THANK YOU FOR YOUR REVIEWS! I will respond to each one individually when I get time. I was caught up writing this chapter, which was much harder to write than usual. Sorry for the delay. I have also added tags to the top of each part, to try and make some sort of chronological sense. I will go back and do the same to the earlier chapters later tonight.


NOW

Sam woke up immediately, a familiar disappointment. He kept his breathing normal, sensing a nearby presence. The skin over his collarbone and neck burned, someone had cleaned his injuries. There was no sound around him, but the mattress was dipping underneath his hips. Had to be John by the weight.

"He's awake," Adam reported from nearby.

Sam winced involuntarily. Trust Adam to call his bluff. He reluctantly opened his eyes, and was greeted by his father's shadowed face. He looked angry, was he going to shout?

"Hey Sam," John said gruffly.

At least he wasn't shouting, but this was confrontation, and Sam didn't have an argument for this. He had failed, and now he looked pathetic, a failure.

"Where are the other Adam and Dean?" he asked, turning away to wipe the forming tears out of his eyes.

Behind him he heard John sigh, "Making calls."

"Don't try to pretend," that was Dean. That was more like the Winchester growl, the violent edge behind the words. Sam sent him a glare and was surprised to see Dean with an arm around Adam, the two of them slouched against the backboard of the second bed. Adam looked confused, Dean angry.

"What?" he asked, peeling off the ruined white shirt and reaching for another in his bag. His raw skin pinched against the fabric, a punishment. This wasn't a big deal. He hadn't managed to do it after all. Just another failure in a long line of failures.

As he pulled the cotton over his shoulders, something brushed against him. The motel door opened, the cotton cleared Sam's eyes and like a vanishing act, Dean was no longer huddled next to Adam. The door slammed shut behind him, throwing a gust of cool air into the room.

"Dean?" Adam asked, looking out of place all alone on the crisply made bed.

"It's okay, buddy," John reassured him, "Why don't you go after him? Me and Sam are just gonna be in here talking."

"I want to go with Adam," Sam said impulsively.

"Sam," John said warningly, but Adam had him beat.

"I'll bring you back something," and the eleven year old was running out the door, no doubt glad to be away from the tension. Or away from Sam. He tried to bite back the thought, but it rang so true in his head.

The door opened and closed again, marking Adam's exit.

Now it was just him and John. Sam tried to make an escape to the bathroom, cutting a wide berth around his father, but the eldest Winchester shook his head, "Come on Sam."

He made a show of sitting on the bed, and nodded to the other one. "We need to talk."

Sam backed away, shaking his head in opposition, "It's fine Dad. It was just an accident. It was just…"

"I know what it was, Sam," John said, cutting through the jumbled thoughts racing through Sam's head. Why couldn't he think? There was a way out of this, there was always a way out—

"Where's my gun?" The guns were gone, all of the guns. The knives, and the packages of herbs, and wooden bowls. Were they going to leave him? They were. Even Sam's duffel had been emptied of weapons, he hadn't noticed when he was pulling out the new shirt, but now he could see the bulges where they should have stretched against the canvas.

"You won't need your gun," John said. He was still sitting on the bed, his hand clasped between his knees.

Sam suddenly wanted to hit the man. He wanted to cause him pain. Sam had been trying to fix it, was so close to fixing it, and now they were just going to leave him? Fear writhed in his chest, squeezing precious room in his ribcage from his heart and lungs. What were they going to do? Lock him a room with soft walls?

"Dad," he began shakily, "Dad, I didn't mean it."

John shook his head. "That Adam and Dean are from a future where you succeeded. I know you meant what you were doing. You used a gun, you were in the tub, and you pulled the trigger— Christ," Sam jumped a little as his father swiped a hand over his face, "Sam, you nearly…"

He choked up, and Sam was grateful because every word was shaking his foundations. His lips are trembling and he was seconds from breaking, shattering into a thousand places. He wanted to scream, howl, fight and fight until he shredded himself out of his body.

But he was frozen, and when John looked at him again it was an imploring, pleading look that Sam had no idea how to respond to. His father is a commander. Even when he is in the room, he isn't really there.

"Sam, talk to me. Tell me what's going on. Is it a girl? Or School? Or is it… is it us?"

And that's when Sam bolts.


THREE YEARS AGO

Adam gets his diploma, and Dean half wishes he would get out of the life. He wished his little brother could just leave. He's smart enough, capable of anything put in front of him, but there's that Winchester stubbornness. Dean sometimes wants to ask him whether he still remembers Sam, how intelligent and driven he was.

Because now it scares him. He is terrified of how similar his brothers are.

"You good?" he asks Adam when the skinny boy only orders a cup of coffee. They've spent twelve hours in the car. They've got lead on yellow-eyes. A good lead, and that's too precious to waste. Both of them are still fired up from John's death, and Dean can't measure how relieved he is that Adam wasn't there to see it. He had been finishing his senior year in Orlando, waiting for their call.

Adam blinks sleepily at him. "Hmm?" he asks.

"We've still got a long way to go, you sure you don't want some pancakes?"

He nods. "I'll eat when we get there."

Dean calls the waitress over. She's in her forties with dyed blonde hair and a sallow face. She smiles at them with big, unfortunate teeth. "Something else caught you eye?" she asks with practiced enthusiasm.

"Can I get a side of blueberry pancakes?" he asks.

