Previously on Supernatural...

"You know, you're just not dying fast enough for my liking." There was a crazed light in his eyes as his grip tightened around her neck. "Let's remedy that, shall we?"

"Son of a bitch!" Dean swore as Adonis lifted Baby up the wall one-handed. He tried to fight his restraints again, but with his cracked ribs he couldn't move without extreme pain and the risk of puncturing a lung. He could only watch helplessly as Adonis kept choking Baby to death. "Dammit!"

A low mutter suddenly reached his ears. Castiel's lips were moving at breakneck speed, blue eyes locked on the manacle securing Dean's right hand. He was speaking Enochian, and Dean knew that meant some serious angelic mojo was about to go down.

Baby continued to lash out at Adonis with her free hand, but she was too weak to fight him off. Black smoke was weakly puffing out of her mouth like Steamboat Mickey's tugboat, and the longer Dean watched, the weaker Baby's struggles became. "Hurry up Cas! She's losing!"

The dark-haired angel barked out three words that made the air crackle. The chain at Dean's wrist melted off as his gun skidded across the concrete as if thrown by a ghost. Dean snatched up the weapon as he flashed a thankful grin at the angel. Focusing through the pain, Dean aimed for the god's head and cocked the hammer back. "You leave her the hell alone, bastard!"

Luck favored his aim; the bullet went right into Adonis' temple. Blood sprayed from the wound as the god howled in pain. Sam and Castiel both gasped for air as the pressures on their chests disappeared. Dean couldn't help the cocky grin that spread across his face.

But Adonis' head swung around to give a deranged smile, and that's when Dean suddenly realized he'd walked right into a trap. The older Winchester heard a series of strange words, then all he heard were his own screams as it suddenly felt like a pack of hellhounds were tearing him apart.

Baby could barely hear anything over the roaring in her ears, but she heard the gunshot ring out and Dean's shout. She felt Adonis release her other wrist as a flurry of foreign words tumbled from his mouth. Wrenching her eyes open, she looked over just as Dean screamed in agony and the bloody symbols on his chest lit up like fireworks.

Letting her arms go limp, Baby let the boar's tusk she had taken from Sam slide down into her left hand. Dean's blade slipped out of her right sleeve into the other hand. She jammed the tusk into Adonis' groin, causing the god to scream in pain as he tried to remove the tusk one-handed. Grabbing the hand still clamped around her throat, Baby brought her blade up to lop off his arm at the elbow. She ripped the severed limb from her neck as she crouched on the ground, gasping for air.

"You bitch!" Adonis screamed as he stumbled backwards, his bleeding stump hanging useless beside him. "How dare you!" He lifted his remaining hand to cast a spell, but Baby gave him no time. She tackled Adonis like a linebacker, quickly straddled his waist and stabbed Dean's blade through his palm to pin his other arm down.

"That's for trying to kill me and my boys. Again." Leaving the blade sticking in the ground, she pulled out her second blood-slicked stake and pressed the point over his heart. "Now stop the spell."

"Can't be done," the god sneered.

"Wrong answer, Junkless." She reached back, grasped the embedded boar's tusk and gave a sharp tug. Adonis writhed and squealed like a pig, but Baby didn't let him budge an inch. "Try again."

Despite the agony in those harsh, inhuman eyes, the pagan god smirked with sadistic amusement. "That ring of symbols will tear out his soul no matter what you do to me."

"That right?" Baby asked. "Huh. Then I'll just kill you."

"If you kill me, your own transformation will be reversed."

"I don't care."

Adonis looked at her in shock. He clearly hadn't expected that. "What?"

"I said, I don't care." She lifted the stake to eye level. "I'd do whatever it takes to save them."

"For such a reason, you'd give up being human?"

"That's real love, Adonis. Being willing to give up everything to those you love safe from scum like you." The stake slammed home, and she twisted it hard to ensure that the boar's blood permeated the wound. Adonis' scream was coupled with a searing blast of golden light that blinded Baby. When her vision cleared, she was kneeling over a pile of crimson anemone petals.

"Baby!" Sam called out in panic.

The Impala noticed a million things as she raced over. Dean had stopped screaming, but his body was rigid as plywood and his teeth were gritted in pain. The markings on his chest were flaring with power, sparking the symbols written underneath their feet in spiraling lines of golden magic. Baby realized that once the entire array was activated, the ritual would rip Dean's living soul straight from his body. She knew what had to be done, and from the way Castiel gave her a shocked look, he'd reached the same conclusion.

"What?" Sam demanded, noticing the exchange. "What is it?"

The angel's hand trembled slightly as he reached into his trenchcoat to pull out Braxton's grimoire. "If we transfer the symbols, it won't take his soul as the sacrifice," he said, flipping pages to where the spell was located.

"Transfer? To what, another soul?"

"Yeah," Baby said. "Mine."

~Flashback Thirty Minutes Before Sam Woke Up~

After Rose left the motel room, Baby looked at Castiel and said, "Okay Cas, no more interruptions. What exactly am I?"

