Prologue - November 2007
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Prologue
November, 2007
“So, how’s this supposed to work?”
Dean has a toothpick jammed into the corner of his mouth, his feet kicked up against the wall, and he watches Sam pace the breadth of the motel room in six long strides, pivot on his heel, and return to the other wall, his nose buried deep in the musty old tome.
“‘Cause I’m tellin’ you, Sammy, this is probably cheating-”
“It’s not cheating,” Sam protested, “if we’re making the deal never happen.”
“I’m pretty sure that’s exactly what’s cheating, actually,” Dean retorts. He pokes his gums a few times with the toothpick.
It’s been a week since the sound of the Hounds began to get loud again. For months there, he managed to ignore the brays in the night and the dreams of dark, violent deaths that plagued him. The six-month mark brings the Hounds closer, snapping at their heels-or his, at least-and breathing heavily down his neck. And, one afternoon after a particularly haunting dream, while Dean fucked a woman who hadn’t given her real name (but then, neither had he), Sam found the book that he’s currently perusing. Dean didn’t ask where he got it, didn’t even voice an opinion on it until he watched Sam pack it into his duffel and take it with them from Bismark to Austin for an easy poltergeist Hunt that turned out to be a lot tougher than it needed to be.
That night, the Hounds are loud, shuffling around the edges of his perception of them, practically licking their chops. He wonders if everyone goes through the same thing, or if he knows they’re there because he knows they’re there, he knows what they look like, how they smell, the exact shape and pressure of their claws on pliant human flesh.
“Anyways,” he finally begins again, “I told you how the whole djinn thing went-it just traps you, and then you wither away-”
“We’re not using a djinn,” Sam says. He’s quiet, finally firm and grim in his resolve to fix what’s happened. Dean slaps his head against the mattress a few times, then pulls his feet off the wall and rolls onto his belly fluidly. He sees Sam cast him a curious little glance, but ignores him. He totters when he gets to his feet, but shakes his head, shrugs, and grabs his jacket off the back of the chair by the table scattered with four-day-old pizza and take-out boxes and Sam’s books.
“When you figure it out,” Dean begins. He looks up, shrugging into his jacket, and stops at the look on Sam’s face.
“Don’t go out,” Sam says, the edge of questioning heavy in his deep almost-accent. Dean licks his teeth and shakes his head a little, adjusting his jacket. “You can hear them, can’t you?”
“It’s still another six months, Sammy,” Dean interjects, and smiles wildly at his little brother. “Nobody’s going to try to get an advance on me, Sammy; you know they don’t work like that, even if they want to.”
“If Bela’s out, though,” Sam tries again, clapping the book shut and reaching for Dean’s sleeve. “Or Lilith-”
“If Bela’s out there,” Dean grumbles, “I’ll call you, and then I’ll kick her sorry demonic ass into next week. And Lilith’s after you, anyway.” He shrugs and smirks, but Sam doesn’t let go. After a second where confrontational staring does nothing, Dean sighs, shakes his head once more, and shrugs out of his coat as Sam lets it go. “Fine.”
Sam goes back to his six long strides across the breadth of the room, and Dean collapses back onto the bed he claimed when they arrived in Austin, grabbing the remote from the side table and turning on the television. He watches something trite and involving a surprising number of scantily clad women-he loves cable-and then FarScape for all of about ten minutes, then changes the channel to one of something like twenty movie channels and settles in for IT, wondering if Sam will even notice.
As soon as Tim Curry’s clown-painted face appears on the screen, Sam notices. Later, Dean knows, Sam will deny shrieking like a girl at the sight of it-but he does, and it makes Dean smile victoriously.
They wrestle for the remote when Dean refuses to change the channel, and Sam flinches any time he looks over and sees Pennywise on the screen. Finally, Dean concedes and changes the channel over Sam’s back. He’s stuck with the Home Shopping Network until Sam threatens to lock him in the bathroom if he’s going to keep being annoying. Dean can’t help but remember the days when he was tha one to threaten such punishments on Sam. He finally changes the channel to VH1, which is playing their classics list-most of the songs are ones Dean remembers hearing on the radio as a kid-and lets his mind wander to the drone of heavy bass chords.
Dean is starting to doze when Sam sits on the edge of the bed and says, “I think I found something.”
