She supposes she should have known that the Restoration of her Grace was going to do a number on her human body. After all, angels don't have human bodies. That's why they have to borrow them from humans.

Which is problematic.

Because it's not like she can go to the person most suited to be her vessel -- a thirty-something librarian in South Carolina who got married a year ago and is six months pregnant and bakes award-winning lemon meringue pies and sings in her church choir -- and ask, "Hey, wanna go on the run from Heaven with me? It'll almost surely eventually get us both killed. Sounds like fun, right?"

Even the most devout of vessels is probably going to decline that particular request.

And Anna isn't all that interested in dealing with pregnancy.

But she also isn't all that interested in being stuck in her angelic form for however long she's got. (And that clock is ticking; she's still got a death sentence, after all. Then again, she doubts very much that she is Heaven's top priority at the moment; they have an Apocalypse on their hands.)

Which means it's time to call in a very old favor.

All she has to do is find him.

Of course, that's its own set of problems, because they're both of them trying to fly under the Celestial radar right now. She can't just broadcast on all frequencies -- she's got good reason to believe he'd hear her, but so would all their other siblings. Neither of them wants that. But she's fairly certain he'll have heard all about recent events. Which means all she needs is the tiniest of blips, because her brother is not a fool. And sympathy and old favors aside, he certainly won't want her to do that again. They don't exactly need attention drawn to themselves, or each other.

Then it's just a question of waiting.

He'll find her.

It really is a beautiful night.

Clear. Temperate.

Sky full of stars, breeze through the trees.

Not a bad last night, if you have to have one.

(And, in the end, doesn't everyone?)

It's quiet, too. The looping message from the angels -- Dean Winchester gives us Anna by midnight, or we hurl him back to damnation -- has finally stopped going around and around in her head. She hadn't really expected it to. Because, yes, of course, they all got the message after the first few dozen threats, but the message is only half the point. And she wouldn't have been surprised if her former brothers and sisters decided she should have to listen to that particular message for however long she could still hear.

Anna has slipped away, just for a moment, just to be outside and away from the discussion of what to do, how to stop angels and demons and both all at once, how to save her, if such a thing can still be done, which, practically speaking, may be impossible. Oh, Dean and Sam are very good at what they do -- Anna may have that on hearsay, but it's pretty reliable hearsay. But, practically speaking, this may be beyond them. May be beyond any humans.

She hasn't gone far, not out of earshot, should they call for her, still hidden from angels and demons and whomever else by Ruby's "extra crunchy" hex bag -- stealth technology of the mystical world. But she just wants to walk for a moment -- stars overhead, ground beneath her feet, awareness of the air in her lungs and the taste of her own mouth and the slight pull on her skin by the bandage on her arm.

It's a beautiful night.

. . . true orders . . . test to see . . . another Seal hangs in the balance . . . if Lucifer rises . . . Apocalypse . . . beep . . . beep . . . beep . . .

Anna wakes to fading whispers of Angels and the sounds of hospital monitors.

She tries to sit up but can't; she's strapped down.

She supposes that's what happens when you run out into the street yelling at your neighbors that the Apocalypse is nigh.

She's about to call out -- surely someone is waiting to hear that she's woken up -- when she becomes aware of other voices, human voices, in the hall.

" . . . don't understand," says her father. "She was getting better. Calmer. What happened?"

"Mr. Milton," says the gently professional voice of who Anna assumes is her latest doctor, "there's no set pattern with mental illness. And it does appear that Anna had stopped taking her medication. Your daughter needs more help than you and your wife can provide."

"What do you mean?" Amy Milton asks.

"She's in danger of hurting herself, or someone else. It took four people to restrain her this afternoon, and you said she kept screaming until she was sedated. She's not well. It's probably time to start considering transferring her to a behavioral health facility, at least for a while."

"Have her committed, you mean?" Rich says.

"Let's talk about this in my office, all right?" the doctor says.

Anna thinks about calling out to them, but if she does that know, they'll know she's heard all that and they'll be embarrassed and it will be awkward and awful.

So instead she lets them go, because at this point she's probably going to wind up in the loony bin anyway, and there's no sense in making it harder on her parents.

