A/N: WEE!CHESTERS! *squeee* Enjoy. Also, reviews would be great, people. Yeesh… Thank you to Rifle53, Irish Ghost, lisa, Zampers, Bandit, and TheChosenBetrayer. You guys rock!

Also, special thanks to Irish Ghost. I attribute you to my sanity. *gives cookies* Thank you so much!

Side note: This jumps ahead to Dec '89… next chapter will go back to Paige in summer of '89. Just so you don't get too confused.

Disclaimer: I only wish I owned the Winchester boys...


CHAPTER SEVEN
Mothers and Tomato Rice Soup

December 1989

Dean Winchester shivered slightly and curled into a tighter ball, staring across the motel room at the opposite bed. Sammy, his seven-year-old little brother, was curled up in his pillows and mound of blankets, warm and content. It was freezing outside, snowing last time he checked, and they didn't have enough blankets in the room and the heater was busted.

He shivered harder and curled tighter, tucking the edges of his thin blanket around him. He'd given the rest to Sammy when he'd noticed him shivering. Usually he would curl up in bed with him, but Sammy had been sick, and he didn't want to get sick, too.

Puffing out a frustrated breath, he switched to looking at the door. Dad had been gone for a week, with no word when he was coming home. The wad of cash he'd been given was dwindling quickly, and soon, he'd have to steal for their dinners, and that was dangerous. What if he got caught? But Sammy was sick, and he needed as much soup as Dean could find.

Fighting back frustrated tears, Dean burrowed deeper into his pillow – one of the only things he'd been allowed to carry around with him from place to place (it was clean and didn't smell gross).

Somehow, he managed to fall asleep despite the cold, wishing that his dad would come home soon.

He was sick of this place.


"Dean?"

Dean huffed out a frustrated breath (he'd been doing that a lot lately) and continued to stir the tomato rice soup, not turning to look at his baby brother. He knew Sam would be at the table, wrapped up in a blanket, sniffing bleary-eyed and flushed of face. And he didn't want his brother to see the tear leaking out of the corner of his eye. He'd bothered his dad for weeks to give him mom's recipe, and now instead of her making it for Sam, he was.

He hated it when Sammy was sick, even if it was just a cold.

"What, Sammy?" he replied.

"How come we don't have a mommy? Everybody else at school does. They call me weird cuz I don't."

Oh, the dreaded question. Dean gulped and squeezed his eyes shut, struggling to banish the image of his mother, on the ceiling, burning… screaming… shaking his head Dean forced himself to think of other things.

"She died," he said shortly, hoping Sam would keep it at that, angrily sticking his finger in the soup. The soup was almost hot enough.

Sam's lip wobbled as he studied his brother's stiff shoulders and rigid posture. "How?" he mumbled.

"Car crash," Dean snapped, ignoring the burning in his throat at the lie. Sam did not need to know about anything evil, no way. Not his baby brother. Not yet. Hopefully, not ever.

"Oh," Sam said softly, sniffing pitifully as he sneezed. Still, Dean forced himself not to turn around. He'd take one look at those puppy dog eyes and spill out everything in his heart to Sammy.

The urge to comfort overcame his silence. "It was an accident, Sammy," he whispered. An accident with a demon…

Sam rubbed his eyes to scrub away the tears and nodded, even though Dean couldn't see him. "Was she nice?" he wondered.

Dean stiffened again halfway through pouring the soup into a bowl. He forced himself to continue scooping most of the broth into Sammy's bowl – his throat hurt and the broth would go down easy – and struggled for a response.

"Yeah, Sammy," he said finally. "She was nice. She had the pretties smile I ever saw, and her eyes were the prettiest color in the world. Every night she'd lift me up so I could say good night to you in your crib. When I was sick, she used to make me tomato rice soup and sing to me, and…" he trailed off as the tears choked his throat. He cleared it quickly. "She loved you, Sammy. Very, very much. She died…" he stopped himself from finishing that sentence. She died trying to protect you.

"Do you miss her?" Sam wondered, perching his chin on his fist. He'd never known his mom, but Dean seemed really close to her. Sometimes Dean would sneak into his dad's journal and grab the picture of the four of them, running his index finger gently over her face and crying when he thought Sam wasn't watching.

"Every day," Dean said as he brought the bowls to the table. He slapped a spoon into Sam's hand. "Now eat your dinner. I'll go get your medicine."

Sam watched him disappear into the bathroom and looked down at the soup, taking a careful whiff. It smelled amazing. He tried a bite and smiled. Tasted amazing, too. Eating carefully because of his sore throat, he tucked into his dinner and waited for his brother to come back.

Good thing his ears were plugged...because he didn't hear his older brother's muffled sobs on the other side of the bathroom door.


Dean wasn't a stupid kid. He read every book he could get his hands on, simply for the reason that by reading as much as he could about everything, he could tell Sam the right answer when Sam would eventually ask him a particular question.

Sam was a pretty inquisitive kid, and just as smart as Dean. Any question he had, Dean would be ready with an intelligent answer, be it geometry or reading or spelling tests.

But there was one thing Sam learned far quicker than all other things.

Never, ever ask Dean questions about mom.

For the simple reason that Sam, young as he was, couldn't bear to see the pain that would flash over the face of his big brother and his own personal hero.


E/N: Not sure if Wee!Chesters are in character, but I felt they needed to have this conversation. Poor Dean. *sniffle*