Season Four

Episode Eight: Family Album

By irismay42

Part Two

Winchester house
Lawrence, KS

Dean wondered whether this was how it felt when your brain melted.

He seemed completely incapable of rational thought, standing there on the lawn of his old house in Lawrence, looking up at the flames blackening the window of Sammy’s nursery, hearing his mom’s screams, his dad’s screams…and the screams of his four-year-old self begging for someone to unlock the front door and let him and his baby brother out of their burning house.

He was pretty sure the universe would forgive him needing to take a minute.

“Please, Daddy—somebody—please, we can’t get out!” he heard his younger self pleading, and suddenly a switch seemed to flip in his head, the paralysis that had gripped his body abruptly releasing him, and he found himself bolting for the front door of the house, rational thought and his own sense of mental wellbeing be damned.

“Kid, get back!” he yelled, praying the little boy—his four-year-old self—inside the house could hear him. “Get away from the door!”

Not waiting for an answer, he barreled into the door, ramming the wood with his shoulder and every ounce of bodyweight and inertia he could put behind it.

The door didn’t budge and Dean took a breath, trying not to think about that night over four years ago when the poltergeist had trapped his little brother in Jenny’s kitchen and he’d had to take an axe to the front door to get inside.

His eyes skittered to the Chevy parked on the street and he doubted very much there was an axe hidden in the trunk.

And this time, he reminded himself, not only did he need to save his little brother, he needed to save himself too.

If little Dean and baby Sammy died here tonight, Dean wasn’t entirely sure what would happen: to him, to Sam. To history. If they were really here in 1983, if this really was the past, could whatever happened tonight affect their own future? Would they even have a future?

He shuddered, glancing longingly over his shoulder at the Impala before returning his determined gaze to the couple of inches of wood standing between himself and his family.

Okay, no axe. But that door was coming down.

Taking a few steps back, Dean made a run at it, bringing his foot up at the last minute and kicking out at the door with a heavily-booted heel.

A satisfying crack was followed by his foot going through the wood, which threw him off balance for a second before he could extract his foot and give it another try.

This time the door flew open with a thunk and the heat of the blaze almost knocked him flat on his back.

Dean dragged in a couple of gasps of air, the heat instantly searing his lungs while the thick smoke made his eyes water mercilessly.

Yeah, it was definitely the smoke making him tear up.

Blinking hard, he threw himself into the doorway, only to find himself repulsed by the same invisible barrier that had earlier denied him and Sam escape from the confines of the photograph.

“Dammit!” he swore, the smoke already getting into his airway and causing him to choke.

Had to get Sammy out. Take your brother outside, Dean…

“Kid!” he yelled, pressing himself right up against the barrier and trying to peer in through the smoke. “Kid, where are you?”

A tiny coughing sound caused his eyes to travel to an end table by the couch, polished surface already cracking, and a lamp Dean remembered his mother lighting every evening when the sun went to bed tipped over onto its side, the glass shade blackened and broken.

Beneath the table, his younger self huddled, small arms full of baby brother, eyes huge and terrified.

“It’s okay, kid,” he heard himself saying, his voice as rough as sandpaper. “It’s okay. Don’t be scared. I’m here to help you.”

Four-year-old Dean just stared at him, green eyes so familiar and yet so completely alien, as if the things Dean Winchester had seen in the time that had passed between then and now had forever dulled the windows to his soul.

Or maybe it was his soul itself that had become tarnished.

Whatever the explanation, for the first time in a long time Dean could see innocence in his own eyes, innocence and guilelessness and a desperate need to trust a stranger.

Had he ever been this young? This childlike?

And yet still the kid didn’t move.

Because the boy didn’t trust him. And he didn’t trust him because he didn’t know him.

Even back then, even before the fire and the demon and the monsters in the closet, Dean’s Prime Directive had been the same: Look out for Sammy.

And that was why the little boy hesitated, why his arms tightened around the baby clutched protectively to his chest. Why he wouldn’t move when the stranger on the doorstep told him to.

Dean understood. He did. He really did. But right now, his own Big Brother Prime Directive was going to get his little brother killed. Not to mention himself.

He tried softening his tone, crouching down so he was at eye level with the kid—me, he reminded himself—trying to make himself look smaller, less intimidating.

“Kiddo, it’s okay. I’m here to help you and your brother,” he said, beckoning the boy toward him. “It’s okay. Just come toward me, okay? I won’t let anything hurt you, I promise.”

The kid’s eyes skittered behind him, to the stairs, to the sounds still coming from above.

“Mary!”

Dean heard his dad’s anguished cry, and no matter how deeply he’d buried the memories of that terrible night, part of him realized he remembered hearing his father screaming his mother’s name as if it was the last word he ever intended to say in this life or the next.

Shuddering despite the intense heat, Dean held out his hands toward the child. “C’mon, kiddo,” he continued to cajole. “It’s okay. Just come outside with me, then I can go help your dad, okay?”

The kid under the table continued to stare at him with those wide, frightened eyes, not moving, not exhibiting the slightest sign he’d even heard him.

This was getting him nowhere.

“Dean, you take your brother outside right now, you hear me?” Dean barked, sounding so much like John Winchester he almost turned around expecting to see his dad standing on the lawn behind him.

