Something was wrong with Sammy.

Something besides him suddenly being a freaking giant from the goddamn future, like that wasn't weird enough on its own.

He was trying to hide it, but Dean could tell. Dean could always tell, no matter how freakishly huge his little brother had gotten. It was there in his posture, his voice, his eyes. Something was really, really wrong with Sammy.

And Dad had sent Dean on a freaking breakfast run. It made him want to shoot something. Unfortunately, there was nothing around but civilians, so he settled for cutting a couple people in line, skipping his usual flirtation with the cute cashier, and booking it back to the motel.

He opened the door to the sight of Sam – enormous, oldish, time traveler Sam – cowering in the far corner like a frightened animal.

Breakfast hit the ground with a thump.

"What the hell?"

"Damned if I know," Dad replied lowly, moving sideways to place a restraining hand on his shoulder, gaze not leaving Sam – whose eyes never once flickered their way, terror-blown pupils tracking something else entirely. "He checked out not long after you left, freaked when I tried to touch him." He rubbed the side of his face, and Dean noticed a red mark that was sure to blossom into a spectacular bruise. "Kid packs a hell of a wallop."

"What is it, like a seizure or something?" Dean questioned, and tried to move forward.

Dad's grip tightened on his shoulder, holding him back.

"He ain't the Sam you know, Dean," Dad warned him.

"Like hell he ain't," Dean snapped back. He didn't like to argue with Dad, but that was Sammy – a whole lot more of him than he was used to, but Sammy all the same – and Dean would never leave his little brother on his own when he was hurting. Not for anything. "Sammy," he said, directing it at his brother and ignoring his father's warning growl.

It worked – sort of. Sam's eyes fixed on him, but they were still hazy, uncomprehending.

"It's me," Dean continued, fighting to keep his voice steady. "It's Dean. C'mon, Sammy, you know me."

Slowly, slowly, Sam's eyes began to clear.

"D-Dean?"

"Yeah," Dean answered, relief flooding him. "Yeah, it's me. I'm right here." He shook off his father's hand and stepped forward, within Sam's reach. Behind him, he sensed rather than saw Dad tense, ready to leap forward should this larger, obviously unbalanced Sam make any hostile move. "I'm right here," Dean repeated.

Sam gave a little shake of his head, and something seemed to snap back into place. Mortification and shame quickly replaced fear and confusion.

"Sorry," he muttered, straightening up and running a hand over his face. "I'm sorry, I – " His gaze landed on the mark he had left on Dad's face, and he grimaced. "God. I am so sorry."

"Why don't you stop apologizing and tell us what the hell that was," Dad said, and it wasn't a suggestion.

"That – " Sam's eyes darted between the two of them. He swallowed hard, and his entire manner shifted between one breath and the next. He was suddenly standing straight, shoulders relaxed, lines of stress and pain smoothed from his face. "Nothing. That was nothing," he said firmly. "Like I said, we had kind of a rough hunt. Had a run-in with a crowbar," he said, gesturing towards his head. "Guess it knocked a few screws loose." He smiled, a bit sheepishly.

"Never seen that sort of reaction to head trauma," said Dad flatly.

"Yeah, well." Sam shrugged. "Repeated head trauma. Not exactly the first time I've been knocked around. Bruised something. Doctors say it should go away on its own. I mean, it's only happened a couple times, and those were right after. Probably just the shock of the time travel."

He was lying. He was better at it than the Sammy Dean was used to – alarmingly so, actually – but he was definitely lying.

Dad couldn't see it, or at least was pretending not to. The oldest Winchester gave a grunt and turned back to the table without another word. Dean opened his mouth to protest – but Sam caught his eye with an all-too-familiar expression.

Please don't tell him. Please.

He closed his mouth with a clack. Dammit, he would never get done covering for the kid.

.

"I'm going to go get changed."

