-Summary: It's the end of the world and they've got one last card to play. Castiel sends Dean back: back before everything. Now he has time to stop what's coming, but no friggin' clue how to do it. Time travel should really come with a manual. TIMELINE AU

-A/Ns: Welcome back! I'm posting a day early since all you lovelies had to wait two weeks.

-Reviews: Thanks to everyone who reviewed! I know, I know, three seconds of Cas last chapter was not enough. I knooooow. Again, no idea why I tackled a story without him in it for this long. All I can promise is that he is still coming. As much as I would love to, I can't rush it.

-Chapter Warnings: Our dream adventure wraps up with a lot of bangs! Slamming doors, guns going off, explosions of light. What is happening?!

-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-

The Road So Far (this Time Around)

Chapter 21

-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-

Dean woke with the same momentum he had last held in the dream. He shot out of the chair, nearly taking it with him as he stumbled back and away from an angel that didn't exist in the waking world. Gone was the quiet, suburban neighborhood in Lawrence, Kansas, replaced by the panic room. His father was still sleeping on the cot against the wall and his brother was conked out in the kitchen chair beside him, head hanging back at an angle that would punish him when he woke up.

"Shit." Dean ran his hand through his hair as he spun around. Had the root worn off? But why wasn't Sam awake too, then?

A loud bang and a crash came from above, and the hunter dropped into a defensive stance out of habit. The reverberating blast of a shotgun followed.

Bobby.

Dean sprinted out of the panic room and bolted up the stairs at a pace that surpassed fast and hit reckless. He burst through the basement door and rounded into the study, skidding to a wobbly halt at the petite girl, maybe seventeen at most, standing in the front door of the house. It was pretty obvious from the damage the wall and door had taken that she'd kicked the thing in.

Shit, Meg was early.

"You must really think I'm stupid," she spat out, taking confident strides forward. Dean searched the room around him for a weapon, pausing at the sight of Bobby's crumpled body in the corner. A shotgun lay in his limp hand, books from the shelf he'd been chucked into littered the ground around him.

Dean tried to spot movement in his chest, but he didn't have time to confirm if the old hunter was still alive. Please, God, let him be alive.

Meg came to a stop just outside of the study, a smirk on her lips. Dean's gaze snapped back to her as he stood, weaponless, in the center of the room. "I thought I said no more games."

"Says the bitch who showed up to the party early."

The demon laughed, tossing her head of curly hair back. "Oh, Dean. I never said I was at Caleb's when I slit his throat. Really, after everything I heard about you Winchesters, I have to say I'm a little underwhelmed."

The hunter fisted his hands as the echo of his friend's dying breath flashed through his head. He was going to kill this bitch if it was the last thing he did. Screw the timeline and screw some things staying the same; she wasn't going to be one of them.

Meg held his gaze in their standoff before brown eyes roamed around the house tauntingly. Dean glanced at the stretch of carpet she was almost standing on, knowing Bobby had painted a devil's trap beneath it as part of their trap and dragged it over to the entryway. He just needed her to take a step forward.

"So," Meg didn't move; she just glanced curiously around the room, her eyes lingering on the door down the hall to the basement, and the open entrance to the empty kitchen on her other side. "Where's your brother?"

"Bermuda."

"Cute."

"I think he was going more for 'hot.' Bikinis. Speedos. Little umbrellas in all the drinks."

"You're funny, Dean."

Meg waved her arm and the hunter found himself flying through the air. He tried to tense his body for the hit, but it still knocked the air out of him as he crashed into the corner of the window above the couch. He hit more wall than glass, but he heard the window rattle in its frame and he considered himself lucky he didn't go straight through it. Instead, he bounced off the couch and rolled onto the floor beside Bobby with a grunt. God, his back was going to hate him in the morning.

"I'm going to skin you alive, but you're funny."

"I try." With a low moan, he climbed to his feet, shaking pain and books off. It took a moment to gain his footing as he nearly tripped over a heavy tome on Greek mythology, almost sprawling across the floor again. She'd thrown him harder than he'd expected. Awesome.

