A/N:

Thanks to Gayle for the review!

Time to check in on Dean and the others!

He was alone.

It didn't matter that Jacob was standing right next to him, or that Bowman was in his hand, cupped close to his chest with the tiny leaf glider that belonged to Sam.

Once more, Dean had lost his little brother and was alone in the world. No father, a mother long dead, and a little brother lost in a world that was dangerous to his size. The biting loneliness that Dean had allowed himself to think gone for a few blessed hours came rushing back.

Sam, the person Dean had believed dead for over a decade, had resurfaced on his latest case against a demon. He didn't look anything close to how Dean remembered him aside from a bright smile and fluffy brown hair, but it was him. Lean and in shape, a rapier by his side and a knife tucked away in his jacket, he'd stood up to Dean when the hunter had trapped his adopted family in his hands.

Because Sam, and his adopted family, stood no taller than four inches.

A curse had struck the younger brother all those years ago, brought on by a witch. Instead of killing Sam, it had taken away his size and sundered him from his family. Dean and John had given him up for dead after months of desperate chasing after the witch, and Sam had assimilated into a new home.

"Sammy!" Dean called out into the night air, desperately following the motions of the flashlight Jacob held as it danced over their surroundings. Each moment that slipped by without any sign of Sam struck another knife in Dean's heart.

He'd finally found his brother just in time to fail him all over again.

"Sam!"

Bowman peered over the edge of Dean's hand, his brow pinched with worry. He was missing a brother, too. Adopted, maybe, but his brother all the same. The flashlight skirted over bushes and trees, but illuminated nothing about Sam's whereabouts. He was simply gone, with no sign of where he'd be.

Bowman would be useless flying in the woods to find him. Aside from having to dodge owls and other night predators, he'd never catch sight of Sam in the dark. His eyes were adapted to the bright sunshine of the day.

Jacob said nothing, but his expression spoke of the same worries as Dean and Bowman. Finding Sam out here would be like finding a needle in a haystack blindfolded. If he was hurt and had crawled to some hiding spot, his forest-colored clothes would hide him from their sight exactly as they were meant to.

"M-maybe we should regroup," he suggested softly after the echoes of Dean's last cry faded away. "See if the knights saw anything and ... Dean, you need a hospital."

Dean stared back at Jacob, his mind refusing to admit defeat. Tears of pain mixed with tears of desperation on his cheeks, an emotion rarely seen on him. He'd spent his entire life building up walls around his heart after losing everyone important to him.

Walls that Sam had shattered the moment he reappeared. Right when Dean least expected it, and just in time to go through the shock of losing Sam again.

There wasn't much question that Dean would need a hospital, as much as he refused to admit he needed any help. If the arm started to heal wrong, it could leave him unable to hunt in the future, or at the very least it would need to be rebroken. It was limp at his side, only held up by the makeshift sling Jacob had created. Hopefully that would buy them enough time to find their way back to civilization.

"Sam..." Dean said, terrified of admitting they'd failed. "You... do you think the sprites can send out search parties?" He tried to cling to any hope of finding the tiny swordsman. Dean lifted up the leaf glider, staring at the delicately crafted vehicle. Sam had made it, and with it he could fly.

Without it he was vulnerable.

Dean's thumb shifted and reverently brushed the edge of a leafy wing, carefully staying away from the small ropes that bound the glider together. "We should bring this back to the village before we go," he said hollowly. "If we leave it out here, we'll never find it again. Sam... Sam deserves better. He'll want to see it when he gets back."

Bowman glanced over the silhouette of the glider. He was almost seated under it, shielded from view from above. If they left it out here, there was no question it would be crushed by an animal or blown about in a harsh wind.

More than once, he and Sam had been caught by surprise by a storm on their patrols. They'd always had to lash the glider to a tree branch, close to the trunk, and wait underneath it for the winds to pass. Bowman could maneuver through strong winds like no other sprite in Wellwood could, but he wouldn't leave his brother out there for anything.

He didn't want to do the same now, but they needed help looking. The forest was a big place for one patrolsprite to find one flightless knight, even with giants helping.

Bowman tried to smirk. "Scar can organize search parties. Back when Sam first arrived, everyone thought you might be out there sprite-sized, too." He crawled out from under the glider so he could push himself to a shaky stand on Dean's hand with what little room he had. "We can put the glider in the 'garage' and tell them what happened."

