"Hey Sammy," said the somewhat raspy voice of his older brother's twelve-year-old self. "You OK?"

All Sam could do was stare as the illusion came closer to him. The boy stopped, looking down at him and suddenly Sam realized that he was looking up into the face of a preteen Dean.

"What happened?" was the first thing Sam could force out of his mouth. "Why are we young again? Dean, you're supposed to be-"

"Settle down, Sammy," young Dean put his small hand on Sam's shoulder and said calmly, sounding so much older than he should – then again, Dean always seemed older than he truly was. At least to Sam. "Don't worry. Nothing's happened. And, we aren't young again."

This he said looking down at Sam, as if to indicate Sam should do the same. When he did, Sam was shocked all over again. He was the same size, the same height, the same age as he was before he hit the tree. So... why then...

"Come on," Dean said before Sam could ask any more questions. He reached out his hand to help Sam up. On instinct, Sam grabbed onto it, finding that Dean's hand was about the third of the size of Sam's.

"Where are we going?" Sam asked, completely thrown that this little person pulled him up to stand without any trouble. And now, he stood next to his big brother – though it would take two of him to equal Sam's height.

"The motel," Dean told him as if it was obvious. "It's getting a little cold out here Sammy. I think it's starting to snow," the boy said looking up to the sky. Sam followed his lead – it was beginning to snow – and then returned his eyes to his little brother and found that they were no longer in the cemetery at 1:00 am but in a park around dusk.

"Besides," the kid said, still holding Sam's hand, pulling him along, "Dad'll get mad if we aren't home by the time the street lights come on."

Sam allowed himself to be nearly dragged to a run-down building with peeling olive paint on the walls and chipped yellow trim. Dean took a key from his pocket, reached out and unlocked the door, and practically pushed Sam inside.

"There you two are."

"Dad?" Sam whispered. He took in the sight of his father – thick, dark hair without a grey strand to be seen, clean-shaven face accentuating his bright smile, looking Sam right in the... knees.

From behind him – through him – ran a very little Sammy. Sam could only guess that the vision was of a four-year-old self. He watched as mini-Sammy ran to his daddy, who in turn went down on one knee to scoop up the little boy and give him a bear hug the likes of which adult-Sam could not even remember.

"Go in and wash up for dinner, Sammy," young John said, placing the little boy back on the floor. As the door of the bathroom closed, John turned back to look at eight-year-old Dean. The smile that remained on his face looked strained and hard-pressed to stay there. "I thought I told you to be home by dinnertime."

"Sorry, Dad," the boy said, standing in front of adult Sam and twelve-year-old Dean. "The street lights aren't on yet-"

"That's because they're busted, Dean," John told him, smile no longer in place, though the look he was giving Dean was far from the angry-Dad faces Sam could remember from his teenage years. "How many times do I have to tell you to get your brother home before dark? It's not safe for a little boy out there. Do you want something to happen-"

But anything else he was going to say was cut off by little Sammy's return.

Sam turned to twelve-year-old Dean. He was getting a little dizzy, what with being the only one that was the correct age.

"What's going on?" he asked just as the motel room began to fill with smoke. The loud beeping of the smoke alarm began screaming in the room and the fire sprinklers sputtered out inconsistent spurts of water while John cursed and ran to the kitchenette's little oven with a fire extinguisher. Little Dean grabbed little Sammy's arm – the kid's hands were covering his ears against the shrill wail – and pulled him to the door of the motel room, and young Dean and adult Sam followed them out.

Only, it wasn't outside. They walked out of one motel room straight into another. This room was colder than the last and he watched a now ten-year-old Dean taking the comforter off of his own bed to tuck it around a sleeping, six-year-old Sammy. The solemn child then walked over to a ragged chair, sat down, and pulled a shot gun into his lap. A sentry protecting a prince.

Behind adult Sam and his guide, the motel door opened to a snow-covered John Winchester carrying a duffel bag and a brown paper sack. The man dropped both bags in front of his older son without a word and then made his way to the bed where his younger son was sleeping. Quiet as he could, John whispered what sounded to adult Sam like, "sweet dreams, Sammy," tucked the blankets closer around him, and then walked into the bathroom.

As the shower turned on, ten-year-old Dean locked and re-salted the door. He carefully took out the damaged packages from the paper sack. Adult Sam watched with a smile as he saw the child cut off the torn and ripped cardboard backing and wrap the figures in bits of the brown paper sack.

"I remember that," Sam said softly to the slightly older Dean standing next to him. "I remember telling Dean that the only thing I wanted for Christmas was G.I. Joe. I got four of them: Hawk, Snake-Eyes, Cobra Commander, and Storm Shadow. I can't believe I still remember their names," he said with a chuckle.

"I remember how excited you were," said the twelve-year-old, sounding much like his present-day brother – tired and a little sad.