"You're going to start answering my questions, you know."

"Or what?" He blinked at the double vision of the demon, but it was clearing up quickly enough. "You gonna kill me?"

"Something like that." Meg took a step forward and Dean tensed as her foot brushed the edge of the carpet. But she stopped, tilting her head to stare at him.

Oh crap.

Her eyes dropped to the rug and he swore like a sailor in his head as she toed the edge of it. Lifting her foot, she flipped the corner over and the edge of the spay-painted devils trap was clear even across the room. Meg's eyes met his, the smirk gone.

"I'm so done with your crap, Dean."

She raised her hand once more and the hunter flew across the room and into Bobby's desk. He managed twist, hitting the edge with his side rather than his back, so it was his forearm that snapped with a splintering crack and not his spine. He gasped against the shock of pain shooting up his limb even as momentum from the toss sent him up and over the desk. Papers and books went flying as he rolled off the surface and hit the ground below, hard. He cried out as the drop jarred his freshly broken arm, but at least he hadn't landed on that one.

Bobby had moved the devil-trapped carpet out from the center of the room to block the entrance to his study completely, but that didn't stop Meg from darting down the hall, passing the basement door to skid into the library's secondary door just to the right of the desk. Dean scrambled back up as she appeared in the doorway, holding his arm close to his chest. He vaulted over the now cleared desk, landing on the floor with too much momentum and ended up half running, half tripping to the other side of the room.

He spun around to face Meg, who was moving around the desk and pursuing him through the study as he backpedaled as quickly as possible into the kitchen. She got in one more, good toss that sent him careening into the cabinets hard enough to see stars, before she walked straight under the devil's trap painted on the ceiling in the center of the room and slammed into the invisible barrier of the far edge.

Her eyes snapped furiously to the ceiling and widened as she realized her mistake.

On the floor of the kitchen, Dean let his head fall back to the ground and laughed loudly. He didn't bother holding back as he rolled over, deep-chested chuckles interrupted by painful grunts as all his aches and pains were jostled. He climbed to his feet, arm held feebly to his body. He stretched his back, wincing at the multiple pops, before turning to stare at the trapped demon, a grin stretching over his face.

"I can't believe you fell for that twice."

Meg glared at him from the center of the room, baring her teeth.

"Don't go anywhere, sweetheart. I'll be right back." Dean lumbered out of the kitchen and over to Bobby, bending down to press two fingers shakily to his neck. He breathed a sigh of relief as he felt a steady pulse, and could see the old man's chest rising and falling from the close distance. Straightening with a pained moan, he headed for the front door, not bothering to hide the limp in one leg or the way his back throbbed from the last crash. Damn demons. He ambled down the stairs on the front porch and crossed over to the haphazardly parked Impala. It took him a moment to dig into his jeans' pocket for the keys, grimacing at the constant, unintentional jostling to his broken arm.

And he had a good six weeks of useless one-armness to look forward to.

He popped the trunk, ready to get a little payback.

-o-o-o-

Sam stared at the Baku as it kept its distance. The beast didn't need to get close to do damage, as was evident by the amount of dream mass it was sucking into its open jowls. The walls were bleeding away into the floor, which was being pulled up by the Baku like a never-ending vacuum.

On the ground beside him, his father groaned against the constant pull of the creature. He was still conscious, but by the looks of his fading edges, wisps curling away from him and towards the beast, John wouldn't be aware for much longer.

The young hunter swallowed and forced himself to focus. He still didn't know how to wake John up while he was trapped by the Baku's influence. The African Dream Root wouldn't last much longer for him, either. If it kicked him out of the dream, his dad was as good as dead. He had to keep the Baku distracted long enough to find a way to free his dad from its hold.

Red flight flared through the cramped alley they'd trapped themselves in running through the factory. An explosive crack thundered off the small space, making even Sam wince at the volume. The firework lit up, true and bright, not more than five feet off the ground between them and the beast. The hunter could feel the heat from the flares.

