WARNING: may contain typos, misplaced lines, stunning lack of plot, non-chronological order, confusing and probably misused verb tenses, and random thought brackets in awkward places. Confusion factor is tripled by eight if page break lines fail to show up. Keep away from small children and dogs. May cause head explosion, total organ failure, severe migraines, coma, or brain damage.

Disclaimer – If I owned it I wouldn't be a broke college student, probably.

It's an old memory that Dean has. Like all memories of his mother, it's fading at the edges, wearing away. There are some details that his mind has probably filled in over the years. There are other details that it has left out entirely.

Like how he can't quite remember the layout of their house, and if he and Dad were in the front yard or the back yard when Mom came out with baby Sammy. He doesn't really remember what the backyard looked like anymore, but he can imagine the front of the house clearly enough.

(The front of the house on fire late at night – sitting on Dad's car in his pajamas watching the smoke rise and the firemen – Dad is holding the baby and shaking, shaking because – Sammy is crying, keeps crying and crying – and Mom is... Mom is...)

Mom is on the porch. It must be the back porch, because they didn't have one at the front, did they? It's a sunny day and Dean and Dad are tossing around a softball. Dad says Dean is getting really good. He doesn't drop the ball anymore. The arc he throws it in isn't so wobbly. Most of the time Dad doesn't have to lean too far forward to get it.

Mom is smiling and holding baby Sammy. Sammy, who she just pulled out of the crib and who is sleeping on her shoulder. Or maybe Sammy is awake, and watching Dean with wide, fascinated eyes. That part of the memory is not clear. Dean runs up to Mom, because he has been expecting her. Dad took him out with the softball to distract him, but he remembers now that he's been waiting.

"Did you make them? Are they ready?" He pesters her excitedly, but she doesn't mind. She reaches down with her free hand to pat him on the head. Or maybe she leans down and kisses him. He can't remember. What he does remember that she was there. She was warm, she was happy, and she was alive.

"They're on the table, sweetheart."

Dean runs ahead of her, filled all at once with glee and anticipation. This part of the memory is blurriest of all. He doesn't remember which way the hall turns to reach the kitchen, or what Mom was saying to Dad as they followed Dean, laughing. Were they even laughing? He hardly remembers what the kitchen looks like. The walls were painted green, or maybe blue. Or maybe that was the colour of Mom's dress. Maybe she wasn't even wearing a dress. His memory tends to superimpose images of other women he's seen over the years, but none of them are Mom.

He remembers the smell of the fresh-baked cinnamon buns, more clearly and sharply than anything else. They were his favourite thing in the whole wide world, back when he was four-years-old and his wide world was not so very wide. Mom knew, and made them just for him.

He's halfway through gobbling up his first one before she even catches up with him. Baby Sammy is definitely awake now, in his memory, looking at the bun Dean is eating. Dean sees and plucks a fresh one of the tray, holding it up to his brother.

"Here, Sammy! You can have one too!"

Mom laughs, though he can't quite remember what that sounds like. "Sammy can't eat cinna-buns, Dean. He doesn't have teeth yet."

"Oh. He can't have any at all?" Dean remembers feeling sad all at once. Or maybe that's a more recent feeling that he gets from thinking back on it and knowing Sam will never get to eat one of those cinnamon buns.

"Don't feel bad, sport," Dad says, entering the kitchen finally, softball and glove in hand. "It means there's more for you."

"Yay!" Dean cheers. He moves onto his second bun with gusto.

"John, he can't eat them all," Mom admonishes.

"Yes I can!" Dean says quickly. And to prove his point he stuffs two more cinnamon buns in his mouth. He gets a gooey, sticky mess of icing and cinnamon all over his fingers and his face. Sammy giggles.

"See, even Sammy thinks you're being silly," Mom says. She coos, "Your big brother is so silly, isn't he Sammy?"

