I honestly don't know where the show is going this season. So I had a little fun and projected the boys seven years into the future to see where they end up.

Two of the characters are original; otherwise I own neither the show nor any other characters.

I'm toying with the idea of writing a prequel that will explain in more detail some of the events referenced in this story, but who knows? So for now let's hit the ground running, shall we?

Look Back in Anger

Seven years from now…

The "Mommy and Me" group that met every week at the park had always been a bit suspicious of the Winchesters. After all, Whitefish, Montana was a small town, and rumors did tend to fly.

Not that anyone had anything against Jane Winchester herself-quite the opposite, in fact. They all agreed on that as they stood together in a knot.

In was a sunny day in early spring, and the sun shone warmly. Each woman had one eye on her own children and the other on Jane, watching as she pushed her young daughter on the swings.

"I mean, she puts in all that time at the clinic. Dr. Sorensen says he couldn't do without her," one mother offered.

"Her pies and cakes always sell first at the school bake sales," another added. "Folks practically snatch them off the table."

"And of course, that little Angela is such a sweetheart," Loni Johnson, the de facto head of the little group, said with a nod.

All the other mothers agreed aloud again.

Angela Winchester was a kindergartner now. She was an ordinary-looking little girl, with thick brown hair that hung straight down her back. She was on the thin side but tall and long-legged like her mother.

Every mother in Whitefish knew Angela to be the best behaved child around. She always played nicely with the other children, always shared her toys. She got only "A"s in school, and spoke respectfully to adults at all times.

Everyone in town—young and old, cat and dog—liked her. There was something about the child that made it impossible not to like her.

Her good influence even had a way of rubbing off on other children. In fact when a child was acting up a "play date with Angela" was usually one of the first remedies local parents applied. Within an hour of two even the wildest little boy would be playing quietly with his guest.

If it wasn't for the fact the Angela ran and whopped like any other child on the playground, and that she'd recently knocked out one of her baby front teeth in a very public fall, people might have thought the child was a bit strange.

"I mean, so what if Jane's living arrangement is kind of…unconventional," another mother named Beth volunteered. "If it works for her and Angela, I say, hey, live and let live."

"But then why does she keep it a secret? Why doesn't she just tell us the truth?" Loni asked rhetorically.

"All of them living in that little cabin," red-haired Staci clucked.

"And the husband we never see," added a tired-looking woman in a nurse's uniform. "I mean, how many Elks Club pancake breakfasts have we tried to invite him to over the years? And Jane always says the same thing-"

"'He's out of town,'" they all chorused together with a laugh.

"And then there's those brothers of hers," Loni said. The low, growling sound of a car engine distracted her for a moment. "Well, well, speak of the devil."

A black car, vintage and with a long, low profile, had swung around the corner and was parking at the curb. A lean man in a leather jacket got out and strode across the grass.

Jane's little girl had already spotted him. She leapt down from her swing in spite of her mother's protestations.

"Uncle Dean, Uncle Dean!" She shrieked as she ran. The man caught her and swung her about with a casualness that had the mothers shaking their heads.

Beth frowned. "Wait, that's not the brother I met. The one that brings Angela to Blue Birds is a lot taller. He can barely fit in those little chairs in the kindergarten room."

Loni smirked. "That's the other brother, Sam. He's the youngest. This one's Dean, the middle child. Or so Jane says."

As they watched Jane embraced the newcomer. The two took the girl by the hands and chatted quietly as Angela danced happily between them.

Patty, the nurse, squinted for a moment. "Well, they've both got sandy hair. But otherwise I don't see much of a resemblance."

"She doesn't look anything like Sam Winchester," Beth avowed. "She's pretty enough but, boy, he's a hottie. If I'd had a brother that looked like that I never would have left home."

"Beth, you're so bad," Patty chuckled.

"So if Jane is shacked up with two younger guys she isn't related to, which one is Angela's father?" Staci asked.

"Hang on, they're leaving," Loni said abruptly. "Jane, dear?" She called in a louder voice so she could be heard over the children playing. "Don't forget the PTA meeting next Tuesday night."

"I won't," the other woman called back. "See you all then."

As Jane gathered up her daughter's belongings and steered her towards the car Dean Winchester regarded the gaggle of mothers with a cool, appraising look. They smiled and waved at the handsome man, but he only turned his back to them and walked away.

"Well, it's clear Angela didn't get her manners from him," Patty huffed.

"He may be rude, but I sure wouldn't kick him out of bed," Loni said sagely.