The Baku hissed, staggering back away from his feeding fest. As the light faded and the echoes of the gunpowder explosion petered out, the creature lowered its head and stared at Sam through dangerous eyes.

The hunter eyed those tusks as the beast pawed at the ground. Crap, he'd hoped to scare it off, not make it charge.

Another firework exploded between them as the Baku reared back on its hind legs and trumpeted. Sam released two explosions of green and blue, but the creature charged, relentless. It jumped between the two explosions of light and color, skidding across the ground on the landing. Throwing it's trunk in the air, it let out a horrendous roar and sucked the firework straight into its open throat.

Sam staggered at the pull as a piece of his conscience, however small, was devoured and he felt himself fade in and out of the corporeal world.

The bursts of light faded, leaving them in darkness lit by the monochromatic illusion of a moon. The young hunter was panting by the time the pull against his very soul faded with the colors. The Baku turned to face them again, head lowered dangerously in line with his spine. This time instead of charging, it tossed its head to the side and Sam felt the world tighten around him, like a hug gone too tight and lasting too long.

He tried to summon another explosion and got nothing.

Shit.

Beside him, John finally collapsed into unconsciousness. The Baku eyed the fallen hunter before turning those fierce irises to Sam. He swore he saw the taunt there as the creature dipped his head back down and started feeding, all but ignoring the now defenseless hunter.

Sam's hands tightened into fists, nails biting at the flesh of his palms that wasn't really there in dreamland. There was only one thing left he could think of to try, even if he'd promised Dean he wouldn't do it again.

-o-o-o-

Within the circle, Meg was seething when Dean made his way back into the study. The more minor aches and pains were beginning to fade, which was a good sign for how he'd be feeling come morning. His back still spasmed with every step, causing him to limp, but besides that and the damn arm, he had gotten away with nothing more than bumps and bruises.

The rest of his family had better come out in similar condition, or Meg would be begging for a quick death before the day was through.

The demon's fury faltered when she spotted the Colt in Dean's hand. She eyed the gun, her face falling, then reddening, and then settling for something like pissed acceptance. Meg had always been a quick one.

"I should have killed you both," she spat, turning her chin up at the human as he stood just outside of the trap with her death in his hands. "I could have, you know. A hundred times."

"Oh, I don't doubt it." Dean flipped the cylinder of the old revolver open with a flick of his wrist, checking the bullet count. "But Azazel wouldn't let you, would he? See, me and Sam, he needs us alive. At least for now."

Meg shook her head, anger fierce in her eyes along with fear. "Who the hell is feeding you this shit? And where were they when I was beating the crap out of you, huh? You think they're on your side? They sure don't seem to care whether you live or die."

Dean huffed something of a laugh, though there wasn't much mirth in the sound. Meg was one of the toughest demons they'd ever dealt with. Relentless, cruel, and fiercely loyal. Crazy, even. But she had never been much for negotiation.

Probably why Crowley couldn't stand her.

"No one's feeding me anything," Dean snapped as he flicked the cylinder shut and raised his good arm to aim directly between the demon's eyes. "You want to know how I know so much? I lived through it. Been there, done that: took a one-way ride in an Angelic DeLorean."

Meg's eyes widened.

"Spoiler alert." He cocked the hammer of the Colt. "You don't win."

The bullet tore through her chest, just below her right clavicle. The demon staggered back with a gasp. Light scattered beneath her skin in microbursts of lightning, silhouetting her bones in relief. Meg met his eyes for a single moment before the bullet within extinguished her rotting essence in an explosive burst of orange, and she hit the floor.

"That's for Ellen and Jo, you demonic bitch."

-o-o-o-

Sam shifted his stance, spreading his feet shoulder length apart. He raised his hand, fingers spread wide as he focused on the creature. The Baku wasn't paying attention to him, convinced he was no longer a threat. That would be his first and last mistake.

The hunter closed his eyes and drew a slow, deep breath. He focused on that thing just beneath the surface of his skin. The thing that, here, was a dull thrum in the back of his mind, like the buzzing of electricity through wires.