Dean makes faces at Sammy and smears the icing all over his cheeks. Sammy giggles again and claps his hands together. Or maybe he waves them and reaches out to Dean. Mom complains lightly about the mess Dean is making of himself, but she's smiling all the same and so is Dad. The memory fades away almost entirely from there.

Or is it a dream?

Mrs. Langdon's ninth grade class is still chattering away long after the bell rings. She has to rap a ruler against the board to get them to be quiet, and even then there are still whispers from the back. Today's the day they hand in their big project for the term, and she would expect them to be more attentive. Then again, they are ninth graders.

She's pleased to see that most of them still have their 'babies', sacks of flour that she handed out and the beginning of the term. She walks up and down the rows to collect their reports and directs each 'couple' to discard their 'babies' in the bin for the local food bank. She doesn't notice until she reaches the back of the row that one student is missing his sack of flour. She shouldn't be surprised, but she is.

"Where's your flour baby, Dean? You were doing so well." For once it was true.

Dean Winchester does not look concerned. She worries for a moment that he's going to start falling back into old habits, goofing off in her class and not taking assignments seriously. After she called his father a couple months ago he really seemed to improve. She hopes she doesn't have to do that again. Even over the phone the man seemed severe.

"Uh, yeah, well... stuff happened," Dean tells her with a noncommittal shrug.

"I hope your mother didn't use it for baking," she says. It wouldn't be the first time.

"Nah," Dean says wistfully, "Would have been nice, though."

She sighs. "I suppose you filled out a death certificate and wrote a suitable obituary?" she asks with resignation. It was part of the project. The extra work was supposed to be a penalty for allowing the baby to 'die'. She had kind of hoped none of the students would end up having to do it.

"Sure did," Dean replies. He grins and holds out few lined papers covered in his messy scrawl. He seems almost pleased with himself.

Mrs. Langdon shakes her head and takes the report. She really didn't expect Dean to do well, but the fact that he had brought the flour baby to every class before today had set her up hoping.

She remembers when she first gave out the project, and the uneven class paired up and left Dean as the only 'single parent'. It was exactly the sort of thing she had been afraid of – there were always one or two students that didn't seem to have many friends, and for this class Dean Winchester was it. She didn't expect him to try very hard. When it came to dressing up the flour baby, he'd taken out a thick black marker and drawn a slanted happy face on one side. It was nowhere near the effort some of the other students put in to dressing up their flour bags, some with fancy ribbons and button eyes, and clothes from old dolls, but she let it slide. She had an inkling that his home life was not so stable. He was always missing class to go on 'hunting trips' with his father.

The rest of the class has filled the food bank box with their flour bags, stripped away of all the clothes and baby accessories. Mrs. Langdon congratulates them all (almost all) on having successfully completed the project. She tells them their marks will be in by next Friday.

Dean is chopping up carrots. He's never done it before, but he's so adept with a knife by now that there isn't much of a learning curve to it. Usually they buy canned vegetables, because they're staying in a motel and they don't have a real stove. This is another new thing. Dad actually rented out an apartment this time.

It doesn't look much different from the various motel rooms they've stayed in before. There are a few more rooms – he and Sam actually get separate bedrooms for once. Dad sleeps on the couch, when he sleeps at all. Dean has caught him awake in the middle of the night a few times, newspaper clippings and old books scattered around the cheap coffee table, muttering to himself.

He's not sure why this hunt is taking so long. Dad has been sparing on the details, and that's only when he's in a good mood which isn't often. Knowing hardly anything, Dean is forced to make up the details for himself. Sometimes he imagines that Dad is tracking a pack of shapeshifters, or a coven of witches. Some slippery group of monsters that is difficult to track down, but not so difficult to kill. Other times he suspects that the big bad is a powerful monster or demon. There's only one, but it may as well be an army itself. Whatever it is, Dean was not allowed to go along when Dad left this afternoon.

So he's stuck babysitting Sam, as always, and playing with a real stove for once. A real stove and real vegetables. Dean can't remember the last time this ever happened.

