Babies In The Bunker #4

Sam was slowly giving up on the idea of sleeping. When he wasn’t caring for the little ones, he was hunched over the old files in the bunker, trying to find an answer for what was happening. It was almost two days now that Dean and Castiel had been toddlers, and he was becoming desperate. Kevin had been sceptical that they’d find anything in those old files if the archangel knew nothing, but Sam wasn’t giving up that easily. There had to be something, right? Something, crammed away in some distant corner somewhere. There had to be something. Because strange objects like this never just appear; everything has a creator. Every last object or creature had been made by something. Even the angels were forged by God. So this dumb little box, the only lead that they so far possessed, had to have some kind of maker.

He screwed his face up as he remembered the small object, so seemingly innocent when he first looked at it. But of course, things were never that simple. He should have known that the things that look the most innocent are often the most dangerous. Just like Belladonna, baby Castiel, and of course this little wooden box.

So now, at half past midnight, he was perched at the kitchen table. He had one of the old files laid out in front of him, skimming through every last page. And even though he was only skimming them, it still took a long time. Even so he pressed on, determined to find something. He would find something on this dumb, decorative wooden box.

It’s in this file… He continually promised himself this, every time he closed the last folder and grabbed the next one. It’s definitely in this file…

He continued like this for many hours into the night, before his body at last gave up on him.

***

When the morning came, Sam received a rather rude awakening. He blinked several times, the light from the kitchen window that shone down onto him blinding him as he struggled with his eyelids to keep them open. He sat himself upright, looking down at the open file that he’d used as a pillow. His head was throbbing as he tried to remember what had happened the night before. Seriously, he had not gotten enough sleep to be woken up this early in the morning…

He was broken from that train of thought, however, as he felt something bat against his arm.

He looked down to the location of it. He rubbed his eyes, not quite certain of what he was seeing. Could it just be his tiredness making him see things?

Another slap on his arm told him that no, he clearly wasn’t.

“Bop-bul.”

Sam blinked again, looking down at the toddler standing in front of him. Little tufts of black hair, tiny dark eyes shining brightly with the innocence of youth, and apparently stark naked asides from a t-shirt that seemed to drown him. He had a clear plastic baby bottle in his hand, which is apparently what he’d been batting Sam’s arm with. It took a couple of moments before Sam could connect his thoughts with his mouth to talk again.

“…Kevin?” he finally asked, looking down at the toddler.

“Bop-bul.” He repeated, not answering Sam’s question.

Sam sighed.

“You thirsty, Kev?” he wearily rose to his feet, rubbing his temples. He decided just to accept what he was seeing. Enough changes had gone on over the past few days that it seemed possible that it was possible that the prophet was now a child, and he chose not to question it. He took the bottle from the child’s hand. Judging from his height, he looked to be about two.

“No.” Kevin replied sharply.

His reaction was very pointed and unmistakable. Sam turned back to look at him strangely. He wasn’t thirsty? Then what did he want a baby bottle for?

Kevin answered Sam’s unspoken question, blinking at him expectantly.

“Gabey want bop-bul.”

Sam froze at that statement. Had he heard little Kevin correctly? Gabey? Please let him have misheard that.

“W-who wants the bottle, Kevin?” Sam tried to speak calmly, unable to keep a slight waver from his voice.

“Gabey.” Kevin repeated, looking at him plainly. “Gabey-ul.”

Sam’s heart plunged to the pit of his stomach. He started praying to himself one single phrase over and over, dreading for it to be true. Please, don’t let this mean what I think it means. Don’t let it mean what I think it means.

Having baby humans and baby angels had been challenging enough. Please, don’t let this mean that they had a baby archangel on their hands… But what else could it mean, really? Little Dean and little Cas had both been brought back big enough to use sippy cups, so what would Gabriel need a baby bottle for…?