It didn't take him long to find. When he did, he only hesitated for a moment before wrapping his hand around that pulsing cord of energy.

Brown eyes flew open as the thing he'd just enveloped his mind around flared at the sudden attention. It filled his body, vibrating bones and muscles and making him feel weightless and heavy in a single breath. His mass increased as gravity retreated, although he knew neither existed in this place. His feet were still solidly on the ground when he checked, but damn if it didn't feel like he was struggling just to stay connected with the earth.

The Baku stopped feeding, lifting his head to stare. Sam met the thing's gaze head on, squaring his shoulders and clenching his jaw. This monster picked the wrong hunter to mess with.

His physical hand, clenched in a fist as surely as his mental hand wrapped around that throng of darkness within him, spread open. The energy within him practically sang and his whole body shook from the vibrations it caused within him.

It wanted out, and he would let it.

The Baku winced, ducking his head with a hiss. It staggered back a step, eyes full of confusion and the first flickers of doubt. The creature doubled down, pressing his feet hard into the ground against the pressure building from the tiny human. It tossed its trunk with a roar, shoulder blades scrunching together in preparation for a pounce.

But Sam didn't care. He pushed harder, shoving the thing back with his mind and digging beneath skin that wasn't really there. The hunter searched deeper than the visage of the beast, straight through flesh and muscle that were nothing more than representation. He pushed down to the soul.

The creature hissed and writhed, tossing its body from side to side in an attempt to dislodge the presence wrapping tight claws around its insides.

The hunger could feel blood beginning to drip down his nose. He could almost taste the copper on his tongue echoing down from the waking world. He ignored it.

Sam tightened his fist when he was sure he'd found the beast's center. It felt slimy, like oil sludge dripping through his fingers. But he could feel warmth within it, beneath the inch thick darkness that snaked around the white light like a living thing.

The hunter slammed his eyes shut, focusing everything he had on the thing he currently held within his mind. He started pulling at the sludge, ripping away fistfuls of the dark goop as the creature screamed and snapped and howled.

-o-o-o-

Dean lowered the gun, savoring the momentary calm that filled him. Meg was dead and all the people she would hurt going forward would be spared. He rubbed at his chest, Colt still in hand. The strong ache that had been there since Cas jump started his consciousness was finally starting to fade.

The man from the future moved forward swiftly, dropping beside the young body the demon had been possessing. He'd shot true, a through-and-through just under the clavicle. It should be survivable for a human, though it would hurt like a bitch, but it was too close to the heart for a demon to escape when the bullet was from the Colt.

He dropped the gun beside her lifeless body to search for a pulse. Even as his fingers pressed to cold skin, he spotted the blood spreading across her chest in more than one place. Dean pulled away with a clenched fist. She had multiple gunshot wounds in her gut and breast. Caleb or Garth had gotten off several good shots, their aim as true as hunter's had to be.

Scooping up his gun, Dean stood. When it became evident that tucking the weapon into his waistline one-handed was easier said than done, he set it down on Bobby's desk instead, frustration mounting in the face of another innocent life he'd cost. A moan and a grunt alerted him to Bobby waking up, and he quickly crossed the room towards his fallen friend, side-stepping the girl they'd lost in the middle of all this.

Bobby was just sitting up as Dean sank to a knee beside him. The older man grumbled, grabbing at the back of his head and the no doubt fresh bruise there.

"You okay?"

Bobby waved the question off, obviously fine given the circumstances. He dropped his hand back down as he eyed Dean critically. "You?"

The younger hunter nodded with a half grin. He raised his broken limb by the shoulder, wincing as he did so. He extended his good arm to the older man. "Arm's busted, but otherwise I'm good."

"Good." The older hunter took Dean's offered hand and pulled himself up with a grunt, body aching. He caught the boy's eyes and held him there with a single look. "Then you can tell me all about that angelic DeLorean of yers."

-o-o-o-

Sam pushed past the pain in his head and bones, the exhaustion that dogged him down as he clawed and scrambled through the black ooze of this thing's infested soul. If he couldn't destroy the Baku, he'd tear it into shreds too tiny to harm his family ever again.