(Certainly not since Mom...)

Dad's been lecturing him on feeding Sam properly. Potato chips do not constitute vegetables. Canned ravioli and baked beans do not make a full meal. Chocolate bars and gummy bears are not a side dish. Dean knows. Dad says Sam is going the get cavities if this keeps up, and they can't afford a dental bill. Dean knows this too, and the thought of Sam having a mouthful of cavities makes him feel a little guilty.

(But it's not really his fault they don't have – )

There's a lot of bills they can't afford to pay, even with the credit card scams Dad has started running. Some things will just attract too much attention, like dentists and hospitals. That's why Dad makes them learn and train in basic first aid – to avoid hospitals whenever possible.

Dean knows more about paying bills than most fourteen-year-olds. He still remembers when Dad didn't know the useful art of credit card scams yet, and the bank accounts were running dry and they never ever had enough money.

He was thirteen years old the first time Dad's bank card didn't work. (Was it really only last year?) He was in the grocery store, Dad was in the middle of a job and he was alone with Sam, and the cashier started saying something about the bill not going through. He might have panicked a bit, because Sam was with him, because there were too many people around, and also maybe because he had just watched a few snippets of a documentary on TV about how social workers took children away from their parents if they didn't have any money. He told her to nevermind and then he dragged Sam out of the store.

He didn't go back the next day. Dad didn't come back that night, so Dean didn't have much cash. In fact, Dad didn't come back for the rest of that week. Dean had to ration whatever food they had left, marine-style, the way their Dad had taught them for emergencies. Sam complained about being hungry, and eventually Dean went back to the grocery store and stole several cans of spaghetti-o's. He hid them in an over-sized sweatshirt while pretending to buy a candy bar, which he paid for in dimes. By the end of the week he was paying in nickels and pennies and Sam was complaining that he was tired of spaghetti-o's.

Dean doesn't know why he's thinking of that now. Dad came back, eventually. He aways did, and it was rare that he would leave them completely alone for so long. In fact he promised Dean, sort of, that it would never happen again. So it won't. Dean has always believed his dad.

He finishes with the carrots and dumps them in a pot. He really isn't sure what to do with them now. Should he just boil them? How does one cook carrots? The sack of flour stares at him from the counter beside the stove. He left it there a few hours ago, when he got home with Sam. It hasn't moved. It hasn't done anything. Obviously. It's not a real baby, nothing like one. What a stupid, stupid project.

Real babies cry. They're impossible to ignore. Dean remembers Sam crying constantly after the fire. Dad would always need his help with something – 'Go run and grab Sammy's bottle for me, Dean.' – 'Fetch the diapers from the closet.' – 'Give him the darn pacifier already, will you?'

Dean wishes he hadn't drawn that silly face on the flour. It makes it look dumber, sitting there. There's only one more day of this anyway. The project ends tomorrow, and then he'll be rid of it at last.

They've never had flour before either. Flour and vegetables. It almost looks like a real kitchen.

For a while Dean wonders if he could do it.

He's never tried before. He never had the right stuff, nor the time, or really much of a reason to think about it. He's too afraid to ask Dad, afraid of what Dad would say, afraid that Dad would never let him do it.

(If Mom were here...)

They probably don't even have the recipe anymore. Without the recipe there's no point, or so Dean keeps telling himself. It won't taste the same, so there's no point. Baking is for sissies and girls anyway. It's a completely unmanly thing and therefore not something Dean would ever do.

So he's really not sure why he finds himself on their cheap computer after school one day, looking for cinnamon roll recipes on the internet. Their dial-up connection is like molasses, and he waits nearly ten minutes for one page to load.

It's still loading when Sam pops his head through the door. Dean is so engrossed in his own thoughts that for once he isn't paying attention, and Sam sneaks up behind him easily.

"What'cha doing?"

