Sam and Dean just sat on the hood of the Impala, thinking. The only words they had exchanged had been to thank each other for drawing the sigil and to inquire as to whether or not either of them had any bandages. Sam had a couple spare in his back pocket, so after they had applied them to their palms, they resumed their contemplative silence. It didn't last too long, though.
"Things were supposed to be different…" Sam whispered, "Not much different, but… something. She was supposed to have been there. We wouldn't have been alone, not always."
Dean nodded, unable to think of a smart reply. After what Naomi had told them, he wasn't sure what to think. Other than home-cooked meals and fewer monsters in the world when she hunted alone, he wasn't sure if anything would have really changed with Olivia with them. According to her, the bad things that happened to them still happened in her memories, so what would have changed?
Nothing, except… Sam was right. They wouldn't have been alone in their worst hours. They would have had someone to help them through it. Someone to keep them together when it seemed one of them had died. When Sam had gone to the Cage, when Lilith had killed Dean, when Dean and Castiel had been trapped in Purgatory, there would have been someone for them to turn to. They would have had family even in the worst moments, someone who understood what the life of a Hunter was like. Someone who loved them and would cry with them and wouldn't give up on them. Someone who would have bargained away herself so that her brothers could both be alive, if he remembered her deal with Death correctly. A real sister.
"Let's go home," Dean said suddenly, but Sam seemed to understand, and the two of them wordlessly got back in the car and drove back to the bunker. Just as silently, Sam grabbed the bag of lady supplies from the backseat, and they entered the bunker to the smell of eucalyptus and honey. Olivia was seated at the library table, most of her books open and her laptop on full brightness, barefoot in a set of grungy sweatpants and a faded T-shirt with the Van Halen logo on it. A freshly steaming cup of tea sat beside her, and her hair was done up in a messy knot. The dark bags under her eyes betrayed how tired they figured she was, but they were hidden under thickly-rimmed glasses that were nearly slipping off her nose.
She looked up when she heard the door close and smiled cheerfully over at them, removing her glasses. Then she remembered why they were returning and scrambled from her seat towards them, her bare feet making a soft slapping noise against the marble floor and her eyes fixated on the brown sack Sam had in his hand.
"Thank you, thank you, thank you," Olivia moaned gratefully, snatching the bag and checking its contents. She didn't get a chance to say another thank you, however, before she was being hugged fiercely by the two brothers who had just returned home. Dean held her tightly to his shoulder, and Sam wrapped his arms around the both of them, sandwiching a confused Olivia between them. She still leaned into the hug and participated, wrapping one arm around Dean to her front and the other around Sam at her back, but her confused voice piped up from where she was smushed between their chests.
"Tam-tam? Bean?" she asked, cautiously, "A-Are you okay? Did something happen?"
"Yeah," Sam answered softly, "but we're okay."
"Promise," Dean reassured. At their assurance, Olivia squeezed them tighter before squeaking out another question.
"I am happy for the hug, as always, but is there something you want to tell me?" Both brothers gave each other a quick look before allowing their sister to wiggle out of their embrace. She looked up at them expectantly, but Dean allowed her a reprieve.
"How about you, uh… take care of that," he said, motioning to the sack, "and we'll talk about it after." Olivia looked back at her hand with a start, having forgotten it was there, and padded quickly to the nearest bathroom. Sam chuckled and went to the kitchen to see if there were any leftover muffins, and Dean took his spot from the previous evening at the table.
Olivia soon returned, looking much more comfortable, put on her thick glasses, and resumed her seat at her little research station. Her bespectacled eyes flew back and forth over the four books she had open as her fingers rapidly clacked on the keyboard, and Dean marveled a little bit. He and Sam were decent at research, but she seemed to almost breathe it. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Sam marveling at her too, his mouth half-full of muffin, and Dean grinned a bit. He had to admit that this was not so bad.
Sam cleared his throat, getting Olivia's attention, and said, "So… Ollie, is there anything else we should know about your memories?" She perked up considerably at the use of her nickname, which didn't go unnoticed by her brothers, and placed a finger to her lips to think.
"Hmm… well, let's see… Oh! This might help!" An idea suddenly occurred to her and she began digging through her laptop bag. She pulled out a little purple leather book, opened it to the first page, and showed the brothers the contents. The image practically knocked the air out of their lungs.
A five-year-old Dean and one-year-old Sam sat on either side of a hospital bed with their mother in the middle. Mary held a sleeping bright blonde newborn in her arms, and a woman they recognized to be a younger Deanna Campbell supported the toddler Sam. Dean seemed to be leaning closer in towards his new little sister as if he had just been looking at her face right before whoever was manning the camera had commanded their attention. All four of the non-newborns in the photo smiled brightly at the camera. Sam wore a shirt that said 'Birthday Boy!' on it, and the red time-date stamp at the bottom of the photo read 'July 2, 1984, 1:42 p.m.'