“Oh?”
“You know, one of those spells that has the warning ‘Only use in cases of dire need’,” Sam mutters. He smiles a little. “I think this counts, right?”
“What are you even trying to do?” Dean asks. Sam stares at the page.
“We’ve got a lot of this stuff on hand-Belladonna, salt, lavender. We’ll need to go buy some yew bark, some other stuff too, but, you know, Austin’s bound to have an occult store somewhere, right? And anyway, we have to be in a rural area for it to work-”
Dean grabs Sam’s wrists and scowls a little. “I never asked you to save me or anything, did I?”
“Dean,” Sam mumbles. They stare at each other until Dean lets go of his wrist and crosses his arms and sinks back against his ratty motel pillows. “We can at least try, right? And if it doesn’t work, than it doesn’t.”
“What happens if it half-works, huh?” Dean growls. Sam looks a little bashful at that. “What if we lose our memories, or get stuck in a time loop, or just stop existing? What then? I don’t know about you, but I’m not real keen on paradoxes.”
“This won’t cause a paradox,” Sam said. “We’ll be verging into an alternate reality.”
“Great. Cool. Have fun, John Woorfan.”
Sam chuckles softly. “Buckaroo Bonsai didn’t do alternate realities, Dean,” he chastens gently. “That was Star Trek, for the most part. Bonsai was alternate dimensions.”
“What’s the difference?” Sam shrugs. “Exactly.”
“Dean,” Sam urges. “Can we at least try?”
For a moment, Dean simply lies there, before he pushes away from the pillows, scooting to the edge of his bed and hauling himself to his feet.
“I’m going to take a shower,” he mutters, then looks at his little brother. “I’m gonna go out, and I’m going to get drunk and if, in the morning, neither of us have come up with a better idea, then we’ll try your stupid Back to the Future plan, alright?”
Two days later, they leave Austin with the back seat of the Impala holding Sam and countless bags from an occult shop. Dean drives as smooth as he can, reaching for the horizon, listening to Sam count and bless his way through herbs Dean can barely pronounce the names of and talismans and idols and candles that even the girl at the shop thought were a little creepy to be buying. He drums his fingers on the steering wheel, mumbling lyrics under his breath and feeling the itch of the Hounds following him. If this works-which he does not expect it to-he wonders if the Hounds will try to stop them, or at least him.
“Hey,” Sam mutters. “Do you have, like, a sharpie or something?”
“Yeah, just let me pull it out of my ass,” Dean grumbles, sliding the Impala through a turn. Texas stretches dry and arid but still somehow surprisingly green around the road. Sam kicks the back of the driver’s seat, grumbles under his breath. “I’m sure we’ve got somethin’ in one of the bags or the trunk.”
“Okay.”
“Why?”
Sam doesn’t answer, just goes back to counting and mumbling and organizing like he hasn’t done since the backseat of the Impala was his native homeland. Dean sighs through the thick, odd humidity of the car and wishes the air conditioner hadn’t blown out on him just after his last credit card got maxed.
They stop, finally, at night fall. There is nothing around for miles. The moon hangs, not full but swollen and brilliant orange, on the horizon, gleaming with a broad corona. Dean sits on the hood and watches as Sam walks a circle around the Impala, their patch of the earth, Dean. From what he’s said, they aren’t moving land and sky-just the fabric of time-space. When the spell is done, it will still be Texas, and they’ll have just a couple of days to get to Lawrence, Kansas and work whatever mojo they have to work.
“Hey, c’mon, help me.”
“Whine, whine,” Dean grumbles. “Were you always this much of a dependent little pussy?”
“No, it’s just something I grew in to when my brother decided it’d be an awesome plan to sell his own soul to bring me back from the dead.” Dean remembers the graveyard and the Yellow Eyed Demon questioning whether what Sam was now was entirely Sam. Drawing runes into the earth, watching Sam reading from his thick old tome and muttering incantations in a language that is not quite even human sounding, Dean believes he brought him back hale and whole. But the words stick.
An hour later, the moon hangs heavy overhead, ominous and bright. Dean flinches at the sound of the Hounds on his trail and wonders if they know their plans.
“Take off your shirt.”