The page is still blank, but Dean jumps up, startled and frantic to cover up the evidence of his 'crime'. In his haste he manages to knock the entire computer off the desk. It lands with a huge loud bang and leaves a dent in the hard wood floor. The connection between the monitor is severed, and the screen goes black.

Sam flinches away from the noise. He looks nervously at the carnage that was once their computer and then over at Dean who has gone very quiet. After a moment Sam asks in a small, almost accusatory voice, "Were you looking at pictures of naked girls again?"

Dean is still embarrassed and shocked and a little bit ashamed of the baking and the computer. So when he shouts it is probably a bit louder than he means to: "Get out, Sam!"

Sam scurries off and spends the rest of the evening sulking in his room. Dean puts the computer back together as well as he is able, and when Dad gets home he doesn't even notice that the floor has been scuffed.

Feeling bad about Sam, Dean makes him his favourite alphabet soup from a can, but it ends up going cold on the table.

Dad takes them out to dinner on Wednesday. It's been about a week since they moved into the apartment and Dad has been acting strangely dad-like. Not in the way that Dad normally acts, but in the way that most dads normally act. He asks them about school and goes to see Sam's soccer games. He even offers to teach Dean to drive. There has been no mention of hunting or training since they got to this town. Something is not right. Dean doesn't like it.

Sam is in some kind of I'm-almost-a-real-boy-now heaven, so Dean can't say anything. He watches Dad listen to Sammy chatter about his day in the overly-excitable way only a ten-year-old can. Dad actually seems to be listening, even though Dean can't remember a time that he ever cared about the trials grade school and soccer tournaments. He wants Dad to say something normal, normal for Dad, because to tell the God-honest truth this is all starting to scare him just a little.

(There's something he's not telling)

Sam comments emphatically that the food in this restaurant is way better than Dean's cooking. Dean completely agrees but kicks Sam under the table anyway, because after all, he is slightly insulted.

"Dean, I got a call from one of your teachers today."

"Oh yeah?" Except Dean tries to say it around a mouthful of mashed potatoes, and so the words mesh together it doesn't sound like that. He's a little confused. When have his teachers ever phoned Dad? When have they ever stayed in one place long enough for the teachers to remember who he is? It's only been a week for crying out loud.

(And when has Dad ever cared...?)

"Apparently you aren't doing very well," Dad says. His voice is serious, so serious, like he's explaining to Dean how to stop an angry poltergeist or shoot a werewolf. But he's not, and that's what makes it so unsettling.

"Really?" Dean asks, as if this is news to him. He purposely takes longer than usual to swallow his mashed potatoes. Sam has gone all quiet, and for once Dean wishes the kid would start talking – just start yammering away about some silly thing like he does the rest of the time. But he doesn't, and Dean is left alone with Dad's silence.

"I need you to start taking school seriously, son," Dad says finally. The words are not so much of a betrayal as a foreign language, some alien verse that Dean has never heard before. Dad may as well have started quoting Shakespeare. It's surreal. He stares across the table with a face full of blank confusion.

"Why?"he blurts.

He's not supposed to ask that question, even if Sammy says it all the time. Dean is older. Dean knows better. Dean obeys. Sometimes it's hard.

After all, what does he learn in school that is worth knowing? Nowhere in his history and geography classes do they teach him how to recognize the signs of a haunting. In none of his textbooks does it describe how to load or fire or clean a shotgun. There are no Latin classes, no studies of exorcism rituals or banishment spells or protection symbols. He is quite sure none of the teachers in his school would know what to do if a demon showed up on their doorstep, or a poltergeist moved into their basement. Dad has always taught him that these were the important things. If they are ever going to find the thing that killed Mom then this is what Dean needs to know. This is the way Dad has always been, and Dean expects it from him.

Dad gives him a hard look, and answers in a way that is completely Dad. "Because I said so. That's an order, Dean." Dean has no idea what else to say, so he says nothing. Since when has Dad ever ordered him to do something like this?