He was broken from that train of thought with one ear-splitting wail from down the hall. Sam dropped the bottle and fell to his knees, already recognising what this was. This was the crying of a baby angel. But if it was possible, this screaming seemed even more unbearable than little Castiel’s wails had been.  So who could this be if it wasn’t Cas…?

Please, someone. I don’t care who. Anyone, just stop him crying.

Sam spoke his prayer through gritted teeth, pinching his fingers as tightly as he could into his earlobes. He hated the sound of babies crying anyway, but this was nothing short of completely unbearable… literally…

The wails only lasted a matter of moments, his prayer being responded to remarkably quickly. Perhaps it was the unexpected wailing, the nature of his prayer, or just the plain obscurity of everything. Because there was no rhyme or reason as for why there should be an infant fledgling at the men of letters bunker, crying its eyes out. But of course, for some reason, there was.

And that brought a fluttering of wings and an angel running to the scene in mere moments. In a matter of seconds, the bunker was calm again.

Sam gave himself a couple of minutes before attempting to get back up, taking in his surroundings again. The wailing had disorientated him a little and made his head spin, so he had to recompose himself. He noticed little Kevin crying, and so took him into his arms as he rose to his feet. He rubbed the back of the shoulders of the two year old prophet, facing the doorway to the kitchen. And that was the point when he realised that they weren’t alone.

There in the doorway stood the angel that had stopped the baby’s cries and saved his eardrums. The shoulder of his black blazer was now damp from the tears of the baby he had propped up in his arms. He looked venomously at the elder Winchester, supporting the six month old in his arms. It seemed a strange sight to him, Balthazar holding a baby. It looked almost alien, really, something that he’d never have once imagined him doing.

“I do hope you have a good explanation for this.” He spoke coldly, every last syllable dripping with tones of how unimpressed he was.

And Sam couldn’t help but wonder what was in store for him if he couldn’t supply a reason that Balthazar deemed as “good”.

***

Sam rubbed his temples, attempting to soothe the raging headache that was fast developing. He now had Dean and Castiel returned to their normal size and maturity, the former demanding answers. Dean was demanding as for why Sam had left him and Cas in a small child’s cot, completely naked—asides from the scraps of fabric that had once been children’s pyjamas. He seemed to have temporarily forgotten the de-aging curse that had befallen Sam, and so it seemed completely absurd that one had just affected him and Castiel.

Balthazar had taken a seat at the kitchen table, propping up the infant—Gabriel, they had deduced—whilst also demanding to know what the hell was going on. And of course, Sam was the one left with supporting the two year old Kevin on top of all of this. That wasn’t such a difficult thing, though—Kevin was quite content to perch on Sam’s lap and munch at the bits of jammy toast that Sam had made for him. The only downside to this seemed to be that two year old Kevin was quite a messy eater, getting strawberry jam on everything.

And after two days of trying to tolerate the crazy antics of little Dean and Castiel, Sam found himself starting to wear thin.

“It’s a de-aging spell, Balthazar. No, I don’t know what caused it. It started with me, then it was Dean and Cas, now it looks it’s Gabriel and Kevin. Gabriel didn’t know what had caused it, either. I’m going through every last file here in the bunker trying to work out what might be behind this.” Sam snapped. He continually rubbed at his temples and eyelids, tired from multiple nights of little sleep and frustration at everyone’s inability to listen to him.

Really, it was a good thing that Kevin was all too happy to play with his breakfast and wasn’t paying much attention to the man he was sitting on. He should be trying to make him eat it a little more intently, Sam thought to himself, but he wasn’t especially bothered about it right now. There were certainly other things bothering him more than if the prophet ate his jammy toast or not.

“Well do you have any idea how to stop it?” Dean interjected, “If this is the third time it’s de-aged someone then—”

“I’m working on it, Dean. Why do you think I’ve barely slept for the past two nights? I’ve been fruitlessly going through every last file in this bloody bunker, trying to find something about how to stop this thing!” He smacked his fist down on the table, grabbing everyone’s attention. “And all the while we had Cas smashing honey jars over the impala to bring around all the bees he possibly could, and you were streaking and doing just about everything possible to make my life even more difficult! No, I haven’t yet figured out how to stop it.”

