Chapter 1

November 16, 2018

"Mere, hurry up!" Dean called from the living room, where he waited impatiently with his nearly six month old daughter strapped to his chest.

Never in his life had he ever thought he'd be a babywearer, but he had to admit it was a heck of a lot easier than toting her around on his hip or in his arms, or lugging a stroller everywhere. And he couldn't deny that he enjoyed the snuggle time and the way she always laid her head on his chest and dozed off as if nothing could hurt her.

Maddie had once teased him about wearing Kit on a hunt, and he wasn't sure what it said about him that he could easily imagine himself fighting off a ghost or demon with a baby attached to him. That couldn't possibly put him anywhere near the running for father of the year, but even Meredith had been able to picture it when he had told her about it. She had laughed at the idea because she knew he would never even consider it unless he had absolutely no other choice, but it did seem like something that was within the realm of possibility under the right circumstances. Especially since almost everything he had seen in his nearly forty years should be way outside the realm of possibility. So why not carry a baby into battle against a werewolf if he had to?

"Sorry." Meredith said as she finally emerged from the bedroom. "Shelby stole my boot, and I had to chase her under the bed to get it back."

The squirrel that normally had run of the house unless no one was home was currently perched on Meredith's shoulder. As reluctant as he had been to keep her as a pet, Dean was glad Meredith had talked him into it. It was nice having a pet, just one more piece of normality in his ridiculously abnormal life, and like every other female in the house, Shelby adored him. Dean took a moment to revel in the feeling of having a stable family that loved him so much despite all his flaws and past bad decisions.

Then he took a moment to study the woman that had started it all.

His fiance was wearing a navy blue and white sweater decorated with alternating stripes of snowflakes and reindeer silhouettes that somehow looked very classy, a simple pair of dark blue jeans tucked into light brown hiking boots with some kind of attached sweater cuff thing, and a cozy looking garment in black, beige, and crimson. He wasn't sure if it was a poncho, a blanket, a shawl, or just a really big scarf, but he had seen it at the mall the other day when he had taken the kids Christmas shopping, which hadn't been quite as terrible as he had expected, and had known she would love it. He hadn't wanted to wait until Christmas, so he had given it to her as soon as they got home, and she had worn it every time she had left the house since.

Her hair was loose and wavy, tucked behind her ear, and pulled over her shoulder, she wasn't wearing any makeup, and the only pieces of jewelry she wore were the charm bracelet he had given her as a birthday present so many years ago and her engagement ring.

She realized he was staring, and Shelby scurried across her back and over to the other shoulder as she adjusted her wrap. "What?"

Dean simply smiled. "You're beautiful."

Meredith happily returned the smile, and walked over to stand on her toes and kiss his cheek. "Thanks."

Shelby made the jump from Meredith's shoulder to Dean's, and he chuckled as the family headed for the back door. "Do I need to carry you too?" he asked.

Meredith giggled. "I think I can manage a two mile hike on my own, but if you really want to..."

"Nope. I'm good."

She reached for his hand, not even realizing she was doing it because she did it so often, and placed a kiss on Kit's head as they descended the steps of the back deck and headed across the yard toward the path that would take them through the woods and to the barn Dean was so excited to show her.

They were getting married in two days, and Dean had been working on fixing up the barn for about six months. The entire family had pitched in, including Cas, just so Meredith could have the wedding of her dreams that she so undeniably deserved. Kim and Meredith were the only ones that hadn't helped. Kim was pregnant, and Dean wanted to surprised Meredith with the final results even though she knew what was going on and desperately wanted to be a part of it. Sam, Brooke, and Trevor had spent a couple of weekends with them, and had happily helped out, and even Gabriel and Kaylie Archer had hammered in a few nails.

Meredith and Kim hadn't been thrilled at being left out, but Dean had enjoyed every second of the project, and while it wasn't completely finished, a little angel magic would have it looking picture perfect for the wedding.

They had decided to have a small, easy courthouse wedding, but Cas had come up with the brilliant idea of dropping them into some kind of angle-induced alternate reality where all their deceased loved ones could join in on the more traditional festivities after Meredith had made a comment about wishing her father could be there to walk her down the aisle and give her away.

So they were having two ceremonies. A legal one with just their living friends and family in attendance, and a second one just for fun that no one could bring a date to unless they were aware of the supernatural world. Dean wasn't exactly excited about the second ceremony and reception, but he was looking forward to being able to legally introduce Meredith as his wife, and he was definitely excited about getting to see everyone he had lost over the years. It was definitely a cool idea, and he was glad Cas had come up with it. Mostly because Meredith was so excited. Despite the fact that her mother would be there.

But what Dean was most excited about right now was showing her the barn, and he was seriously enjoying this walk through the woods with his family. He was struck once more by how normal his life had become simply because he had decided to take his R&R in a little Georgia farmhouse with the girl that used to live next door.

