Disclaimer: I own nothing.

Author's Note: This one has a bit more angst than chapters previous.

"I wouldn't worry about it," she says with a flip of the wrist. "I went through the same thing when I was her age. Well," she drawls out, continuing on in the same breath, "I went through the whole rebel by wearing all black, not washing your hair, and caking your eyes with heavy liner. Not so much with the whole finding out your family's into ghost hunting and demonic wartime assistance, or whatever." She pauses briefly, takes in the stares from those around her before saying, a bit slower, "But I really wouldn't worry about the way she's dressing."

Sam gazes, dumfounded, at his sister-in-law. Part of him figures she's right, no need to worry. The other part's fairly well decided she's just plain nuts, no real surprise there, and has absolutely no idea what she's talking about. Because, let's be honest, this is his kid, not hers. It's his daughter who suddenly decided to shut down right in front of them, stay in her room, barely utter a word to anyone, least of all him and Sarah. And while her new look, that I'm so misunderstood, you just couldn't possibly get me, Gothtastic ridiculousness that kids had been doing since he was her age, since even before, was rather disconcerting, it was not what really worried him.

She was thirteen, a teenager, no longer his little girl. And she was the oldest of all the Winchester kids, making her, to Sam and Sarah, as well as to Dean and Ava, the first baby, in a way the most memorable baby.

But to her she was always the girl who never got to be the baby, because for as long as she could remember, there'd been babies there for her to look after, guard and protect, teach and train. And Sam knew this, never before feeling so much for his brother's constant burden of being the eldest until watching it take its toll on his own child.

But that was different of course. Rachel had to perform the necessary tasks of big sister, which truthfully she was to the boys and Samantha as well, but she never had to worry about them getting into trouble when no adult was around for days, never had to worry about keeping them fed and clothed and cared for while her parents were…gone. Never had to stay up late, shotgun in hand, to stand guard against any sort of supernatural entity intent on pain, murder, devouring her younger sibling for a midnight snack.

No, of course she would never have had to do that. As far as she knew those sorts of things didn't even exist.

There'd been times over the past thirteen years, when they wondered if it was a good idea to keep the truth from their children, wondered if it were even possible. There were times when an old friend would call, needing help, needing advice, needing the old Sam and Dean back. And they would on occasion oblige, because blood is thicker than water, and so many people from their past life had bled buckets for them.

There were times when an odd happening would catch Dean's eye, an article in the paper, talk and rumors abounding round town. And he would get that itch all over again, that aching desire to hit the open road, search for an evil culprit, track it, kill it. Hunt.

And there were, even after all those years, even after severing the bond that linked them to that yellow-eyed son of a bitch, dreams, nightmares, visions. For both Sam and Ava. There were restless nights, waking knotted up in the bed sheets, cold sweat plastering hair to their faces.

There were late night infomercials and constant trips to the kids' rooms, to the bathroom, to the kitchen for a drink of water, to anywhere they could think to go but bed. There were, and always would be, nights when sleep was simply not an option.

Well, kids aren't stupid. They see things, hear things, know things. They'd asked questions when their daddies left town for seemingly no reason, or when they returned beat to hell, bruised knuckles and callused fingers grasping their tiny bodies, holding on like they might never let go. And they'd listen to their mothers' explanations, their far-fetched excuses, and smile and nod, returning to their childish worlds, filing away all the inequities for later exploration.

So there had been close calls in the past. Like when John was four and he found Dean's .22 in the duffel under the bed. It was loaded, the safety off, just like always when he took it on the road, on a hunt. But after returning he was too tired to think, too tired to remember that it was sitting like that, on top of everything else in the bag for easy access, so he simply kicked the duffel under the bed, deciding he'd unpack later.

His eyes had been closed barely a moment it seemed when John, whom he hadn't even heard come in, woke him with, "Bang, bang, Daddy," the loaded gun clenched in his chubby baby fingers. Dean nearly shit a brick, grabbing the gun, grabbing his son, screaming and sobbing even as Ava flew into the room in a panic. From then on, no hunting equipment was allowed inside their house, except on certain necessary occasions.

From then on, whenever John sensed trouble, fear, disappointment, or anger, he'd break into screams and sobs that rivaled his father's.