"Me neither," Beth said wistfully as they watched the trio drive away. "Jane is so lucky!"

"So, anyway, today at the clinic Angela helped me bandage up Mrs. Rossini's foot. Did a bang up job of it too, didn't you, baby?" Jane called over her shoulder to the tiny living room.

"Uh huh. It smelled nasty," Angela called back in her frank child's way. "But she said I made her feel better. She gave me a peppermint."

"Cool," her Uncle Sam told the little girl. He and Jane were drying the evening's dishes.

"My daughter's a natural healer," Jane said proudly. "I'm thinking next stop, Harvard Medical School."

"You know, Stanford's got a good medical school," Sam offered. "And she'd be a lot closer to home there."

"True," Jane said thoughtfully as she scrubbed at a stubborn spot on a dish.

"Would you two knock it off?" Dean called back. "Everybody knows what the kid is going to be when she grows up."

"And what's that?" Sam asked.

"An awesome hunter like her Uncle Dean. Duh."

Sam tossed the towel he was using over his shoulder and went to stand in the living room. Since only about five feet separated the postage-stamp sized kitchen area from the rest of the cabin it wasn't a long walk.

It was a cozy domestic scene, Winchester-style. There was a fire in the fireplace, the air was still redolent of a home-cooked meal, and Dean and his niece were making custom bullets at the dining room table.

"Make sure she doesn't pinch her fingers in that loader," Sam reminded his brother.

"Dude, I'm not an idiot," Dean scolded. "She's just handing me the casings. Right, Ange?"

"Right." Angela had already carefully removed the empty shell casings from their boxes and sorted them according to size. In one small hand, however, she had grouped a few of them. She held them out now to show Sam.

"Sammy, look. A daddy, a mommy, and two baby bullets!"

"Can you tell us what kind they are?" Dean encouraged.

"Two .22s, a .38, and a .45," Angela rattled off immediately.

Dean winked at her. "That's my girl."

"Nice, Dean." Sam rolled his eyes.

Jane appeared next to him. "Sam Winchester, get your butt back in here and help me finish these dishes. I've got a mountain of paperwork to do and Angela still needs her bath."

As Sam turned to follow her Dean's lips made the sound of a whip soaring through the air.

"He wouldn't be whipped if you'd get it together and install that dishwasher that's sitting out in the shed," Jane told the older of the two Winchesters.

"Get off my back, woman," Dean retorted. "I'll get around to it."

"I've heard that before," Jane laughed as she and Sam resumed their work. "We bought the damn thing to wash Angela's baby bottles. It would be nice if we could get some use out of it sometime. Maybe even before we're washing the champagne glasses from her wedding reception!"

Dean frowned. "Janey, that's not funny. Don't joke about that kind of thing in front of the kid. You'll put ideas in her head."

Dean squinted down at the child next to him, trying in his mind to imagine her grown up, a woman. He couldn't do it. She stayed the same little midget she'd always been.

Angela, as she often did, seemed to know what he was thinking. She grinned at him, showing off the gap where her missing front tooth should have been.

"OK, pumpkin head, get back to work," Dean said gruffly.

"I'm not a pumpkin head," the child corrected. "I'm a jack o' lantern head. See?" She smiled again, wider this time.

Dean swallowed a laugh and gave her a stern look. "You heard your mom. Let's finish this up, and then it's a bath and bed. Got it, Winchester?"

"Aye, aye, captain," Angela said, saluting him.

"You are such a weird kid."

"No, you are."

"No, you are."

"Uh, uh, you are."

"Nope, you totally are."

"You're way weirder than I am, Uncle Dean."

"Am not."

"Are, too."

In the kitchen Sam smiled to himself.

Dean rolled over on the sofa and cautiously opened one eye.

Sunlight was streaming into the room. It must be morning.

He sniffed deeply.

Coffee was already on. God bless Janey, he thought, grinning to himself.

"Good morning, Dean."

The older Winchester rubbed his eyes and squinted across the room.

"Hey, Cass. How long have you been here?"

"All night. I was watching my daughter sleep," the angel explained. He still looked exactly the same as he had when Dean had first met him, stubble and all.

"I've told you before, you shouldn't do that. It's weird."

"It isn't weird," Jane corrected as she came into the room, pulling a sweater over her head. "I do it all the time."

Dean knew better than to ask if Cass had really spent to whole night in his daughter's room, or if he had slipped into her mother's for awhile. When it came to their relationship, whatever it was, the angel had absolutely no sense of humor.