A thought occurred to him, and because he was with Meredith, he asked the question that he had pondered many times over the years. He wasn't sure if he had ever asked Sam. "You ever wonder what our lives would be like if all the supernatural crap wasn't real?"

Meredith was only mildly surprised by the question. It wasn't something Dean would normally ask if he was with anyone but her, and even though it was just the two of them, Kit, and Shelby, it was still a bit of an odd question for Dean Winchester to ask. She thought he'd moved passed his what ifs. "Sometimes. Do you?"

"Sort of." he admitted. "I have an idea of what might've happened if my mom hadn't been killed. My life at least, but I don't mean just that. I mean no demons, no angels, no Apocalypse, or ghosts, or magic, or any of it."

"I don't think that's a world I'd want to live in." Meredith said honestly.

"I think," Dean said as they walked. "that everything would be completely different. I think my parents would've gotten divorced, Adam probably never would've been born, your family would still be alive, and none of us would've ever left Lawrence. I think we would've grown up next door to each other like everyone thought we would, and none of this would exist."

She started to say that her family would never have moved to Lawrence if supernatural things didn't exist, but then she remembered that Hanna Durant's ghost wasn't what had caused her grandparents to leave Bristol Ridge. Her murder had.

Daniel and Abigail Fairchild had moved to Lawrence because of the rumors, gossip, and looks Abigail got from their neighbors after everything that had happened. Clayton killing Hanna and Aaron Reeves, Hanna's father killing Clayton and then himself. They were the same rumors, gossip, and looks that Meredith had grown up with, the same rumors, gossip, and looks that, coupled with the tragic loss of most of her family, that had driven her into her dark days as a teenager.

Her family hadn't ended up in Lawrence, Kansas because of anything supernatural. Unless her great-grandfather had been possessed by a demon or driven to insanity by some spell the thing that had led to the destruction of her family was completely and utterly human.

"You know what?" she said. "Your alternate reality sounds great, but I wouldn't change a thing."

"Why?" Dean asked. "You'd still have your parents and your brother."

"My dad and Jason may have been killed by a ghost, but supernatural forces aren't what started it." she explained. "My family was torn apart by something that started with humanity. My human ancestor went insane and made the very human choice to kill two innocent people. That's what led to me losing my family, Dean, but I still have a family. A wonderful family that I wouldn't have if it weren't for something supernatural. Whether you want to credit God, Cupid, Yellow Eyes, or Hanna Durant's ghost, this...us...what we have, what we've created here? None of it would exist if the supernatural crap wasn't real."

"You know," he said, pulling his hand from her grasp and draping his arm around her shoulders, "For someone who dreams so much, you sure do think pretty logically."

She slipped her arm around his waist, and smiled. "You can afford to think logically when you're living your dream."

"Now, it's not totally finished." Dean cautioned as they came out of the woods and into the pasture where the barn stood. "Not on the inside, anyway. There's still a little more work that needs to be done, but...Mere?"

He was excited to see her reaction, but she didn't seem to be having one. She was just standing there, staring at the barn with a squirrel perched on top of her head.

"It's beautiful, Dean." she finally said, a smile spreading across her face.

Dean was certainly proud of the work he and the rest of the family had done, and it did look great, but to him it was just a barn. Nothing fancy. Just a wooden building with small rooms for tack, feed, and he supposed an office or some other form of storage in the middle, rows of stalls that still needed new doors on either side, and a hay loft upstairs. There were no horses to live in it, and the land around it needed a lot of work. The fences were rotted and falling apart, the grass was patchy and overgrown, and it just looked like part of an old farm that hadn't been taken care of properly for decades because that's exactly what it was.

All of this land had once belonged to the Marshall family. Meredith's great-grandfather Clayton Marshall, who had gone insane and murdered two people before he was murdered himself, had bred horses when he hadn't been doing whatever church deacons did and having psychotic breaks.

He had grown up on this farm, but not as part of the family that owned it. Walter Marshall had been a farmhand here, and his wife, Ruthie, had been the family's maid. Their son, Clayton, had fallen in love with the boss' only daughter, Vivian Todd.

After Clayton and Vivian had been married, and her parents, Matthew and Eliza, had both died of old age the farm had gone to Vivian. Clayton had married into it. And then Vivian had died giving birth to their only child, Meredith's grandmother Abigail, and Clayton had continued to run the farm with help from his brother Nathaniel, until he had been locked up after killing Aaron and Hanna.

Abigail had turned the farm over to Uncle Nathaniel after her father had been locked up, but had stayed in the house until she had married Daniel Fairchild and moved to Lawrence.

After Nathaniel died the farm had gone to his son, Clark, who had decided to sell it when he realized it was never going to be profitable again. And that's what had brought the Fairchild family back to Bristol Ridge.

