Later that night…

In his fifty years and change upon this forsaken planet, Bobby Singer had known pain.

He'd watched his darling wife be taken over by a demon. Her beautiful face, her gentle spirit, had been completely crushed by that invading black-eyed bastard puppeting her around in some grotesque parody of the woman he loved. He'd had to put her down himself; to look into the eyes of the only person he'd wanted to spend the rest of his days with and watch the life leave her body.

That had been bad, but it had only been the opening few notes in a symphony of agony that was to engulf his life. Becoming a Hunter had kept him sane, he knew that; if it hadn't been for the good he'd done in putting evil sons of bitches in the ground, he'd have hit the bottle so hard he wouldn't have come back out the other side (and even then, it had still been a close-run thing on occasion). Becoming a Hunter had also left him open to some epically crappy bad days, it was fair to say. Watching the boys – his boys – be torn apart time after time by tragedy. Losing Jo and Ellen. Losing the use of his damn legs. And oh, not to forget the time only a few weeks back that Sam had gone all soulless-like and tried to gut him. Good times.

Bobby would have swapped almost any of those days for what he was going through right now, in his own damn kitchen, listening to someone with Dean's face and Dean's body talk on the phone.

"ACKLES! A! C! K! L! E! S!"

Oh yeah. Sorry. How could he have forgotten. Not Dean. Jensen.

"Jensen" was currently pacing around in a state of extreme agitation, unbeknownst to anyone currently present in a manner eerily similar to how Balthazar had been only a short time ago in the same place. His cellphone – Dean's cellphone – was pressed to his ear.

"How many times I gotta say this?" he was barking down the phone. Actually, scratch that. Dean could bark. With Jensen it was more of a yelp. "C'mon! What? What? What? What d'you mean, who? Haven't you seen 'My Bloody Valentine', lady?"

Wonder of wonders, he actually paused.

"Okay, bad example," he conceded. "Whatever. Listen, honey – I have been Kid. Napped. Do you understand me? Do you realise what I'm saying? Somebody – prob'ly some crazed fan – has abducted me and I dunno, brainwashed poor Jim Beaver…" and here he gestured to Bobby, who had to check behind him before confirming that, yep, that was supposedly him he was referring to, "…and put him up to this nonsense. I don't even know what part of Canada this is!"

That did it.

"Canada?!" Bobby said.

Jensen held up a finger to shush him, and to Bobby's astonishment it sort of worked because his initial instinct to floor the ignoramus was quelled, at least temporarily. He glanced at the other guy wearing the Sam costume, trying to recall his name. "Sam" only shrugged, indicating Jensen. As Bobby watched, he began tapping at walls, rapping on doors, as though checking for termites or something.

"Oh I'm making this up, am I?!" Jensen exploded. "So I just imagined being nominated for Teen Choice's "Breakout Star" Award in 2006, that right? That it, sugar? Who would make up something like that, huh?"

"Nobody I know," Bobby muttered. He reached for another beer.

Jensen's voice dropped to conspiratorial, although everyone in the kitchen could still hear every word he was saying. "Now look honey, I didn't wanna do this," he hissed, "but I have connections, you understand? Oh like what? Like how about a little organisation called La Cosa Nostra, hmm? Texas branch, babe. Look it up."

There was a click-dnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnn from his direction.

Bobby swigged his beer.

"She hung up," Jensen said slowly, disbelievingly. "She. Hung. Up!"

"Imagine my horror, Vito," said Bobby.

It was then that "Sam" sat opposite him. Unlike Jensen, he was relatively calm. Bobby looked at the boy about as neutrally as he could manage, given the face that was staring back at him. He hadn't quite kicked his suspicious habits just yet and although these two seemed about as dangerous as a two-legged sheep in an ass-whuppin' contest, nothing that stole other people's faces was generally gonna trouble the 'good' column in the Great Ledger of Life.

Sides, neither of these two dumb clucks had clocked that Bobby currently had his trusty pistol in his free hand under the table. Take no chances, that was his motto.

"This isn't a set, is it?"

Jared! That was his name. How in the hell could you forget a name like that? Bobby took another swig of the beer, measuring this fella before he replied. He could detect no malice coming from either of these two, but that wasn't quite enough to set him at ease. There was also still the burning question of: if these two clowns weren't Sam and Dean, then just where the hell were Sam and Dean?

"Not 'less the termites are members of Equity, son."

"And your name isn't Jim Beaver."

Bobby about bust a gut laughing at this. "Beaver?!" he said. "As in Leave It To? Shoot, I caught enough of a hard time off the other boys at my elementary class for 'Singer', let alone Beaver."

Jensen sighed theatrically from where he stood. "Do not tell me you're actually swallowing this, Jared," he declared. "What, did'ja catch rabies off those alpacas in your back yard, or what?"

Jared did a fine job of completely ignoring the interruption. Instead, he simply held out his hand across the table. After a moment's thought, Bobby extended his own – the other one, of course, kept right on where it was nicely out of sight.

"Jared Padalecki. Nice to meet you."

"Bobby Singer. Likewise. Now…you mind tellin' me what the hell you two clowns are doing here, how you ended up sprawled in my backyard, and oh yeah – how exactly you're the spitting image of Sam and Dean?"

