Ok. I'm here. I'm dead tired, but here. Yay!! Hope y'all are ready for an action-packed chapter that involves a promising new discovery :)

Thanks again for reading and reviewing!


"My feet hurt."

Sam glanced down at his brother and cocked an eyebrow. "I'm not rubbing your feet, Dean."

The older man shook his head. "How chicks walk in those things, I'll never know."

Sammy sighed, shoving his hands into his jacket pockets and running his fingers over the smooth metal of the gun that he'd thought they'd never see again. With the Colt back in his grasp, he found himself walking with anew confidence, a new swagger. Maybe he could do it. Maybe he could actually save his brother. At least now they had a plan. Or, at least, a semblance of one.

They would find out where the demon that held Dean's soul was, they would run in with their gun blazing, and the damned thing wouldn't stand a chance. In theory, it would work. In life, it would probably result in more deaths than just the demon's. If not Dean's, then definitely Sam's. There was a price to pay any way he looked at it, and it wasn't pleasant.

He ran into Dean as the older man stopped. His brother turned to glare at him. "What is it with you today?"

Sam shook his head. "Dunno. Just thinking. Why'd we stop?" He followed Dean's gaze up to the second-floor windows of an old brick apartment building. Smoke belched from the tiny openings as flames flickered inside.

The brothers looked at each other, clearly worried about the occurrence of such a familiar disaster so close to their recent victory. They were both pulled out of their speculation, however, by the harried screams of a young woman. They spun to see a stout blonde straining against the beefy arms of two firemen, one neatly manicured hand reaching toward the burning building.

"Please," she shouted, "my baby. My baby boy! He's still in there."

Without waiting for a reaction from his brother, Dean took off into the apartment.

o0o0o0o0o0o0o

Fire licked at his feet as he ran, threatening to engulf him, to send him to Hell before Sammy got a chance to use their newly recovered weapon on the faceless demon that had haunted their dreams for nearly a year. He could hear screams from outside the inferno, shouts of panic, of pain.

And then he heard something closer, barely audible over the rushing of smoke and fire in his ears, a small cry. He ducked into a room, dodging fallen support beams and a wall of smoke. The sound got louder.

He stumbled farther into the room, staggering down a hallway, coughing as his lungs filled with deadly smoke. Stupid hero complex, he thought, squinting through the haze to see a closed door at the end of the hall. He could make out words now, a small voice calling for help amidst the flames.

He didn't bother to try the doorknob, just reared back and kicked down the door, sending a sharp spray of splinters into the room. A choked sob reached his ears as he beheld the scene before him. Fire climbed the walls of what was obviously a child's room, embers dancing and twirling in the fog of smoke, falling onto a small, coughing bundle huddled in the corner.

Dean picked his way across the room as quickly as possible and scooped the boy up in his arms. The kid screamed, and one look at him explained the noise easily. His skin was burnt, charring and blackening with the heat, the fire, the unrelenting spray of embers that had rained down on him.

He loosened his grip on the kid as much as he could and headed back for the door. The smoke was thicker than it had been before, stinging at his eyes and choking life-giving oxygen from his lungs. Flames shot up in front of him and for one terrified moment he believed his earlier suspicions- somehow his demon had found out about his intended jail break, somehow they'd been betrayed, somehow he would never be able to outrun that deal.

Then a spark of pure blue light caught his eye and Dean spun in the main hallway to find a back door out of the building. Without thinking, he ran toward it, feet pounding at weakening boards, child squirming and screaming in his arms. He burst into the fresh air and sunlight, gasping for breath as his lungs burned in his chest.

Choking on the clean air, Dean hung his head, trying to catch his breath as sirens rang and people screamed. The boy in his arms was still shrieking with pain, writhing in his grip, soft tears streaming down a ruined face. He would be a freak if he survived, his puckered skin an outward sign of his near-death, his survival. No one would ever look at him the same again, would ever treat him the same. Dean could relate.

Curling his fingers around the boy's blackened skin, eliciting a cry of purest pain, he closed his eyes and concentrated. Maybe Sam had something with the whole psychic thing, maybe biological makeup could be changed with a touch, with a thought. Maybe he could reach past himself and touch another, more deserving, more innocent life.

He felt the boy calm in his grasp as he focused on what he intended to do. Despite what Sam might have thought, Dean had paid attention in high school biology, at least enough that he had an idea of what he was doing. After all, if Sam and Bobby were right about him, there had to be a reason that he could change his age. All he had to do was find it and apply it.

He cracked his eyes back open and looked down at the boy, at perfectly tan skin, wide eyes, not a flaw on him. The boy looked back, his mouth hanging open in shock. Dean just smirked and shushed the kid, raising his eyebrows to get the point across. The boy nodded. Not a word would be spoken.

He lowed the boy to the ground, and, taking his hand, led him around the side of the building to the waiting crowd. The boy's mother burst from the group and ran at them, her arms held out wide, face soaked with tears.

"Oh, my baby," she wailed, scooping her son up into her arms. She turned grateful eyes to Dean. "Thank you so much."

The hunter shrugged. "No problem, ma'am." He flashed her a smile that shone white through the grime that coated his face, turning to find his brother in the crowd. Sam looked worn, worried, scared, and Dean couldn't blame him. He started to leave, his brother falling into step behind him, waiting until they were well out of earshot of the crowd gathered around the burning building to yell at him.

"What the hell were you thinking?" Sam demanded.

"I was thinking I could save that kid."

"No, you weren't thinking. You were running into a burning building."

"But I saved him," Dean said, a serene smile sneaking onto to his face as the full realization of what he'd just accomplished hit him. "There wasn't a scratch on him."

"Yeah," Sammy said, "what was up with that? I asked one of the firemen at the scene. He said the fire supposedly started in the kid's room and spread. How could that kid not be burnt, Dean?"

The older man shrugged, looking down at his feet. "I thought about what you said."

"What?"

"About the psychic thing. I think you were right. You and Bobby."

Sam shook his head. "What are you talking about?"

"You should have seen that kid when I got to him. He was all burnt up. Screaming bloody murder. His face… his arms… they were black and dead and he would have been in so much pain. People would have stared. They would have pointed. He would have been a laughing stock."

"Dean-"

"So I fixed him."

Sam stopped walking and turned to his brother. "What? How?"

"After you told me what Bobby said, I got to thinking. If he was right, then how could I make myself younger? And then I thought about it- actually thought about it- and I remembered taking biology in high school. Do you know why people age?"

"Their cells die."

Dean nodded. "Yeah. The way I figure it, I was bringing those cells back to life without even realizing that I was doing it. They were multiplying and regenerating and that's how it worked."

"How did that help the kid?"

"I told the dead cells to come back to life."

Sammy raised an eyebrow. "You did… what?"

"I put my hands on the kid and concentrated on fixing him and it worked." He grinned, suddenly proud of himself, happy to have done something good with something that he'd once viewed as evil. "I saved him years of rejection. I healed him."

"So, you're saying that you can do this to other people now?"

Dean shrugged. "Maybe I always could. Never thought to try before."

Sam started walking again, heading toward the back alley where they'd left the car. "You know, you might finally be good for something after all."