After Mary had been killed and John left town with Sam and Dean, Dan had heard that his cousin was planning on selling the family farm. So he had bought it and moved the family to Georgia.

They knew all of this because Meredith and Kim had started digging into their family history, wanting to learn more about who and where they came from. They had been surprised and pleased to find out that Cousin Clark was still alive, and living in Jackson, Mississippi. So, the two sisters had packed their bags, hopped in Meredith's Camaro, and gone to meet the relative they hadn't even known existed, taking care of a routine haunting Garth had caught wind of and passed on to Dean on their way through Montgomery, Alabama. And that was how they'd learned about the history of the farm. It was also how they knew that Clayton Marshall and Hanna Durant had actually had a brief, but very real romantic relationship that had ended not long before Hanna had met Aaron Reeves.

Knowing what he now knew about his in-laws, Dean had no trouble understanding why this barn was so special to Meredith, and even though it didn't mean much to him the fact that she was pleased with the way the project was turning out meant a great deal to him. And he had no doubt that the restoration of the barn was sort of a symbolic restoration of the family name for her.

"You know," he said as he watched her study the outside of the restored building from afar, "It's kind of a shame to fix up the barn, and leave the rest of the place looking like a ghost town." If fixing up a barn could wash off a little tarnish, what would fixing up the entire farm and turning it into something good do?

The suggestion in his voice had Meredith turning around to look at him, surprise and excitement evident on her face. "You want to fix up the rest of it?"

Dean shrugged. "Why not? What's the point in having all this land if we're not gonna do anything with it?"

"And what would we do with it?"

"I'm sure we can figure something out." Dean said. "But for starters, we could get a couple of horses to put in that barn."

Her face lit up with excitement for a moment and then clouded. "We can't afford horses."

"We can figure something out."

"You really think so?"

He nodded. "We can try at least."

The smile returned to her face, and she might have thrown herself into his arms for a hug if it weren't for Kit. Instead she simply said, "I love you."

Dean smiled and leaned down to kiss her forehead. "Come on. Let's go check out the inside, and dream a little."

%%%

"I am so not ready for this." Meredith grumbled after dinner.

Everyone was back in their own homes or rooms, and Kit was tucked in for the night. Shelby was back in her cage, and Meredith's suddenly cloudy mood had Dean worried.

"The wedding?" he asked cautiously, hoping it was something else. She had been excited about the wedding an hour ago.

"No." she said, shaking her head and gesturing to the photograph in her hand. "Seeing my mother."

Dean was relieved, but not surprised. He had nothing but good memories of her mother, but then again, he had only know Sharon Fairchild for four years. Meredith knew a lot more of the story from personal experience, and based on what he had learned since making Bristol Ridge his home Sharon Fairchild had not been the Aunt Shari he had known when she died.

He moved to sit beside his soon-to-be-wife, and looked at the picture in her hand. It showed Meredith at about four years old, smiling so hard at the camera that her eyes were squeezed shut, and sitting on a couch pressed against a very pregnant Sharon. But Meredith hadn't even been two yet when Kim had been born in January of 1983. He'd seen pictures of Meredith and Jason with their newborn sister, and this version of her was older by a couple of years. He was clearly missing a piece of the puzzle.

"I didn't know Aunt Shari had another baby after Kim." he said, confused. "What happened?"

Meredith swallowed the lump in her throat and sighed. "Mama got pregnant again around Kim's second birthday. Twins. This picture was taken about a month before they were born."

Dean wanted to know what happened to the babies, but he knew this was a difficult subject for Meredith for more than one reason and he didn't push her. He simply put his arm around her and waited for her to continue.

Meredith swallowed again, fighting back tears, and finally finished her short story. "They didn't make it. They died."

He pulled her close and held her tight, amazed that she wasn't crying.

"And then two years later Daddy died, and we might as well have lost both parents." Meredith continued. "I know that wasn't easy on her, and I'm sure she was still hurting from losing those babies, but she had three other kids that needed her, and she just abandoned us. She was there physically, but she wasn't there at all. She was depressed all the time and either drunk or hung over, and she didn't want anything to do with us. We tried for a long time to get her to pay attention to us, to take care of us, but we finally gave up. I don't even know why she was picking me and Melissa up from that movie. I don't remember that day. I blacked it out, or there was brain damage that erased it. I'm not sure, but all I know is what I was told."

Now she was crying. He'd known the tears would come. They always did. He didn't think he'd ever met a woman that cried as much as Meredith, but it didn't bother him at all anymore. She cried when she was happy, she cried when she was angry, she cried when she was upset, when she was hurt, when she was scared. He was used to it now, and the only thing that bothered him about it was that a lot of the time it meant she was hurting. Like now. These were not happy tears. These were tears of grief and anger and confusion, and there was nothing he could do to make it any better except let her cry. So he did.