Jacob nodded in agreement. He glanced around, sweeping the flashlight across the forest floor, before he found the direction of the village. "There could still be some knights on the lookout, too," he said. "Let's head back in. Could be they already know what's happened."

He wanted to be more hopeful than he sounded, but with the night bearing down on them, it was difficult. Jacob eyed Dean's arm in its sling, looking swollen and painful and wrong. The same hand gripping the flashlight had somehow done that.

"Yeah," Dean mumbled in return. He blinked at the memory of helping Sam out with the glider in his tiny 'garage' in the tree. More than anything, he wished they'd spent more time together before striking out against the demon. Such a short amount of time, gone before they knew it. He had so many questions about Sam's time in the village, all those blank years of separation that he wanted to fill in.

At least it sounded like Sam had been happy there.

"Maybe someone already found him." Trying not to shake, Dean lifted up the hand Bowman was standing on. "You… mind telling us where to go? I'm guessin' you know this forest a hell of a lot better than anyone else around."

On any other day, Bowman might have smirked confidently and stretched his wings out to boast about how well he knew his forest. As a patrolsprite, he flew among the trees out there every day, and he had indeed learned it as well if not better than the others who patrolled with him. It was a good excuse for flying all the time.

Instead, he nodded soberly and merely rustled his wings to prepare for flight. "Yeah, I know the way," he answered, sidling around the glider a little to hop off of Dean's hand. His wings caught him swiftly and he hovered between the two giant humans before leading the way.

Jacob opted to take up the rear of their little group, since he carried the flashlight. He noticed that Bowman flew relatively low, and paused to look back often. His shape nearly disappeared in the dark at times.

The closer they came to the village, the easier their travels became. Up ahead, small, gently glowing lights guided them unerringly to the cottonwood at the very edge. Jacob realized, as he and Dean finally stepped over the stream with the most cautious moves they could, that the lights were from tiny lanterns made of flower petals.

The porch of the cottonwood was occupied by several sprites, some with swords on their belts and some without. Among them stood Lord Cerul, who wore a deep frown as he beheld the returning group. "News?" he called, unerringly calm despite the fact that Jacob and Bowman both knew he could tell something was horribly amiss.

Dean stared at the strange surroundings, his amazement tempered by the feeling of the tiny glider in his hand. Sam grew up here. This is what he's used to. The sight of the tiny lanterns reminded Dean of the way Rischa had been innocently making flowers glow when he discovered her.

If he hadn't found her then, would they be in this situation now?

Many of the sprites on the porch had jackets like Sam, so Dean figured they must be other knights. Aside from the gawkers he'd spotted staring at him, he'd only really met Bowman, Rischa and Scar, along with the fluttering kids that had flocked around Sammy. That memory put another ache in his heart.

Dean frowned. "We did away with the threat," he told the sprites. "Thanks to the knight that spotted him. But…" He lifted up the glider and his throat closed up a little inside. "Sam's missing, and we don't know what happened to him."

Cerul narrowed his tarnished-gold eyes thoughtfully, glancing at the glider resting on Dean's hand. Usually the glider looked much bigger, but seeing it sitting on a single human hand was bizarre. Cerul remembered Sam eagerly stretching his arm over his head when he was just a nestling to explain that his brother was five and a half feet tall!

Now, Dean was bigger than that, and nearly drowning in emotions that he clearly had no method of handling. Grief, regret, longing, sadness, worry, and physical pain washed over Cerul like a flash flood, and he took a slow breath to remain calm. Jacob and Bowman harbored similarly dire emotions, but they weren't as intense as the tallest human there.

Cerul glanced over his shoulder to address the other sprites that waited up with him. "Patrolsprites, please spread the word that the threat is gone. Knights, you should find the others flying sentry and bring them in so we can organize a search with Scar."

Bowman sighed, frustrated that they couldn't find a more immediate solution, but as the other sprites fluttered away from the porch to do their duties, he knew there was nothing. They would all work as fast as they could, but Sam would still have a little more waiting time until then.

He drifted to the porch to land on it near Cerul before looking back to Dean and Jacob. "Scar will know what to do."

Dean nodded his head, not trusting himself to talk for a moment. He watched as the sprites fluttered off, all knowing their roles and what they had to do. It made him feel more out of place. With his arm broken, he was useless. He couldn't even help look for his younger brother without risking his arm more.