But it did the trick.

Four-year-old Dean was on his feet, scrambling out from under the table, his arms still wrapped protectively around his little brother as he tottered purposefully in Dean’s direction.

Unsure of what else to do, the older version of Dean held out his hands toward his younger self, finally hauling the little boy over the threshold of the house and onto the porch, Sam slipping slightly in the kid’s grasp.

“Here, lemme help—” Dean began, reaching out to take the baby.

But his younger self had other ideas, skittering back a couple of steps and shaking his head insistently as he clutched the baby tighter to his chest. “Daddy told me to take my brother outside,” the kid informed Dean shortly, keeping Sam out of his reach with a steely resolve. “I’m s’posed to take care of him.”

“Uh—” Dean stammered. “I—okay…”

“Have to get him away from the house,” younger Dean added, before barreling right on past his older self, willfully determined to get his little brother to safety just as his dad had instructed him.

Blinking, Dean spun to follow him. “Hey kid! Wait!” he burst out, but little Dean just kept on going until he was sure he and his baby brother were safe, only then stopping to turn wide eyes up to the nursery window.

“It’s okay, Sam,” Dean heard the four-year-old cooing to the baby, his voice trembling a little as nervous fingers twisted in his brother’s blanket. “Don’t be scared. Daddy’s coming.”

And before Dean knew what had hit him, Daddy was right there, John Winchester bolting out of the house and almost knocking him off his feet in his urgency to get to his kids, grabbing the boys and scooping them both up into his arms protectively.

“I gotcha,” he reassured his older boy, sprinting away from the house just as an explosion ripped through the air above their heads, glass raining down where they’d just been standing as the nursery window blew out and tendrils of flame clawed hungrily at the night sky.

Dean fell backwards, landing hard on the soft grass, his gaze stuttering between the window above his head and his younger self and his baby brother, now safe in their father’s arms. He was unsure what to do next, his attention inevitably turning back up to his brother’s nursery window as he climbed back to his feet and just stood there, unable to move any further, as the flames turning his mother to ash reflected yellow in his eyes.

Just as they had twenty-seven years earlier.

Could he save her? If he ran back into the house, could he save her? Like Sam had tried to save Jessica with the watch?

She was already gone, already dead, Dean knew that. Deep down, he knew that. But part of him wanted to try. Part of him wanted to run into that burning building and try to change the tragic course of his family’s history.

And yet he knew he couldn’t. Not just because there was an invisible barrier denying him entrance to his childhood home; but because he knew his mother was already gone.

If he’d learned anything from Sam’s experience with the watch and with Jessica, it was that trying to alter the past to change the present could have dire—and often unpredictable—consequences.

He wasn’t willing to risk what he had left trying to recapture something he lost a long time ago. All he’d done here tonight was put history back the way it was supposed to be. The way it had been before that shadow creature had intervened, had tried to kill him and Sammy and Dad.

He may not have been putting things right, but he was putting them as right has he could put them.

At least now, Dean, Sam and Dad would live to see another day.

Except this dad, the one from 1983, had just deposited little Dean and Sam on the hood of the Impala and was running back toward the doorway of his burning house.

That hadn’t happened. That hadn’t happened before.

Dean opened his mouth, but no words would come out.

Had to warn him. Had to stop him.

And yet his feet still didn’t seem to want to move, and Dean could only watch in mute horror as his father charged toward him, back toward the fire, back toward his mother, while somewhere in the distance he could hear the voices of the neighbors huddled in the street in their nightclothes. Were they all out of the house? Had anyone called the Fire Department? Someone said they had, and a woman with a high-pitched voice prayed to God they’d get here soon. They had little kids, right? How many did they have? Wasn’t there a baby?

“Daddy!”

His own voice. His own four-year-old voice. Calling out to his father from the hood of the Impala, where once again Sammy was cradled against the little boy’s chest.

“Don’t they have three kids?”

“Where’s the baby?”

“Did someone call the Fire Department?”

“His name’s Jack, right?”

“John. I think it’s John.”

“Someone called the Fire Department, right?”

“Is it three kids or two?”

“Daddy!”

“Stay right there, Dean. Stay right there and look after your brother.”

“Daddy?”

“Mary! I’m coming, Mary…”

“You—you can’t go in there.”

Dean’s own voice—his adult voice—sounded strangely different in his ears, his hand heavy and sluggish pressed against his father’s shoulder.

John’s eyes were dark pools of despair as they turned in his direction, not looking at him, not seeing him, seeing only Mary, seeing only Dean’s mother pinned to the ceiling and on fire.

“You can’t go in there,” Dean repeated, his voice a little stronger, his posture a little more set, his hands on each of John’s shoulders now, restraining him, blocking his suicidal trajectory. “She’s gone, Da—John. She’s gone.”

If John heard him the only acknowledgement he gave was the pressure against Dean’s restraining hands lessening slightly.

“Think about your kids, John. You want them to be orphans?”