Jane wouldn't talk about it either. Even the most ribald jokes Dean came up with, he knew, would be greeted only with two cold stares. So he'd learned to keep his mouth shut on that score.

"Dean, do you want eggs for breakfast?" Jane now asked as she started to pull items out of the fridge.

He sat up and started pulling his boots on. "Yes, ma'am."

The Winchesters' first encounter with Jane had been a hostile one, to say the least. But she had had no one else and nowhere to go.

So he and Sammy had ended up looking after her, for a time. The upside was that they discovered Jane had put herself through college cooking in various restaurants.

Now, years later, whenever he came home from the road there was someone to cook a tasty, hot meal for him if he asked nicely. After so many years living on crappy cheeseburgers and little else Dean still appreciated the novelty.

Dean nudged the old recliner where Sam was sleeping with the toe of his boot.

"Get up, Sammy. Breakfast."

"Huh?" Sam's eyes blinked open and then focused on their guest. "Oh, hey, Cass."

Sam stood, stretching out his long arms. His hands touched the ceiling.

"Man, Dean," he complained, rubbing his lower back. "Next time I get the sofa."

"You lost the coin toss, dude. Get over it," Dean growled at his brother.

But he didn't really mean it. It was rare nowadays that they were both home at the same time. Since Angela had arrived the Winchesters had tried to make sure there would always be one of them home with Jane and the baby. But the downside of that was that one or the other was always away doing his job.

Dean knew in his heart, no matter how much he and Sam fought, that deep down he still missed hunting with him. He missed Sam's company on the road.

Jane had always insisted that their arrangement wasn't permanent, that the two brothers could both come and go as they pleased.

But privately both Dean and Sam had agreed that wouldn't be an option for a few more years. Not until Angela was older and better able to look out for herself.

Dean had already known from helping to raise Sam how much work it was to take care of a kid. Sure enough the last five years had been a blur of bottles and diapers and first steps and walks to school.

Adding to that was Angela's unusual ancestry, which also meant endless spell work and warding to keep her safe. Not to mention the occasional unannounced visit from the uncles on the celestial side of her family tree.

Because Jane had no family, and because Cass was the closest thing to family he and Sam had left, both Angela and Jane had become honorary Winchesters following the baby's birth.

Dean liked to think the name also gave them a bit of protection. There wasn't a hunter or demon alive anxious to mix it up with a Winchester, no matter what her origin.

While Dean was ruminating on all this Cass was regarding him sternly.

"What, Cass?" He finally asked.

"She is missing a tooth."

"Angela? Yes, she is. She and a neighbor boy were climbing that big oak in the park and she fell out. She scraped her knee and knocked out a tooth." Dean shrugged. "The dentist said since it was a baby tooth it was nothing to worry about."

"Her adult teeth will start growing in in a year or two," Sam added for the angel's benefit. "Those are the permanent ones."

But it wasn't the aesthetics of his daughter's smile that was troubling the angel. His voice was concerned, almost fretful. "Did she feel pain?"

"She did, in the fall." Jane looked up from the pan where she was melting butter. "And her mouth bled a bit. But she was fine in a few hours. She's already forgotten about all that. Our daughter's half-human, Cass," she reminded him. "She feels pain."

"I do not wish that for her."

"I don't either, but it comes with the territory, I'm afraid." Jane began cracking eggs into the pan, and then whisking them quickly with the back of a spoon.

"She's a Winchester," Dean added. "She's a tough kid."

Seemingly mollified, Castiel shifted away from them and was now examining the mantle over the fireplace.

It was full of angel figurines Dean and Sam picked up in their travels—pudgy cherubs, sparkling Christmas angel ornaments, even porcelain teddy bears in angel's robes. It was a running gag between the brothers and Angela, and she loved every one of them.

"Ridiculous," Cass opined. "This is not what we look like."

"I like them," said a young voice from the doorway. Angela stood there, dressed but with her hair still tangled from sleep. "They're funny."

"Morning, baby." Jane smiled at the child over her shoulder.

"Angela Cassandra," Castiel greeted her in his formal, old-fashioned way.

Angela regarded her father solemnly. After a long moment she spoke to him softly in Enochian.

She seemed to have been born speaking it, able to communicate silently with Cass before she could speak to anyone else in the family. Since most humans couldn't even write in Enochian without three or four ancient books in front of them, the Winchesters assumed the ability was just part of her birthright.

Cass responded in kind, and the girl went to him. She put her arms around his waist and hugged him, just like any other child would.

Over the years the angel had gotten better at recognizing the human need for physical affection. He patted the child gently on the head.