She lies there, still strapped into the hospital bed, and waits for them to come back.

Her nose itches.

Really, really itches.

Anna likes it here in St. Michael's Church. She always has. She likes it during services and she likes it as it is now, empty and slightly dim, light through the stained glass windows throwing patches of color across the pews.

She sits in the last row, bathed in red-tinted light, and she feels more at peace than she has for weeks.

She's home again, and the Angels are quiet for the moment.

It's gotten Quiet again, for the moment.

Anna sits by the window, turning the paper bracelet around her wrist, staring out at the sun.

The room is very white and very still. And quiet, though there's always activity to hear in the hall.

She can overhear it, but she can tune it out, too.

It's not like the Voices.

She's been here since the day she ran out into the street, since it was decided that she was getting worse, that she was a risk to herself and maybe to other people.

In an hour or so, Dr. Jamison will be in.

If it's still Quiet (instead of just quiet), she'll tell him (again) that she doesn't know what the Voices are, that they don't tell her Do Things (except the one time she thought they told her to run), that she's not making it up and she'd love for them to go away.

If the Voices are talking, though, then the best she can hope for is distracted, attention divided, stopping to listen. And if they all talk at once again, she probably won't be able to tell him anything at all.

Please, God, make this stop. Make them go away.

Words are starting to lose all meaning.

It had been getting better -- quieter -- Anna had still heard voices, but not all the time.

Not all at once.

Her parents had brought her home, to the house she grew up in, fussing and worrying and promising her that they'll find someone who could help, and Anna had nodded and tried to seem brave and confident and sane.

And then four days ago it had, almost in an instant, gone back to the wild jumble of words.

She can neither focus on them nor tune them out, hundreds of voices all talking at once, words overlapping, crashing into one another, blurring, until they're just a loud, inescapable buzz of meaningless sound, whirring in her mind.

Very occasionally, she'll catch a word.

Seals.

Rising.

Defend.

Witnesses.

Plan.

But mostly, it's like listening for meaning in radio static.

Anna sits in the floor of her bedroom in her parents' house, papers spread around her, colored pencils in hand. And she draws. She doesn't know the words for what she draws -- she can't think in words, can't hear her own words in all the others.

So instead she draws. She fills page after page with shapes and colors, sharp lines and sweeping curves, blots and whirls and slashes in all shades, a delirium of cubist nightmares, a dream of abstract impressionism, maps of the shifting cartography of her mind.

Her parents watch from the doorway, or try to get her to stop, to pay attention to them, to listen to them. But she can't listen to what she can't hear, and there are voices, voices, too many voices, too many words, words, words already in her head, and there's no room for more.

And then, cutting across all the other voices like a scythe through wheat, she hears it.

Fall back! Return to the Garrison! Fall back!

Anna grabs a handful of her papers and runs, past her startled parents, down the stairs and out into the street, fast and hard as she can, barefoot, in her pajamas, retreating from from a front she isn't on.

The voices run with her.

She's gone the better part of mile before her father catches her, his arms tight around her, holding her fast.

Anna screams, a wordless cry of panic and fear and frustration.

And then she collapses.

The voices are still talking.

But for now, Anna Milton cannot hear them.

[After this.]

She comes to in an ambulance, screaming.

She can see the mouths of the EMTs moving, vaguely knows that that means they must be speaking to her, but she can't hear them, can't hear anything over the roar of voices in her head.

She can barely hear her own thoughts in the din, but she thinks she manages to say, "Make them stop."

After that, she doesn't come to again for a while.





When she wakes up again, she's in a hospital, with an IV in her arm, and all she can hear is the beep beep beep of the machine next to her.

The room is very, very bright.

Her mother is in the chair next to the bed, apparently asleep.

Anna swallows twice and then tries her voice out, carefully. "Mom?"

Amy Milton wakes with a start. "Anna?"

"Mom, what's going on?" she asks, feeling about five years old.

"Oh, thank God," Amy says, standing and moving over to stand by her daughter. She smoothes Anna's hair back.

"Mom?"

