A/N:  I am so so so sorry for it being over a month since I've updated, my bad y'all. HOWEVER, it is now summer break so here is a vaguely edited ~4K words chapter that is one of my favs <3

(Also FYI it takes place in episode 9 because I skipped a bunch of episodes)

~

Up until 5 minutes ago, the only memories Abby had of the Winchester's home in Kansas were from her brothers' stories of childhood. But now she was sitting in the back of Baby as Dean sped past the sign signifying they were entering Lawrence Kansas. Abby noted Dean's tight grip on the steering wheel and clenched jaws as a result of Sam's possibly prophetic dreams. Abby doesn't really know what to think of it, she has bad dreams too, but they usually don't come true. The thought of Sam having dreams that saw the future made Abby's stomach feel funny, and she thought it did the same for Dean based on his current demeanor.

That wasn't the only thing that was making Abby's stomach feel funny. Going back to the former Winchester home was something Abby definitely did not want to do. Abby couldn't even remember the place, having moved out of it before her first birthday, just a few months after Mom had died. All Abby wanted was to go on a normal hunt with Sam and Dean where no one had weird dreams and there were no memories in the place they were going. But Abigail Winchester did not often get what she wanted, and this occasion was no different than the norm.

But if Dean could go back to their house, when he had sworn to himself he wouldn't, to maybe help some people and for Sammy, Abby could be brave too. Right?

Abby looked warily at the plain blue house Dean had stalled Baby in front of. It looked too... normal. Abby hadn't been expecting to see the ghost of her mother standing on the front lawn or anything, but nothing about this house suggested that just nine years ago a woman, a mother, had been murdered by a demon inside it.

"You gonna be alright, man?" Abby registered Sam's comment as a reference to Dean's opposition to go back to their house. Dean had told Sam, during a conversation, Abby was present for but not involved in, that he had sworn to himself never to go back.

On the long car ride to Kansas, Abby had thought in excruciating depth about all the things Dean and Sam were probably thinking about going back to their old house. When Mary Winchester died, Dean had been in his junior year of high school, just having gotten his driver's license, and was excited to go to college in just a few short years, a landmark that would never come.

Dean had instead spent the last nine years hunting and taking care of Abby when John couldn't, or, though Abby would never admit it, even to herself, except late at night when she couldn't sleep, wouldn't. Sam had been twelve when he had watched his mother die, and almost been murdered himself by a demon. He remembered much of it, that much Abby knew from the panicked pleas Sam whispered in his sleep and the quiet conversations Abby had listened to when she shouldn't have been.

"Let me get back to you on that," was Dean's ever-stoic response to Sam, though Abby could see through his calm exterior to his clenched jaw and hands that were shaking ever so slightly as he walked up to the house.

Dean started to tell some lie about them being federal agents of some kind after the new owner, a young blonde woman opened the door, when Sam interrupted him with, to Abby and Dean's surprise, the truth.

"I'm Sam Winchester and these are my siblings Dean and Abby. Um.. we used to live here. You know, we were just driving by, and we were wondering if we could come see the old place." So not the complete truth, but a lot more of it than normal.

"Winchester, that is so funny. You know, I-I think I found some of your photos the other night."

"You did?" Dean said, and even though he didn't give it away Abby could tell from the harsh swallow immediately after that he hadn't meant to come off so harsh. She prided herself on how well she could read her eldest brother, something pretty much no one else could.

"Okay, come on in," the woman held the door open for the siblings to step through, Sam first, then Abby and Dean closely following behind, keeping his hand on her back. Abby could feel the pressure of the memories that were suffocating Sam and Dean as they trailed behind the woman. The home that felt all too familiar to Sam and Dean was completely absent of familiarity to Abby. She had no childhood memories linked to the walls of the home, only the brothers she was currently between.

Abby had become distracted looking around the house that once could have been hers when Dean's tap on her back brought her back to reality.

"Hi," A girl sitting at a makeshift kitchen table in front of them said, looking right at Abby. She seemed to be about Abby's age, probably a little older.

"Hi," Abby said softly, giving her a slight wave in response to hers.

"Hey, Sari," Sam said in the softer tone of voice he used when speaking to kids, Abby included. It made Abby kind of mad when he used it if she was already mad about something like Sam and Dean making her stay in the car while they went and did something cool, but most of the time she didn't mind.

"So, you just moved in," Dean said, his anxiety clear to Abby from the rhythmic tapping of his fingers on her upper back.

"Uh yeah, from Wichita."

"You got family here?" Abby thought that question probably sounded weird to this lady, and her opinion of her dropped a margin when she actually answered Dean's question.

"No, I just uh..." This lady clearly didn't have older brothers to teach her anything, Abby thought to herself while the woman paused, trying to find the right phrasing, "Um, needed a fresh start. That's all. So new town, new job- I mean as soon as I find one- new house."