The silence drags on, like a little bubble of it surrounds just their little table. The rest of the restaurant is teeming with chatter and noise, but none of it seems to reach them. Finally Sam asks, in a small tentative voice, if they are allowed to get dessert.

They are all watching him. Every single one, like he's some kind of zoo animal in an exhibit, and there they all are pawing at the fence, trying to get a good look. Dean can't believe he's actually doing this.

He's being silly of course. Obviously none of them are looking at him. They are rushing to the fence because school is out, and he is barely noticeable amongst the throng of adults and excited children. He's just some high school kid, someone's big brother, and there's no reason for any of them to care about him or what he's doing.

Except Sammy, of course. Sammy, whose head is already tilted quizzically trying to figure out what it is that Dean is holding in his arms. Dean feels sure that Sam has never seen one of these before. Why would he? It's not like they've ever had any reason to buy one. Hell, Dean can't remember the last time he saw one. It's not useful, like salt or bullets.

Sam opens his mouth before he has even reached Dean, and Dean knows what he is going to say. He anticipated it before he even got to the elementary school, when the playground was still empty and a good five minutes walking distance away. It isn't empty now, and he can't shake off the feeling that everyone is staring at him like he's some kind of freak – that Sammy is staring at him like he's some kind of freak. He isn't in the mood to explain himself, he isn't even in the mood to make jokes about it, so he turns quickly before Sam can get the words out and starts walking.

He can hear his little brother struggling to keep up behind him. Sam is only ten, and Dean still has the advantage of being taller and longer-legged for a couple more years yet. But Sam is persistent. They get a few blocks away from the school when Sam manages to catch up and stay caught up. He is practically jumping into each step to keep up with Dean's stride.

"Why are you walking so fast?" he whines. Dean slows down slightly, but keeps scowling at the road ahead of them. This is all Dad's fault, he decides, having no one else to blame at the moment. It is Dad's fault for being weird and un-Dad-like and giving Dean crappy orders about school.

Sam doesn't say anything for a moment, maybe still trying to catch his breath. Finally he looks over and points at the thing in Dean's arms.

"What's that?"

Deep down, Dean knew he would never avoid the question. Forcing Sam to run after him like that was probably unnecessary, and he feels a little bad about it. And so he answers in a compassionate understanding way, mastered by big brothers everywhere.

"What does it look like, dork? It's a sack of flour."

Dean drops the bag of flour on the kitchen table in front of Dad when he gets home. He does this every day for two weeks before Dad finally notices. When he asks Dean what the hell that thing is, Dean responds in much the same way he did to Sammy, only without the 'dork', because he can't call Dad that.

"It's a project. You know, for school." Dean puts special emphasis on each word, hoping Dad will see how utterly hopelessly stupid this is and retract his order.

He should know better, because in the entire ten years it has been since Mom died, Dad has never given Dean an order that he later recanted. And even though Dad rubs his chin and shakes his head and stares at the flour and then at Dean with an utterly perplexed frown, he doesn't withdraw any orders now.

"Well that's very... good, son."

Dean heaves the sack of flour off the table with a highly exaggerated sigh and stalks out of the room.

Later, he thinks it was probably a good thing he never tried to bake any cinnamon buns.

It's not like he could have used the flour for that sort of thing anyway. Dad gave him orders, stupid orders, but Dean has never disobeyed his father and he is not about to start now.

But he still goes looking in the grocery store one evening, when Dad has sent him out to get bread and cheese. He doesn't know what makes him do it. Sam never stays mad at him for very long. He started talking to Dean again that afternoon, but for some reason Dean feels a burning need to find those cinnamon buns and make it up to Sam. Or is that really the reason he wants them so badly?

(But he'll never find them, of course, because Mom baked them and she–)

The store doesn't even have them. He has the bread in the basket already, and feels oddly guilty for continuing to loiter in the bakery section. It's not like they have a whole lot of money to go throwing around on things they don't need. How much do cinnamon rolls cost, anyway?

