A/N: In the last chapter, when Evy was arguing with her family over Connor, Bobby told her that she was 'only fifteen'. I meant to say seventeen. I've established it in my other Evy stories that Evy was born in 1993, ten years after Sam, so that would make her 15 in 2008 and 17 in 2010. My apologies, and I will go back and fix that.

2008: Say Goodbye 'Cause You Can't Go Back

"Hey, babe? I'll be back."

"Okay. I got the kids. Do what you gotta do."

Evy smiled, sharing a quick kiss with Peter before walking slowly down the park's hiking trail. She absentmindedly kept a hand on her stomach, where she could feel one of the twins kick the other one.

"Sammy, stop kicking your brother."

The offending baby stopped kicking, then seemed to shift his position away from his brother as far as he could go. Which wasn't very far, considering they were both still inside Evy's very pregnant womb.

"All right, you two. That's enough in there. Mommy's going to talk to someone and I need you two to be quiet for a minute."

Surprisingly, both babies stilled and Evy smiled. She was so close to her due date that Peter had needed convincing she would be alright walking the less than quarter of a mile by herself. Evy considered sitting down, but knew that if she did, her chances of getting back up on her own were slim. Though she could hear Connor and his baby sister Isla laughing far off in the background, her heart wasn't with them today. Her heart was miles away, and maybe even worlds away, with a family that she still longed to see and say goodbye to. Double checking that no one was around, Evy began her speech, looking to the heavens and hoping, praying, that somehow she would be heard.

"Sammy, Deanie, it's me. Cricket. Baby girl. I'm still here. I don't know where exactly I am, or why you never found me. Or if you even looked for me to begin with."

Evy's heart clenched at the thought. Of course Sam and Dean had looked for her. She had to hold on to that hope. No. Not hope. Certainty. Without it, the entire time she'd spent looking for the two of them had been wasted.

"But I want you to know that I'm okay. I'm better than okay. I have this wonderful, amazing family here. A husband that loves me and that worships the ground I walk on. Two gorgeous kids and two more on the way. It's everything I ever wanted."

Evy wiped away a tear that sprung down her face when a sudden flashback of herself at ten years old sprang to her mind, unbidden. She had been living with Sam and Jess at Stanford for just over two months. She had heard Sam talking to a friend about Jess being 'the one' and wanting her to be 'the mother of all my children'. It had worried her, and she'd been quiet for days. Sam had been the one to mostly raise her. Did all that change now that he had a new woman in his life? When she finally confessed the truth to Sam about how she was feeling, he'd pulled her into his lap for one of his signature bear hugs and explained,

"There is no one and nothing in this world that could ever replace what you mean to me. Not Jess, not any kids that we might or might not have, nothing. My family will never be complete without you in it. Got it, Cricket?"

Evy shut her eyes against the happy but painful memory, and when she opened them again, she began what she'd come to the park that day to do. "Sammy, Deanie, I'm sorry. I want you to know, whatever happens, that I'm sorry. I tried to find you. I really did. And I know you tried to find me. I hope you guys are at some kind of peace right now, but knowing you, you're still poring over the lore or banging on doors trying to find me. I want you to know, too, that it's okay. I'm not mad you didn't find me. I'm really not. But I've come to say goodbye."

Evy choked on the 'goodbye', and she wept silently into her hands for a few moments, until some passing by joggers forced her to regain her composure.

"I can't do it anymore. I can't go back to the lore trying to find ways to contact the two of you. I can't try to comb through old Star Trek episodes hoping that I've somehow travelled back in time or to another world and there's some kind of path I can follow back to you. There's days I wake up and I wonder if my old life was even real. And then there's days where Peter makes me laugh and I swear it's you, Dean, pulling a joke on me. Or Connor does something to make me frustrated, and I'm in an argument with you, Sam. Or Isla makes a face at me and it's the two of you trying to tickle me to cheer me up. And it's on those days that I love you two the most, and that I miss you so badly. But like I said, guys, this is it. It's been ten years, and I'm hanging up my hat. Goodbye, you guys."