"So how are you liking it so far?" Sam asked. Abby began to tune out the conversation, focusing instead on the workbook of school problems Sari was doing. Even upside down, Abby could tell she wasn't very good, but she knew not to correct her because that would fall under the category of "rude," something Abby was supposed to not be right now.

Abby focused back in on the conversation when she felt Dean's hand tense on her back. "-got flickering lights almost hourly." Jenny said, something Abby knew was a tell-tale sign of supernatural interference.

"Oh, that's too bad. What else?" Dean said.

"Um, sink backed up. There's rats in the basement." Abby didn't need to see her brothers' faces to know they were probably upset by what had happened to their childhood home. "I'm sorry, I don't mean to complain," Jenny continued.

Abby shifted from foot to foot and bit her lip, watching looking at the worn toes of her sneakers as Dean asked Jenny more questions about the house.

Abby could just barely hear Sari whisper to her mother "Ask them if it was here when they lived here," but it still made her stomach twist a bit. Abby knew that after hunting for her whole life, practically, she should be desensitized, but sometimes things still got a bit too creepy for her.

"What, Sari?" Sam said from the right of Abby.

"The thing in my closet."

Abby kept her eyes on her shoes as Sam assured the young girl that there was never anything in their closets.

"I wasn't dreaming." Sari protested against her mother, "It came into my bedroom, and it was on fire." Abby bit down on the inside of her lip hard enough for a metallic taste to fill her mouth and sand filled her stomach, pulling her down.

As Sam and Dean walked away from the house briskly, Abby had to practically jog to keep up with them, focusing on not falling behind while Sam listed all the signs of a malevolent spirit they had just heard.

"Yeah, well, I'm just freaked out that your weirdo visions are coming true," Dean said as they turned onto the street, now holding Abby's left hand in his right, as Sam kept going off on Dean to Dean's left.

"Forget about that- the thing in the house, do you think it's the thing that killed Mom and Jessica."

"I don't know." As they reached the car, the pit in Abby's stomach had grown enough that she felt like it was going to swallow her alive.

"I mean has it come back or has it been her the whole time? Sam said.

"Or maybe it's something else entirely, Sam, we don't know yet!" Abby just wanted to curl up in the backseat of the car and be somewhere far away from Lawrence, Kansas, so Dean and Sam would stop fighting.

"Those people are in danger, Dean, we have to get them out of that house.

"And we will."

"No, I mean now." Dean finally unlocked the door to Baby, and Abby opened her door and got into her back seat. As Sam and Dean got in, she grabbed her small stuffed bear from next to her and held it to her stomach, trying to make the dark angry pit go away.

It didn't go away, though, so by the time they had driven to the gas station, Sam and Dean had gotten out, and Abby was still sitting in her seat, holding her bear tightly. She closed her eyes and tried to drown out the snippets of Sam and Dean's conversation floating through the open car windows. She tried to pretend that they were talking about something else, some new case that didn't involve the house Abby was supposed to grow up in.

"I mean how much do you actually remember about that night," Abby knew Sam was talking about the night their mother had been killed, and thinking about that made her squeeze her eyes tighter closed.

"Not much," Dean said, which Abby thought was strange. Dean had been sixteen, old enough to drive a car when their house had burnt down. Abby, of course, remembered nothing of the night, but she had always assumed her brothers had intact memories of it.

"I remember the fire...the heat... then I carried Abby out the front door, dragging you with us."

"I don't remember anything before we were out of the house,"

"I know, Dad drilled you for weeks on a description, anything, of whatever killed Mom."

"And he never had a theory about what did it?" Sam asked.

"If he did, he kept it to himself. God knows we asked him enough times.

"Okay. So if we're going to figure out what's going on now, we have to figure out what happened back then, see if it's the same thing."

Sam and Dean kept talking, but Abby managed to pull her blanket out from under the seat where she'd stashed it that morning and over her face. Her legs stuck out, and the bit of skin where her jeans didn't quite hit her purple Converse was cold, but she couldn't hear them anymore besides low, very muffled noises, so it was worth it. Her racing mind had almost slowed to a jog when she felt a light tap on the top of her left shoe and practically jumped out of her skin.

"You okay?" Sam was using the same voice he had used with the girl earlier.

"Fine," Sam could see through Abby's lie and she knew it, the blanket over her head had been strange behavior even for her.

"My head, uh, hurts." Sam's hand was ice cold as he pressed the back of it against her forehead.

"You feel fine, it's probably just the weather or something. Want me to grab you some medicine from inside?" Sam said, referring to the gas station they were parked outside.

"I'm okay," Abby said and Sam nodded, closing the passenger-side back seat door and getting into his seat in the car upfront.