"It'll be okay," her mother says. "You collapsed in class two days ago. They're not sure why, but I'll call the doctors and they can . . . "

Anna blinks. She can still hear her mother's voice, she just can't make out the words over the others suddenly in her head. It's like trying to talk to someone and listen to the radio and watch a movie all at once.

Amy's expression changes from one of relief to concern. Anna focuses very hard on her mother. "Anna?"

The other voices die away.

"Anna, are you all right?"

"I can hear them," Anna says. "In my head. I can hear them."

"Hear who, honey?"

"I don't know."

"What are they saying?"

Anna tries to remember, but the voices have all overlapped, like listening to every conversation at a party all at once. The only thing she thinks she heard clearly was --

"Dean Winchester is Saved."

"Anna," her mother says. "Anna, who is Dean Winchester?"

"I don't know."

"Saved from what?"

"I don't know," Anna says, again, starting to panic. "Mom, what's happening to me?"

Amy Milton puts her arms around her daughter. "It'll be okay, Anna. I'll call the doctor, and it'll be okay."

Anna nods.

Even as the rest of her mother's reassurances are lost among all the conversation in her head.

There is no peace.

No detente, no armistice, no cessation of hostilities.

There never can be. Not till it's over.

But there are lulls. And lulls can last for years -- or decades -- of human time.

Anna is watching the slow drift of the continent below her, the shifting of the land mass that isn't called Europe yet. Strange, really, to think about all the motion the humans never feel -- the world below her shifts and spins and rushes through the space around it, and none of its inhabitants will ever feel any of it.

Even in heaven, true stillness is rare.

But Anna comes close to it now.

Honestly, Anna has no idea what she was thinking, signing up for a class that meets at eight in the morning.

Well, all right, she was thinking I need this to graduate.

But it's 8:07 am and the coffee hasn't kicked in and the professor just drones up there at the front of the room and if she thinks very hard and pays very close attention, then . . . then she realizes she doesn't remember a word he's said so far.

She looks down at the "notes" she's taking and discovers that she's managed to record the date (September 18, 2008) and then written the first three lines of "Hot N Cold," which probably will not help her with her next test.

Anna straightens in her chair, tries to stifle a yawn, and prepares to pay attention to . . .

. . . her hands, because she's not sure she likes the nail polish she put on last night. It looked darker and more orange than she thought it was going to. Yes, definitely the wrong color for her.

She steals a look at the clock. This class is going to drive her insane before the semester is over.

Anna spends the next half hour idly doodling on her notebook. Gareth, sitting next to her, is using his laptop to check his e-mail, and she's pretty sure Winnie is asleep with her eyes open. The professor seems unlikely to notice anything short of one of his students --

She hears the words in her head, clear as day and louder than thought.

Dean Winchester is Saved.

Anna stands, suddenly, more quickly than she should be able to, because she can't just sit there.

". . . Ms. Milton?" the professor asks, and her classmates turn to look at her.

And then her head is full, hundreds upon hundreds of voices, all speaking at once, jubilation and glory, chaos and cacophony, overwhelming and beyond overwhelming.

"Ms. Milton? Are you all right?"

"I'm fine," Anna says.

And then her eyes roll back and she collapses.

If the Miltons and the Rubins have noticed that their usually something of a Dynamic Duo children have been avoiding each other for a week, no one has said anything. Anna and Jake have had the occasional falling out before, after all, and always quickly gone back to being friends.

So no one is aware that Anna has been avoiding Jake because he is a dumb boy and a jerk, when the Miltons head across the street to have dinner with their neighbors.

Anna decides that she will give Jake until the end of dessert to realize that he is a dumb boy and a jerk and apologize to her. That is more than enough time, really.

Except that it's not. He doesn't say anything at all to her, just talks to his brother Nate.

And then, before she can tell him so, he disappears while she is helping to carry dishes into the kitchen.

And Anna doesn't see him again until it's time to go home, and his parents make him come say good night to her parents.

Anna looks at him, standing in the hallway, and then she puts her hands on her hips.

"Listen up, Jacob Rubin," she tells him. "You are a dumb boy and you're a jerk and if you're going to break up with someone you should do it yourself and not have Seth call them because that really hurt my feelings and it was mean and you shouldn't have done it. So don't you ever do it again to anybody else."