He said the words as if he was reciting a script, as if he’d heard them before—somewhere. Pushing John back from the burning house, his burning wife, the love of his life dead on the ceiling. Pushing him back to his kids…like that guy. That guy he remembered from the night of the fire. There were two of them. Youngish. One had helped him get out of the house and then stopped Dad going back in until the firemen and the police came. The other had run across the lawn toward the first guy as if he needed to tell him something urgent, taller guy, darker hair, and the firemen and the cops had had to restrain them both, push them away from the house, back behind the sawhorses and the yellow tape.

Two young guys that Dean suddenly remembered as clear as day, even if he couldn’t quite picture their faces.

“Sir? Sir, please come with us.”

There was a cop at John’s elbow, but John wasn’t hearing him, wasn’t seeing him, only had eyes for his burning house, his burning love. His burning life.

“Sir?”

“Please,” Dean said softly. “Please. For them. You’re all they’ve got now.”

He looked over toward the Impala, and for the first time his father seemed to hear him, his own focus shifting to the terrified little boy with his arms full of baby brother, almost too heavy for him to hold.

“You’re all they’ve got.”

John looked at him then. Really looked at him. And something seemed to break inside.

He wasn’t pushing anymore, wasn’t trying to get back into the house. He looked at Dean—his grown up son—and nodded, just once, before meekly turning and letting the police officer lead him away.

“Sir, what happened? Is anyone left inside?” the cop was asking.

“My wife. My wife’s inside. My wife.”

There was a fire truck parked outside the house, firefighters jumping out, pulling out lengths of hose, shouting orders to one another. Dean wondered when they got there. He hadn’t seen them arrive. Hadn’t seen the lights flashing. Hadn’t heard the sirens.

Yet here they were.

The neighbors had called the Fire Department.

“Are the kids okay?”

Dean was four years old, sitting by himself on the hood of his father’s car with his six-month-old baby brother cradled in his lap and his house burning.

And Mommy hadn’t come outside with Daddy.

Dean remembered how completely alone he’d felt right then. Just him and Sammy in the whole wide world while all the grown-ups raced around them yelling at each other.

Maybe he was invisible.

Maybe only Sammy could see him now.

Maybe Mommy was coming out soon.

But deep down inside, he’d known that wasn’t going to happen.

He’d seen…something…through the door of Sammy’s nursery, when Daddy had put the baby in his arms and told him to take him outside as fast as he could.

He hadn’t really known what was going on, but he’d known it was bad. Really bad.

Mommy hadn’t come out of the house with Daddy because she was still in Sammy’s nursery where the fire was.

He’d wondered whether she was an angel watching over him, like Grandma and Grandpa. He’d wanted to believe that. Then, and in the days, weeks, months that followed. He’d wanted to believe. If Mommy wasn’t coming out of the house, he’d wanted her to be an angel watching over him and Sammy.

He took in a breath and swallowed the hard lump suddenly lodged in his throat.

The kid was all alone.

And he was holding the baby all wrong.

“Kid, you okay?” he found himself asking, legs seemingly moving of their own accord toward the kid sitting on the Impala, and even as he said it, he flashed back once again to the guy who helped him out of the house, who came and talked to him when no one else seemed to remember he was there.

The little boy looked up at him, eyes wide and blank, jaw clamped tightly shut in an effort, Dean suspected, Dean remembered, to keep himself from crying.

“Y’know, you’re gonna hurt your little brother if you keep holding him like that,” he told the boy, casually leaning his hip against the Impala’s hood by the kid’s knee.

That got the four-year-old’s attention, the blank look in his eyes clearing, and a little bit of clarity and focus returning to the cloudy green depths. For a second, he seemed to reconnect with the world as he eyed his older self uncertainly.

“Here.”

Very gently, Dean slid his younger self’s small hand so it was correctly supporting Sammy’s head, the little boy watching intently, as if storing the information away for later use.

“You’re gonna need to take care of him now,” Dean added quietly. “Dean? Ya hear me?”

The kid looked up at him and blinked, and Dean took that as an affirmative.

“Your dad’s gonna need you to be brave, right? Like your mom would want? Huh? Your mom would want you to be brave, Dean. For Sammy. You’ve gotta be brave for him, Dean.”

Younger Dean was still gazing at him, hardly seeming to breathe, but after a moment’s hesitation he nodded his head, just once.

A brief smile skittered across Dean’s face. “That’s my boy,” he mumbled, suddenly frowning. “Or that’s my—my—uh… self?” He scratched his head in confusion, just as a lady cop rounded the Impala with a thunderous expression on her face.

Dean resisted the impulse to back away, merely smiled easily as the woman squinted at him suspiciously.

“You a relative, son?” she asked, her hand moving reflexively to her hip and the holster nestled there.

Dean wasn’t sure how to answer that one.

And he really didn’t appreciate being addressed as “son” by someone younger than he was.

“Neighbor,” he lied smoothly, turning up the wattage on his most brilliant smile. “Just checking the kids are okay.”

The cop nodded. “Uh-huh,” she said, still sounding a little dubious, her arm looping around younger Dean’s shoulders protectively. “Well thanks, sir, but I think I can take it from here.”

Dean didn’t offer to move, just continued to lean against the Impala, not breaking eye contact with the cop, who shifted, her posture stiffening as she narrowed her gaze.

Staring match it was then.