He didn't know what he was doing, but he didn't spare time to think about it. Working on instinct, he tore dripping chunks of slime away from a ball of light that shone too bright to look directly on whenever he pulled enough sludge back to expose the blinding brilliance. If he could get through to that light, he knew he could free his father and end this nightmare once and for all.

Focused on a task that narrowed his world down to the beast, himself, and that bright soul, Sam didn't notice the tremors that started beneath his feet. They ran across the surface of the world with finite trembling, and slithered up his body to fill his ears with a low, distant buzzing.

At first, it lined up with the way his body vibrated with the power coursing within and Sam paid it no mind. Soon enough, though, the buzzing grew until his ears went numb, and then it kept going. Sam grimaced, twitching his head to dislodge the growing noise that stabbed at his concentration. The earth beneath his feet began to truly shake. He tried to refocus his attention on the Baku. The buzzing grew in pitch until it was piercing, and he finally had to release the beast to slam his hands over his ears.

The terrifying realization that his hands made no difference came almost immediately, and the sound still continued to climb. It felt as though it was penetrating straight into his brain to the point of exploding. The young hunter cried out and fell to his knees, whether from pain or the tossing of the earth, even he didn't know. Fresh blood ran from beneath his palms as his ears practically wept and the world shook tried to shake itself apart.

The Baku cowered beside the factory wall, whining in high pitch bursts and clawing at its ears and head. The dream started to crumble around them. Large portions of the world split open, like tears across a canvas, and white light shone through with such brilliance that Sam couldn't look. Even with his eyes closed, the building explosion burned through his eyelids until he was sure he was blind and deaf.

It grew until he was encompassed in a light so pure and hot it burned. The piercing pitch shattered the world like glass, and everything disappeared in the explosion of white.

-o-o-o-

The 'oh crap' expression plastered on Dean's face would have been comical in almost any other situation, and it was a shame they were in the middle of a damn demon attack and Baku nightmare. Bobby would have liked to take a moment and enjoy the dumbfounded look on the cocky hunter's face. He'd been getting damn tired of the enigmatic man being three steps ahead of them for the past six months. It was nice to see some genuine surprise and speechlessness on the kid he knew.

Dean stood there, gaping like a fish at his surrogate father. He didn't know how to respond. He was pretty sure he was screwed, but even if he wasn't, part of him didn't want to try and lie his way out of this. Part of him – the bigger part – was tired of lying, tired of walking this path alone.

With nothing else to do and completely unsure of what he was supposed to say in the face of Bobby's realization, the man from the future reached out with his good arm and pulled the other man into a hug. Bobby stiffened under his grip, but Dean didn't let go.

"I wanted to tell you so many times." He said it more as an apology than explanation. He stubbornly ignored the flare in his chest and the burn in his eyes, or the relief that practically drowned him. Before the moment could get more chick-flicky than he'd already made it, Dean pulled away.

He took a deep breath, steeling himself for coming clean, when Bobby emptied a bottle of holy water straight across his face.

Dean blinked through the water at the man. He spit a mouthful of purified water to the side. When the hell had he even pulled out his flask? "I'm not a demon, Bobby."

His half-assed shrug was utterly unapologetic. "Sounded like a better option than time travel."

Dean was spared from answering as the light in the room suddenly dimmed dramatically, despite the late afternoon sun outside that should be shining in. Before either man could move to the window to figure out what the hell had happened to the sun, smoke slammed into the house from all sides as dozens of formless demons barraged the Singer home out of nowhere.

The two hunters stumbled into the center of the room, avoiding Meg's body as demons attacked the remaining warding of the house in a three hundred and sixty degree arc around them. The building shook under the assault, groaning at the structural stressors. Picture frames rattled on the walls and books vibrated right off their shelves.

Dean glanced at Bobby, eyes wide. "Holy crap."