And there'd been the time Jo came to visit, just after Ellen's death, just after the funeral they were unable to attend due to it coinciding with Michael's six-month birthday. She said she just felt the need to see some friendly faces, look into the eyes of a couple of people who actually knew her mother, might actually mourn her passing, instead of all those she'd been around the past few weeks who were simply trying to weasel information out of her by way of playing nice. Because Ellen knew a lot, about every hunter who ever happened into her establishment. She knew more about how their world worked than just about anyone, had a file cabinet full of offenses and dirty little secrets and fucked up hunts from all those she met, buried deep in the back of her head.

And everyone wanted a piece of that.

"I mean, who cares that Nate Barker once made an ashtray out of a hellhound paw? Or that Simon…whatever his name is kept a finger from a golem?" she said while relaying her distaste.

"He reanimated it with that finger," Sam said simply, swishing his coffee around in front of him.

"Yeah, well, he's dead now anyway. So's Barker. So are half the people everyone's talking about now."

Dean looked over, brows crinkling with interest. "Like who?"

"Marvin Tucker, Big Abe, that guy Charlie."

"Charlie who, Charlie Horse?" She nodded through the steam of her coffee. "Damn, Charlie Horse is dead," he said, shaking his head.

Sam mumbled something about stupid name before Jo let out, casual as can be, "Ripped limb from limb. Werewolf."

And it was only then that they noticed, that Jo noticed actually, and then indicated with a slight nod, the little girl eavesdropping from the stairs.

Sam put her to bed, shrugged off her questions about werewolves, did all he could not to say they don't exist, because he really didn't want to be the kind of parent who outright lied to his children. He tried to ignore the ache that rose when she said with all the sincerity a six-year-old could muster, "You know a lot people who're dead, Dad."

He tried to ignore the fact that she'd heard anything at all. Because surely she wouldn't really think it was real. Surely she wouldn't even remember it all the following week. She was a kid after all.

But she did remember. Seven years later, two weeks ago, when a close call became the unavoidable moment, she remembered the sad blond lady who sat in her kitchen talking about werewolves and demons and friends lost to the cause.

And there was no denying this one.

Nearly everything from their past life had sat sprawled in front of her long, lanky legs. Every pseudo militaristic manual. Every ceremonial dagger and old rusted machete. Every too big bag of half-used salt and too full box of extra lighters. Every odd charm and old medicine bag and bizarre rambling story collected through the years.

Every item from that previous life, before marriage and kids, lawn mowing and mortgages, she found that night, stumbled across all because they'd been too careless to keep her from doing so. Just like John with the gun, stashing it under the bed, assuming, somehow convincing himself, there's no way a kid would go looking there. Well, if you can misjudge a four-year-old, certainly you can misjudge a thirteen-year-old.

It wasn't even as though she'd been snooping around, intent on finding something that obviously no one want to be found. It wasn't like that at all. She had only been looking for that ridiculous stuffed duck that little Sammy loved so much, the one that Dean, for whatever reason, couldn't stand to look at and always tried to get rid of, stashing it behind the couch or tossing it down the laundry shoot, each time hoping the baby would forget about it entirely.

But she never did forget, and she always yearned for it back. And Rachel knew this, knew that the quiet rasping cry she had been letting out for the last five minutes, quelled not even by Sam's large rocking hands, which nearly always did the trick, was the duck cry. Because she knew her cousin, knew all her cousins as well as her own sibling. She knew what they wanted or needed often times even before they did, always. She didn't know how she knew, she just knew.

And quite frankly both her parents and Samantha's parents seemed too preoccupied to care, each one frazzled and on edge like she'd never seen them before. Because on that night Sammy turned six-months-old. And while she had no idea the absolute significance of that event, she did know it meant something. Because amid all the other memories filed away inside her head rested the ones of tense family gatherings past: Maya's six-month birthday, John's close on its heels, later and bit less hazy was Michael's.

But as had been the case all her life, whenever she'd bring up such odd occasions, her questions were merely sloughed off and ignored.

It was their fault for sure, Sam and Sarah and Dean and Ava. They'd taken for granted what it was like to have a little abiding child in their midst. They hadn't thought about how to keep secrets from a near adult, a teenager who simply knew better.