Nothing, clearly, because this backward grocery store doesn't sell them. He walks up and down the aisles as many times as his fragile adolescent ego can stand, and then settles for buying Sam a chocolate muffin.

Dean finally decides to just boil the carrots. He sticks them in a pot of water and nothing else and turns the stove on, and decides that if Sam won't eat it then Sam just can go hungry.

(But that's not really true, because he could never let Sammy –)

He rinses off the knife and is wiping it down with a cloth when he hears a noise like someone tripping over something and a muffled cry. He calls out Sam's name but there is no answer. Dean is considering whether running into the living room with a shotgun now would be an overreaction when Sam bursts into the kitchen. He comes careening toward Dean at full speed, looking wild and frightened. Dean is automatically between Sam and the door, steering him away from the stove. He never puts the knife down.

"There's a Thing!" Sam says, glancing furtively at the door all the time, "In the bathroom! I saw it – it was – I saw..." he falters uncertainly. "Something."

"What? What kind of something, Sammy?" Dean asks. He voice is as serious as he can possibly make it. Serious, because Dad is gone, because he knows all kinds of things that 'something' could be, and most of all because his little brother looks terrified.

"I don't know," Sam says, with a strange high note like panic, "It tried to lock me in the bathroom."

"What did?" Dean prods impatiently. By now he is watching the door steadily too.

"I didn't really see it. I was washing my hands and then all of a sudden I saw the door swinging shut in the mirror, and so I ran and I barely got out because something was pushing against it and when I did get out the door opened again and something grabbed me and tried to pull be back in, and I kicked and it let me go and then when I got out all the other doors in the hallway were shut even though I swear they were never shut before and then I ran all the way here and I don't know if it followed me." Sam is rambling, his eyes are getting wider and wider and he is looking back at the door to the living room more and more.

"Don't forget to breathe, Sammy. You sure you didn't see what grabbed you?" Dean's already running through all the possibilities of what it could be. A ghost – but why hadn't it shown itself until now? Some sort of boggart-like creature that hid in cupboards or floorboards – but those didn't usually grab people. Maybe something that followed Dad home that they hadn't noticed – but Dad would never do that. Or possibly just Sammy's overactive imagination...

(Please let it be the last one.)

"I don't know, I just saw the door moving on it's own," Sam hesitates, and then asks, "Is it a ghost?"

At ten, Sam has never seen a ghost before. He knows that they are real, Dean told him and then Dad. He's seen a zombie, a gremlin and two witches, but he's never seen a ghost yet. He has an expression on his face somewhere between a five-year-old who has just come running into his parent's room after a nightmare and a teenager who's about to go driving on the freeway for the first time.

"I'm going to check it out," Dean assures him. He can still hear the TV going in the living room where Sam left it on. He glances one final time at the door and then back at the stove where he notices the carrots are starting to boil over. He switches it off. And then, because he is never anywhere very far away from one, he grabs a shotgun off the counter and tucks the knife into his back pocket. "You wait here, Sammy."

Sam looks momentarily panicked. "No, I'm coming with you!" His jaw sets stubbornly as he says it.

Dean can't really argue. He doesn't know what this thing is, whether or not it is coming after them, if it knows where they are, or how much time they've been wasting. He lets Sam tag along, keeping him close but safely behind him.

There is nothing in the living room that Dean or Sam can see. The TV is running a commercial about laundry detergent. The coffee table is scattered with all the research paraphernalia Dad left behind, Dean's comic books and some of Sam's homework. The window is open, though Dean doesn't remember opening it.

The two of them turn and head slowly down the hallway. All the other doors are shut, but the bathroom door is ajar. Dean has the shotgun ready to charge down whatever might be in there, but the cry comes from Sam, who is behind him, and he whirls around.

"Sammy!"

Sam is in the air, kicking and flailing and screaming and just floating there, floating away. Dean doesn't know what to do, because he can't see anything, except his brother being dragged off into the living room by some invisible force. If he fires the gun now he could hit Sam, so he goes running after whatever it is with no real plan in mind except to get Sam back.