She smiled up at him, and then turned to her mother without leaving the protective circle of Cass' arms.

"Mom, can I show Cass where we're going to build the tree fort in the backyard? Please?"

"All right. I'll fix you breakfast when you get back. Take a jacket," she added.

"And use the door, not angel travel," Sam added as he and Dean sat down at the table. "We have neighbors. You can't be too careful."

"Understood." Cass allowed the child to take him by the hand and lead him outside.

The three remaining adults ate breakfast together. Dean filled them in on what had happened on the road—an encounter with a shapeshifter, no big deal. Sam talked about what was happening at Angela's school and the macaroni necklace she had brought home.

"Man, don't schools ever come up with anything new?" Dean groused good-naturedly. "You used to make those, Sammy."

"I think kindergarten teachers probably stick with what works," Sam mused. "When Angela starts first grade in a few months they'll hit her with some new stuff."

"Don't bet on it." Dean had never concealed his contempt for formal education. He and Sam had pieced together an education while on the road with their father, changing schools the way other kids changed hairstyles. Like Sam Dean had finished high school, but unlike Sam his educational goals had never gone any higher.

"So what's with the PTA coven in the park, Jane?" Dean asked as he helped himself to another piece of toast. "When I got there yesterday they were staring at you and Ange like you were bugs under a microscope."

"They mean well." Jane sighed. "They're just bored. I give them something to gossip about, which they appreciate. Plus they like to ogle you and Sam."

Sam frowned. "Tell me about it. Beth—Dakota's mother—"

"Dakota," Dean smirked rudely.

"—practically sat in my lap at the last classroom meeting. Her husband gave me the stink-eye all afternoon."

"This is a small town we live in, guys," Jane reminded them. "A small, weird, town. And it doesn't matter what they think about the three of us. What matters is what they think about Angela. As long as this place treats her well they can call me anything they want behind my back."

Dean admired Jane's absolute determination that her very unusual daughter would have as normal a childhood as possible. He didn't always agree with it, but he didn't argue. Not even Cass did.

Mothers felt differently about things like child-rearing than fathers did, Dean guessed. If his own mother, Mary, had lived, Dean was sure she never would have allowed John to take their sons out on the road with him at such a young age. But of course if Mary had lived John would never have become a hunter in the first place.

Jane had moved on and was now telling some stories about what was happening at Whitefish's little medical clinic. She had been a hot shot ER doctor in a big city hospital before she'd been sent on a different path. She still worked part time to keep her skills sharp, she said.

"You never know when someone is going to show up here at the cabin needing stitches," she said with a smile. "And it's better if I do it than you guys. I can always recognize when a hunter has stitched himself up because it looks like something Edward Scissorhands would have done," she laughed.

"They come for your cooking," Sam corrected her. "The free medical care is just a bonus."

They were both right. Everyone in the hunting world knew the Winchesters, and knew that there was a safe house in Montana where a hunter could get medical help and lay low if he or she needed to do so.

They'd also all heard about the unusual child that lived there. The unspoken rule was you didn't ask the Winchesters about her. Ever. Anyone who did would be unceremoniously tossed out of the cabin on his rear.

But a smart hunter who kept his mouth shut would enjoy great coffee, the services of a pretty doctor, and the admiration of a cute kid who was always interested in hearing stories from the road. To most hunters it was a fair exchange.

When they were finished eating Sam gathered up the plates and took them to the sink. He paused there, gazing out the kitchen window into the back yard.

"What are they up to?" Jane asked curiously.

"They're doing that weird angel thing we're they just standing really still."

"They're still talking to each other," Jane clarified. "Just without words."

Dean knew that Enochian was unlike any human language. It was apparently able to express very difficult concepts and complex ideas in a single word, or even just a thought. A massive work of human literature like, say Moby Dick or War and Peace, Cass had once explained, could be distilled down to only a few phases in Enochian if an angel ever cared to do so.

Which they usually didn't. There was almost nothing in human culture angels found valuable.

There had been a few over the centuries, like Gabriel and Balthazar, who had lived among humans and found them amusing. But theirs had been a patronizing affection, like one might have for a dog.

Castiel was the only angel who had come close to understanding and appreciating human beings on their own terms. And the results had occasionally been disastrous.

But then there was Angela, who had a foot in both worlds. Sometimes Dean wondered if the whole reason she'd been conceived in the first place was so that there would be someone who could interpret for both sides. Maybe she would be the one finally able to mediate conflicts between humans and the angels when they arose.

In his more cautiously optimistic moments Dean sure hoped so.