"Cas had to leave." Dean states matter-of-factly, eyes never leaving his scribbles. He picks up a blue crayon and begins to draw a rectangle next to the figure in a triangular trench coat. "Doctor has Cas right now. He will come back with Cas, he said, when things are safe. Things aren't safe. I want to be safe with Cas and Doctor, but Doctor said you can keep me safe." His round, green eyes lock in on Sam's. Sam keeps his expression clear, though, inside, he feels horrible. His voice is weathered as he speaks.
"You don't think I can keep you safe, Dean?"
His brother's eyes falter, searching the room for an answer, rather than keeping on Sam's face. The silence drags out for what feels to Sam like forever.
"I think maybe you can."
Sam exhales, inaudible, watching his older brother's too-many-years-too-young face turn back to his paper. Dean picks up another crayon, a purple one. He scrawls out the words "Cas, Doctor, Sammy, Dean" at the top of a new sheet, each name a different colour. Cas, Purple - Doctor, Blue - Sam, Red, while Dean depicts himself as the light, oceanic Green that matches his eyes. He lines up the waxy figurines in two groups, Red and Green, together, standing at attention, and the Green, having been used a lot, is shorter. The Blue and Purple are on the farthest opposite edge of the paper from the other two, and the Purple is on it's side, out of commission. Sam has to blink back his overwhelmed state when Dean once again looks to him.
"Doctor said for me to tell you that you need to keep fighting what you see." Sam is confused, but before he can ask what he means, Dean goes on. "He says he can help you not see the bad things anymore. He says he can fix you, but you have to remember to fight the bad things. You can't beleive the bad things, because then, Doctor said he can't fix you, Sammy." Dean's eyes haven't left Sam's for a moment, and he grabs Sam's oversized hand and squeezes his small fingers against Sam's palm. It doesn't hurt the way it did when Dean was his normal age, but it still sends the same clarity-inducing chill raging through his body. Sam sucks in a breath, but doesn't pull back. He closes his fingers slowly around Dean's, feeling the warmth radiating from the contact. "You want Doctor to fix you, right?" Dean's eyes are serious, the storm in the sea of green thundering.
"Yes."
Sam blinks down at his older brother, and after the third try, realises the sudden blurred vision is his anguish flowing gently down his cheeks in a steady release.
"I want Doctor to fix you, Sammy." Dean rests the side of his head up against Sam's side, still holding his palm. His young voice aches the way older-Dean's voice so often does, in the way that says so much more, on so many more intense levels than the words that actually come out have shown. Sam chokes silently on his tears, his body shaking against Dean, and Dean lets him. He stretches his small arms around as much of his younger brother as he can, and Sam wipes now and again at his face, and rubs a hand through Dean's hair, and holds him close as they fall asleep, leaning against the couch at Bobby's, awaiting the man's return with the ingredients for the cure for the age-reversal that Sam wouldn't have traded anything for…