(But that isn't really a plan...)

Sam is clawing vaguely at the air as if something the size and shape of an arm or a hand is covering his mouth. He is floating closer and closer to the living room window, and for a moment Dean thinks that Whatever-it-is is going to drop his little brother, four storeys down onto the pavement. He doesn't know whether it is panic or adrenalin or some combination of both, but the next thing he knows he is firing the shotgun at where ever the Thing's legs would be, assuming there was a Thing and it had legs.

He must have missed. There is no sound or howl of pain from Whatever-it-is and no blood appears out of thin air, but the shot does as much as Dean intended. The Thing drops Sam on the floor. There's a bit of a thud when he hits it, but at least it's not the sidewalk outside.

And then it comes after Dean. Dean only knows this because he feels it hit him and knock him back against the wall. He sees nothing in front of him, except the living room and Sam struggling to get to his feet, but he can feel something pushing him against the wall and trying to wrench the shotgun out of his hands. Dean's grip is firm. Dad has taught him never to let go of a weapon.

But then Whatever-it-is tries a different tactic, and before Dean can really register that the tug on the other end of the shotgun has lessened, something hits him in the jaw and slams the back of his head into the wall.

He feels sure it made a dent.

Sam shouts his name. His ears are ringing, the shotgun is yanked forcefully from his hands and tossed across the room. All of a sudden he is the one floating in the air.

The Thing has more trouble with him. He can hear something like a grunt, and several times he is shifted about as if he is too heavy to be floated away like this. And when he finally recovers from his daze enough to start struggling like he should, he is almost dropped.

Sam makes a mad dash after the shotgun. Dad's trained him pretty good too, after all. He runs after Dean, with the same look of helplessness and not knowing what to do. The Thing staggers and tosses Dean across the kitchen, into the stove.

(It is a very good thing he turned that off.)

Before Dean can get to his feet, It has slammed the door in Sam's face and locked it. Sam is shouting and banging on the other side of the door, and Dean is alone with Whatever-it-is.

Only he can't see it.

He gets to his feet. His head still throbs and the room is slightly blurry, and he wonders faintly if he has a concussion or something. He has a thought that he should move away from the door in case Sam decides to use the shotgun, but even as he thinks about it he knows that Sam won't. Because if Dean can move away from the door, why can't the Thing?

Dean suddenly misses the shotgun. How nice it would be to have it back. He remembers the knife, belatedly, in his back pocket, and feels for it. It's still there, but what can he do with it? He has no idea where the Thing is. He hears a rustling by the sink and knows it is coming toward him. He gropes blindly for something on the counter to help him.

His hand hits a sack of flour.

It's an odd memory that Sam has. Like many memories of his childhood, it's a bizarre bit of a horror story, with real live monsters and ghouls and Dean to save the day.

He remembers banging on the kitchen door and yelling Dean's name until his voice is hoarse. The Thing, Whatever-it-was, took Dean into the kitchen and locked Sam out. Sam remembers wondering in a blurry-eyed rage of unshed tears why there was even a door to the kitchen. Most normal kitchens don't have doors. They certainly don't have locks. Even when they try to be normal, nothing in their life ever is. It's not fair.

Sam has developed a very strong sense of what is fair and what isn't, even at the age of ten. For instance, it's not fair that he always gets straight A's and Dad barely notices. It's not fair that Dean never lets him stay up past midnight watching TV, even though he knows Dean does it all the time. It's not fair that his soccer team lost on the very first game that his dad ever bothered to come and see. It's not fair that this Thing came and attacked them when they did nothing to it, and dragged Dean away. And it's not fair that Dean always saves him, and now he can't save Dean.

He is reluctant to fire the shotgun. In the first place, he's never fired at anything outside of target practice at the shooting ranges Dad takes them to. In the second place, everything sounds eerily quiet on the other side of the door, and he doesn't know what Dean is doing. He keeps calling Dean's name and getting no answer. Why won't Dad come back? Why isn't Dad here? Why can't Sam do anything?