She waits, for a moment, for him to say something, but he doesn't. So Anna turns her attention to his parents, and smiles. "Thank you very much for inviting me tonight, Mr. and Mrs. Rubin. Dinner was very good and I had a nice time."

"You're welcome," Mrs. Rubin says, and it looks a little like she's trying not to laugh, though Anna has no idea what could be funny.

"I'd like to go home now," Anna tells her parents.

This has really been a very trying ordeal, even if dinner really was very good.

"Yes, I think that's a very good idea," her mother says. "Marni, Ben, we'll call you later." She looks from Anna to a rather red-faced Jake and back. "I think we have a lot to talk about."

Anna is very busy this evening, because the Knights of Columbus are sponsoring a bake sale after church tomorrow and that means Anna has a lot of cupcakes to put icing and sprinkles on tonight.

So while she usually loves to answer the phone, when it rings tonight, she goes right on spreading purple frosting on chocolate cupcakes.

At least, until her mother says, "Anna, honey, it's for you." And "Don't talk too long," as she hands Anna the phone.

"Hello?"

"Hi, Anna. It's Seth. Jake's friend."

"Oh, hi, Seth."

It's a little weird that Seth is calling -- Anna doesn't know him very well. He's one of Jake's friends, though, so they see each other sometimes, like at Jake's birthday parties and stuff like that.

Anyway, just because you don't know someone is no reason not to be polite, right?

"How are you?" Anna asks.

"I'm fine. I'm calling because Jake doesn't want to be your boyfriend any more."

Anna blinks in confusion. "Wh-what?"

"Jake asked me to call and tell you he doesn't want to be your boyfriend any more. So . . . I did. And he doesn't." There's a pause, and then Seth says, "Bye, Anna."

And he hangs up.

Fifteen seconds later, the phone starts beeping at her.

And seventeen seconds after that, Anna carefully puts the phone back where it belongs, and then turns and runs for her room.

Anna has had to bide her time, as her mother says, on talking to Jake. Because his grandfather came to stay for Passover, and there are things you just cannot talk about in front of grandparents. It's just too embarassing.

It's even worse when the person hanging around is Jake's older brother Nate.

So she has had to watch for an opportunity for ever and ever.

It's all very trying, really.

But her patience has paid off, because Anna has just spotted Jake out in his driveway, riding up and down on his skateboard, and no one else is around.

So without asking for permission, Anna heads out the front door and across the street.

Jake almost falls off the skateboard trying to not ride right into Anna, who stands blocking his way, with her hands on her hips.

"Anna, you're in the way," he says, but he stops, and gets off the skateboard.

Anna waits until his feet are firmly on the ground, and then she shoves him, hard, in the shoulder with one hand. "Why did you kiss me?"

"Ow." Jake frowns at his shoulder, pointedly, and then shrugs. "I dunno. Wanted to."

"Well, that's not a good reason. You can't just go around kissing people because you want to. They may not want you to kiss them."

"Did you not want me to kiss you?" Jake asks.

"Well, not without asking."

"So if I ask, can I kiss you again?"

"Only if I say 'yes.'" Anna tells him.

Duh.

"If I ask, are you gonna say 'yes'?"

"If you ask, I'm only going to say 'yes' if you're going to be my boyfriend. I'm not going to let somebody kiss me if he's not my boyfriend. I'm not that kind of girl."

Anna has only a vague idea of what "that kind of girl" is, but she's very clear on that fact that she doesn't want to be one.

"Okay," Jake says. "I guess I'll be your boyfriend."

"Then I guess you can kiss me again. If you ask. Nicely."

“Milton residence,” Anna says, very grown up, answering the phone.

“Anna? It’s Mrs. Rubin. Is your mother home?”

“Oh, hi, Mrs. Rubin. Yes, I’ll get her.” Anna sets the phone down, takes two steps away, then remembers, picks the phone back up and says, “Please hold on.”

Anna is not supposed to stand by the phone and yell, so she goes into the living room, instead. “Mom? Mrs. Rubin’s on the phone and she wants to talk to you.”

“Thank you, honey,” her mother says, and then goes to pick the phone up. “Marni? Hi, what’s up?”