“Sir,” the cop began, her hand again shifting to her hip, “I really think…”

But Dean never got to find out what she really thought, John Winchester suddenly interposing himself between the two of them, scooping Sammy out of little Dean’s arms and sitting himself down on the hood of the Impala next to his eldest.

The cop took a step back as Dean’s younger self leaned against his father’s shoulder, his eyes shifting once again to the burning house, John’s own gaze soon following.

Taking his lead from the police officer, Dean respectfully backed off in order to give the remaining Winchesters their privacy, but somehow he just couldn’t bring himself to look away from them.

He couldn’t bring himself to look away from Dad.

John’s expression was unreadable, the color draining from his face as he clamped his jaw shut tightly, a mirror of his eldest son.

Maybe John was trying not to cry too, Dean figured, wondering what his dad was thinking right then.

Maybe he wasn’t thinking anything at all.

Maybe he was thinking too much.

“Dean.”

The voice in his ear was familiar, insistent, a hand tugging urgently at his jacket.

“Dean?”

Dean turned slowly, reluctantly tearing his gaze away from the devastated family—his family—sitting on the hood of the Impala.

Sammy.

“Dean, we need to go.”

Sam’s face was ashen, and although Dean knew his little brother couldn’t remember anything of this night, he obviously knew what date this was, what was happening, even if he appeared to be doing his level best to avoid actually interacting with anyone here, his eyes darting everywhere but in the direction of the Winchesters sitting on the Chevy, the exact opposite of his older brother.

“Sam?” Dean murmured, finally dragging his attention away from the shattered family of his past to focus on the only family he had in his present.

Sam’s eyes flitted just once to the man and the boy watching life as they knew it come to an abrupt and fiery end, before clearing his throat and pulling once more on Dean’s arm.

“Dean, come on,” he said, his voice thick with something other than smoke inhalation. “You need to see this.”

Reynolds house
Lynchburg, TN

Maybe this was a bad idea.

Bonnie folded her arms across her chest as she nervously paced the living room floor, glancing every now and then out the window above where Chris and Amie were sitting on the sofa, waiting, watching. Wondering.

“Maybe this was a bad idea,” Chris echoed his mother’s thoughts, fidgeting slightly and twisting his head to follow his mother’s gaze out the window onto the street. “You don’t even know this guy.”

“No, I don’t,” Bonnie agreed. “But John did.”

In fact, John had spoken about him with almost as much affection as he spoke about his boys. And that said a lot. Considering.

“And that’s a recommendation?” Amie asked uncertainly, brow furrowing as her gaze slid to the photo of John Winchester on the mantelpiece.

Bonnie stopped her pacing briefly, fixing her daughter with a determined stare. “We need some help,” she pointed out resolutely. “John’s kind of help. And from what he told me, this guy might be the only other person besides John’s boys who might know what to do.”

Chris snorted. “Because John’s boys were so much help, weren’t they?” he observed sarcastically.

Bonnie huffed. “This isn’t their fault. At least they tried. At least they came when I asked them. They came when I told them I needed their help. Now they need my help, and I’m not gonna let them down. I’m not gonna let their dad down.”

Her attention shifted back to the window as a decrepit Oldsmobile pulled up in front of the house, the hood and the trunk a vibrant orange while the rest of the car was a weathered, nondescript gray.

Bonnie wasn’t sure what she’d been expecting when she called the number John had given her years ago, but when the driver’s door opened and a guy in a trucker cap and a grease-stained t-shirt who looked a little bit too much like Uncle Jesse from The Dukes of Hazzard for comfort stepped out, she realized he wasn’t it.

Okay, maybe inviting this guy into her house was an even worse idea than calling him up in the first place had been. It wasn’t like he had “axe murderer” tattooed on his forehead, but still. The word “crusty” sprang immediately to mind.

Drawing in a breath, she hesitated for only a second before opening the front door when the guy knocked, her fears waning somewhat when “Uncle Jesse” smiled warmly at her and held out a callused hand.

“Bobby Singer,” he announced. “You must be Bonnie?”

Bonnie nodded, taking the guy’s hand a little less hesitantly than she’d opened the door. “Reynolds. Bonnie Reynolds,” she confirmed, returning the his smile.

Bobby looked her up and down for a second before letting out a soft whistle. “Boy, that John Winchester,” he said with an affectionate laugh. “‘Dark horse’ doesn’t even begin to cut it.”

Bonnie’s face fell a little. “He never told you about me either?” she asked. “I thought he said you were his best friend?”

Bobby seemed quite taken aback by that, his smile widening still further. “John Winchester said that about me?” he queried. “Must o’ had some kind o’ head injury or somethin’,” he noted. “Never known John to say nice things about nobody.”

Bobby’s smile and easy disposition quickly put Bonnie at ease, the tension running from her back and shoulders, her grip on the door handle loosening. “That sounds like John,” she agreed, throwing open the door and motioning Bobby inside. “He certainly has a way with people.”

“Like a pit bull with a migraine,” Bobby agreed, taking off his hat politely as he crossed the threshold into Bonnie’s house.

Bonnie led him into the living room, introducing him to her kids before indicating he should sit.