"She doesn't have to be there." Dean said when she had stopped crying and was just snuggling. "I can talk to Cas, make an adjustment to the guest list."

"No." Meredith said, wiping her face as she sat up. "She's my mother. She should be there. Besides, I have some questions."

"Hey, wait a minute." he said, alarm bells going off in his head as she got up to go wash her face. "Come back here." She didn't, so he followed her to the bathroom. "Hey. This is supposed to be a happy event, a celebration. It's dangerous enough that Sam, my dad, and my grandfather are all gonna be in the same room. I don't want you picking a fight with your mom at our wedding reception."

Meredith washed her face with a warm, wet washcloth and then turned to look up at him, her eyes puffy and red from crying. "I'm not gonna pick a fight with her. I just want to know why."

"Can't that wait until another time though?" he asked. "I'm sure Cas or Gabriel would be happy to arrange it."

"I'm not politely chatting about the weather with my dead mother, Dean." Meredith argued. "And I guarantee you Kim feels the same way. She and Jake are probably having this exact discussion across the street right now. I promise you I'll do my best to stay civil, but you know I suck at small talk. Especially when there's a giant pink elephant in the room."

"Alright." Dean said, holding up his hands in defeat. "Alright. You win."

Meredith suddenly deflated and leaned against the counter, covering her face with her hands for a moment, and then pushing her hair back away from her face. "I don't want to fight with her. I just don't understand. I know it was hard. I know it sucked. But why couldn't she fight for us?"

"Don't cry anymore." Dean begged gently because he knew how much it annoyed her, pulling her into a comforting hug.

"I'm sorry." she said as the waterworks started up again, her voice muffled by his t-shirt. "I'm so sick of crying."

"It's okay." he assured her. "I hear it's healthy to cry. I just don't like to see you hurting when there's nothing I can do to fix it."

She wrapped her arms around him and pressed closer. "Just be here."

"I'm always here." he said softly. "And I'm always wet."

Meredith giggled because she couldn't help it, and looked up at him. "How are you not totally over my crying? You're the last person I ever would've expected to be so...not freaked out by a compulsive crier. But you're not. You do realize this isn't going to go away after we're married, right?"

Dean smiled. "I don't want you to change."

"Good. I don't plan to."

"Good." he leaned down to kiss her, and frowned when she pushed him away. "That's hurts."

"I'm all snotty."

"Kit threw up in my mouth today. I think I can handle a little wife snot."

She laughed at the memory. "I thought you were gonna throw up for a second."

"That was just gross." Dean said, shuddering visibly at the memory. "Absolutely disgusting. I'd rather change a poop diaper than have to relive that experience."

"No, you wouldn't. I've seen you try to change a poop diaper. It's never gonna happen."

"Yeah, and you've never had a baby throw up in your mouth."

"Kit's not the first baby I've dealt with." she reminded him. "Maddie projectile vomited all over me when she was seven. In my mouth, on my face, my clothes. It was disgusting."

"I'm so sorry." Dean said sincerely.

Meredith smiled, and took the wash cloth he handed her to wipe her face off yet again. "Never shake a recently fed child. Or put them on a spinning ride. Both very bad ideas."

"Noted." He pulled her in for another hug. "So, are you okay now?"

She nodded as she hugged back, and let out a deep, contented sigh. "Yeah. For now."

"Good. Because I think we're running low on tissues. Ow! Don't kick me!"

"Hush." She said. "You'll wake the baby."

"Me? I'm gonna wake the baby?" he grabbed her playfully and pulled her back as she started to walk away, tickling her as he did and making her squeal. "You're the one screaming."

Meredith laughed, and leaned back against him as he wrapped his arms around her. "You're mean."

Dean dropped a kiss on top of her head. "I love you too."

She turned around, and stood on her toes to kiss him, smiling when she pulled away and wrapping her arms around his neck. "I can't wait to marry you in two days."

He wrapped his arms around her waist and lifted her off the floor. She laughed and wrapped her legs around his waist so they wouldn't get tangled up and fall as he carried her to their bed and dumped her on the mattress.

Once she was situated all cozy and comfortable under the covers he laid down beside her and kissed her goodnight.

"Goodnight, my love." she said as she closed her eyes and began to drift off to sleep.

No matter what happened with her mother on Sunday everything was going to be okay because she had Dean.

Yes, we will be delving into the Fairchild family tree some. In this story, and in future stories. When I wrote this it was just because I love Mere so much and I wanted to know a little more about their family and their history. But now, thanks to one little conversation that ended in a completely different place than it started, I have some interesting plans for Miss Meredith. And don't worry, the wedding festivities will start tomorrow, and while I didn't get to fit in everyone I wanted to I did get some really good moments worked in that I think y'all are going to enjoy. I love you guys! ~SG