Anna goes back to the kitchen table and to writing out all her spelling words five times each.

“Yes, we have one of those. I should. Well, if Rich put it back where it belongs last time he used it. No, it’s no trouble at all. Give me five minutes and send him on over. Any time, Marni. Bye.”

Her mother goes out into the garage and comes back a moment later with a plastic sleeve full of weird, bendy tools.

“What’re those?” Anna asks.

“Allen wrenches. Mrs. Rubin is sending Jake to borrow them.”

“I could give them to him,” Anna says.

“All right. But his mother will be waiting, and you have homework, so no playing.”

“Okay,” Anna promises, and takes the wrenches.

She could wait for Jake to ring the doorbell, but it’s a nice night, so she goes out to wait on the porch, and then meets him in the middle of the yard. “Hi, Jake. Here,” she says, holding out the wrenches.

“Thanks,” he says. “And my mother says to tell your mother thank you again.”

“I will,” Anna says. “I’m supposed to go back in now.”

“Me, too,” Jake says. “Bye.”

“Bye.”

He take two steps back towards his own yard, and then stops. “Hey, Anna?”

“Yes?”

Jake comes over, leans forward, and kisses her on the mouth. And then he runs back to his own house as fast as he can.

Anna stands in the yard, frowning and staring after him until her mother opens the door. “Anna, come inside. Homework.”

“Coming.”

Anna’s still frowning as she climbs the porch steps.

Boys are so weird.

Note: As of December 2011, Anna has regained her Grace and is once again an angel, albeit an angel on the run from Heaven. The following no longer applies. She'll register as an angel, if your pup is attuned to such things. Furthermore, unlike the other angels in her canon, Anna does not occupy a human vessel, but merely a human-shaped one (she called in an old favor). Questions, etc., please don't hesitate to ask.


Anna Milton is a former angel, who made the decision to separate herself from her Grace* and fall to Earth to be human. At present, she's being played at the age of nine ten and with no memory of ever having been anything but a perfectly normal human girl.

So, a couple of requests.

1. Anna's Grace is gone, she has become human, and she has no memory of any other existence -- all of which mean that the former angel thing is not going to be readily apparent without a good reason. With all that in mind, if you think there is a reason your character would know or recognize that Anna is a former angel, please get in touch with me OOC before you do anything IC. Please.

2. If, after we've talked, we decide there is a reason your character would know, please do not, under any circumstances, tell Anna (or anyone else) that she used to be an angel. Please. It screws canon up massively, for a number of people, and that's best avoided.

Questions, concerns, etc., ping me, e-mail me, or leave a comment here (all comments are screened until I reply).

Thanks!

*Grace, in this canon, is the source of the angel's power and angelic nature; in other words, it's what made her an angel. Without it, she became human.

Dear Santa,

First of all, I want to thank you for the things you brought last year. Can you believe it's been a whole year since Christmas already? I hope it was a nice year for you and Mrs. Claus and all the reindeer and the elves and everyone. Do you get to go on vacation in the summer, or are you too busy making all the toys? I hope you got some time off and got to go some place nice. And that the elves did, too.

Do the other reindeer feel bad that they don't have songs written about them like Rudolph does? Or do they have songs and I just don't know them?

I've been good this year, mostly. I know you will understand that it's not possible to be good all all the time, but I've tried.

For Christmas this year, I would like a nice box of colored pencils, in lots and lots of colors, to draw with. I do not want crayons, though, please. I like colored pencils better, and I don't have very many, and the ones I have are not the really interesting colors.

I would also like the Molly doll from the American Girls catalog. I thought about asking for the Samantha doll, because Samantha is an artist and she has really pretty clothes, but I decided I would rather have Molly, because I like the books about her better than the ones about Samantha. Have you read them? They're really good.

And I would like a purple slinky. If you have run out of purple, another color is okay, except green, because Jake's slinky is green and if they are the same color it will be more confusing when we race them down the steps. The steps in Jake's house are really good for slinky races, only Puppers, who is my dog, chewed up my slinky last month and we haven't been able to have races since.