It was Bobby’s turn to hesitate, wiping his hands on the backs of his jeans before perching himself gingerly on the edge of the spotless armchair.

“Can I get you a drink?” Bonnie asked, twisting her fingers together a little nervously.

Bobby shook his head. “Best get down to business, ma’am,” he said, his tone soft but insistent. “What have John’s idjit boys gone and gotten themselves into this time?”

“It really wasn’t their fault,” Bonnie assured him. “John said if I ever needed help—his kind of help—I should call them. Or you.” She shrugged. “They were trying to help me. I’m sure they never expected—”

“To get pulled into a photograph album?” Bobby offered.

Bonnie nodded. “I mean, it’s not exactly something you go around expecting to happen, right?”

Bobby shrugged dismissively. “In our line of work?” he said. “You can’t afford to be surprised by anything. Even getting sucked into a photograph.”

Bonnie shook her head, running her fingers across her furrowed brow. “It’s my fault. I never should have—”

“Nonsense.” Bobby was on his feet, his hand gentle on her shoulder. “Unless I’m very much mistaken, you’re an innocent bystander in all of this. I think someone—something—might have been using you to get to John’s boys.”

Bonnie looked up sharply. “You think this was a trap?” she asked, her mouth falling open a little. “For them?”

Bobby shrugged again. “Won’t know for sure till I see the damn thing.”

Bonnie nodded. “Sure,” she agreed, leading Bobby out into the kitchen. “It’s still in the basement. I haven’t been near it since—well. You know.”

“Yeah, I think I do,” Bobby agreed, following Bonnie as she led the way downstairs. “These things have a tendency to follow those boys around like a bad smell.”

“Like father like sons,” Bonnie commented, leading Bobby through the maze of half-empty paint cans and boxes of old toys until they reached John’s trunk in the corner, and the still-glowing photo album laid out on the concrete floor in front of it. “Here.”

Bobby approached the album cautiously, crouching down while still a good couple of feet away and inspecting the photographs laid out in the album’s plastic-covered pages.

“The pictures don’t look any different,” Bonnie told him. “I’ve looked at them before—when John’s not been around. Guess I’m just nosy that way.” She laughed nervously. “But how those boys—where they could be…” She trailed off, shaking her head and once again running a hand across her brow. “John told me he dealt with some pretty weird stuff, but this…?”

Bobby surprised her then by snorting a little derisively. “This?” he said, gesturing at the photo album as he slowly rose to his feet. “This is a stroll in the park compared to some of the things that man—and his boys—have hunted.”

Bonnie tilted her head to one side. “Then you know what this is? What happened? Where John’s boys are?”

“Think so,” Bobby confirmed, again wiping his hands on his jeans. “It’s enchanted somehow. Not quite worked out the specifics yet. But from what I can figure, the album’s become a doorway. A conduit. To another time, another place.” He shrugged. “To wherever and whenever these pictures were taken.”

Bonnie blinked at him. “Wait. You’re saying—you’re saying John’s boys have gone back in time?” she burst out incredulously.

Bobby shrugged, sticking his hands in his jeans pockets. “Looks that way. Not just traveled in time, either. Pretty much a lock they’ve moved through space too.”

“So…So they’ve gone back to their childhood home? In Lawrence? Where their mom died?”

“Maybe,” Bobby said, sighing a little. “Not beyond the realms of possibility. Some o’ these demons can get real creative given the right motivation.”

Bonnie blinked again. “Demons?”

“Looks like a demon’s handiwork,” he confirmed, disturbingly matter-of-fact about this whole thing. “’Course I won’t know until I can figure out what charm they used.”

“Then you’ll be able to fix it? Get the boys back?”

“Hopefully. Gotta figure out the charm before I can remove it, make this thing safe again so’s nobody else gets pulled through. Looks like whatever did this designed the charm so’s it could get back out again.”

“That’s why it’s still glowing like that?”

“Uh-huh.”

Bonnie scratched her head thoughtfully. Demons… “So won’t removing the charm trap Dean and Sam in the album, along with the thing that did this?”

Bobby nodded solemnly, a little smile ticking up the corners of his mouth. “That’s the plan, ma’am.”

Winchester house
Lawrence, KS

Chaos still reigned outside the Winchesters’ childhood home, and although the fire was pretty much under control now, John was still huddled on the hood of the Impala with his kids, Dean looking pale and shell-shocked, his dad barely aware he was there, much less of anything else that was going on around him.

They were both in shock, Sam could see that, and he was pretty sure the same could be said for the adult version of Dean, who was stumbling after his little brother way too obediently for Sam’s liking.

Sam stopped for a second, his hands on his brother’s shoulders as he turned him around to face him, momentarily dragging his attention away from the fire and the family on the Chevy.

“You okay, man?” he asked pretty redundantly, Dean’s gaze skittering straight back to the Impala and the smoldering remains of their former home.

“Pretty much no,” Dean replied, a tremor in his voice that set Sam’s teeth on edge.

“Look,” Sam said quietly, calmly, fingers gentle where they touched his brother. “I can’t pretend to understand what this is like for you—I mean—reliving all of this—”

“Sam—”

“But right now, you gotta focus, man. We got more important things to think about.”