~

Abby wished she had a more interesting name. Something cool, like Azalea or Lily. She really loved flower names. Missouri Mosely, though, was too weird of a name. Having the same name as a state was fine when it was something like Virginia or Georgia, but Missouri? Just strange, in Abby's opinion. But, in all fairness, 'strange' encapsulated the psychic standing in front of her pretty well. She, apparently, lied to people about how their husband was 'cold-banging' the gardener and knew Sam, Dean, and Abby's names without them saying anything.

She kind of liked her though. Missouri Mosely may have been strange, but her laugh made the pit in Abby's stomach a little lighter. Abby could tell Dean and Sam were not big fans, though, from the way they looked at her after she correctly guessed Sam's girlfriend had died and their father was missing. Abby backed away a little after that. She didn't want Missouri to read what was inside her head, especially not to read aloud to her brothers.

"I don't know," Missouri said after Dean asked where their father was.

"Don't know? You're supposed to be a psychic right?"

"Boy, you see me sawing some bony tramp in half?" Abby pressed her lips together to hide her smile at Missouri's comment. "You think I'm a magician? I may be able to read thoughts and sense energies in a room, but I can't just pull facts out of thin air." She continued indignantly, to Dean's embarrassment.

As they sat down at her request, Abby stopped trying to hide her small grin after she saw Sam's much bigger one. Her smile grew when Missouri snapped at Dean for even thinking about putting his foot on her coffee table, saying she'd 'knock him with a spoon.'

"Okay, so. Our dad, when did you first meet him?"

"He came for a reading a few days after the fire. I just told him what was really out there in the dark. I guess you could say I drew back the curtains for him."

"What about the fire? Do you know what killed our mom?"

"A little."

As Missouri told her story of how she couldn't sense what had killed their mother, besides that it was evil, Abby grew more and more uncomfortable. The happy mood had slipped from the room, and Abby grew more and more aware of how Missouri hadn't made a single comment to or about her, besides saying her name earlier. It was like Abby was invisible, and she wasn't sure if she liked it or not.

"So you think something's back in that house?" Missori said after Sam had explained the situation.

"Definitely," Sam said

"I don't understand..."

"What?"

"I haven't been back inside, but I've been keeping an eye on the place, and it's been quiet. No sudden deaths, no freak accidents. Why is it acting up now?"

"I don't know," was Sam's ever-honest response. "But Dad going missing and Jessica dying and now this house, all happening at once, it just feels like something's starting."

"That's a comforting thought," Dean said, and Abby looked down at her shoes, not quite touching the floor in between Sam and Dean's much bigger shoes as the pit in her stomach grew darker and heavier.

~

Abby hung back as Missouri convinced Jenny to let them in, and she hung back as Missouri diagnosed the sickness in the house as something other than what had killed their mother. Shivers went up Abby's spine when Missouri explained that there was more than one spirit residing in what was formally the Winchester's house, spirits who were there because of what had happened to Mary Winchester.

The wounds Mary Winchester's death had left on the house had become infected, and they attracted pain, just as the wounds she had left on her family attracted the anger that festered inside each of the siblings.

Abby sat next to Dean at the dining room table, and she placed the ingredients in the cloth bags, just as Missouri had instructed her and Dean to. She kicked her legs against the side of the chair as every inch of her body screamed for her to get out of the house. Abby had been in haunted places before, hundreds of times, since before she could talk. But here it was different. The former Winchester house was not just haunted by two spirits, but also the ghosts of Sam and Dean's childhood, and what would have been Abby's childhood.

Abby stuck by Dean as he made holes in the walls of the house, placing bags in their respective spots, so when she saw the knife beginning to rise behind Dean's back she grabbed Dean's arm and whispered his name. She was loud enough he heard her and turned just in time to push her to the ground with him, dodging the sharp blade.

He pushed her behind him wordlessly as he blocked more knives with the table and dragged her with him by her hand, held tightly in his, as Dean raced up the stairs to see if Sam was being similarly attacked by the house. As Dean pulled the cord wrapped tightly around Sam's neck off, Abby kicked a small hole in the drywall, feet under where Sam's had been, and hurriedly pushed the small bag in.

As soon as the bag was in, a gust of light emitted from the room, and Abby stayed in her place hiding against the wall as she watched Dean rouse their brother from his almost-suffocation. Abby trailed behind the brothers, and they went downstairs to the wrecked kitchen and waited for Jenny to return home.

~

Abby was driving in and out of sleep, curled up in the backseat of Baby when she was woken fully by Sam and Dean getting out of the car at a speed that suggested an emergency. She followed suit, scrambling out of the back and following her brothers into the house as quickly as she could manage.

"You grab the kids, I'll get Jenny." Dean said to Sam and then to Abby, "Go with Sam." Abby nodded.