“I’m flattered, Sammy, really-”
“God, does everything have to be a joke with you?” Sam is already stripping to his briefs. Dean sighs and does the same. They fold their clothes and put them in the Impala-Dean hopes the Impala travels well in their circle-and then Sam turns the sharpie on him. “Memorize the pattern and location, right?”
“Thanks, mom,” Dean mutters, but closes his eyes and turns his attention to only his skin.
He can count, barely on one hand, the number of times they’ve had to do this. Sam connects tattoos and scars and chakra points, writes strange runes against his skin that tingle as they grow more numerous. The ink sinks in everywhere: his chest, his arms, his back, the back of his thighs and tops of his feet, the inside of his ankles and his knees. After what feels like ages, Sam hands over the sharpie, and Dean repeats what he’s just put to perfect memory-this, unlike Sam, he was always the best at. Let Sam be the fount of useless, creepy knowledge; Dean will suffice as the tactile-photographic memorizer.
“Now what?”
“Now we wait.”
When it happens, it is not like anything Dean expected. They are sitting together in the dirt, have put their clothes back on, are playing a card game that Dean is pretty sure they’re making up on the spot when the universe shifts around their circle but not within. Dean looks beyond, sees the sun moving from west to east and the stars shifting, the weather that comes and goes, faster and faster still until he closes his eyes and grabs Sam’s arm for support.
He lets the earth settle for a second before he opens his eyes. When he does, it’s still midnight, it’s still Texas, and everything is still exactly as it should be.
Dean grounds the energy. Sam breaks the circle by driving the Impala out of it. They aim for Kansas.
When they arrive, they have exactly thirty hours to spare. Dean is driving, and takes them right to the street he’s seen before, that he remembers-from childhood, and from a little girl named Sari. They sit in the car together, stare at the white and green-trimmed house, the car that they’re sitting in parked on the street beside the driveway, a stupid sedan-type thing sitting in the drive-way with a woman they’ve known all their lives without ever actually knowing her.
It’s raining a little, but Mary still looks beautiful, young, energetic. A four year old swarms her feet while she puts a car seat into the sedan. She laughs at something the four year old does-throws back her head and laughs-and sends him inside.
Dean vaguely remembers this scene. Sam watches with curious interest.
“C’mon,” Dean finally says, and Sam follows.
Mary turns to them before they touch the driveway, and stares at them with a closed, cautious look in her eyes.
“Can I help you?”
“Uh,” they murmur intelligibly, and Sam saves ungracefully, “This is going to sound completely unbelievable, I’m sure, but we just need you to trust us. Alright?”
Mary looks between them slowly, plants her hands on her hips, and finally asks, “Did Ellen set you up to this? God damn, I told that woman-”
“Yeah,” Dean interrupts, though he misses his mother’s voice. “Yeah, Ellen sent us. She said you’d know what it was about.”
“Yeah, I know what it’s about,” Mary grumps, and shakes her head. “Well, you can go back to Ellen and tell her I don’t need her checking up on me. I’ve got everything perfectly under control here, and there’s nothing she should be worrying about.”
“You’re wrong,” Sam tells her, and Mary starts a little.
“I’m sorry?”
“You need to protect yourself,” Sam continues, urgent and uneasy. Dean frowns and can’t really look at either of them. “Look, if you love your family, if you want them to be happy, you’ll leave. Tonight, or early tomorrow. You’ll get out of here and you’ll keep running until-”
“Oh God,” Mary moaned, covering her mouth and looking back toward the house. “Sammy? I didn’t-. Is it really-really him?”
“Yes,” they say together, and Mary shakes her head disbelievingly. Dean does not question how she knows about the Yellow Eyed Demon and his plans for little Sam; he accepts, and sobers, and asks her, “Do you have a plan?”
“Yeah,” she tells them, and nods a little. “Oh God, thank you-I don’t even know your names, boys.”
“Doesn’t matter,” Sam says quietly, and Mary is still before she nods her understanding. Her four year old returns then, holding his precious bundle close but gentle. He lurks behind her knees and stares up at both of them.
Dean kneels, and smiles at the face that will one day become his own. “Hey kiddo.” He doesn’t remember this from his childhood. He improvises: takes off his rams-head talisman and slips it over the kid’s neck. “You just hold onto that, okay? Pretty neat, isn’t it?”