Dean looked back at him sharply. “More important?” he echoed. “More important than what? Our mom dying? Our home burning?”

“Dean. That was twenty-seven years ago!”

“But it’s right now, Sammy! It’s happening right now!”

“No,” Sam insisted. “Dean. I don’t know if we’re really in the past or—or what, but we can’t change anything. Ya hear me? We can’t. The watch. It—it just made me realize that—”

Dean nodded. “I know, Sammy.” He sounded defeated, shoulders slumping and eyes downcast. “I know.”

“And you need to see this.”

Sam began to lead his brother toward the bushes at the rear of the house, to the place where earlier he thought he’d seen a shadow moving within the shadow that should have been the garden.

“Hey, stay back.”

A cop was suddenly in Sam’s face, pushing him and Dean away from the house, back toward the street.

“You have to stay back. C’mon, guys.”

Neither Sam nor Dean protested, allowing the police officer to herd them back toward the sidewalk, back to the crowd of onlookers huddled together in their nightclothes.

Once the cop was satisfied the boys were back where they were supposed to be, he turned away and headed off toward one of the fire trucks, and Sam took that as his cue.

“C’mon,” he said, once again tugging on Dean’s sleeve. “We gotta get back there.”

Dean nodded, following Sam mutely as he looped around the back of the large gathering of neighbors on the sidewalk, ducking down behind a patrol car before signaling Dean to make a run for the back of the house.

The two of them slipped unnoticed up the lawn, Sam’s shoulder brushing the invisible barrier keeping them trapped in the vicinity of the house, before finally pulling up near the fence at the back of the property, helpfully hidden from view by that big old tree, the one he’d seen in his dream all those years ago, the one that had led them back here to Jenny and her kids.

Sam stopped and took a breath before indicating what it was he was so intent on Dean seeing. “Look at this.”

Dean looked. And frowned. “What am I lookin’ at?” he asked. “The roses or the green stuff?”

Sam rolled his eyes. “It’s called shrubbery, Dean,” he pointed out. “And that’s not what you’re supposed to be looking at.”

Dean looked again. Squinted. Looked again. “Holy crap.”

“Exactly.” Sam nodded triumphantly.

“What the hell is that?”

“It’s a hole,” Sam pointed out a little obviously.

It was Dean’s turn to roll his eyes. “I can see that,” he said, bending a little so he could get a better look at the phenomenon in question. “But a hole in what?”

Sam considered the ragged black circle hovering at waist height in the bushes thoughtfully. It was about twelve inches in diameter, no more, the edges shimmering and sparkling where the color of the surrounding objects seemed to bleed into it. At its very center it was just emptiness, darkness, the complete absence of anything. Like someone had ripped a hole in the fabric of space.

“I think it’s a tear in reality,” he hazarded, and to his credit, Dean didn’t seem at all surprised.

“Of course it is,” he said on a sigh. “What else would it be?”

“Dean,” Sam returned. “I know it sounds—”

“Crazy?”

“Yeah. That. But I followed that—that shadow creature here when you were trying to get into the house and I saw him make this hole and—and he went through. To whatever’s on the other side.”

Dean frowned. “What’s on the other side?”

Sam shrugged. “I have no idea,” he admitted. “But I think—I think this might be our only way out.”

Dean considered that. “It’s getting smaller,” he observed, pointing at the hole, which seemed to be pulsing and contracting even as they stood looking at it.

“Yeah,” Sam agreed. “That’s why I came to get you.”

Dean hesitated for a second. “What if this is like a Stull deal?” he asked a little uncertainly. “What if we find ourselves in some whacked out alternate reality again?”

Sam glanced around them. “What, like this one?”

Dean shook his head. “Nothin’ alternate about this, Sam,” he said quietly. “This is it. This is what happened.”

“That shadow creature didn’t lock us in the house back in 1983,” Sam pointed out.

“No,” Dean agreed. “It didn’t. But if it hadn’t come back here tonight, through that—that photograph, then history wouldn’t have changed. That thing changed reality, our reality, Sam.”

Sam raised an eyebrow. “To kill us?”

Dean shrugged. “I dunno,” he admitted. “We don’t even know what it is.”

Sam ran a hand through his hair thoughtfully. “Closest thing I can think of is the Daevas back in Chicago.”

“Shadow demon,” Dean nodded. “Yeah, that fits. But Daevas are usually controlled by other demons, right? The way Meg controlled them in Chicago?”

“Yeah, I guess,” Sam agreed. “What did you call them? Demonic pit bulls? I guess they gotta have a master, someone pulling the strings.”

“So if it was a Daeva,” Dean continued. “It’s gotta be someone’s bitch, right?”

“This seems like a lot of trouble for someone to go to just to gank us,” Sam observed.

Dean seemed to think about that for a second, before a light suddenly snapped on behind his eyes, signaling the proverbial light bulb moment.” “Terminator!” he burst out. “Maybe it’s a Terminator deal.”

“Okay,” Sam said hesitantly. “A cyborg from the future gets sent back in time to kill the mother of its enemy before he’s even born, erasing him from history before he can even exist.”

