby said he'd been twitching like that since he arrived at Ellen's.

However, Bobby did not mention that the wings could fold themselves. Granted, it was slow and jerky, but the mess of feathers that had been covering most of the small bedroom began pulling back toward Cas' body. After a few seconds, the wings settled on Cas' back, neatly folded and relaxed closely around him like a blanket. They covered him from shoulder to knee and I could only just see one of his hands and part of his arm from beneath the edges of the feathers.

I could finally see his face.

He was indeed sleeping. Or at least he looked to be. And he looked peaceful, at last.

"Hey Cas." I smiled, but he didn't wake up. For the rest of the evening, I didn't try to talk to him. I was worried that if I did, I would wake him up before he was ready and would be in pain. The last thing I wanted was for Cas to be in pain after all he had already gone through.

Evening came. Then night came. I went out sometime around seven to ask Ellen if I should start something for our dinner and she told me exactly what to make with a big, relieved smile on her face. She and Jo were frantically prepping the desserts, including piecing out a massive wedding cake, when I arrived. I checked in with Sam, who was bartending. He was tired, of course, but seemed to enjoy having an actual job. Dean was acting as added security; the law requires having at least one real security guard at one of these events, but that guy just stood around in case someone stole something or a big fight broke out. When I found him, Dean was crouched down next to a little boy, barely four, who was in tears.

"Lost his Mom." Dean said as I strolled up. "Doesn't know Mommy's name or where they were sitting."

"Hey buddy." I said with a smile. "Why don't we go talk to the new Mrs.? She'll probably know where your Mommy is."

Dean took the hint. The little guy gave me his hand and we followed Dean through the crowd – he was a great way-maker – to the head table.

The bride knew exactly who the boy was and shouted for his mom over the booming music the DJ was currently jamming to. Mother and son were reunited within a minute.

"Thanks for that. How's Cas?" Dean asked as we made our way back to the bar where Dean apparently chose to wait for trouble. Surprisingly, I couldn't pick up a whiff of alcohol on his breath.

"Still asleep. I'm gonna go start dinner. See you when you're done?"

"You got it."

Bobby was nowhere to be seen, apparently acting as a valet for the party's older guests.

Our little crew returned from kicking the last guest out of the barn at around eleven. I had dinner ready. We ate in near silence. Poor Sam smelled like an alcoholic because he had exactly four drinks spilled on him over the course of the evening. Ellen and Jo were at each other's throats, which was apparently very normal for them. Dean and Bobby were just Dean and Bobby.

The highlight of my day, well, second to seeing Cas for the first time in a long time, was Jo offering me her bed for the night. She proposed an every other night schedule until they could find me a real bed. I didn't blame her for not wanting to sleep on the cot every night. Gratefully, I accepted. I slept like a log.

A/N: Forgot to mention that I hardly did any editing on this chapter. Sorry! Leave me some words. See you soon...