Jensen threw up his hands. "I've been roofied," he said, mostly to himself. "That's it. That has to be it. That bastard Kripke hit me with one of his happy pills…oh God…" this seemed to sink in, and he began checking his pulse, "…oh God, it's in my system. How long's it stay in your system? They were gonna test my Thetan levels! I was due to meet Tom-"

"Would you-" Bobby began.

"Jensen, sit your ass down and shut up for five minutes!" Jared snapped.

To Bobby's mild surprise, Jensen complied, albeit in the manner of a five-year-old who's been denied ice cream. He looked at Jared with a mite more respect than he had been able to muster – mind, the bar had not been set especially highly.

"This is gonna sound nuts," Jared said, talking to Bobby directly.

"Y'don't say."

"We're not Sam and Dean."

"See above."

"We play Sam and Dean."

"Okay," Bobby admitted, "startin' to lose me a little."

"On a TV show. We…we act as Sam and Dean."

And somewhere, a sixty-watt bulb lit up in Bobby's mind, and the pieces fell into place. He just wished fervently that they hadn't. "Waaaaaaait a minute," he said, looking from Jensen to Jared and back, "is this somethin' to do with those awful books that damnfool sonofabitch Prophet of the Lord Chuck what's-his-name wrote, few years back? What was it? Super…?"

"Natural! Supernatural! Yes!" Jared looked as though he could kiss him. "Yes! That's exactly it!"

"Hi," Jensen said. He was back on the cellphone. "Can I order a cab, please?"

"They made a TV show out of that crap?" Bobby said incredulously. "Since when?"

"I'm not sure where I am, exactly. Can you zero in on my location with your GPS? Probably somewhere outside Vancouver that's been made to look like South Dakota – hello? Hello?"

Wings flapped.

A familiar trenchcoated angel stood in the middle of the kitchen, having popped into existence in full view of Jensen and Jared. Jensen's phone fell out of his nerveless fingers and clattered to the floor.

"They didn't make a TV show," said Castiel. "At least…not in this reality."

Bobby stood up, nice and slow. Oddly, despite everything, he felt a mite happier now that Cas had shown up. Not for the same reasons he would have a while back – Cas wasn't exactly reliable these days, but at least it was definitely Cas, and that meant he could start to get some damn answers.

"Where'd your boy Balthazar send Sam and Dean?" he demanded, the angel blade again resting in his hand.

"Sam and Dean are safe," Cas promised.

"Oh yeah? You'll forgive me if I don't exactly take your word as gospel," Bobby said.

"Misha?" Jensen said, wretchedly. He looked as though he were about to throw up. "Oh God, you're really not Misha, are you. Oh God…"

"Sam and Dean are safe," Cas repeated. "In fact, they are much safer than the three of you."

"Bring them back!" Bobby snarled. "NOW!"

"In good time."

That did it. He took a long step forward, angel blade in hand, ready to swing, ready to wipe that blank expression off of Castiel's face…and something made him stop. He wasn't quite sure what. Later, when he had time to mull it over, Bobby Singer would come to the conclusion that some instinct within him had told him that if he gave in to his urge to take a swing at Cas, the angel would genuinely kill him without giving it too much thought. That scared the hell out of him.

"In good time?" Jared spoke up. He stood up too, and though he made no move to attack Cas as Bobby had, he looked as though he were giving it some consideration. "I have a wife back home!"

"Yeah, and a zoo," Jensen pointed out, in a faraway voice. In his muddled state, he was genuinely trying to be helpful. "Those things don't run themselves..."

"What happens when Sam and Dean come back here?" Jared asked, again ignoring Jensen. "We go back home too?"

Cas seemed troubled. "Theoretically," he said after a pause that went on for a fraction too long, "assuming that is, you survive that long."

"Assuming we what?" Jensen said.

In a horribly matter-of-fact tone that only angels could pull off, Cas illuminated their plight. "Half the heavenly host and pretty much all of Hell want Sam and Dean Winchester's heads on a plate. Not to mention that Eve currently has every Wendigo, Rugaru, Shifter, Werewolf, Vampire and monster from the Atlantic to the Pacific on alert to kill them on sight. And to them – you look, you sound, you smell like the Winchesters. I'm sorry you've been dragged into this. Truly. I wish I could do more, but all I can do is this-"

Before any of the three men in the room could react, he had reached out and grabbed Jensen and Jared by the shoulder. A white light filled the room, along with the sound of sizzling and the two men hollering in pain. When the light died down, both were on their knees, moaning softly.

"You're hidden from my brothers," Cas said. "Good luck."

Jensen staggered to his feet. His face was ashen. "You b-"

Wings flapped, and Cas was gone.

Looking at these two, a change came over Bobby Singer. Some of those instincts he'd been blocking since he realised all was not what it seemed, he allowed back. Okay, these two doofuses (doofi?) were definitively not Sam and Dean Winchester. But they had just been thrown into the deepest of deep ends, and he remembered what that was like.

"Well, boys," he said, companionably thumping both on the chest (and getting a howl of pain from each for his troubles) "you heard the angel. Hell might be coming a-knocking. And damned if I'm gonna sit around and babysit you two idjits until Sam and Dean come back. Which they will," he added, as much for his own benefit as these two's.

Jensen glowered at him. "Fantastic," he said sarcastically, "so what do you suggest…Bobby?"

He caught the gun Bobby threw in his direction with a grunt of surprise, and almost dropped the damn thing.

"Time for some Method Acting, boys," Bobby grinned.