Dean raised his hands defensively.

“Okay man, sheesh. Just asking you a question…”

Kevin stopped eating for a moment to look over his shoulder at Sam, raising a pair of slightly scared, innocent dark brown eyes. His little outburst appeared to have distracted him from his breakfast. Whether or not Kevin ate it wasn’t what bothered Sam, it was the fact that he’d distracted and upset him.

Sighing, he took a couple of deep breaths, forcing himself to calm down a little. He took one of the sticky slices of toast and held it back out to the toddler prophet. He waved it from side to side before guiding it towards the toddler’s mouth.

“Here comes the aeroplane…” Sam said softly, causing Kevin to giggle. Suddenly, he wasn’t worried or upset about Sam’s outburst anymore, and seemed to forget all about it. He gladly took the food from Sam’s hand, going back to his breakfast.

Relieved, Sam looked back at Dean, Castiel and Balthazar. It was very tempting to lose his temper at this point, but he forced himself to remain calm for the toddler that was perched on his lap.

Balthazar spoke, looking at Sam irritably.

“So what were you doing when this… happened?” he looked displeased, propping up the baby Gabriel in his arms a little better.

Sam frowned, propping his chin up on the back of his hand, thinking.

“I was filing things away in one of the research rooms.” He said after a few minutes, straining his memory, “I picked up this little box, filing it away just like everything else. But it felt… strange, like it was on fire or something, and I dropped it. I don’t remember anything else.”

Balthazar frowned and rubbed his chin, apparently thinking. He leaned back a little in the chair he was perched on, cocking his head to one side. Gabriel slapped his cheek a couple of times with a slightly sticky, pudgy hand, but he ignored him. He seemed to be a little impatient.

“Do you know where this “box” is?” he finally asked, sitting back up properly on his chair. He almost fell off of it immediately afterwards, however, when the infant in his arms burst out crying again. He straightened himself up immediately afterwards, rubbing Gabriel’s back and hushing him quietly, trying to calm him down. The child’s cries seemed to be physically hurting him too, although not as much as any of the humans in the room. It was little Kevin, who’d now fallen on the floor from Sam’s lap, who seemed to know what was wrong. While still crying and curling into the moose-man that was had been him, he extended one arm out to the angel holding the wailing fledgling, holding the empty plastic baby bottle.

Gabriel still hadn’t been fed.

Castiel was the one who noticed this, and took the bottle from the prophet. He promptly vanished for a moment, returning with the bottle filled with baby formula. Cas held it out to Balthazar, wincing, who was still trying to stop the pitiful wails. Upon noticing the baby bottle, Balthazar snatched it from Castiel’s hand and started to feed Gabriel, relief washing over him when the fledgling suddenly quietened.

The crisis had been averted.

It took a few moments for the humans to regain their composure. Sam was the first to sit up, remembering Balthazar’s question from before the archangel’s little outburst. He rose to his feet, mumbling as he left the kitchen.

“I’ll… see if I can find that box I was talking about.”

Dean quickly picking up Kevin, who was still at this point on the kitchen floor from where he’d fallen, before he had a chance to start crying and set Gabriel off again. Kevin clung onto the elder Winchester’s shoulder, looking over at the infant archangel.

“Don’t cwy Gabey. Balfy have you.” He reached over Dean’s shoulder in an attempt to touch Gabriel, but he was a little too far away and almost fell from Dean’s arms. Before that could happen, Dean re-adjusted how he was holding the miniature prophet, and sat him back down at the table, fetching the toddler’s breakfast for him to finish eating it.

And though he didn’t show it outwardly, Kevin’s comment made a small smile tinge on Balthazar’s lips as he continued feeding up the fledgling in his arms.