Dean – clearly Dean, complete with unsafe self-medication practices, for all that Sam's brain revolted against the idea – made an affirmative noise in response. He grabbed the remote as Sam moved away, turning on a – Sam glanced back over his shoulder to make sure he wasn't mistaken. Yeah, it was a Spanish soap opera. Dean really was high off his ass.

After pausing a moment to roll his eyes, Sam quickly and quietly returned to the room he had woken up in, shut the door, and set to work.

The room was neat, with one window that didn't open and one door which lead out to the main area of the . . . the cabin, he supposed, judging by the rough, natural look of the place and woods outside the window. There was a gun on the bedside table. Sam had looked at it before, long enough to confirm that it was unloaded and the bullets weren't anywhere easily accessible. Now he picked it up again, examining it in light of new information. This was his room. This was his gun.

His hands did not shake, though his stomach twisted unpleasantly. He wished he was surprised. But he had hoped . . . he had thought, maybe . . . .

He put the gun back with a slightly louder clang than he had intended. Stupid, stupid.

There were two other things on the small table, a wallet and some sort of futuristic electronic device. Well, he was in the future, he supposed, and then had to stop for moment to attempt to wrap his head around that. He quickly gave up and turned his attention back to the device.

He tried pressing the green button first. The screen lit up rewardingly, but then presented a new conundrum.

SCREEN LOCKED

PLEASE ENTER PASSWORD

A more familiar set of controls – a number pad – appeared on the screen beneath the request, and with a little trial and error Sam discovered that it was a touch-screen, about fifty times as reactive as the ones they had at some more high-tech libraries. Unfortunately, as cool as it was, it wasn't all that useful. He tried all the four digit codes he could think of (his birthday, Dean's, some pairs of numbers from his favorite football and soccer players' jerseys) but none of them worked. He finally gave it up as a lost cause and turned to the more familiar item.

The wallet contained twenty-six dollars and fifty-two cents, a stack of fake credit cards and IDs, and three folded photographs. Sam ignored the money and the standard hunter's ware and smoothed out the pictures.

One, he recognized. It was a picture of their parents – his only connection to two people he'd never seen and Dean never talked about, Mom alive and smiling, Dad young and happy – standing in front of their old house. It was older than the version he kept tucked away in one of the books he knew Dean would never read, yellowed edges and worn crease lines, and he folded it carefully before replacing it in the wallet.

Another, he couldn't place at all. It was a girl he'd never seen before, adult but very young, grinning at the camera, her curly blonde hair a halo around her head. This picture, too, was carefully worn, several years old at least. But she was very beautiful, and Sam felt a small thrill of hope – maybe he wouldn't mind hunting so much if it meant having this girl smile at him like that.

He put it back in the wallet.

The last picture, he could easily guess. It was Dean, older than Sam was used to but younger than the man in the other room, wearing Dad's jacket and leaning against the Impala, head thrown back as he laughed. On the other side of the hood was . . . Sam, he supposed. He'd gotten tall. He wasn't laughing like Dean, but he was smiling, wide and warm with his eyes on his brother.

A knock on the door made him jump, and the picture slipped from his fingers.

"Sam?" questioned a familiar voice. "You in there?"

Sam scrambled over and yanked the door open.

"Uncle Bobby!"

He threw himself at the older man's middle, and after a startled 'oof' Bobby's arms came up to hug him back.

"Alright, kid?" Bobby questioned, sounding a little taken aback as he let him pull away.

"Yeah," said Sam, face flushing, suddenly self-conscious. "Sorry. I just –" He just felt lost and scared and confused beyond belief. He didn't say that, though. Instead he shrugged awkwardly, but Bobby seemed to get the message.

"Yeah, 'spect you would," he agreed. "Quite a mess you two've gotten yourself into this time. Your brother said you were getting changed," he added, raising his eyebrows at Sam's pajamas.

"Nothing fits," said Sam, which he guessed was true enough, judging by the size of the man in the picture.

"'Course it don't. C'mon, Dean's stuff is a bit smaller. We'll figure somethin' out."