Castiel beckoned her to the chair on the opposite side of their small table. He waited until she sat before speaking. "I believe that...you possess something that an object of your limited years should not. Not yet, in any case."

"Tell me straight."

Castiel nodded. "Very well. You have somehow come into possession of a soul."

The blunt revelation made Baby glad he had waited for her to sit. Her body suddenly felt like it weighed like nothing, and her heart was pounding so much faster than ever before. "A...a soul?" When he nodded, she choked out, "But how?"

"For such a thing to be possible, you must have been close to some event that enabled this soul to become lodged within your chassis."

Guilt crept into her voice as Baby asked, "Is it...from a dead person? I've been around plenty of dead people." If it was, then the list of possibilities was endless; people had a habit of dying around her boys, and magic was commonplace on more than half of their hunts.

"No." Blue eyes squinted at her torso in a way that, had she been human, Baby would have found incredibly uncomfortable. "This purity..." Castiel looked up to meet her eyes, frowning in puzzlement. "An unborn soul. One untouched by the world beyond the womb."

"You're saying this soul is a baby's?" Now she felt really guilty, but the knowledge helped her place the possible time it happened. She scrambled for the journal and flipped through it. "One of John's first cases was in a hospital..." When she found it she cried out in triumph. "Ah-HA! Here, twenty-eight years ago. Demon was using dark magic to cause babies to be stillborn. Had a hankering for dead baby, apparently. Thirteen died before John exorcised the bastard."

Castiel nodded. "One of those souls must've followed John Winchester and attached itself to his vehicle. Its very nature allowed it to grow naturally within you to achieve its own consciousness. In a very real sense, you were born that night twenty-eight years ago."

Baby gaped for a few seconds before eloquently replying, "Son of a bitch."

"You have a - " Sam's eyes widened in realization. "No. Baby, no!"

"We don't have time to argue. With Adonis dead, my transformation won't last another two minutes."

The taller Winchester shook his head vehemently. "There has to be another way."

Baby smiled softly. "It's the only way to save him, Sammy." She stretched up on her knees to kiss Sam on his bruised cheek. "You take care of your brother, you hear?" Sam clutched her tightly against his enormous frame, shuddering with suppressed tears as he nodded. Baby pulled away and looked down at Dean. "And you. Try not to shoulder everything on your own, okay? Let other people help you sometimes."

"Baby..." His breath was coming in ragged gasps as he fought to speak. Dean weakly reached out for her, and Baby cradled his hand in her bloody ones. "Please...Baby...don't do it..."

"You've saved everyone else. Now it's my turn to save you." Baby bent down and kissed his cheek as well. She pulled back slightly, then muttered, "Ah, screw it," against his skin and pressed her lips against his. This kiss was soft and poignant, holding all the love she felt for him. "One for the road," she whispered before stepping back to let Castiel approach.

The angel's hand was now wreathed in the same golden aura as the symbols on Dean's chest. "Be ready to get out of the way quickly," he ordered Sam. "Once the symbols are transferred, we will have seconds before the ritual activates."

He flattened his glowing palm against Dean's chest, and the Winchester threw back his head as he let out an anguished groan. The ring of symbols peeled off Dean's skin like stickers to hover around Castiel's hand. Sam quickly hooked his arms under his sibling's armpits and dragged Dean outside the magical circle, ignoring the older Winchester's weak protests and struggles.

Once the boys were clear, Baby stood up and stripped off her jacket and T-shirt, leaving her black bra on with Dean's amulet hanging between the valley of her breasts. "All right Cas, do it," she announced. "We don't have much time."

Castiel briefly hesitated, processing everything that could go wrong with this plan. The ritual called for a human's soul, and while Baby's soul was technically human, she was not truly human. Her soul had to be forcibly pulled out and then shoved back into her body, and even if the transformation worked, was no way to know how badly the process would damage her soul.

And yet here she stood, tall and proud, ready to face oblivion to save Dean. She is far braver than many I have known, Castiel thought as he pressed the symbols to her bare stomach and hurried out of the circle to join the Winchesters.

High above the warehouse, the moon reached its zenith just as the final symbols flared to life. The letters glowed beneath her feet like spotlights, throwing shadows across Baby's face similar to a flashlight beam under her chin. A roaring wind tore through the warehouse, and Baby was lifted into the air by an unseen force. Her head tilted back as her body went rigid, arms out and slightly stretched behind her and legs dangling. Bluish-white light shone from her eyes and mouth similar to how an angel's Grace flared when stabbed.

A small white orb rose from her open mouth, like a firefly rising among the swamp grass. It darted around her head as if unsure of where it was supposed to go, then shot back down her throat with a high-pitched trill. Light exploded from beneath her skin like a supernova, sending flares of cold fire through the warehouse in expanding rings.

For one brief, glorious moment, Baby's body shone like some sort of flaming beacon. Then the arcs retracted, her glowing skin winked out, and she dropped onto the scarred, blackened, broken concrete floor with an anticlimactic thump.

And now, faithful followers, the moment you've all been waiting for...happens next chapter. Stick around!

Review as well!