Abby trailed behind Sam as he ran through the hallway to the daughter's room, and almost ran into him when he stopped abruptly in the doorway. Peeking around, she could see the cause of the girl's frightened screams: a seemingly human figure, invisible, and covered in very visible flames. Before Sam could move, Abby darted around him and she felt his hand brush against her back, trying to stop her as she ran as fast as she could to the girl's bed.

"Come on," Abby grabbed Sari's hand, the same size as hers, and pulled her off of her bed and next to Abby. "Don't look!" She said, louder than she meant to, as she darted back to Sam's side and down the hallway. The group, with Sari and Abby in front, still linked by their hands, and Sam carrying Richie behind them only made it half of the way down the stairs when Sam stopped them. He shoved Richie into Abby's arms, and said "Alright, take Richie outside as fast as you can and don't look back," and as soon as Richie was held in Abby's arms as securely as possible, the floor below Sam collapsed and he fell through the hole into the ground below.

Sari screamed loudly as Abby, shifting to hold Richie in one arm and hold Sari's hand with the other, ran as fast as she could down the stairs and out the front door. As Jenny picked up her two kids, embracing them both, Dean kneeled in front of Abby and asked, panicked, "Abby, where's Sam?"

"He's inside. Something's got him." Abby said, tears forming in her eyes from the worry consuming her body.

~

Abby stood by Dean's side as he used an ax on the front door of the house, ignoring the strange looks they were getting from Jenny's neighbors who had gathered in the last few minutes from the loud commotion. Abby ducked through the hole in the door after Dean and into the house. She stayed partly behind him as he pointed the gun at the flaming figure in front of them and stared with wide eyes, unable to break her sight away, as the flaming figure morphed into a woman who Abby had only seen in pictures.

Mary Winchester stood in front of Abby, and it felt like her insides were tearing apart as part of her wanted to run as fast as she could and the other part wanted to never leave, staying staring at her beautiful, mystical, dead mother for as long as she could. The moments that passed as Mary became more clear seemed like ages for Abby. She couldn't believe what she was seeing. Seeing a random person who you know is dead standing in front of you, seemingly alive, is one thing, seeing your mother who you only have memories of in photographs standing in front of you is a completely different thing.

"Mom?" Dean half-whispered and Abby watched as the spirit of their dead mother approached them. Mary Winchester looked at Dean and said his name, clear as day, and it sounded to Abby just like she was alive as Abby realized, with a slight shock, that she had never heard her mother's voice before. Abby shifted her weight from foot to foot, still staring up at her mother with wide dark brown eyes as she tried to frantically memorize every detail of her face.

Mary shifted her gaze down to Abby and as Abby waited with bated breath, Mary locked eyes with her. Abby was waiting to hear her mother say her name for the first time, but Mary said nothing. As she took in the sight of the young girl, Abigail's mother's smile fell, just slightly, and a small puzzled look took over her face.

The pit in Abby's stomach which had disappeared, forgotten, in the action, suddenly came back as Abby realized she was unrecognizable to her own mother. Her mother, who was the first to hold her, did not know what she looked like, or who she was. Mary Winchester couldn't have picked Abby out of a lineup, but Abby could find her mother in any crowd, and she was going to have to live with that for the rest of her life.

Abby turned her head with Dean to follow their mother as she walked past them to Sam.

"Sam." The only sound in the house was Sam's slight whimpers and Dean's heavy breathing.

"I'm sorry," Mary said.

"For-for what?" Sam choked out.

Mary only looked at her youngest son, her youngest child she got to watch grow, with a pained expression before turning and walking away.

She looked up to the sky and said "You, get out of my house."

"And let go of my son."

Mary Winchester's spirit burst into flames and disappeared as the spirit which had been holding Sam tightly against the wall let go.

"Now it's over," Sam said, quietly, as the Winchester siblings looked around their former home.

~

As Dean drove down the street, away from their house, Abby watched the houses go by and tried very hard not to think about the box full of pictures next to her. The pictures were of her brothers, her parents, and in some cases, her. They were of a time, a family, Abigail Winchester never got to see, to experience the love of.

Mary Winchester's spirit may have been let go of, released into the infinite, that night, but Abigail Winchester's spirit remained tied forever to the house, her brothers, and her father. The wound that had been left on the four remaining Winchester's that night had grown, tearing the love that had once resided between the father and his children away, hiding its tattered remains in some dark corner of John Winchester's heart.

In a kinder world, Abigail Winchester would have grown up in that house, with brothers who visited from college to see their baby sister and a loving father who doted on his baby. But Abigail Winchester had not been given the same childhood her brothers had, she had gotten one of the guns hidden inside sleepover bags and a switchblade stuck in the bottom of her left Converse, for emergencies.