“What if that’s what’s happening here?” Dean suggested excitedly. “The shadow demon locks us in our burning house so that—uh—Mini-Me couldn’t get Baby-You out. And me, you and Dad die in the fire with Mom.”

“Get rid of his enemy,” Sam agreed.

“Before we’re even his enemy.”

“So someone’s trying to kill us before we’re old enough to protect ourselves?”

“Maybe. Or maybe they’re after Dad. Or maybe they wanted us to follow them in here so they could kill us twice, as us, and as kids. Who knows what sick twisted crap goes through a demon’s noggin.”

“Okay, so we have to find it,” Sam insisted. “The shadow demon. We have to find it before it kills us. Or past us.”

“But we don’t know where the hell it’s gone,” Dean said, pointing at the rapidly receding rip in reality. “If we follow it through, we could wind up anywhere.”

“If we can follow it through,” Sam added. “No way we’re gonna fit through there.”

The rupture was now only a few inches across.

Dean took a step back, reaching behind him and pulling out his Colt.

Sam’s eyes widened as his brother aimed the weapon at the hole. “Wait! No!” he burst out, grabbing Dean’s arm and pushing it down. “No, we can’t just shoot it!”

“Why the hell not?” Dean demanded, squaring up to his brother.

“Because we don’t know what that would do!” Sam pointed out in exasperation. “You could accidentally shoot Kid You—or Kid Me—on the other side of that hole.”

“We don’t even know what’s on the other side of that hole!”

“Exactly!” Sam concurred. “No, listen, Dean. I think there’s another way.”

Dean raised an eyebrow. “What way? You got a bulldozer in your pocket you forgot to tell me about? Wait, don’t answer that.”

“Wouldn’t dream of it,” Sam returned. “Hate to make you feel inferior there, shortstuff.”

“Shut up, Sasquatch.”

“Shut up yourself, I need to concentrate.”

Dean paused. “On what?”

“On the residual energy hanging around from whatever that shadow demon did to open this hole in the first place.”

Dean blinked at him. “You think you can mirror it?” he asked, a tiny spark of awe in his voice.

Sam set his shoulders and closed his eyes. “Dunno yet,” he admitted. “Gimme a minute.”

Concentrating, Sam tried to get a sense of the power still echoing around the rim of the rupture, trying to feel its outline like a living thing, like something he could grab hold of and use in whatever way he desired.

He thought about how it had felt when he’d faced Lucifer in Leicester, or Alyssa in Phoenix. When he’d faced that yellow-eyed version of himself through the looking glass at Stull.

He tried to remember that feeling, what he’d had to do to make that power obey his whim, not the person he was mirroring.

Well, firstly, Dean had been in mortal danger. Which, at a stretch, Sam could say was the case right now.

But the threat wasn’t immediate. No one had Dean dangling by his throat over a Hell Gate. No one was trying to lobotomize him with the power of their mind.

And yet Sam could feel the edges of it, the tingling in his fingertips, the buzzing in his brain, he was so close, so close, he just had to catch hold and…and…push.

“Holy crap, dude!” Dean burst out, his voice strangely distant, as if he was standing at the end of a long corridor. “And no one even had to threaten to eviscerate me or anything.”

Sam opened one eye, then the other.

The hole had widened considerably, quite possibly enough for them to get through.

“Holy crap,” he echoed his brother’s sentiment, blinking in surprise. “I did that?”

“You’re gettin’ good at this, Sammy!” Dean told him, clapping him on the shoulder, before glancing just once behind him at the scene outside their childhood home. A shadow passed briefly over his features before the shutters slammed down and once again he was giving Sam that familiar grin. “So whaddya say we blow this popsicle stand, little brother?”

Sam nodded. “Not a minute too soon.”

Taking a breath, he closed his eyes and followed his brother into nothingness…

* * * *

“Aw man, I hate camping!”

Sam blinked, opening his eyes to a bright blue, cloudless sky reflecting off an equally bright blue lake that seemed to roll on forever in each direction.

It was a beautiful sunny day, and he was standing on the shoreline, the water calm and glassy, snowcapped mountains rising up in the distance, trees green and fragrant all around them, birds singing.

It was perfect, and beautiful. And familiar.

“Where the hell are we?” Dean grumbled at his side, and Sam reluctantly tore his gaze away from the stunning vista, his brother frowning discontentedly at his sudden surroundings. “When the hell are we?”

“Heck if I know,” Sam returned, considering. “But there’s something familiar about it. Like we’ve been here before.”

Dean shrugged. “I dunno, Sammy,” he said, shucking out of his jacket in the warm sunshine. “Dad took us on a hell of a lot of camping trips growing up. They all kinda merged into one.” He grunted as he stepped in something squishy and grimaced. “Freakin’ nature.”

“Maybe this wasn’t a camping trip,” Sam suggested. “Maybe it was a hunting trip.”

“Yeah, but could be any one of hundred,” Dean observed, scanning the terrain thoughtfully before suddenly glancing sideways at his brother. “You think we’re in another photo?”

Sam took a breath, deciding to see if they could make it as far as the waterline. “Maybe,” he said, walking slowly just in case he should suddenly find himself slamming against another of those invisible barriers. “But I don’t remember Dad taking many happy family snapshots when we were on hunting trips.”