"Sure thing," and she's gone.

Adam glares at him. "I'm not hungry Dean." he says.

Dean shrugs. They're both tired, and had more than enough of each other, cramped in the Impala, breathing each other's air. This is the cue for a fight, but he feels too tired, too worried, to win this one.

Adam opens his mouth, about to argue, but when Dean doesn't meet his eyes, he deflates. "Fine."

That wasn't Sammy. Dean's chest opens a little. Sam would have pushed and tested, until they both snapped. They would have had an argument, and he would have stormed out rather than admit defeat.

Then they both would have said too much, and they'd feel guilty, but no longer angry. And they'd know exactly how the other was feeling when they got into the Impala and set out again. The air would thin a little, and they'd apologize in a thousand tiny ways with Adam rolling his eyes in the backseat 'you guys are such girls.'

At least, that was Sammy six years ago.

But Adam was as closed off. And Dean was still tired. He shouldn't be making this comparison. Adam wasn't Sammy, and Dean had to be grateful.


NOW

Adam watched Dean cautiously. They had gotten an old number from John, and Dean was frustrated. Sam would be awake by now, and Adam wanted to go to him. It had been a shock to realize just how much he remembered his older brother. Wiry, lean, long limbed. Tired. It was all the same, true to the memory that he thought should be distorted by time and pain.

He twisted his fingers, feeling the knuckles crack under the stress. His younger self was a stranger now. There were a thousand warnings and reassurances he felt like he owed the little Winchester, but he had held back in the motel room.

Maybe this time, he would have a chance at making everything right. With Sam here maybe Dean wouldn't make the Deal, maybe John wouldn't die or go missing with three sons too look after. He was thrown out of his thoughts by Dean snapping the phone shut.

"Bobby's looking through the books," Dean told him curtly, throwing the phone to Adam to take back to John.

"What about Ellen? She might know something."

"I'm not calling Ellen."

He began to walk back to the motel room, apparently already done with this conversation.

"Why not? We should pool resources." Adam followed his brother, already clicking his way through John's contacts, trying to find Ellen's name. He is so absorbed in the search, he nearly walks into Dean's back.

"Ellen's dead," Dean said with a finality that scares Adam. "Ellen, Jo, Ash. They're all dead."

"Not now," Adam scoffs. "Maybe this is a second chance, we can warn them. Hell, we can stop the apocalypse! We saved Sam, who knows what else we can change!"

"We're here because of a monster, Adam. We'll kill it and everything will go back to the way it was. That's how it works. If any of this is real, any of it at all, we'd be changed. We'd remember it differently."

Adam took a step back and held his hands out, trying to calm his brother a little. It doesn't work.

"We didn't save Sam. We can't save Sam, because that's just how the world works," Dean continues, cocking his head to the side, like he's facing down a threat, "All we have is each other, and the apocalypse is still happening somewhere. Anything we see or do here will change nothing."

"You can't really believe that."

"Angels are dicks, and there are more demons than people. If we have learned anything, it's that believing in anything will get you killed. What I know is that there is no magical fix for the Winchesters."

"You don't know that, Dean," Adam whispered, and this time he's the one to move forward until he's in Dean's space and his brother had to lean away. "You can just stand out here and be angry at everyone else for not giving you a break. But that is our family in there. Sam is in there and he needs our help, Dad too. I know you're angry at Sam, and you're hurting, even if you won't admit it. You think you don't care? Fuck you. You don't just decide to stop caring. So you just sulk out here for a while, I'm going to go find my brothers and tell them it's going to be okay. Hell, I'll go give John a hug because he's my father, and I miss him. And then I am going to call Ellen, and ask her to help us. You can come find me when you've decided that the world is worth saving again."

He walked past Dean. He didn't want to hear anything his brother had to say, not at that moment. Dean was his brother, the only person that Adam would trust with his life, even his soul. That didn't mean he was right.

They were both tired, and confused, but that didn't mean they had to give up before they even tried.


ELEVEN YEARS AGO

Sam stared at himself in the mirror. The hunt had been bad, his side is all cut to hell, and if he were a normal kid, he'd be getting stitches at a hospital. Dad had brought the thing home, had thought he'd killed the whole nest, but of course there was just one survivor, all fired up for revenge.

Dean had gotten it worse. He was getting stitched up on the motel bed, but Sam had to shower, get everything out of the cuts before John could take a look at them. He lingered at the mirror, watching the watery blood stream down his skin in rivers, connecting with droplets of water collected on his skin from his shower.

It became thinner and gathered speed. It tickled as it ran down his thighs, slipped over his calves and gathered around his feet, a pale, pink water. The torn skin was almost fascinating, all the jagged edges and diagonal lines.

Violent. Uneven. Uncalculated. Sam hated that.

He had an English Test tomorrow. The pain would be a distraction. He'd spend the whole day paranoid that blood would be leaking through his shirt. That would be his two worlds colliding. School and the hunting, his family tangled. Maybe he could bind it up with cling-film. It would take longer to heal, but nobody would find out. Things could stay separate.

A knock on the door startled him. "You done?" It was Adam. He hadn't been hit, but John was going to show him how to stitch up a wound, and Sam had helpfully provided some practical practice.

Sam was useful in that way at least.


RIGHT NOW

Please more, I am a greedy writer. Reviews are just… they keep me going when the siren call of procrastination comes for me.