Bobby clapped a hand on his shoulder and steered him out of the bedroom. The weight of it, the scratch of Bobby's clothes, even his scent of motor oil and gunpowder were familiar in a way the older Dean and the older Sam's room hadn't been, and Sam let them comfort him. Bobby was here. Dean was here.

They'd figure something out.

.

It was Sam who broke the awkward silence, peering over Dad's shoulder (really really easily; how did such a scrawny kid grow into such a giant?) and giving a not-exactly-polite cough.

"Y'know, the research might go faster if you were actually researching time travel and not what sort of supernatural creature I could be."

"There it is," Dad said definitively, closing his book. "You were making me suspicious," he explained in response to Sam's questioning look. "Too damn obedient. Now that your attitude's showing through, I can put my mind to rest."

Dean flinched, bracing himself for the sharp comeback and the subsequent explosion, but it never came.

"Guess I've mellowed in my old age," said Sam. His voice was light – it was his smile which cracked halfway through.

God fucking dammit, Dean did not like this at all. However, both Dad and Sam himself seemed to want to focus on the time travel issue. Which, okay, was kind of a big deal. And it wasn't as though Dean had a lot of say in the matter – it was beginning to hit him that he was now the youngest person in the room, which was another addition to the growing list of things he was not happy about.

"This library's kind of limited," Sam commented, looking through the books which were scattered across the table. "Nineteen ninety-seven," he muttered, and shook his head. "Bobby's probably our best bet."

"Bobby Singer? Why d'you say that?" Dad asked sharply.

"Bobby knows spells. These are mostly about supernatural creatures, which almost always need direct contact to do anything to you. Neither, uh . . . versions of me have been on a hunt recently. Also, I'd probably have noticed if I got bitten by a time wolf or something." Sam's voice started out carefully reasonable, but acquired a wry note by the last sentence. Dean couldn't help but be a bit relieved at that. Dad hadn't been the only one disconcerted by this older Sam's meekness.

Dad's response was almost as off-putting.

"Alright," he agreed with a nod. "I'll give him a call."

He stepped over to the phone, and Dean managed to close his mouth.

"Mind if I talk to Sam for a sec?" he asked Dad, as casually as he could manage.

"Fine, but don't be long," Dad replied, receiver already to his ear.

"Yessir," Dean agreed, and then, in an entirely different tone. "Sam. Outside. Now."

He felt grim satisfaction when Sam, over six feet tall and way older than him, jumped and followed him out with the same guilty look as always. However, it was not nearly enough to drown out the storm of anger and fear and worry which had taken up residence in Dean's chest.

"What the fuck," he growled as soon as the door closed behind them.

"I don't know," said Sam with a shrug and a grimace.

"No, seriously, what the fuck," Dean repeated. "And I don't mean about the Back to the Future shit," he added sharply when Sam opened his mouth. "What the fuck happened to you and where the fuck was I?"

Sam closed his mouth, and sighed.

"It wasn't your fault," he said, eyes earnest and pained. "It was my choices, my issues, okay?"

"No, it's not fucking okay," Dean snapped back. Sam's safety was his responsibility, always had been and always would be, and he wanted to kick his older self's ass for so obviously dropping the ball. "What. Happened?"

Because Sammy didn't break easy. He was an emo little bitch, but he was tough as nails when he wanted to be. He had barely made a sound when Dad stitched him up – even more impressive, he had stood his ground and deflected most of Dad's anger from Dean, even though Dean had deserved it for letting Sam fall like that. Anything that could hurt Sammy like this – batter him into this haunted, weary half-stranger –

Sam's lips twisted into a pale imitation of a smile.

"You really don't want to know."

.

It wasn't that Sam hadn't noticed the rather conspicuous absence in the cabin. Bobby was always there when they needed him, but he was never the first one Dean called. There was only one bedroom and Dean was clearly sleeping on the couch. So yeah. Sam had noticed that, for one reason or another, Dad wasn't around.

He looked at the new grey in Bobby's hair, the new lines on Dean's face, and didn't ask.

Yet.