Work Text:
The girl sat between Sam and Dean at the small, round table in the family kitchen. Large grey eyes took up most of her face, under a mop of wildly curly, honey-colored hair. Her left hand held down a sheet of yellow construction paper, upon which her right was carefully forming letters. It was clear in her demeanor that she was the person in charge.
Across the table from the two Hunters and the child, were her parents. Visibly freaked, they twitched at every rustle of feathers or sough of breath. Fifteen minutes previous, their tidy farmhouse had looked like a horde of demons had attacked--exactly what had happened, in fact.
And then two strange men had burst in and started stabbing things; a very, very bright light had shone; and their daughter had shouted, “Stop it! Stop it, right now!”
In the aftermath of the brief, but violent battle, their home had been more than restored. Every surface gleamed--even the spiders lurking in the walls, unseen by those gathered in the kitchen, glowed with health and well-being.
Barachiel shook out her wings and sighed. “Can we get on with this, please? I do have other places to be, today.”
The child slanted a glance at the Archangel and pouted. Barachiel, Blessing of God, seventh among the highest host of the Lord, sighed again and slumped against the wall of the kitchen. “Never mind,” she muttered, waving a hand, “please, take all the time you need, Theotokos.”
Jack and Anya Kowalski barely winced at the umpteenth utterance of the title, although Anya repeated, “but we’re atheists,” yet again. Both parents were suffering a certain amount of shell-shock.
“Oh! Can I have my own room?” Kelsey asked, excitedly.
“No,” said Jack, more out of what seemed like habit, than real conviction.
“She can have the room!” Jack and Anya’s other daughter yelled from the living room. “I’ll sleep on the sofa! I don’t want to share with some freak!”
“Get stuffed, Tamara!” the Handmaiden of the Lord shrilled back. “I hope you get a giant zit, right in the middle of your stupid face!”
The three Kowalski boys, banished to the living room with their other sister, snickered. Sam and Dean coughed, politely hiding their own laughter.
“Are you absolutely certain?” Jack asked. “This has to be some sort of mistake.”
“I’m sorry.” Sam smiled as reassuringly as possible, under the circumstances. “I know it’s a shock, but Kelsey is definitely a potential Mother of God.”
“This is not how it should be done,” Barachiel complained. “Her father, or one of her brothers, should be writing her Rules. She should be spending the next 11 years in the desert, contemplating the Word.”
Jack snorted. “Right. When pigs fly.”
Barachiel brightened. “I can do that.”
“Touch my pigs and I’ll scream,” Kelsey announced, and glared at her Guardian Angel.
Barachiel glared back. “Perfect virtue and humility, my ass.”
“You said a bad word! You have to put a nickel in the jar!” Kelsey pointed at the angel, until a faint chime sounded from the other room. Subsiding, Kelsey returned to her paper.
Interested, Sam watched the chubby fist carefully forming each letter. Her penmanship was far better than his own had been at six, but the three R’s hadn’t been a priority in the Winchester household. Jack and Anya were homeschooling their kids, with a seriousness and devotion which was frankly awe-inspiring. And intimidating.
In his research, Sam had discovered that the Kowalski’s both held Master’s degrees, and were what Dean would call ‘super-hippies.’ They’d moved to a farm to raise a family, livestock, and organic vegetables, living entirely off the grid, but they weren’t survivalists, or Hunters, or hard-core Bible types. They weren’t even Hippies, properly speaking. Sam was having a hard time categorizing the Kowalski family, which vaguely unsettled him.
So far, Kelsey’s Rules consisted of cookies (preferably fig or oatmeal-raisin) and milk every night before bed, if she was good; combing and braiding her own hair; washing up before meals, including behind her ears; brushing her teeth at least twice per day; studying; writing her Gospel; chores; and taking care of her creatures, of which she had many. The kids were all very into 4-H, and Kelsey, the middle child, was apparently already the surrogate mother to every animal born sick or small or weak on the farm, stray cat or dog wandering by, or injured forest animal found on her daily perambulations through the woods around the property.
Dean resumed his interrogation of Kelsey’s parents. “Were there any signs when she was born? Did you notice a shooting star, maybe, or have a vision of a saint? Anything at all?”