The wards held as the demons collided against them again and again, disembodied voices screaming. Bobby met Dean's wide eyes with confusion and panic of his own. He had disabled only the minimal amount of protection needed to let Meg in, but even that was enough to seriously weaken what remained to protect the house. And under this level of assault, the rest weren't going to hold for long.

Bobby reloaded and cocked his shotgun. Dean swiped the Colt off the desk, but he wasn't even sure what to shoot at. Would the colt disable the wards if he shot through them? The thing was supposed to kill everything, right?Smoke swirled violently outside the study's window, pulsing with each push.

"What the hell is this?" Bobby asked, spinning continuously at each new bang and rattle, coming from every wall. It was a true siege, a barrage against his home from dozens of formless demons. He'd never seen anything like it.

The house started shaking.

It wasn't the same hits and rattling the demons were inflicting on the old structure as they fought the remaining wards to get inside the house. No, this was new and in addition, like they needed more to deal with. First it was just the floor, trembling minutely and quickly growing until the tremors were climbing up the walls and the building rumbled and quaked until the hunters could barely keep their feet beneath them.

Dust and bits of plaster rained down on the two hunters as a crack suddenly split through Bobby's ceiling, cutting straight through the devil's trap painted on the ceiling.

And then it was gone. The shaking stopped abruptly with a final shove; the demons pushed off the walls of the house and vanished with a scream. Dean bolted for the window, pulling back the curtains. A writhing ball of black smoke was flying away to the east at impossible speeds, disappearing from visual range in seconds.

Dean looked back at the older hunter.

What. The. Hell.

Bobby, eyes bulging, could only shrug helplessly.

The silence in the house seemed deafening, and with it came the realization that he had left his brother and father in the panic room. Shouting Sam's name, Dean took off for the basement, Bobby hot on his heels.

"We're here!"

The response immediately eased the tightness in his chest before he threw open the door and spotted his brother at the bottom of the basement stairs. Sam was holding John up with an arm slung over his shoulders. Their dad looked shaken but alive.

"We're okay."

Dean took the stairs two at a time to help his little brother get their father back upstairs. He spared a glance at Sam, who met his gaze with the same expression.

"What happened?"

"Not a friggin' clue," Dean shook his head. "Meg showed early. She brought a bunch of bodiless demons with her. They took off like bats outta hell after she ate a bullet from the Colt. You?"

Sam blinked in surprised, having not been privy to the siege upstairs or been able to discern the shaking in the dream for the shaking in the waking world. He shrugged as they hefted their dad up the first steps. "No clue, either. The Baku just…disappeared in a bright light. Then we woke up."

"Well that's anticlimactic," Dean grumbled, causing Sam to send a prize-winning bitchface his way.

"Sure wasn't anticlimactic for those of us still stuck in it," he sniped back, though there wasn't much heat in it so Dean didn't bother feeling guilty about leaving his kid brother and father to face the Baku alone. It wasn't exactly like Cas had given him a choice.

So he didn't take the bait, instead helping Sammy get their dad up the rest of the stairs without further comment. He could tell his brother wasn't telling the whole truth; the smeared blood across his upper lipped suggested a hell of a lot more, but Dean didn't push. At least not yet.

He caught Bobby's eyes as they made it to the landing. Yeah, it wasn't exactly like he was telling the whole truth either. At least…not yet.

-o-o-o-

John was out as soon as they'd finished the warding circle around the couch in the study. It was unclear how much damage the Baku did down there, but he was coherent enough to be his usual grumpy self, insisting he was fine despite being unable to stay upright on his own for more than half a second.

Dean watched him from the kitchen, arms crossed and leaning against the doorway. Sam checked the warding again, referring back to the book in his hand again and again to make sure he got it right. Neither of them knew if the Baku had been killed in the explosion of light Sam described, and Dean couldn't draw any firm conclusions while his brother obviously left out a chunk of the story.

A chunk he suspected was the cause of that explosion and came from the demon blood flowing through the kid. His hand twitched with the urge to lock his brother in the panic room and sweat it out of him until he was sure he was still the Sam he knew.