And on that night they were so caught up in their own world, protecting Samantha and Ava, watching out for themselves, keeping the kids quiet and oblivious, that they didn't even notice when Rachel disappeared, didn't think anything of her being in the house unsupervised. Because the ground rules had been put in place, stay inside, keep out of the nursery.

They never thought that she might, while looking for the one thing she knew her cousin needed most, stumble upon the one thing that they had never wanted her to see. So no one had bothered cleaning up the mess, the piles of papers and stacks of journals, the just cleaned, glimmering guns laid out on the desk.

Since the incident with John some four years before, all the kids had been taught not to enter their parents' rooms without permission. But she was on a mission, and she knew that the last time Ducky had disappeared Ava found him buried at the bottom of their closet.

So she found it all, let her fingers dance over the weapons with an amazed hesitancy, perused the journals filled with wild ramblings of crazy men: her uncle, father, grandfather. She took note of the pages they'd been open to, tales of fire and electrical storms and motherless babies being born for a purpose.

She studied the ancient drawings inside old dusty books, about demons lurking as shadows, baptizing babies with blood, bending fire to their will. And she read the story of her grandmother's death, the one she'd never been told before, always getting instead a shrug of the shoulders, an, "It was a long time ago, Rache," whenever the subject came up.

She read the account in her grandfather's tight, pained scrawl. And she knew.

It was close to an hour before they found her, frantic when she didn't answer their calls. Dean stopped short in the doorway, others ramming into his frozen body as they followed, each with equally terrified expressions on their faces.

There was a moment in there when no one spoke, no one even seemed to breathe, save the still whimpering baby held tight in Sam's arms. Rachel looked to her cousin and with stiff resolve, a face as hard as stone, said simply, "She wants her duck," before turning back to the reading in front of her.

Dean moved over to the desk and pulled the ratty stuffed animal from the back of a drawer, put it in his baby's gleeful little fist, and looked up at Sam with guilty eyes. And whatever was said with that look, Sam understood, nodding slightly before backing out the door with Dean's daughter in his hands. Leaving his daughter in Dean's.

Ava touched Sarah lightly on the shoulder, broke her from the trance she seemed to have fallen into, and guided her back as well, further into the hallway. She leaned into her from behind, resting her chin in the crook of her neck, saying nothing, only holding on as Sarah held her breath, tried to figure out a way to get her mind to catch up with the changes the night was bringing.

From outside the room they could hear everything, whether they wanted to or not. They heard Dean say, "I'm sorry, Rache," in short clipped words. The gruff tone continued with, "This is important. We can't talk about this now. In the morning, when the sun comes up, whatever questions you have…"

"It's true," she said, and they all knew it wasn't a question.

They didn't see Dean nod, didn't see the pained expression on his face as he looked down and realized that the book in her lap was his father's journal, that the entry she was reading was about his mother's death. They only heard, after a long moment and a deep breath, "This is your history too. You want to know it, go ahead. You should know. You're old enough now. But…"

"I won't tell them," she whispered. "They're just kids, I won't tell them."

"I'll leave you alone then," he said softly, turning to go. No one looked at each other out in the hall, Ava and Sarah gazed at the same wall while Sam's eyes simply tracked the top of the baby's head as Dean pulled her away, folded her into his needy arms.

No one looked at each other the rest of the night.

She didn't have too many questions afterward, the following morning, the following weeks. If anything did come up she went to Dean, got him alone before whispering about the past, his past, her dad's. But they were usually little things, easily answered, none of the tough stuff everyone expected.

She wanted to know if vampires were real, ghosts and bogeymen and all the other talked about creatures that plagued children's nightmares. She wanted to know, if they were real, how to protect yourself against them, and more importantly, how to protect others.

"She's looking out for the kids," Dean explained in one of several, catch me up on Rachel conversations between him and Sam. "Just wants to keep them safe."

"That's not her job," Sam spat, and Dean merely nodded, knowing full well that it's always the job of the eldest to guard against potential dangers, be they falling off the bed or being bled dry by a vamp. But Sam never did understand how simply inherent that role was, so there was no use in trying to explain it.