There was a time when Sam thought Dean and Dad were invincible. And since they were always protecting him, it meant he was invincible too. He didn't actually believe that anyone in their family could die – except Mom, who died before Sam could remember, and was sort of unreal to him anyway. She was like something out of a story or a myth, something that he had only heard about but never seen. Like ghosts.

But ghosts are real. Sam has known for a long time, suspected before Dean or Dad ever told him. And he knows Mom was real too, even if he can't remember her. He's old enough now to know that Dad and Dean aren't invincible, and neither is he. But that doesn't mean he has to be useless, does it?

He doesn't quite know how long he was standing out there. He knows it felt like a long time, but that doesn't mean that it was. The next thing that he remembers is loud bellow of pain and Dean's muffled shouts telling him to get away from the door. He remembers stumbling backwards just as the lock snaps and his older brother comes barreling out in a cloudy haze of white powder...

Whatever-it-is, the Thing, is there too. Sam can see it. Or rather he can see the white stuff that's all over it, and all over the kitchen, and all over Dean. The Thing is tall, and has the shape of a man. It staggers and limps and trails white stuff as it walks, and that's when Sam remembers noticing a kitchen knife sticking out of its thigh.

"Sammy, shoot it!" Dean urges wildly, panting and out of breath and still clutching the shreds of what looks like the bag of flour he's been toting around for a month. "Finish it off!"

Sam finally has the chance to do something, to be useful, and he freezes. He stares up at the thing that looks like a pasty white silhouette of his dad and suddenly he can't do it. It lumbers toward him, grunting in pain and all he can remember thinking is that it isn't fair and it isn't fair and it isn't fair...

Dean takes the shotgun from him and empties one BANG! two BANG! three BANG! rounds into its torso. Sam watches whatever it was crumple to the ground with a feeling that he has never felt before. It is not so much that he wishes he could be Dean, but more that he wishes that he could be someone, anyone, other than Sam.

When Dean looks back at Sam he is not angry, only relieved. At that point, Sam is still not old enough to figure out why.

"Take that sucker!" Dean lets out a shrill, giddy laugh and nudges the thing with his foot just to be sure. Some of the white stuff shifts to the floor and a portion of the thing's arm disappears. Dean himself looks rather ridiculous, covered in white stuff from head to toe. He turns back to Sam still grinning stupidly. "We showed it, didn't we?"

Sam wants to say something but he isn't sure what. Something about the way Dean used the word 'we' makes him feel like he got punched in the gut, and he can't even think of a way to make fun of the white stuff that's all over Dean's hair.

And he remembers what Dean says next. "It's okay, man. I know you never had to shoot anything before."

When Sam looks up Dean is already over inspecting the kitchen. He can still remember the way his brother's shoulders droop and how the silly grin slides off his face.

"Aw, man. The carrots are totally ruined."

Dad comes back not half an hour later, throwing the door open and shouting the boys' names frantically. Dean has hardly begun to clean up all the flour, and the body of whatever it was is still lying on the living room floor. Sam guards it with an expression of fierce concentration, as if it's going to spring up again and attack them all.

He can see Dad's face fill with relief, and doesn't quite realize how much it mirrors his own face from earlier. Later he finds out the thing was some invisible man, a normal guy driven insane from never being seen, but nothing about that makes him feel guilty for killing it.

(Or so he tells himself).

"Looks like you put that flour to good use," Dad says, and then he looks uncomfortable. He avoids Dean's eyes and rubs the back of his neck. "That was uh, pretty smart thinking, son."

Dean grins. "I guess I kind of failed that project."

He will always remember that day as the first time Dad told him to ignore an order.

Thanks for reading. Let me know what you think. :)

(Also, this is just me being paranoid, but I haven't seen season four yet so please don't tell me anything about it. Thanks.)