Well, guys, thanks for all the reviews. Now I guess it's time to see if Dean's plan (whatever it may be) works. Can you really save yourself from your past? And what's gonna happen when Sam and his younger self are left alone together? I guess that you, faithful readers, are about to find out :)
"Rise and shine, sleepyhead!" Dean smiled, yanking the covers off the freckled ten-year-old's bed, "we've got a big day ahead of us."
The boy rolled over, moaning. His eyes snapped opened as they caught sight of the empty bed beside him, however. "Where's Sam?" he demanded, the sharp tone in his voice unnerving the adult a little.
"Relax, kid. Your Sam and mine went to grab some breakfast. Not sure if you know it, but you guys are almost out of food."
"I want to see him." His eyes were sharp, piercing, accusing. Dean recognized his own brand of hidden panic.
"Well, he's not here right now. You know, these trust issues of yours are getting kind of annoying. How are you ever gonna make any friends?"
The boy smiled, a familiar smirk, the panic slowly fading from his eyes to be replaced by something else. Something like forbidden knowledge. "Don't worry, I'm pretty sure I'll grow out of it. I mean, you seem pretty trusting."
"What's that supposed to mean?"
The knowledge was definitely there, the smirk threatening superiority, the eyes shining. "I'm not stupid, Dean. I know who you really are."
The older hunter's heart skipped a beat. "And who might that be?"
"You're me." He stated it as a simple fact, satisfaction written plainly on his face. He'd figured it out all on his own, and he was very proud of that.
Dean just smiled. "That's not possible, kid."
"I don't know how it happened, how you got here," the young boy said, the confidence in his voice never faltering, "but I'm right. Why else would you save us? How else could you know how I feel about my family? And the names, that was a dead giveaway. Like I said, I'm not stupid. I can pick up on subtle signs."
The older man sighed, sitting at the foot of the kid's unkempt bed. "Man, I really am smarter than everyone thinks."
"So, I'm right?"
"Yeah," he nodded, "you're right. And I know I shouldn't be telling you this, but what harm could it really do in the long run? Seventeen years from now, my brother and I found a wormhole, a kind of slip-up in the time stream. We followed the guy that attacked you through it. We wound up here."
"That guy you're with, your brother? That's Sammy?" The elder just nodded, a little surprised at the way his younger self seemed to be handling things. "Man, he got tall."
"Sure did. Enjoy your height advantage, kid, because when he hits puberty you'll have to step down. Now, you have to promise me that you won't tell Sam about this. We kind of had an agreement to try and not change the past. It can seriously mess up our present."
The boy nodded, a large smile plastered across his young face. Excitement shone brightly in his haunted eyes. "I promise. Don't worry, dad's already told me about the consequences of time travel. As soon as you guys leave, I swear I'll try to forget you. So, how's the day gonna go? You said you had something big planned." He was practically bouncing up and down where he sat.
"Actually," Dean grinned sheepishly, "I was just going to try and earn your trust before asking about the weapons."
"Trust gained," the kid grinned, his face shining with glee, "and I'll tell you where everything is, rock salt and all, if you'll just give me that knife back."
The more experienced hunter smirked. "Deal. But, uh, let's not tell Sam where they are until later, OK. He'll think it's weird if I broke through my concrete defenses in the fifteen minutes he was gone."
The little boy nodded. "Deal. So what are we gonna do?"
"Well, there's a park not too far from here. I figured we could just hang out. What do you think?"
The kid smiled. "Anything to get out of this room."
"Cabin Fever?"
"For the past five years, yeah."
The door to the motel room opened slowly and Sam walked in, the little boy tagging along behind him, a large box of donuts held in his hands. A note was lying in the middle of the small circular table in the kitchenette, and he set the box down beside it before picking it up and skimming over it.
"Looks like we got back too late," he muttered, looking at the untidy mop of brown hair that stuck up from the couch, where his younger self had gone to watch TV, "they went to the park to talk about something. More for us."
"I'm not hungry," the kid muttered, his small voice barely audible over whatever cartoon he was watching on the TV.