"Yeah," Sam said, remembering back. "Until I got to school anyway. First day after Christmas break I brought my new toys to show Joey and Andy. Joey looked at Hawk and told me that he was only a colonel. The Hawk he had gotten was newer, a brigadier general, complete with one star. And Andy showed me that his Snake-Eyes came with Timber, the character's pet wolf.

"I was so angry and embarrassed when you came to pick me up from school. And I asked you..." Sam trailed off, ashamed by his actions from over twenty years ago.

"Why Santa brought your friends good toys," Dean continued for him, "and left you with the crappy, old ones."

"And I remember," pride now shining through in Sam's voice, "that you marched right over to Joey and Andy and told them that my toys were not crappy and were most definitely not old. They were 'vintage', and vintage is far cooler than those new things they had gotten."

Adult Sam and his guide shared a small laugh at the memory while the younger Dean had finished wrapping the gifts and was now decorating the paper with crayon drawings of snow and trees and wreaths to make it look more Christmas-y.

"Of course," Sam went on, "none of us new what 'vintage' meant. It was just a big word used by a bigger kid than us, which made it awesome by definition." He thought it should have felt strange talking to this younger version of his brother, who seemed himself to get lost in which age he truly was, but it was quite simple and comfortable.

They left the motel room in silence. After the G.I. Joe Christmas, Sam was treated to a more holiday scenes. Next was the year that Dad missed Christmas and Sam opened his gifts of a Barbie Doll and a baton – girl gifts that Dean had gotten for him without realizing the gender mistake he had made. Year after year, Sam watched aging versions of himself open what he thought of at the time as sub-par gifts. Only now, as an adult, he could see how Dean had tried. Even if their father hadn't.

It was only after watching an eighteen-year-old Sam pull cash from a sock... When Sam was a high school senior, Dad was once again away during the holiday season. Dean was home, laid-up with badly bruised ribs, his left arm fractured in two places, and both knees in braces that prevented him from getting anywhere fast – not to mention he wasn't supposed to drive. However, it seemed he found a way to get to a local bar one day while Sam was at school and got in on a high stakes game of poker.

"At least it wasn't pool," Dean had said with a smile. But Sam didn't find that much of a conciliation and tried to refuse the gift that Dean had wrapped in an old sock – one of Sam's white gym socks – that had been turned deep pink in the laundry. What Dean didn't know at the time was that Sam's guilty conscience at the thought of wanting to leave their life, go to college – somewhere like Columbia or Yale or hopefully Stanford – was weighing him down.

At least Sam had assumed Dean didn't know. Looking at a twenty-two year old Dean watching his younger brother struggle with his thoughts and feelings about the monetary gift, adult-Sam saw a myriad of emotions play on his older brother's face. It made him wonder how much Dean did know – definitely not the specifics, as Sam himself hadn't known such things at the time, but Dean seemed to grasp the fact that Sam wanted college, normal, more.

Sam turned to young-Dean, hoping that this version of his brother would be more forthcoming with his inner thoughts, but the boy was not there. Sam turned a circle and looked around the room. The kid was gone.

"Great," he said out loud, knowing that the Winchester brothers from Christmas 2001 wouldn't hear him. "Now how am I supposed to get out of here?"

At that moment, someone knocked at the apartment door. At first, Sam thought nothing of it, believing that it must have happened in 2001. Then, he noticed that, when the outsider knocked again – even louder – that the phantom brothers did not appear to hear it.

"Oh, what the hell..." he said to himself – he had nothing to lose by trying to open the door.

"Finally!" the beautiful blonde woman, the one he at one time thought he would spend the rest of his life with, said with her big, beautiful smile.

"Jess?" he nearly cried as she reached in and grabbed his hand, then pulled him through the door. Like the first time with the motel, Sam left one apartment for another – this time, in a cheap but decent building. Unlike any of the Christmases he visited with his brother, this one held a room full of blinking lights and garland and even a decorated tree.

"Oh my God," Jess said in the way that had always caused Sam to tease her about being a 'valley girl'. "How gaudy is this?" She looked at him and smiled, her eyes bright and laughing the way they always got when she was happy.

"I think it's beautiful," Sam told her, staring at her, and they both knew he was talking about more than just the overly-decorated apartment.

"Oh Sam," she said with sympathy. "I didn't want to do this. I didn't want to be the one to show you this last Christmas. I knew it would be hard. But, let's face it, Dean couldn't show you this. He wasn't here. You (she nodded towards 2004 Sam) know as well as you (she nodded to him) do that Dean wasn't a part of this Christmas."

"I," Sam said absently.

"Huh?"

"I... You said 'you know as well as you do.' It's 'you know as well as I do.'"

"No," she told him, shaking her head. "I didn't know anything about Dean until... well... almost the end. You know?"

Sam watched himself and Jess throwing loose tinsel on the tree, then at each other, ending in a shiny shimmering battle where they ending up falling on the sofa laughing and kissing. Sam – the one that was only a visitor to this happy, seemingly life-time-ago dream – couldn't help it when he felt the tears begin sliding from his eyes.