Writer's Note: Thank you again for all your kind reviews and thank you especially to those of you sharing your thoughts on Sam and Dean's current situation. This is a very though-provoking season and I love hearing everyone's insights about what the brothers are going through. Some of you have even offered suggestions that made sense to work into the story, so thank you! We will make it through this season together and I'm having faith that the writers will work their magic. If not, there's always fan fiction, right? Enjoy chapter 4!


The store wasn't terribly crowded and the few people that were there, as Dean expected, didn't give them so much as a second glance. And that was fortunate, because he could not convince Sam to ride in the cart, which would have hidden at least some of his "outfit". So he padded along beside Dean in his socks tied with dental floss and flannel nightgown that dragged on the floor. The only reaction they got was from a weary looking dad holding the hand of an incredibly hyper kid wearing a cape and a batman mask.

He gave Dean a tired smile and sighed, "Thank God for Walmart, right?" as his kid dragged him by the hand towards the toy aisle.

Dean gave him a nod and steered his cart in the opposite direction. Sammy had been a quiet kid. He was smart, inquisitive, occasionally stubborn (very stubborn) and spent more time observing than chattering aimlessly like a lot of the kids they passed. Right now, Dean was extremely grateful for most of those characteristics. His goal was to get in and out of this place as fast as they could.

They picked out some clothes and tossed them into the cart: a couple shirts, pants, a sweatshirt, socks, underwear and some pajamas. Then they headed for the toy aisle.

The batman kid was now being forcibly removed from this aisle by his exhausted father. The kid was having a total meltdown. He was tangled up in his cape and his mask had been pushed halfway up his face from his flailing arms.

"I told you if you said it again, we were going home. So, now we're going home," the man told the kid as he tried to contain the tantrum and escape the toy section. The kid howled all the way out of the store.

Sam tugged on Dean's sleeve. "What do you think he said?"

"Something he shouldn't have."

Sam looked after them. "Probably 'bitch'," he said, seriously.

Dean stifled a laugh. "Probably. Or maybe he refused to sit in the cart."

"They didn't have a cart."

Dean cocked an eyebrow at him. "Always the wiseass..."

"You said ass," Sammy said and grinned at Dean, all dimples.

Dean couldn't help but smile back. "So I did. Are you going to drag me out of the store kicking and screaming?"

Sammy shook his head, and laughed. "No!"

"That's what I thought. Well, here's the toy section. You wanna pick out something to bring back?"

Sammy looked at the toys and then back at Dean like he wasn't sure if he was serious or not.

Dean got down beside him and pulled a box off the shelf. It was a small garage with a ramp. "Ooo! Check this out! And it comes with three cars!"

Sammy beamed at him.

"Do you like this? Or do you see something else that looks like fun?"

Sammy looked around and then walked up and pointed to a box of dinosaurs. He looked hesitantly at Dean.

Dean pulled it off the shelf. "You like this one? Yeah... I should have guessed."

Sammy nodded, the grin still plastered on his face.

Dean laughed and ruffled his hair. "You havin' fun, Sammy?" Cause I sure am, Dean thought, his heart swelling as Sammy gave him another enthusiastic nod.

Sammy shuffled over to the shelf on the other side of the aisle, trying not to trip on his socks. He pointed to the stuffed animals that were a little too high for him to reach.

Dean lifted him up and Sammy grabbed a stuffed dog off the shelf, hugging it to him. "Yep. Could have guessed that one, too. All right, kiddo. One more thing that's always guaranteed to make Sammy happy... books!"

Before they left the toy aisle, Sam longingly ran his fingers over a toy car. "I wish Dean could be here," he said sadly.

"You wanna get something for Dean? We can give it to him when we find him, what do you say?"

The little smile returned.

"All right, let's see... I can tell you exactly which one he'd like. I don't see any Impala's..." Dean looked over the cars and pulled a black corvette off the shelf. "This one. What do you think?"

"Yeah," Sammy nodded. "That one."

They wandered over to the next aisle where Sammy picked out a few books. Dean grabbed a few other basic supplies- a toothbrush, a warm blanket and at the last minute, he reluctantly added a car seat to their pile before they headed to the check out.


Back at the motel, Sam was deeply engrossed in something on the computer when Dean and Sammy walked in the door. Dean dug out some of the clothes and the toothbrush and handed them to Sammy. "Go get ready for bed and I'll ready you one of the books, ok?"

Sammy stood there a moment and shook his head.

Sam glanced up to watch what was going on.

"Sammy," Dean sighed.

"I want to go look for Dean."

"Sammy, we can't right now, it's late. You need to go to bed."

"No."

Sam hid a smirk and tried to focus on the screen.

"Sam," Dean warned, dropping the nickname. Sam looked up from the computer again, but then realized that Dean was still talking to Sammy.

"No. I want to find Dean."

Dean crouched down in front of him. "So do I, kiddo, but we have to figure out what we're dealing with first so nobody gets hurt, ok?"

Sammy looked at the floor.

"We're gonna find him, Sammy. We'll get you home. Look, why don't you go put these on, brush your teeth and I'll read you a story, what do you say? Please?"