“Yeah,” the kid whispers, and smiles goofily.
“Alright, little man, into the car with you. Gimme your brother.” Dean stands as the orders are obeyed. Mary smiles at them again. “Thank you.”
“Least we could do,” Dean tells her, and she smiles.
They return to the Impala, where they watch her strap her youngest into his car seat, check her eldest in his booster seat, and then get in herself.
And then time unwinds itself.
Prologue
November, 2007
“So, how’s this supposed to work?”
Dean has a toothpick jammed into the corner of his mouth, his feet kicked up against the wall, and he watches Sam pace the breadth of the motel room in six long strides, pivot on his heel, and return to the other wall, his nose buried deep in the musty old tome.
“‘Cause I’m tellin’ you, Sammy, this is probably cheating-”
“It’s not cheating,” Sam protested, “if we’re making the deal never happen.”
“I’m pretty sure that’s exactly what’s cheating, actually,” Dean retorts. He pokes his gums a few times with the toothpick.
It’s been a week since the sound of the Hounds began to get loud again. For months there, he managed to ignore the brays in the night and the dreams of dark, violent deaths that plagued him. The six-month mark brings the Hounds closer, snapping at their heels-or his, at least-and breathing heavily down his neck. And, one afternoon after a particularly haunting dream, while Dean fucked a woman who hadn’t given her real name (but then, neither had he), Sam found the book that he’s currently perusing. Dean didn’t ask where he got it, didn’t even voice an opinion on it until he watched Sam pack it into his duffel and take it with them from Bismark to Austin for an easy poltergeist Hunt that turned out to be a lot tougher than it needed to be.
That night, the Hounds are loud, shuffling around the edges of his perception of them, practically licking their chops. He wonders if everyone goes through the same thing, or if he knows they’re there because he knows they’re there, he knows what they look like, how they smell, the exact shape and pressure of their claws on pliant human flesh.
“Anyways,” he finally begins again, “I told you how the whole djinn thing went-it just traps you, and then you wither away-”
“We’re not using a djinn,” Sam says. He’s quiet, finally firm and grim in his resolve to fix what’s happened. Dean slaps his head against the mattress a few times, then pulls his feet off the wall and rolls onto his belly fluidly. He sees Sam cast him a curious little glance, but ignores him. He totters when he gets to his feet, but shakes his head, shrugs, and grabs his jacket off the back of the chair by the table scattered with four-day-old pizza and take-out boxes and Sam’s books.
“When you figure it out,” Dean begins. He looks up, shrugging into his jacket, and stops at the look on Sam’s face.
“Don’t go out,” Sam says, the edge of questioning heavy in his deep almost-accent. Dean licks his teeth and shakes his head a little, adjusting his jacket. “You can hear them, can’t you?”
“It’s still another six months, Sammy,” Dean interjects, and smiles wildly at his little brother. “Nobody’s going to try to get an advance on me, Sammy; you know they don’t work like that, even if they want to.”
“If Bela’s out, though,” Sam tries again, clapping the book shut and reaching for Dean’s sleeve. “Or Lilith-”
“If Bela’s out there,” Dean grumbles, “I’ll call you, and then I’ll kick her sorry demonic ass into next week. And Lilith’s after you, anyway.” He shrugs and smirks, but Sam doesn’t let go. After a second where confrontational staring does nothing, Dean sighs, shakes his head once more, and shrugs out of his coat as Sam lets it go. “Fine.”
Sam goes back to his six long strides across the breadth of the room, and Dean collapses back onto the bed he claimed when they arrived in Austin, grabbing the remote from the side table and turning on the television. He watches something trite and involving a surprising number of scantily clad women-he loves cable-and then FarScape for all of about ten minutes, then changes the channel to one of something like twenty movie channels and settles in for IT, wondering if Sam will even notice.
As soon as Tim Curry’s clown-painted face appears on the screen, Sam notices. Later, Dean knows, Sam will deny shrieking like a girl at the sight of it-but he does, and it makes Dean smile victoriously.