Now it was up to him, as the only one in the family who had any idea what she might need right now, to answer all her questions, put her fears at ease. To train her as she'd requested. To teach her how to shoot a gun.

It wasn't until Sam said, "Uh-uh, no way," that she took on the semblance of walking death, figuring maybe if she dove far enough into this world of ghosts and demons and monsters, that they'd see she wasn't gonna let it go, or let them ignore it.

So here they sit now, two sets of harried parents, discussing for the first time how to deal with raising a teenager, someone who now has a mind of her own, who would only garner a greater taste for rebellion as the years wore on. And who, at her core, only really wanted what's best for her family.

"I think we should let her do it," Sarah says suddenly, her head slowly nodding.

Sam, knowing precisely what she means, counters quickly with a stern, "No."

"She's not stupid, Sam," Dean tries. "She's old enough to know we can't protect her from everything. And now, whether you like it or not, she knows there's even more out there that we won't always be able to protect her from."

"I said no. She's my daughter and I said no."

Sarah turns to him sharply, "She's my daughter too, and I say yes."

He lets his head fall into his hands, mumbles into them. "I don't want our kids growing up like we did. I don't want them to be trained…warriors."

"They won't," Dean says, voice determined. He pats his brother on the back. "She's not a little kid anymore. She can handle this. And it won't be like us, like Dad was with us."

"She just wants to feel…useful," Ava chimes in. "Ready and able, just in case. That's why I asked to be taught, trained. Sarah too."

"And you thought that was a good idea at the time," Sarah adds.

"Yeah, well, at the time you were adults, full grown, capable adults."

"Oh, please," Ava exclaims. "I was a wreck and a half! All jittery about 'is this a good idea or a bad idea? Will I end up using this gun against people the demon wants me to kill, or will I have to use it against something else? Because even seeing a something else…God.'" She takes a breath and looks over at Sam, features bright but serious. "That kid is about a hundred times more capable than I'll ever be. Definitely more than I was then."

She holds the gaze for a long moment, keeping her eyes on his, communicating in that way that only they ever could. Beyond words. Entirely separate from the intense sibling bond he had with Dean, or the I know you so well, I know just what you're thinking link he shared with Sarah. Theirs was built on something else, something horrible and wonderful. It came from a connection they were destined to have, and one forged by surviving what they were meant to be.

"Okay," he gives in. "You can teach her to shoot. You can show her the basics. But that's it," he says in a deep and final tone, glare tearing into Dean.

Then he gets up and heads back inside, trudges through the dark kitchen, shuffles up the steps, and knocks lightly on Rachel's door before turning the knob.

"You know you're supposed to wait 'til someone invites you in," she says snottily as he enters the room.

"I knocked," he shrugs.

"Yeah, well." She sits up on her bed, pulls her long legs up underneath her as Sam takes a seat by her side, his weight on the mattress creating a strong enough dip to pull her closer to him.

"Your uncle's going to give you some lessons," he says carefully, testing the waters. "Just a few. Just some simple stuff."

"Okay," she drawls out, cautious tone matching her father's.

"I don't want the other kids to know about it, not right now anyway."

"Yeah, totally."

"And it can't interfere with anything. School, piano…just…kid stuff. Friends, anything. Understand?" he asks, looking at her for the first time. She nods and he raises his eyebrows, a cue for more confirmation.

"I understand."

He reaches his arm around her, tangles his fingers up in her hair, and gives a quick small tug. "And no more of this Goth crap," he says with a smirk. "Wash your hair, and your face. And put on something…pink."

"Dad, please," she scoffs as he pulls her in to land a kiss on top of her head.

He gets up to leave, makes it as far as the door before she stops him, saying, "Dad?"

And when he turns it takes all his strength to remain standing, because all at once he sees in her something he never had before, and it makes his knees go weak. The strong tilt of her chin, the stoic resolve in her eyes. The cold fear prickling beneath her hazel irises.

He sees himself.

"Yeah, kiddo?"

"Were you really expecting it to come back? For Sammy? Or for any of us? You know," she says, face falling, "like it did for you."

He takes a deep breath and responds, the first real truth he thinks he's ever told his children, maybe anyone, "I expect it everyday."