Chapter 10

Dean was recovering slower than ever before, and Missouri noticed.

"…time was different, wasn't it?" Missouri asked.

She had been talking to Dean for about an hour. An at times he seemed to zone out on her. But she kept talking, hoping that she could get him to talk back.

Dean seemed a million miles away, yet again. He had closed his eyes, once more. But she could tell that he wasn't asleep.

"Dean!" She said firmly.

That got Dean's attention. He opened his eyes and looked at her.

"What is going on with you, Baby?" Missouri was truly, honestly concerned for her friend. "What's wrong?"

Dean didn't know how to describe how he felt. Except to say that the whole experience just seemed so real. It felt like he had stepped through a wormhole, or a rip in time, instead of just waking up from a vivid dream. And he was finding out, very quickly, he hated the fact that he had had to leave his brother behind. It felt like, maybe, if he had grabbed his brother when he had known he as coming back through…. If he had known when he would be waking up, he could have brought Sam back with him.

When dean looked up at her, Missouri saw the tears running down his cheeks. "Sweetheart," She said, enveloping him in a hug. "What's wrong?"

Dean was not able to speak for a moment. He accepted the hug and hugged Missouri back.

"Talk to me, Baby." Missouri broke the hug so that she could look him in the eye. It tore at her heart to see him hurting. She was just going to have to try, even harder, to get him to talk to her.

Dean looked at Missouri. He shook his head. He wasn't sure he could talk about his last incident. He was sure Missouri wouldn't understand it because he, himself didn't understand it. And, it really kind of scared him to have to be honest with her. He shook his head. What would she have thought if he had told her that he wanted to go back? He wanted to live in that world with his brother? That he felt like he…needed to be there? That it felt like it was he and Sammy against the world, working for the greater good?

Dean didn't understand the 'he and Sammy against the world' part himself. But, it felt huge, cosmic, much beyond himself, maybe even beyond human kind, with results that would ripple through time. It was that kinda thing. And that scared and excited him all at the same time.

SPN SPN SPN SPN SPN

"Do you think he's sane?" Dr. Fergus MacLeod asked Missouri. They had all been watching the young man since he had woken up and there were signs that things were changing with him. But, they were not sure what it meant.

Missouri shook her head. "He's more…emotional. And Dean's not an emotional person. Not like this."

Fergus nodded. He knew it to be true. The only time Dean had cried as a child was in connection with his family, mostly his little brother Sam.

Missouri had been very, very confused about Dean reactions after his latest episode. "He's mumbled about Sam coming back with him. I think, Dr. MacLeod, he has made his little brother so alive in his dreams that…. He told me what his brother looked like," She paused. "And this was what he looked like now, at the age he would be now. Which I think, based on Dean's age, is about 22 years old. I just…I don't think he's insane. But…you and I have both been dealing with patients with mental illness for a long time." She looked him on the eye. "Have you ever seen anything like this?"

It was the doctor's turn to shake his head. His other patients had never age-progressed the loved ones they had lost. They had never forgotten them. And they had said that the loved one would be a certain age when their birthdates rolled around, or something like that. But this, this was not at all like that. Dean had described Sam in way too much detail for it to just be made up. It was like Dean was actually remembering seeing this person and then describing them from that memory. Which was not possible.

Missouri sometimes asked her patients to describe what a loved one might look like now, as a part of their therapy. She usually got things like hair color, eye color, and possibly height, if several members in the family were exceptionally tall or exceptionally short That particular trait may be mentioned. On rare occasions, they would get certain specific facial features: prominent noses, pouty lips, and the like. Things that seemed to run in the family. But, she never got things like hairstyle, clothing, facial hair, the way they smiled, that there were dimples. Those were not the normal type descriptors she got. Dean had even mentioned how unfair it was that Sam didn't have freckles.

This was like Dean was seeing the person. And that person did not, could not, should not exist. Samuel Winchester died at the tender age of 6 months. How could Dean know what Sam looks like NOW, at the age of 22, when Sam died in a fire at the age of 6 months? These questions swirled in her mind.

The human mind was a powerful thing. It could create realities, no doubt. But, those realities were of and stayed in the person's mind. Dean's reality was coming out for him. He was missing his brother. He, at the tender age of 4, likely had not developed a close relationship with his, then 6-month-old, brother. His young mind may have been capable. But, Sam's young mind was not. And Missouri had got the definite impression that the bond Dean shared with his brother was reciprocated.

TBC