Sammy looked crossly at him. "I want the Spiderman pajamas, not these."

"Fine. That we can handle," Dean said reaching into one of the bags and exchanging the pajamas. "Here. We good?"

Sammy scampered off to the bathroom, finally losing a sock along the way.

Sam watched him go. "I guess I was a little stubborn, huh?"

Dean stopped, lowered his eyebrows and considered Sam's question. "I'm not sure what's worse. The fact that you think you were a little stubborn or the fact that you used the past tense."

"Shut up."

"You think that was bad, you should have seen the 'Epic Battle of the Car Seat' that took place twenty minutes ago."

"You bought a car seat?" Sam cringed picturing the fight it must have taken to get his younger self to sit in a car seat.

"You're the one who brought it up!" Dean said with annoyance. "So, what have you got? Anything?"

"Maybe. I think there might be something to this parallel universe idea of yours."

Sammy came out of the bathroom then dressed in his new pajamas. He saw Dean across the room and grinned, opened his arms and ran to him, wrapping his arms around one of his legs. "Dean..."

Dean scooped him up. "Hey, there, squirt," he whispered, rubbing Sammy's back and leaning his forehead down to press against the top of Sammy's head. "All ready for bed? You want to read a story?"

Sammy nodded and snuggled up against Dean's shoulder.

"All right, well how about this- you go play with your new dinosaurs and I'll be over to read to you in about ten minutes. Good plan?"

"Good plan," Sammy said grinning as Dean put him down.

"Boy, he got over that quick." Sam said, watching the kid run off to the far side of the room.

"You used to be like that." Dean said with more than a hint of what Sam was pretty sure he meant as bitterness, but it came out more sad.

But Sam was curious. Ignoring the slight dig, he asked, "So what was your secret?"

"My secret?"

"To get me to do what you wanted. I mean, I know Dad had a hell of a time..."

"I don't know. I guess I just knew when to pick my battles. Like just now... going outside in the rain to look for a door to another universe? No. Spiderman pajamas instead of monkey pajamas? Ok. If you weren't going to get hurt, I tried to let you have your way, sometimes. It wasn't about being right, you know? Just about..."

Keeping you safe... Sam heard the unspoken words as clearly as if Dean had spoken them. He digested this information as he might a heavy meal- with the feeling of a rock in the pit of his stomach.

"So what have you got?" Dean asked again, breaking the now uncomfortable silence.

Sam cleared his throat. "Well, it turns out there actually was a parallel universe phenomenon that was reported to have occurred near here in a town called Ong's Hat."

Dean just stared at him.

"I'm going to keep going before you can start a useless commentary on the name of the town," Sam said quickly. "You can look it up later- there's a story with it, but I don't think it's relevant."

Dean's frowned, but kept his mouth shut.

"So it's not clear if Ong's Hat was actually a town or just a couple of buildings. Either way, it was pretty much disappearing from the map until the early days of the internet when Joseph Matheny started posting a series of writings he came across called 'The Incunabula Catalog'. These papers documented the work of a group of physicists who were experimenting with quantum mechanics. Two of the physicists, Frank and Althea Dobbs, were twin siblings who were kicked out of Princeton because their work was a little too "out there" for the university to handle. They set up an ashram in the Pine Barrens, which are right around the corner by the way, and allegedly discovered some kind of gateway to another universe."

Dean folded his arms and leaned against the table. He frowned and watched Sammy playing with his dinosaurs.

"So it turns out that this Joseph Matheny, who was publishing these papers is also an expert on the Elizabethan mage John Dee-"

"Mage? You mean like the comic book?"

"No," Sam said impatiently. "Like a... scholar, but one who dabbles in the paranormal. So anyhow, this John Dee worked very closely with a medium named Edward Kelly to transcribe messages from the angels in Enochian back in the 1500's."

"What?"

"Yeah. So what I'm thinking is that as bat-shit crazy as this whole Ong's Hat story is, it's probably rooted in some kind of truth. It looks like Matheny made a lot of it up, just to see if he could get it circulating as a true story, but I'm thinking it might not be completely fictional."

"So you think the parallel universe thing is possible then?"

"At this point, I think it's likely. I can't find any records of Frank and Althea, but maybe they disappeared on purpose. "

"And you think the angels might have something to do with it?"

"Not necessarily. I just find it less than coincidental that this all has a connection to someone who could translate angel language."

"So what brought Sammy here?"

"I don't know. But whatever it was, I think it brought us here too. That hunt I found? Total bust. There's nothing to hunt. I made a few calls to make sure, but the whole thing sounds like it was just a hoax."

"I told you it was no big deal-"

"The point is, we were lead here, Dean. We were meant to come to this town, meant to run into … younger-me in the parking lot. Whatever this is, it's targeting us, Dean."

"Why?"

"I'm still working on that and so far..."

Dean nodded. He turned to check on Sammy who had brought all of his dinosaurs to the couch and was quietly lining them up on the window sill. Every once in a while he would stop and look out into the parking lot, off towards the woods. Then he would go back to moving his dinosaurs around.