Work Text:
Dean groaned and leaned back as the angels moved around him, Castiel checking their small cache of food and Gabriel dangling a long weed for the kittens to bat. He was tired enough to sleep, but he didn’t want to quite yet. “Hey Cas, what d’you miss about home? Earth, I mean,” he asked.
Castiel paused and crouched beside him. “It is very different from Heaven, and from here,” he mused. “There is so much to do and see there—I watched your kind for millennia before I saved you. You are moved by such strong emotions, unlike Heaven. Anger and hatred, at times, but also love, loyalty, companionship. It is the way that Heaven was meant to be, and I miss that. Particularly Bobby and your brother.”
Dean nodded, fingering something in his pocket. “Yeah. I miss ‘em too.” He pulled out a sheet of folded and rumpled paper, turning it over. “Sammy gave me this. Just a few days before we offed the Leviathans...it’s all I’ve got left of him, ‘til we blow this joint. Just some stupid notes on whatever.”
Castiel laid a hand on Dean’s shoulder as Shadow wandered over. “You will see Sam again, Dean. Do not fear.”
“What dat? Smell differr’n,” Shadow insisted, batting at the paper.
“Hey! Paws off the paper, cat,” Dean grumbled, jerking the paper back.
“Sam gave that paper to Dean, Shadow,” Castiel explained, stroking her head.
“My dada maeke dat? I want see him!” She lunged out of Castiel’s hands and caught the paper in her mouth, leaping over Dean’s lap and bounding into the shadows at the back of the cave.
Dean swore and scrambled after her, though he couldn’t see the black kitten in the dark shadows. “Gabe, your damn cat took my paper!”
The archangel scooped up Steve and followed his brother and the hunter deeper into the cave. “And? It’s paper, and she can’t go far. This cave isn’t deep—”
Castiel lifted his kitten from Gabriel’s arms and inspected the shadows, now less inky with the archangel near. “Gabriel, she isn’t here.”
“What?”
Shadow melted through the shadows, using them as a portal back to her mother’s realm. From there, she followed the imprinted scent on the paper to another point, far away, which overlaid the human’s Earth. Another push, and—
She tumbled into a dark room with a long bed and an open bag on the floor. She sniffed it carefully, ears perking up when the smells within matched those of the paper she held and her grumpy uncle.
The bed shifted, and she crouched, staring. A foot pushed over the side, dangling limply. Shadow leapt onto the bed—having to scramble slightly up the comforter—and followed the foot and long legs up to a face.
It matched the one which sometimes appeared at night, when Daddy and her uncles talked to her Dada, so she licked it, purring loudly.
And then Sam woke up.
“What did you do to my cat, hunter?!”
“Nothing! She disappeared on her own, and after stealing the last thing I have of Sam’s! You wanna explain that?!”
“It was a fucking piece of paper! Shadow’s a living creature, and mine!”
Steve leapt out of Castiel’s arms, presumably to hide from the shouted words around them. Cas didn’t blame him; he’d hide too, except that Dean and Gabriel would continue fighting until either the cave collapsed on them from his angered Grace or their voices attracted monsters. “Please calm...”
“If you don’t get it back—”
“If she gets hurt—”
They pushed against Cas’s hands on their chest, pushing them apart.
Sam jerked back on instinct, his mind jumping to red alert. He looked down and saw a—how had a kitten gotten into his locked room?
“Yoo mai dada?” it purred, darting forward to press against his stomach, and Sam’s confusion only grew.
“Shadow? How did you get in here?”
Shadow purred her agreement and walked up his chest as Sam fell against the bed again. “I comes see yoo!” she chimed, rolling happily on his chest and stretching her paws toward his chin.
“I see that, but how did you get here? You were stuck in Purgatory!” Sam insisted, nudging her paws away.
“I naot stuck. I go see Daddy.”
Sam sighed. “So...you were somewhere else before Purgatory? Where was that?”
“Home! I live night,” Shadow purred.
“Night is a time, Shadow.” Sam covered his eyes with an arm. He didn’t know why he was arguing with a kitten that talked like a toddler. It couldn’t work.
“Dat too.”
He groaned.
Steve cowered near the front of the cave, the voices of his papa and his uncle echoing off the walls. Shadow had disappeared in the middle of their game with Uncle, and then everyone was yelling. He curled in a ball, paws pressing down his flattened ears, but they were still angry. The tiny kitten scooted toward the front of the cave, ears cautiously perking back up as the angry sounds faded.
At the mouth of the cave, the growling behind him was finally muted, and a soft breeze rustled the leaves in the trees. He didn’t know why Dada and Papa didn’t let him come out here; this was nice. It was warm and quiet and there were plants and things to pounce on!
A black butterfly fluttered past, and Steve chased it, batting clumsily with his untrained paws.
“Pick up, damn you,” Sam growled, nursing a Coke and a headache. Shadow refused to be separated from him—even sitting on the bathroom counter and chattering through his entire shower, that had been fun—so he’d barely made it to the soda machine down the hall without getting caught.
She also refused to answer questions about where she came from, preferring to sniff his shoes and bat at the Impala’s keys, so he was deferring to Gabriel. Assuming that the asshole answered his blog...which he wasn’t.
Sam sighed and sat back as Shadow clawed her way up his legs and into his lap. “Dada, I hungurry,” she pouted. “Yoo has food?”
“I don’t know what cats eat, Shadow,” he replied, lowering a hand to pet her and engulfing her small body.
“I eat yoo food,” she chirped, pushing into his hand and vibrating with purring.
“I don’t have any food here, Shadow. You’d have to wait while I go get some.” He was not ordering delivery with a talking cat in the room. If anyone even delivered for breakfast.
“No I comes with yoo.”
“You’re a cat, Shadow. Cats can’t go into stores and restaurants to buy food, and a talking cat would scare people.”
“But I naot cat!”
Sam scrubbed his face again with the hand not covering the impossible feline. “Then what are you?”
“I yoo baby! I yoo baby, an’ Daddy’s baby, an’ Maemmy’s baby.”
“But you look like a cat, Shadow.”
“Ifs I look laeke yoo, we gets food?”
“You can’t—” Sam gave up. “Sure, if you can look like me, we can go get food.”
“O-tay!” Shadow pushed his hand away and stretched her paws up his chest—and then kept stretching them, while the fur changed to skin and her paws became fingers and toes. In only a few seconds, a small dark haired child bounced on his lap where the black kitten had been, and Sam instinctively caught her waist before she fell.
“...Shadow?”
“We gets food naow? I hungurry!” Her voice was exactly the same, and her green eyes, she just...was now a little girl.
“How did you do that? And no, you need clothes before we go anywhere.”
“I naot has clothes. An’ I tell yoo I naot kitty. I baby goddess.”
Sam pushed aside the thousands of questions to focus on the moment. “So...your mom is a goddess?” he guessed, setting her on the bed while he dug in his bag for a spare shirt.
“Maemmy Nyx!” Shadow chirped, watching him sniff a dark t-shirt surreptitiously.
“And your dad is Gabriel. Huh.” Sam held up the t-shirt. “Do you know how to put this on?” At her quizzical head tilt, he pushed it over her head and threaded her arms through the arm holes in a parody of vague memories of his own childhood and Dean dressing him. “That’ll do until we find a store.” He balanced her on one hip as he gathered his coat, cell phone, and keys—then left a message for Gabriel.
Please tell me you didn’t actually impregnate a goddess.