"He'll be okay now," Sammy said as he set the book on one of the practically empty bookshelves and crossed the room to stand beside his brother. "Nothing should get through that circle."

Dean nodded. Too bad they hadn't done that to start with. Too bad John didn't check his messages or rely on his sons for fucking help when he needed it. Too bad Bobby hadn't called them when their dad first showed up. Too bad Sammy couldn't leave his powers well enough alone and listen to Dean when he told him not to do something. Too bad Dean had fucked everything up to start with, coming back to the past like he thought he could change anything.

The hunter pushed off the wall, tension filling every line of his body. His brother let him go. He moved over to the devil-trapped center of the room, where Bobby was wrapping the dead girl up in a sheet. He knelt down, helping the older hunter with the last of the ties.

"Her family will never know what happened," he muttered angrily, guilt eating at his insides for getting some poor kid killed.

Bobby looked at the hunter, and opted out of telling him it wasn't his fault. He knew the boy too well, and those words would fall on deaf ears when he was like this. Together, the two grabbed the girl and hefted her off the ground.

"I know some people." The two headed for the yard, pushing the screen door open and letting it clang behind them. "They'll make sure she's found without it tracing back to us."

Dean nodded, feeling marginally better that her family wouldn't live the rest of their lives wondering what had happened to their precious daughter. Wondering if she was still alive, out there living a nightmare.

"We're gonna have a talk about that DeLorean, you know."

Dean didn't meet the hunter's eyes, but after a moment he nodded anyway. They set the girl down in the bed of one of Bobby's trucks. It was out of view of visitors, and she'd have to stay there until these people Bobby knew could come pick her up.

It didn't sit well with the guilt-ridden man, but there wasn't much else they could do.

"Maybe you and Sam ought to stay here a while. Recharge. You two probably need as much sleep as your daddy, at this point."

Dean met his surrogate father's eyes, and saw the concern there clear as day. Sure, there were questions too, but Bobby didn't ask them. Not yet, at least, and Dean almost sagged with the relief of it.

"Sure, Bobby. Sounds good."

-o-o-o-

Dean went back into the study as Bobby made the call to his cleanup crew. Sam was putting books back on their shelves, occasionally glancing over to their sleeping father for any signs the Baku had come back. Dean started with the bloodstain on the old wood floors, at least until Bobby came back in, spotted him, and told him to give it up and move the carpet back in place atop it. Wouldn't be the first hidden stain in the house.

Sam waited until the grumbling hunter ambled into the kitchen to take stock of the damage before he glanced in his brother's direction, finally asking, "What happened back there?"

Dean didn't answer, dragging the rug back to the center of the room one handed, using the grunts of effort as cover for his silence. Sam let it be until the devil-trapped carpet was back in place, desk and chairs atop it like it had never been moved.

"Dean."

"Back where?" the man from the future parried, despite knowing exactly what his brother was asking.

Sam spared him a look before going back to his librarian duties. "In the dream. You disappeared."

His brother shrugged defensively, starting to pick up the papers, books, and scattered items he'd sent flying with his desk vault earlier. "Guess I got kicked out early."

The Stanford student thought that was weird. He was pretty sure it wasn't the whole story, not by the way Dean wasn't looking at him. But it was hard to tell, given that every line of his brother's body was filled with anger and pain and guilt, so much so that Sam couldn't tell where all of it was coming from.

Yes, Garth and Caleb were dead because of them, as was a young girl they didn't even know the name of. Yes, demons had showed up in an unprecedented frontal attack unlike anything they'd ever seen, and Yellow Eyes was recruiting monsters to do his dirty work.

But they'd saved their dad, Bobby was alive and okay, and Meg was dead. The amount of guilt and self-loathing radiating off his brother wasn't adding up.

Besides, given the differences in their build and weight, Sam should have burned through the Dream Root faster than Dean, if one of them was going to. Then again, given what his brother could eat in a single sitting, along with the fact he didn't exercised outside of a hunt yet never gained a pound…. Yeah, metabolism like that could have made up for the difference in their body weights.