Mommy says I should only ask for three things because there's only so much room in your sleigh, and you have a lot of things to fit in it. But if you have any extra room at all, could you please bring Puppers a toy or some treats? His toys are usually small, so they shouldn't take up too much room. He's a very good dog, except for ruining my slinky, which I'm sure he didn't mean to do, and probably felt very bad about afterwards. He can't write to you himself, because he can't write. If you see him on Christmas, you can pet him if you want. He doesn't ever bite people, I promise.

I am going to leave you coffee and a sandwich this year, instead of milk and cookies, because you probably get a lot of milk and cookies at all the other houses and I thought you might like some dinner, too. And you will probably be cold and maybe a little tired, so the coffee will be good. Daddy says I can use his thermos to leave it for you so it will still be hot when you get here.

I think that's all. Thank you very much.

Your friend,
Anna

P.S. In the poem, you know the one, it says that you smoke, but the poem's really old and a lot of people used to smoke but don't any more, like Mommy, so maybe you have stopped since it was written. If you haven't though, you should, because smoking is really bad for you, and I don't want you to get sick.

Anna loves the day the Girl Scout Cookies arrive.

Her mom is the troop's Cookie Mom, and so all the cases and cases of cookie arrive and then Anna gets to help sort them out, neat piles for each of her friends in the troop with the right number of Thin Mints and Tagalongs and Do-si-dos. And then everyone comes and picks their cookies up, and they have pizza for dinner, because Mommy never wants to cook on Cookie Day, and Thin Mints for dessert.

Only today, after everyone has picked up their cookies, the garage is still awfully full of cases and cases and cases.

Anna doesn't think all these are hers. She sold a lot, this year, but this is a whole lot.

There are always some extras, because when you go deliver them, people will ask if they can't get one more box of Samoas or something, and because they sell them in front of the grocery store every year.

But there aren't usually this many, and Mommy doesn't usually look all upset.

And then Daddy gets home, and there's no room for his car because of all the cookies, and he looks at Mommy.

"No one's been yet, Amy?" he asks.

"Everyone's been," Mommy says. "Deedee went insane."

Deedee is Mrs. Phelps, who is the troop leader.

"She ordered all these extras, Rich. And she says it's because she wants to inspire the girls to set higher goals and make sure they all get really nice prizes this year and earn money for the troop, but you will never convince me she's not just trying to outsell her sister's troop in Cleveland, and we will never sell all these."

Daddy gives her a look, and Mommy looks over at Anna.

It's the look that means anything interesting she might have gotten to hear is pretty much over.

"Anna, honey," her mother says, "do you want pepperoni on the pizza?"

"Okay," Anna says.

Darn it.

The pizza comes, and they eat in the living room, watching a Marx Brothers movie, and Anna doesn't understand why her parents laugh at some of the things they laugh at, but she likes the part on the boat with all the hard-boiled eggs and the people in the little room, and when they fall out into the hallway.

Somewhere in the middle of it, during one of the boring singing scenes, Anna goes to get a box of Thin Mints from the garage, and fix three glasses of milk.

At least, that was the plan . . .

Dear Dean,

Hi! I hope that you are good. Thank you for being nice to me when I was scared, and for the pie. I want to give you this picture, which I was drawing the last time I saw you. I had to wait till now because I had to hand it in with my report and then it was up on the bulletin board at school (sorry about the holes in the corners, they are from the tacks). It is the Archangel Michael throwing the Devil out of heaven. Mrs. Lattimer says it’s a very imaginative drawing, because that this isn’t what you usually see Michael wearing when he was throwing the Devil out of Heaven. You usually see him in a short metal skirt but I don’t know why he would want to wear a metal skirt, because he is a boy angel and anyway a metal skirt sounds very uncomfortable and hard to fight in. So I drew him like this.

Your Friend,
Anna

The i in Friend is dotted with a smiley face. And the enclosed picture shows a Michael who, though not a dead ringer for the elder Winchester brother, is clearly wearing a brown leather jacket and jeans.

