Ohio, 14 May 1988 C.E.

[hear_the_voices]

Anna Milton is supposed to be napping.

But her parents have discovered, in the two and half years of her life, that Anna is not much of a sleeper. There's always something more interesting to be doing.

And it's not like people can be made to sleep.

But they can be made to stay in their beds, and stay quiet, for an hour.

Anna is sitting up in her bed, whispering a story to her teddy bear, and waiting until she can get up.

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[hear_the_voices]

"Mommy!" Anna screams again, and there's the sound of footsteps, coming down the hall. "Mommy!"

It's her father, though, who comes hurrying into the room.

"Anna?"

Anna's eyes dart from the door to Castiel's corner, and back.

"Anna?" Rich Milton asks, looking over to the apparently empty corner. "What's wrong, honey?"

Anna shakes her head. "No. No."

Rich reaches for his daughter. "It's okay, honey. It's okay. Daddy's here."

"You're not my daddy," she says. "You're not. You're not."

"Anna, calm down," her father says. "You had a bad dream. That's all, honey. Just a bad dream."

"He's mad," Anna says, growing increasingly agitated, moving away from her father's out-stretched hand. "He wants to kill me."

Rich looks at his terrified, wild-eyed daughter, and then yells for his wife.

[thursdays_angel]

Castiel has never had a bad dream--or any kind of dream at all--but from his understanding it is not a bad way to describe this state of affairs.

He slips out of the house. He never should have come here in the first place.

He will not come back.

But Castiel cannot help but look back at the house. At the window to the room where words of comfort from a mother and a father are doing nothing to quiet the child's screams.

"He does not want that," he says.

Before racing away towards the horizon.