Dean grunted his agreement as he reluctantly followed Sam down toward the pebbly shoreline.

There was no one around for miles as far as Sam could see, and there was definitely no sign of any shadow demon.

“That thing’s gonna find it a whole lot harder to hide out here in the daylight,” Dean pointed out, toeing at a couple of pebbles with his boot. “If we can find it—”

“Maybe we can exorcise it,” Sam completed his thought for him, his attention shifting out into the distance, to the water and mountains, that prickly sense of déjà vu playing a concerto up and down his spine.

He took in a deep breath, almost tasting the ozone, the sweetness of the air.

If Dad had brought them here as kids, Sam doubted either one of them had appreciated the beauty, the calmness, the stillness of the place.

“There was that water wraith that time,” Dean said suddenly, his brow scrunching in concentration. “Montana, maybe?” His eyes cleared, and he snapped his fingers. “Bowman Lake! Remember? You’d be, I dunno, eight? Dad met Jefferson out here and he took that picture of us sitting on the Impala.”

Sam nodded, the memory hazy, although he vividly remembered the photograph. “The one we found in Dad’s motel room in Jericho,” he agreed. “Yeah, maybe. Can’t really remember much about it though.”

Dean shrugged. “Pretty run-of-the-mill job I think,” he said, the expression on his face suggesting he either had a bitch of a headache or was trying really hard to remember. “Don’t remember no shadow demon showin’ up.”

Sam shook his head, his hands going to his hips as he cast his gaze about himself, trying to figure out what the hell they were doing here.

“Sam.”

Suddenly Dean’s hand was on his arm and he was pointing out toward the middle of the lake.

“Sam, there’s someone out there.”

Sam followed the direction of Dean’s finger, squinting into the bright blueness of the water and just barely making out what looked like a dark blur of something floating on the surface.

“How do you know it’s a person?” Sam started to ask, but got no further, as Dean was already running down to the water’s edge, losing his overshirt as he went. “Dean!”

Sam had no option but to follow, his own jacket and overshirt strewn on the pebbly beach as he waded into the chilly water after his brother.

Dean had been right. That was definitely a body floating on the lake.

Despite the warm sunshine overhead, the water was cold and Sam had to grit his teeth as he swam out into the depths, his brother a blur in front of him.

As they closed in on the body, Sam could see it was that of a man and he was floating face down, obviously not breathing.

Dean reached him first, grabbing him by the collar of his jacket and making a valiant attempt to drag him back to the shore. But the guy was obviously heavy and Dean was struggling, and it took both of them a good minute to manhandle the body back up out of the water.

Finally reaching dry land, Sam collapsed onto his knees on the pebbly beach as Dean turned the guy over onto his back, intent on administering CPR.

It was only then that Sam finally caught sight of the man’s face.

“Dad?”

Dean sucked in a startled breath.

It was John Winchester, younger, sure, but undoubtedly him.

His lips were blue and he wasn’t breathing.

“Dean?” Sam burst out.

Dean looked at him, seemingly frozen, before suddenly coming back to himself and falling on his knees, pinching his father’s nose as he bent over and breathed into his mouth.

Nothing.

Sam began chest compressions, trying to remember everything Dad had ever taught them about basic first aid but unable to focus on a single memory, only seeing his dad’s unresponsive, waxy face, eyes closed, mouth lax as Dean tried to breathe for him.

How did he get out here? There was nothing there, no people, no car, and certainly no demon.

John looked to be in his late thirties, early forties maybe, and Sam’s brain, numbed by what was going on on the beach in front of him, tried to distract itself by concentrating on the math. Bowman Lake. 1990? 1991? Dad would be thirty-eight or thirty-nine? Did that fit?

But this hadn’t happened. Sam didn’t remember this happening. And he would have remembered. Eight years old or not, he would have remembered this.

His hands were still performing chest compressions without him really being aware of what he was doing, and Dean had just pulled his mouth away from his dad’s when John suddenly started spluttering water, dragging in air like it was going out of fashion and scrabbling about himself with desperate hands.

Sam was fairly sure that was the first breath he’d taken in a while too.

“Dad!” Dean burst out, before mentally checking himself. “John? It’s gonna be okay, just relax, okay? Just relax, you’re alright, just breathe. Just breathe for me, okay?” Dean was pressing his father’s shoulders back against the beach, trying to calm the older man.

But John was fighting him, trying to push him away, trying to get up, wheezing and spluttering and still coughing up water as he made it into a sitting position, one hand grabbing hold of Dean’s shoulder for support.

“It’s okay, just relax—” Dean was saying, as John swayed slightly, shaking his head desperately.

“Please, please!” he managed to rasp out, choking on the last syllable and gulping in another huge lungful of air. “No, please, I have to—I have to—”

He started to fall backwards, and both Sam and Dean moved to support him, keeping him upright between them as he hacked up still more of the lake.

“It’s okay—” Sam tried to reassure him, but was quickly cut off by John grabbing a handful of his t-shirt and pulling him down to eye level.

“My kids!” he cried out, eyes wild and terrified. “My kids! They’re trapped! They’re trapped! Please, please, you have to help me! You have to get my kids!”

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The Winchester Chronicles