BRIGITTA: I knew it all along. Frau Schraeder didn’t have a headache. She just wanted to get out of the party. She was faking.
MARIA: (Crosses to BRIGITTA) Brigitta, you shouldn’t say things you don’t know are true.
BRIGITTA: But I do know. I heard her say to Father she’d been dodging these people.
MARIA: That doesn’t mean she didn’t have a headache. It’s very important that you children like Frau Schraeder.
BRIGITTA: I like her all right. Why is it important?
MARIA: Well—I think she’s going to be your new mother.
BRIGITTA: Oh, Fraulein, Father’s never going marry her. Why, he couldn’t.
MARIA: Why couldn’t he?
BRIGITTA: Because he’s in love with you.
MARIA: Now Brigitta, that’s just the kind of thing—
BRIGITTA: You must know that—
MARIA: Brigitta—no!
BRIGITTA: Remember the other night when we were all sitting on the floor singing the Edelweiss song he taught us? After we finished, you laughed at him for forgetting the words. He didn’t forget the words. He just stopped singing to look at you. And when he speaks to you, the way his voice sounds—
(MARIA can’t accept an idea that conflicts with her commitment to the church.)
MARIA: No, Brigitta, no.
BRIGITTA: And the way you looked at him just now when you were dancing. You’re in love with him.
(MARIA stands in stunned silence. The CAPTAIN enters from the terrace with GRETL, LOUISA, and KURT.)

" . . . and I lied to my mother about brushing my teeth, and I stuck my tongue out behind Sr. Felicity's back, twice, and . . . and I went to a bar," Anna says, squinting through the screen in the confessional, trying to tell if she has horrified Fr. Sullivan.

"To a bar?" he asks.

"Yes," says Anna. "I didn't mean to, it just sort of happened. I meant to go to Daddy's office only then there was a bar there, and I know I should have left, but I stayed and talked to people, and I had chocolate cake even though I knew it would spoil my dinner, which it kind of did."

There's a long pause. "There was a bar in your father's office?" Fr. Sullivan asks, finally.

"No," says Anna. "Not in Daddy's office. Instead of Daddy's office."

If one wants to be strictly accurate, and Anna does.

Fr. Sullivan sighs. "You have a very vivid imagination, but the confessional is not the place--"

"I didn't imagine it," Anna says, and automatically adds I interrupted Fr. Sullivan to her list of things she probably needs to mention at confession.

"Anna."

"I didn't," she insists.

"Well, maybe you had a dream that seemed very real."

Anna frowns at the screen. "It wasn't a dream."

"There is not a bar in your father's office."

"Well, not usually," Anna says. "But there was this one time."

"Anna, that's enough," he says, firmly.

"I'm telling the truth. I wouldn't lie. You're supposed believe people when they tell the truth. It's like your job, and it's . . . it's . . ."

"That's enough, Anna," he says, more gently. "You either imagined it, or you dreamed it."

Anna doesn't say anything, just sits frowning in her half of the confessional.

"Is there anything else?" Fr. Sullivan asks, when the silence has gone on long enough.

"I interrupted you," Anna mutters, but her heart's not in the whole confession thing anymore, and she barely listens to her penance and the absolution.

People are supposed to believe you when you tell the truth.

That's how it works.

Isn't it?

Rich and Amy Milton have a habit of volunteering their only daughter for things, especially things that need to be done at church. After all, they know when she is and isn't free, they know what she can and can't do, and it's good for her to help out. It never occurs to then to ask her, and it hasn't yet occurred to her to object. (That argument, epic though it will be, is still a few years away.)

So for now, Rich or Amy says something like, "Of course, Father Barton. Anna would be happy to glue the donor bookplates into the front of seven hundred and fifty new hymnals this weekend." Or, like today, "Oh, don't worry, Sr. Felicity. Anna can help you sort, organize, catalog, and iron all the altar cloths and other linens on Saturday."

For the record, there are a a lot of altar cloths and other linens at St. Michael's.

Anna is kind of relieved when Sr. Felicity says they'll have to stop because she needs to go get ready to do the music for the Saturday night mass. "And no running in the church, Anna," Sr. Felicity calls after her, as Anna leaves for her father's office to let him know that she is done for the day.

Anna slows from a run to what is probably best called a skip, slightly guiltily, and then knocks once on her father's door before opening it.