Dean snatched the photobook out of her hands to study it more closely, and Sam came up behind him to get a better look as well. Olivia piped up, "I really like the pictures on the next page," and Dean hesitantly turned the page. He could almost hear Sam choke up at the next image, and Dean felt very close to joining him.
Dean was sitting in a padded armchair with Sam squished in beside him. On their combined laps was a large pillow, and on that pillow sort of in their arms was their newborn sister. This time, though, her eyes were open and it looked like she was smiling at them. Sam was playing with her blanketed feet, but Dean was staring right back into Olivia's eyes. In the picture right below, John was standing right behind the chair, looking down at his daughter in awe. Olivia's tiny hand had escaped the bundle and was reaching up for Dean's nose, and Dean could see that his younger self had leaned down a bit so she could touch it. Little Sam leaned over to get a closer look, almost appearing as if he wanted his nose grabbed too.
Olivia's voice broke through their thoughts. "Mom died that night." Both brothers took a momentary break from having their hearts squeezed to look up at her.
"What happened?" Sam asked. Olivia sighed sadly, tucking her legs up to her chest and wrapping her arms around them.
"When you were a few months old, Sammy, Azazel came into your room and started feeding you that demon blood. Mom heard what was going on and came into your room to chase him off. He tried to kill her, but she was too fast for him, and he said he'd return to kill her on the happiest day of her life," she explained, resting her chin on her knee. "I was born at 6:34 a.m. on Sammy's first birthday, a month early. Everyone was really worried I'd have something wrong with me, but I wound up relatively healthy, except for the diabetes, but that didn't show up until later. Mom was really glad. But then…"
She inhaled a shaky breath. "Later that night, around midnight, the nurses smelled smoke coming from Mom's room. I was in there too, and they heard me crying. They rushed in to see Mom's body and bed on fire, her stomach slashed open, and her body fastened to the ceiling and bleeding all over the floor and in my cradle. Her blood was dripping on my face…"
"Holy…" Dean whispered brokenly, and Sam collapsed into the chair next to his brother, almost exhausted with the weight of what she was telling them.
"It was too late to save her, but the nurses got me out of there and rushed me to the NICU for smoke inhalation. Stayed there for three months, but I eventually came out fine. Dad called me a little miracle, because I wasn't supposed to have survived the smoke. He was amazed that Azazel didn't touch me, and he kind of obsessed over it. I don't think he ever got the answer to why," she finished, laying her cheek on her knee.
Sam swallowed dryly and asked with a croak, "Did Azazel feed you his blood too?" Olivia shrugged.
"If he did, he never brought it up when we were dealing with him, so I doubt it. I think he was just fulfilling his end of the bargain Mom made," she said quietly. "And I don't have any of Sammy's fancy powers, so I really don't think so."
Sam nodded, relieved. She pointed at the little book with a small smile and insisted, "Keep going. It'll maybe help you guys remember."
Dean turned the page and grinned at the next two pictures. The first was obviously taken under protest; five-year-old Sam and four-year-old Olivia were dressed in identical Cinderella dresses, but one was much happier being dressed up than the other. Olivia's hair had lost a lot of its blonde and was done up in a cute little bun, complete with a tiara and a veil for some reason. Her shoes didn't match her dress and she was only wearing one pink glove, but she was smiling and waving a jeweled wand in the air. Sam, on the other hand, was grumpily standing next to her, glaring at whoever was taking the picture. His Cinderella dress actually fit better than Olivia's, but he was only wearing socks instead of the matching "glass" slippers. He had on the matching tiara and the correct gloves, but there was no wand in his crossed arms. Dean could be seen in the background in some sort of prince costume, and there was a woman's leg in the photo coming from whoever was taking it.
"Nana Millie babysat when Dad was out hunting near her house. They were a lot closer after Sam and I came along," she explained, "I insisted that we play dress up, but since Sam had long hair like me, I said that he needed to be a princess. He begged Dad for a haircut the next day." Sam and Dean both chuckled a little bit at the childish logic.
The second picture was at Sam and Olivia's birthday. There were two little cakes, one with a red five in icing in front of Olivia and another with a green six in front of Sam, lit up with the corresponding number of candles. Olivia's hair was almost completely the dusty blonde shade she sported now, and it was done up in two messy, lopsided pigtail braids; one was down below her ear and the other was a lot higher and further back on her head. The birthday kids were sitting at a table in a motel, and Dean was standing behind them with a hand on each of their shoulders. Both Sam and Olivia looked ecstatically at their cakes as if amazed that they got one for themselves. All three of them looked like they were getting ready to blow out the little candles on the cake when their father snapped the photo, a lovely orange glow enveloping their faces.