But Sam was pretty sure the Dream Root had nothing to do with his brother leaving dreamland early.

-o-o-o-

John slept through the dinner the three hunters ordered in that night. None of them felt exactly like cooking and pizza was easy. Sam retreated after a couple slices, leaving his brother and surrogate father to finish the rest of the box and head out for the hospital. They'd splinted Dean's arm, but it was definitely broken and would need a cast. The stubborn bastard insisted it could wait till morning, at least until Sam reminded him if it started to set at all then they'd have to re-break it.

So Dean and Bobby headed out for a long night sitting in the ER waiting room of the nearest hospital while Sam stayed behind for a long night of his own, waking John up every hour or two to make sure the Baku had not returned. Dean had been more than reluctant to leave his brother in a house recently and unexplainably sieged by demons trying to bring the entire structure down. But hours after the attack, they hadn't returned.

It was a mystery that did not sit well with the man from the future.

Best the boys could figure, the demons had been trying to free Meg, only to realize she was dead and bounce as fast as possible. Bobby reasoned the Baku had probably split at the siege. Not even monsters wanted to be surrounded by demons. The white light explosion could have been the Baku's power shattering and John waking up.

None of it lined up completely, but it was the best they got.

Sam collapsed in the armchair he'd dragged over near the couch by his father's head. All he wanted to do was sleep for a week, or at least until the next "wake dad up" alarm went off on his phone, but he couldn't just yet.

Digging through his bag, he pulled out the notebook once more. It was still folded open to the scribbled notes on angels. He'd have to dig into Bobby's extensive lore as soon as he had a chance. But for now, he had other things to look into.

Sam thought back to that dream world, when he'd first found Dean standing in the darkness. The older hunter had been unsure of where he was, confused when his brother showed up, and even more so when Sam had reminded him that they were there to find Dad.

But more importantly, he had looked a good ten years older.

Sam ran a hand down his face and blew his hair out of his eyes. He put the tip of his pen to paper, but hesitated. It was crazy. He must be crazy. But so was his brother looking a decade older than he should. So was Dean realizing it and slamming up mental walls with such strength and conviction that he'd suddenly looked the right age again in the blink of an eye, and hadn't slipped again for the rest of the dream. Not even when the Baku started feeding on his nightmares and generating things and people Sam had never seen: nightmares he didn't know his brother had.

Sam stared down at the page with notes about angels and theories on demon blood.

Dean knew things he shouldn't. He acted different; heavier and older. He said things that Sam didn't understand, made references to hunts he'd never heard of, and knew what would happen next with a confidence not even psychic dreams could explain. Sam knew it was his brother and not some imposter, but he hadn't been able to explain how it wasn't the brother he knew, time and time again for the last six months.

Then there was the kid that had shown up in Dean's dream. A young boy that had made his brother look heart broken, yet happy enough to cry. Sam had suspicions on who that boy must be, but it didn't make sense. The woman had been older too, far older than his twenty-seven year old brother, and Dean had never been much for older woman. And the boy had been at least ten. Too old to be Dean's son. At least, not yet.

Sam put the pen to paper once more, scribbling down two words and underlining them several times with hard, firm marks and no more hesitation.

Time travel?

-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-

-A/Ns: So many things are starting to happen!

-Meg's Death: Was planned almost from the get-go and holy crap, I can't believe we finally got there! I've been holding onto that Jo and Ellen line for six months.

-Reviews: Thanks to everyone who reviewed last chapter, and congrats to those who guessed Dean would be older in the dream! John didn't react because Dean slamming up his mental walls around stuff labeled 'future' actually made him look young again in the dream. Hence Sam's comment "And he's back..." So when John saw him, he looked about the right age.

Anyone wanna take a guess that what that dream light explosion was about (does it sound familiar, eh, eh, eeeeeeh?) I almost felt bad for the Baku at the end, but then I remembered he's evil and wanted to suck out John's brains. Also, what the heck was up with the demon attack?! Throw your thoughts my way, I love hearing them and they totally keep the muse's butt in gear :D

Thanks again for reading!