They wrestle for the remote when Dean refuses to change the channel, and Sam flinches any time he looks over and sees Pennywise on the screen. Finally, Dean concedes and changes the channel over Sam’s back. He’s stuck with the Home Shopping Network until Sam threatens to lock him in the bathroom if he’s going to keep being annoying. Dean can’t help but remember the days when he was tha one to threaten such punishments on Sam. He finally changes the channel to VH1, which is playing their classics list-most of the songs are ones Dean remembers hearing on the radio as a kid-and lets his mind wander to the drone of heavy bass chords.
Dean is starting to doze when Sam sits on the edge of the bed and says, “I think I found something.”
“Oh?”
“You know, one of those spells that has the warning ‘Only use in cases of dire need’,” Sam mutters. He smiles a little. “I think this counts, right?”
“What are you even trying to do?” Dean asks. Sam stares at the page.
“We’ve got a lot of this stuff on hand-Belladonna, salt, lavender. We’ll need to go buy some yew bark, some other stuff too, but, you know, Austin’s bound to have an occult store somewhere, right? And anyway, we have to be in a rural area for it to work-”
Dean grabs Sam’s wrists and scowls a little. “I never asked you to save me or anything, did I?”
“Dean,” Sam mumbles. They stare at each other until Dean lets go of his wrist and crosses his arms and sinks back against his ratty motel pillows. “We can at least try, right? And if it doesn’t work, than it doesn’t.”
“What happens if it half-works, huh?” Dean growls. Sam looks a little bashful at that. “What if we lose our memories, or get stuck in a time loop, or just stop existing? What then? I don’t know about you, but I’m not real keen on paradoxes.”
“This won’t cause a paradox,” Sam said. “We’ll be verging into an alternate reality.”
“Great. Cool. Have fun, John Woorfan.”
Sam chuckles softly. “Buckaroo Bonsai didn’t do alternate realities, Dean,” he chastens gently. “That was Star Trek, for the most part. Bonsai was alternate dimensions.”
“What’s the difference?” Sam shrugs. “Exactly.”
“Dean,” Sam urges. “Can we at least try?”
For a moment, Dean simply lies there, before he pushes away from the pillows, scooting to the edge of his bed and hauling himself to his feet.
“I’m going to take a shower,” he mutters, then looks at his little brother. “I’m gonna go out, and I’m going to get drunk and if, in the morning, neither of us have come up with a better idea, then we’ll try your stupid Back to the Future plan, alright?”
Two days later, they leave Austin with the back seat of the Impala holding Sam and countless bags from an occult shop. Dean drives as smooth as he can, reaching for the horizon, listening to Sam count and bless his way through herbs Dean can barely pronounce the names of and talismans and idols and candles that even the girl at the shop thought were a little creepy to be buying. He drums his fingers on the steering wheel, mumbling lyrics under his breath and feeling the itch of the Hounds following him. If this works-which he does not expect it to-he wonders if the Hounds will try to stop them, or at least him.
“Hey,” Sam mutters. “Do you have, like, a sharpie or something?”
“Yeah, just let me pull it out of my ass,” Dean grumbles, sliding the Impala through a turn. Texas stretches dry and arid but still somehow surprisingly green around the road. Sam kicks the back of the driver’s seat, grumbles under his breath. “I’m sure we’ve got somethin’ in one of the bags or the trunk.”
“Okay.”
“Why?”
Sam doesn’t answer, just goes back to counting and mumbling and organizing like he hasn’t done since the backseat of the Impala was his native homeland. Dean sighs through the thick, odd humidity of the car and wishes the air conditioner hadn’t blown out on him just after his last credit card got maxed.
They stop, finally, at night fall. There is nothing around for miles. The moon hangs, not full but swollen and brilliant orange, on the horizon, gleaming with a broad corona. Dean sits on the hood and watches as Sam walks a circle around the Impala, their patch of the earth, Dean. From what he’s said, they aren’t moving land and sky-just the fabric of time-space. When the spell is done, it will still be Texas, and they’ll have just a couple of days to get to Lawrence, Kansas and work whatever mojo they have to work.
“Hey, c’mon, help me.”
“Whine, whine,” Dean grumbles. “Were you always this much of a dependent little pussy?”