"Well," Sam sighed, "I guess we've got some time to waste before they come back. Anything you want to do?" He walked around the couch to sit beside the kid, who was busy coloring on some old scraps of brown paper towels. "Whatcha drawing?"
The little boy shrugged, the crayon barely moving, as the adult inspected the art. It was a picture of a family, a woman, a man, and two boys. The smaller boy was standing between his parents, but the taller of the two was off to the side, a large frown on his face.
"That's a nice picture, Sammy, what's it of?"
"I dunno," the boy shrugged again, "a family, I guess."
"Oh." He sat back on the couch, folding his arms in front of his chest and wondering how much progress his brother was making on finding the location of anything that could be useful to them if Jake decided to show up again. He still didn't believe that slowly befriending the little hunter would work in the long run, actually thought it would be easier to just ask the kid where the weapons were hidden, but-
"He's not as stupid as you think he is," the boy said, turning to look up at him.
"Who?" Sam asked.
"Dean. He figured it out before I did, and I've been figuring a lot of stuff out lately. And he fooled you, too."
"What did he figure out? What are you talking about?"
"He knows who you really are. You and your brother. You're me, right?"
Sam grinned. "That's impossible, kiddo, you should know that." Something was off, the kid had said he'd been fooled. What was his brother not telling him?
"No, it's possible. I don't know how, and neither does Dean, which is weird, 'cause I thought he knew everything. But he was still right, and you're me, all grown up."
The older hunter sighed. If he told the kid the truth, he would risk doing even more damage to the past, and consequently, the future. But the boy seemed sure of himself, and-
"I promise I'll try to forget when you leave, if that's what you're worried about. At least, that's what Dean's gonna do."
"He told you that?" Sam asked.
"No. I just know. Sometimes, I just know things. A lot, lately. Do you know things, too, or is it just me?"
"Yeah," Sam muttered, "I know things sometimes, too. And you're right. Your brother's right. There was a wormhole, about seventeen years from now-"
"And you followed the guy that attacked us through it," the boy nodded, "and then you saved us from him."
"That's right," Sam marveled, starting to feel a little unnerved. It was almost as if the boy could read minds, but wouldn't that mean…
"That's cool."
"You said something about Dean earlier? About him fooling me? What did he do, Sam? How'd he fool me?"
"Oh, well," the kid began, looking back to the pictures with renewed interest, "he has a plan. He's gonna take care of himself because no one else will, and both of him know it."
"So, they left? Dad and Sam, and they didn't even care?"
"They had bigger things to worry about, all right, there's nothing you could do to stop it," Dean said, putting a comforting hand on the boy's shoulder as they sat on the swings in the park, "it wasn't your fault. Sam just needed to get away and dad finally got a lock on the thing that killed mom. It had nothing to do with you. They really care about you."
"Yeah, that's what you tell yourself, but I know you don't believe it because I don't believe it. And mom? She just passed on by? Like you weren't even there?"
"In her defense, Sammy'd never met her."
"In her defense. What about my defense? I mean, does it ever feel to you like you're all alone in the world and nobody cares? Like you're just a soldier, or a bodyguard, not even a person? Like the only way you can get people to stick around is to manipulate them, destroy their dreams, keep them down to keep them around?"
Dean sighed, glancing down at the ground. His brother had told him not long ago that he would leave once the demon was gone. The connection had been made in the older hunter's mind and he had done something about it. Not sabotage, but something close. Just to keep him around.
"Yeah. All the time. Guilt-trip them."
The boy nodded. "So, what are we going to tell them when we get back?"
"That depends. You want to do something like this again? If I tell him you didn't talk we can sneak out tomorrow and maybe see a movie or something. If I tell him where everything is, we'll just wait for Jake to attack again. What do you want?"
"I haven't seen a movie in the theatres in years. Let's lie."
Dean nodded. "Lying it is. Let's get back to the room. They'll be worried about us."
"Yeah, right," the kid muttered, jumping off the swing and brushing off the seat of his pants, "like he really cares."
"Come on, you know your brother loves you."
"Sure, but for how long?"