Slowly the flap of green, leafy wings died off as the sprites all vanished into the trees to round up the others. Dean brushed a thumb over one of the wings of Sam's glider, finding solace in the absent motion. It gave him something to hold onto, a reminder that Sam was out there, waiting for them. "I should put this back for Sam," he said at long last. He glanced up at Bowman, wishing his eyes would start cooperating with him and stop threatening tears. "Which… tree was his place in?"

Bowman stared past Dean towards the pine tree where he lived, and where Sam had chosen his own home. No windows were lit by soft lantern glow, and the shapes of the houses on the branches were still and silent in the night. Rischa was probably asleep, waiting for them to come and greet her in the morning.

Sam's home, with its walls covered in writings, was empty tonight.

"You will find him," Cerul muttered quietly. Bowman glanced over his shoulder at the patient, calm noble, before nodding softly and slipping off the porch again to glide past Dean and lead him to Sam's home. Jacob, with his flashlight aimed downwards and the bulky duffel bag on his shoulder, hung back as the mournful feeling still hung in the air.

"It's over here," Bowman called. One of the patrolsprites from before flitted past him to make their rounds letting any worried sprites know what had transpired.

He landed on Sam's porch, with its overarching garage. Shadows clung to it until he muttered a quiet prayer and Sam's lanterns all filled with a quiet, flickering glow. His garage was his workshop, after all, and he needed the most light he could get in there. More than once Sam had dragged Bowman to his house for the prayer, needing light for some late night work.

Dean followed behind, paying close attention to the ground he walked on. There weren't any children around now that it was nighttime, but an assumption wasn't worth their life. His boots were an actual danger compared to people that didn't quite reach as tall as a finger.

The sight of the petal lanterns brought a brief smile to Dean's face that fled almost instantly. "One day he'll have to tell me about this place," Dean said sadly as squatted down to be level with the tiny garage and lifted up the glider. He carefully avoided Bowman as he placed it where Sam had landed earlier that day, and nudged it with a finger so it was facing forward. That tiny little glider was to Sam what the Impala was to Dean, and that's how Dean would treat it. "Maybe he'll even get to show me how he made his glider."

Before pulling his hand out, Dean let a finger run across the walls again, staring at the human-sprite mix of letters that covered it. Sam had adapted to live in a completely different world, and he fit in better than anyone could have imagined. Dean couldn't imagine living like that, or having a glider to fly. Sam not only had, but he also had a wingsuit and had gone on to become a knight.

Protecting others, just like Dean did what he did to save others.

No matter where the brothers had ended up in their lives, they'd found a way to help people. Dean was proud of his little brother, and always would be. Sam had grown up to be a great man, no matter his size.

Bowman, standing near the opening of the garage, hardly noticed how crowded it had become. With him, the glider, and a giant hand filling up the space, there wouldn't be room to stretch his wings, but he didn't mind that for a moment. He watched as Dean's enormous fingertips brushed reverently over the older inked-in sketches Sam had made, of the earliest prototypes of his glider.

There had been a lot of trial and error before Sam finally ended up with his finished product, but it was well worth all the headaches and frustrations. Bowman was glad he'd never given up on it, because it meant he could fly with his adopted brother.

"He made the glider with a lot of poking at me," Bowman quipped, before hopping from the edge of the porch and flapping his wings to fly straight up and avoid smacking into Dean (again). He hovered there thoughtfully, looking down at the glow spilling out from Sam's garage and onto Dean's face. Then, he glanced upwards, at his darkened home on a branch above.

"When you go to find Sam, I'm gonna go with you," he determined. "Even if it's far away, I'm coming along."

Dean watched Bowman hover, his brow furrowed in concern. "I don't know how much good I'll be in a search for Sam, but we'll do what we can." He was pained by the thought of Sam out in the forest on his own, curled up in hiding. "I'm too big…"

With the glider parked, Dean touched it gently on the side with his finger one last time. There were leaves bunched up along the side, probably made to block the garage from the rain during a storm. Dean carefully pushed them along so the glider and the garage was hidden from view. "Sam will be back," he said firmly as he stood, his eyes level with where Bowman was hovering.

A/N:

One Winchester without the other.

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Next: February 26th, 2020 at 9pm EST.