Thank you to everyone reading and reviewing these little moments. I am grateful for all your kind words.

A Moment with My Brother

Birthday

I sit at the head of the big library table and I am patient and mature. (No, I am. I can be if I try real hard.) In fact I would go as far as to say I am a bastion of measured grown up-ness. An icon of tranquility...The poster girl for wholly understated delight.

Well...more or less...pretty much so...aside from the girly squealing and effervescent giggles that seem to be creeping out of me on a fairly constant basis.

Why I hear you ask?

Let me tell ya...

Well, see it's my birthday...No, I will not tell ya how old I am! And the boys...my brothers...made me a party.

The cake got me first of all.

I can't really remember when I last actually had a birthday cake. Oh maybe I bought myself a solitary piece of cake in a coffee shop but this is a huge, covered in candles, frosting and chocolate curls, real, fucking, birthday cake.

And Dean made it for me.

Yup, my big bro...my savage, kill what needs to be killed as soon as it needs to be killed, badass hunter of a brother made me an honest to goodness birthday cake.

Oh and hell if it ain't good cake too. It's rich and deeply chocolatey, so satisfying...in fact I'd go as far as to say satisfying like really good sex (oh come on, don't be coy...you know what I mean. Well I hope ya do and if ya don't, get out there and remedy that asap.)

So yeah, yummy and scrummy and Dean says it's the dark chocolate that makes the difference. Only the stuff above 70% cocoa solids will do.

And I love that he knows that. Don't get me wrong...he knows a shit-load of stuff about all sorts of things (Yeah, I know Sam does too...but often Dean lets people think all the 'knowing stuff' stuff is down to Sam, even though it isn't). Sam doesn't think like that...he knows the stuff Dean knows is maybe different to what he knows but that it compliments/enhances/magnifies his bucket of stuff and that, as a whole, they know...well, pretty much most everything of what they need to know.

Am I rambling?

I'm rambling, aren't I?

No?

Good...cause see this is really important...

Dean will always defer to Sam when smarts/knowledge/book-learning is the order of the day...cause Sam's the 'college-boy' or now the 'Man of Letters'...and he's just a...what's the word he uses? Oh yeah, grunt.

But see it kinda breaks my heart when he says that. In fact I sorta hate that word because it reinforces for Dean that he is somehow...well...essentially less worthy than his brother...(Sam...my brother too now and that is wonderful) but I want him, Dean, to understand that he is so...so absolutely and utterly worthy. That he is not less than his brother, not less than every piece of crud he deals with in his weird and fucked up life we all lead.

It's gonna take time as I'm pretty sure he's spent just about his whole life not believing in himself but I'm here now and I'm gonna work on him, slowly and carefully until he see himself as I, and we, see/know and love him.

Yeah, so as I said, it all started with the cake and then if they didn't knock me sideways into Sunday with a gift too.

I really didn't expect a gift. Come on, they're boys and, on the whole, boys need a sister to have even a notional chance of buying a gift for a girl. Well a halfways decent, girl-appropriate and delighting gift, and seeing as I'm their only sister, and I couldn't really buy a surprise gift for myself, then I wasn't anticipating anything much.

So then Sam reaches a package from the chair that's pushed up under the table.

"It's from both of us..."

He says and he nods toward Dean as he edges the package toward me.

It's a long and thin, wrapped in soft, white tissue paper and he lays it in my outstretched hands with a open and happy smile on his 'genuinely-looking-better-every-day' face and I feel the breath start to catch in my throat.

"It's to protect you."

I look from Sam to Dean as the older man almost whispers those soft few words. He smiles too. That gentle, kind, lovingly vulnerable smile I've seen only so very occasionally and I feel my eyes start to prickle with tears as my shaky hands slowly peel the paper from this treasure they have given to me.

And within the feather-light cocoon of white lies a delicate and beautiful, lethally sharp, exquisitely pointed silver blade.

And I love it. Love them for giving it to me.

The knife is fine and magnificently crafted, a thing of deceptive strength. It's gleaming planes are etched with sigils and wondrous words, only some of which I understand and I am amazed at the wonderfully heart-stopping beauty of it and of their care in choosing it for me.

"Do you like it?"

I look up into Sam's warm amber eyes and nod because I am too choked to speak and his smile widens as he glances from me to Dean.

"We had it made specially for you."

Dean says as he touches the blade and turns it in my hands so the light catches a delicately scrolling phrase that is etched onto the pure white metal.

"There's not another like it anywhere."

I blink my eyes, pushing the happy tears that pool there to my cheeks and try and focus on the script.

"Meus...carus...s...sanctimonialis?"

Dean nods and his fathomless green eyes wrap and enfold my heart with his love.

"Do you know what it says?"

He smiles hesitantly and he is suddenly years younger and I see in him, for a moment, all the things he's never had a chance to be. I see shy and scared, needy and hopeful, brave and resilient, vulnerable and loving, above all loving, and I want to just...just hold him.

So I do.

I'm across the space that separates us, me and my brothers, and then they are in my arms.

And the tears run down my cheeks as I hiccup...

"W...what's...it...m...mean?"

Their arms close about me.

"It means...My Beloved Sister."

Dean whispers, tightening me to him.

And I am suddenly, wonderfully, amazingly overwhelmed that I have found my family.

Ends