He sounded faintly desperate. Sam smirked. The past quarter hour of questioning had yielded nothing out of the ordinary, if one skipped the fact that Anya had given birth in a pool, aided by a doula. That was a little unusual, but not exactly a sign from God.
By all accounts, Kelsey was just a normal little girl: a little bit stubborn, somewhat precocious, and cute as the proverbial button. She shared a room with her sister, Tamara, and slept in the top bunk. According to her parents, the strangest things about her were that she didn’t like chocolate, loved peas, and sometimes snuck out at night to sleep with the sheep.
“You told me to count sheep,” she pointed out.
“It was a metaphor, I didn’t mean go outside and literally count the sheep,” her mother responded, the argument well-worn, from her tone of voice. “She’s very literal,” explained Anya, appealing to Sam.
“Well, she’s six. Kids her age tend to be pretty literal,” Sam said. “I was pretty literal, myself, around then.”
“Not to mention that she is quite literally the next Queen of Heaven, God-bearer, and Blessed Mother. Not a lot of room for metaphor, there,” Barachiel chimed in.
“Potential,” Jack corrected, “you said before that she was a potential Virgin Mother. That means there are others, right?”
“Well, no.” Sam shrugged and smiled at the parents. “That means that there might not be a Second Coming in this generation. It’s not like Buffy, with many potentials but only one Chosen; it’s more like one potential, with one in a hundred generations Chosen. And, I’m afraid, it’s about that time, again, so…”
“Done,” announced Kelsey, waving her yellow paper. She’d gone with the classics, and decided that a proper number of Rules was an even ten. These would be her rules for living until she turned 12 and pledged to a convent, or was no longer Called. Until then, she would live in her mother’s house, and Barachiel would watch over Kelsey and her family. “Can I show Sam and Dean the puppies, now?”
Kelsey wriggled out of her chair, dropping to the floor with a thump. She was dressed in green dungarees, a pink t-shirt, and ladybug rainboots. She looked nothing at all like a holy vessel in training, but she had wandered into the local Orthodox church on a Sunday morning, less than a week ago, and told the priest that God had told her to go see him. She had been glowing from head to foot, according to poor, traumatized Father Luschenkov, and the icons had cried tears of liquid silver.
Demons, Winchesters, and angels had followed shortly thereafter. It was understandably confusing for her parents and siblings, although the kids seemed to be taking it far better than Anya and Jack.
“Sure, show them the puppies. Whatever!” Anya put her head down on her arms. “I need a drink.”
The other kids came tumbling into the room, squealing, “Puppies!” and Sam and Dean found themselves carried out into the yard on the tide.
Not even Dean was capable of resisting the appeal of baby animals, handling each gently, as offered by the Kowalski brood. Sam managed to restrain himself from open mockery, mostly because he was having a nice time. He couldn’t help wondering who he and Dean would be if they had grown up the way the Kowalski kids were. Dean had had something like this, Sam suspected, the summer he spent on the boy’s farm.
After puppies and washing up (supervised by Kelsey, who carefully inspected their ears,) Jack and Anya insisted they stay for dinner, which was loud and happy, before hitting the road, again.
“What do you think her life will be like?” Sam mused, as the farmhouse dwindled behind them in the fading twilight. “Do you think she’ll end up like us?”
“No. No, I think it’ll be better. I think, maybe, that this is a sign that maybe soon there won’t be need for us. Maybe it actually does get better.”
“Really? You think?” Sam asked, sitting up in surprise. He looked at his brother, serene at the wheel of his Baby. Dean always seemed most at ease when he was driving, at his most philosophical and contemplative.
“I dunno. Why not? The world’s in the crapper: we’ve averted how many Apocalypses, so far? Maybe it really is time for a little peace on Earth. God only knows, I could use a few days off.” Dean smiled and hummed softly, a wandering little tune that faded before Sam could identify it.
“Maybe,” Sam said, doubtfully. “I just wonder what’s the catch, you know. It’s like the Monkey’s Paw.”
“Probably. Nobody seems to agree on what the Second Coming will be like, anyway. I guess we’ll just have to wait and see. Besides, she seems like a good kid, maybe she really will pop out the Prince of Peace.” Dean snickered.
“God, Dean, only you could make an Immaculate Conception sound like porn.”
“It’s a gift, Sammy, a gift.”
~finis~