Evy wanted to weep again when she said goodbye, but was cut off by the sensation of a pair of small, skinny arms wrapping themselves around her legs. When she looked down, she could barely see Connor's face grinning back at her mischievously over her own pregnant belly.

"What are you doing, monkey?"

"Missed my mommy." Connor said, squeezing his mother's legs again.

On Evy's other leg, she felt an even tinier pair of arms squeezing her. "I can't see, but that down there must be baby Izzie."

"Mommy!"

"Sorry, babe." Peter said, running up after the two energetic toddlers. "They wouldn't stop begging for you. You'd think you'd been gone for days."

"Uh huh. They wouldn't stop begging or you got worried?"

Peter shrugged. "Maybe both."

"That's what I thought."

"I'm sorry. I know you hate me mother henning you when you're pregnant."

"It's okay." Evy said. "It really is. I'm done here anyway. Can you pick up Izzie? I'm scared I'm gonna step on her since I can't see her."

"Got her."

"And you, baby boy," Evy said, waving Connor out from under her, "need to walk in front of Mommy so I can see you. Okay?"

"Okay. Can I race back?"

"No. No running since Mommy can't keep…" Evy suddenly grabbed Peter's arm when she felt a familiar sensation that only meant one thing.

"Babe?"

"Pack up lunch and take the kids to your dad."

"What's going on?" Peter asked. "You okay?"

"But the picnic!" Connor complained. "You and Daddy promised!"

"Connie, honey, I know we did and I'm so sorry, baby. I swear to you we will have a picnic. But Mommy needs to get home right now and get ready to go."

Connor, who'd been helping in the best three-year-old way he knew how to help his mother prepare for the birth of his two new siblings, realized what was about to happen and gasped. "The babies are coming?"

"Not for a little while, but they just told me they're ready."

At the exact moment Evy's water broke, Sam was rechecking the conclusion he'd come to almost two minutes earlier. If he was right, then the problem was so much worse than Evy just being missing.

Inside Evy's jacket, Sam had found a gray substance that they'd never encountered before. It was thick and gray to the touch, but if left on a surface longer than a few seconds, it evaporated into thin air. Only through dumb luck had they discovered that waving a hand through the area where the substance had just evaporated led to it taking shape in the hand again.

Sam had immediately researched 'thick gray slimy material found at disappearance' and was surprised to find that a lot of the sources he used agreed. The substance had different names, but the purpose was the same-to transport anyone who stumbled onto it into another plane of existence. What exactly happened there no one seemed to agree. But it was the best lead Sam had at the moment.

Sam finished the math he'd just worked out and leaned back in his chair. "What the hell?"

Bobby and Dean, who were across the room arguing over the best strategy to move forward, stopped and turned to Sam, the distress in his voice making them both nervous. Neither of them were entirely convinced of Sam's 'other world' theory, but they had no other explanation at the moment.

"Sam, what is it?" Bobby asked.

"I, um, found a lore reference that verifies the other world theory."

"What? Where?"

"Here." Sam said, pointing to the book in front of him.

Bobby walked over and glanced at the weighty ancient tome, one that had been in his library for as long as he could remember but that barely had been used. He read some of the passage that Sam was pointing to and nodded. "I guess you're right, boy. What I can translate off the bat seems to say so."

"That's good, isn't it?" Dean questioned. "So we translate the passage and we should be good to go to get her back, right?"

"This research. It, um, says that time moves faster when we travel outside of our own plane of existence."

"Faster? How much faster?" Dean asked.

"About 40,000 times faster, if I'm right."

Dean shrugged, the relief at having found some kind of solution taking a little of the tension off his shoulders. "Baby girl'll be okay until we find her, right?"

Sam swallowed hard. "No, Dean. She won't be."

"Why, Sam? What aren't you telling us?"

"I've been doing the math. If time is travelling faster for Evy, I wanted to know how long she thought she'd been gone."

"And?"

"Damn it!" Bobby exclaimed, glancing over at Sam's work.

"It means, Dean, that while we've been looking for Evy for two hours, for her, it's been ten years."