After staring at it for a moment, Sam looked up at Olivia for the story, which she readily started. "Dad had been gone for eight days before he came back in time for our birthday. He got back at ten at night and woke us up to surprise us with the cakes he picked up. Dean was a little cranky that he got back so late, but Sam and I didn't care much. I insisted that my hair be done up really nice for our birthday, so you two put my hair up in 'piggytails', and I loved it. We all sang happy birthday and we had cake and pizza and stayed up until one in the morning playing games on our sugar highs," she explained wistfully with a huge smile. Dean cleared his throat, almost willing the wistful emotions back into the recesses of his brain, and looked up at her.
"What did you do with us when we went to investigate monster scenes?" he asked curiously, and Sam nodded. He hadn't thought of that.
"I was your CSI lab tech. You know, collect samples, run fingerprints, handle evidence, all that fun stuff. Allowed us to have access to some of the evidence you two couldn't get by just waving your badges," she explained, pulling out a large cardholder full of FBI IDs. She pulled one out and commented, "My favorite is Nebraska Forensic Biologist Regina Phalange. It always makes me laugh."
"Is that from that show-?" Sam started.
"Friends? Yeah! It was one of my favorite shows when we were younger. It was always on, no matter where we were. I'd always try to finish translating or studying so I could watch. And I kind of forced you two to watch with me when you were there," she explained sheepishly, "We would quote it at each other sometimes to piss off Dad."
Dean couldn't help laughing at that, and Sam nodded, liking the way his sister thought. She quirked an eyebrow at them and asked, "Do you remember anything? I have more pictures. I took most of them myself as we got older and Dad got too busy to take them. Another favorite of mine is when Dean graduated high school! We were so proud, but Dad was away, so I took the pictures."
"I graduated high school?" Dean asked, surprised.
"Well, duh! We moved back to Lawrence, Kansas when I was ten because they had a good diabetes specialist there and I needed more care. Since we were staying in a house for the first time in my life, we all got to go to school like normal kids!" she explained happily, "Dad would go out of town for longer, but we didn't mind. That's how I learned to cook - someone had to feed us. Bobby and Ellen came over all the time to make sure we didn't burn down the house, but we were fine on our own. I had a part-time after-school and weekend job at my doctor's wife's clothing store since they knew we needed the money. I didn't want you two to have to steal," she said, looking at her blood sugar sensor on her wrist. Sam blinked, and he could feel Dean tense next to him. If she had existed, Sam thought, Dean wouldn't have stolen or gone to the boys' home. He would have gotten an education. We'd have been… happy. Almost normal.
"I mean," she continued, "both of you still cut a lot of class to do hunting and stuff. You two tried really hard never to be gone for too long since you didn't let me hunt or cut school, and you always stayed in the state, so you'd always be back within a couple of days. Even with all of that, you both passed your classes enough to graduate. And then Sam waited a year before applying to Stanford so that I could graduate too since he wanted to take me with him. He cried when I made valedictorian. Oh! That picture is right in the middle!"
Desperate for more happy memories, Dean turned to the appropriate picture. Both brothers had hoisted Olivia onto their shoulders and were holding onto her legs to support her, Dean on her left and Sam on her right. Due to the height difference, she dipped down a bit towards Dean, but she was laughing so hard that her eyes were closed and she didn't look like she cared. She wore at least six tassels around her neck and a sash reading "Almond Valley High School Valedictorian" across her body, and she was waving her scarlet cap around in the air. Dean looked like he was shouting out a cheer, bragging about his sister, while Sam's eyes were watery as he proudly looked up at her. Her shoes were falling off, but none of them seemed to notice. Their dad wasn't there, but both brothers spotted Bobby off to the side, covertly wiping away a tear.
"You got valedictorian?" Sam marveled, astounded, and Olivia huffed playfully.
"You sound just as surprised as you did back then, Tam-Tam. Yes, even with taking care of you two, studying languages, working part-time, and being on the wrestling team, I managed to get valedictorian," she said proudly. "I got the stubbornness and insomnia from Dean and the raw brains from Sammy."
"You did wrestling?" Dean asked, and Olivia flashed them both her impressive arms from across the table. They could even see her shoulder muscles tense along with the biceps.
"Didn't get these babies just by wishing on stars, boys," she teased, "I actually trained. When I wasn't, uh, stalking Sam at Stanford or working, I took Krav Maga and judo classes. Gotta keep fit in order to pull your buns out of the fire."
Sam stared at her, wide-eyed, and Dean nodded approvingly and silently considered taking a few of those kinds of classes himself. Olivia sighed, "Do you remember now? Would more pictures help? There's one where Sam and I took the Impala for a joyride when you were asleep, I like that one."
"You took my-" Dean started, but Sam interrupted.
"No, I don't think pictures would help. I mean... we don't remember anything because…" Sam started, licking his lips in an effort to try to explain.
"You didn't exist before yesterday, Ollie," Dean said bluntly, and Olivia blanched.