“No, it’s just something I grew in to when my brother decided it’d be an awesome plan to sell his own soul to bring me back from the dead.” Dean remembers the graveyard and the Yellow Eyed Demon questioning whether what Sam was now was entirely Sam. Drawing runes into the earth, watching Sam reading from his thick old tome and muttering incantations in a language that is not quite even human sounding, Dean believes he brought him back hale and whole. But the words stick.
An hour later, the moon hangs heavy overhead, ominous and bright. Dean flinches at the sound of the Hounds on his trail and wonders if they know their plans.
“Take off your shirt.”
“I’m flattered, Sammy, really-”
“God, does everything have to be a joke with you?” Sam is already stripping to his briefs. Dean sighs and does the same. They fold their clothes and put them in the Impala-Dean hopes the Impala travels well in their circle-and then Sam turns the sharpie on him. “Memorize the pattern and location, right?”
“Thanks, mom,” Dean mutters, but closes his eyes and turns his attention to only his skin.
He can count, barely on one hand, the number of times they’ve had to do this. Sam connects tattoos and scars and chakra points, writes strange runes against his skin that tingle as they grow more numerous. The ink sinks in everywhere: his chest, his arms, his back, the back of his thighs and tops of his feet, the inside of his ankles and his knees. After what feels like ages, Sam hands over the sharpie, and Dean repeats what he’s just put to perfect memory-this, unlike Sam, he was always the best at. Let Sam be the fount of useless, creepy knowledge; Dean will suffice as the tactile-photographic memorizer.
“Now what?”
“Now we wait.”
When it happens, it is not like anything Dean expected. They are sitting together in the dirt, have put their clothes back on, are playing a card game that Dean is pretty sure they’re making up on the spot when the universe shifts around their circle but not within. Dean looks beyond, sees the sun moving from west to east and the stars shifting, the weather that comes and goes, faster and faster still until he closes his eyes and grabs Sam’s arm for support.
He lets the earth settle for a second before he opens his eyes. When he does, it’s still midnight, it’s still Texas, and everything is still exactly as it should be.
Dean grounds the energy. Sam breaks the circle by driving the Impala out of it. They aim for Kansas.
When they arrive, they have exactly thirty hours to spare. Dean is driving, and takes them right to the street he’s seen before, that he remembers-from childhood, and from a little girl named Sari. They sit in the car together, stare at the white and green-trimmed house, the car that they’re sitting in parked on the street beside the driveway, a stupid sedan-type thing sitting in the drive-way with a woman they’ve known all their lives without ever actually knowing her.
It’s raining a little, but Mary still looks beautiful, young, energetic. A four year old swarms her feet while she puts a car seat into the sedan. She laughs at something the four year old does-throws back her head and laughs-and sends him inside.
Dean vaguely remembers this scene. Sam watches with curious interest.
“C’mon,” Dean finally says, and Sam follows.
Mary turns to them before they touch the driveway, and stares at them with a closed, cautious look in her eyes.
“Can I help you?”
“Uh,” they murmur intelligibly, and Sam saves ungracefully, “This is going to sound completely unbelievable, I’m sure, but we just need you to trust us. Alright?”
Mary looks between them slowly, plants her hands on her hips, and finally asks, “Did Ellen set you up to this? God damn, I told that woman-”
“Yeah,” Dean interrupts, though he misses his mother’s voice. “Yeah, Ellen sent us. She said you’d know what it was about.”
“Yeah, I know what it’s about,” Mary grumps, and shakes her head. “Well, you can go back to Ellen and tell her I don’t need her checking up on me. I’ve got everything perfectly under control here, and there’s nothing she should be worrying about.”
“You’re wrong,” Sam tells her, and Mary starts a little.
“I’m sorry?”
“You need to protect yourself,” Sam continues, urgent and uneasy. Dean frowns and can’t really look at either of them. “Look, if you love your family, if you want them to be happy, you’ll leave. Tonight, or early tomorrow. You’ll get out of here and you’ll keep running until-”
“Oh God,” Mary moaned, covering her mouth and looking back toward the house. “Sammy? I didn’t-. Is it really-really him?”
“Yes,” they say together, and Mary shakes her head disbelievingly. Dean does not question how she knows about the Yellow Eyed Demon and his plans for little Sam; he accepts, and sobers, and asks her, “Do you have a plan?”
“Yeah,” she tells them, and nods a little. “Oh God, thank you-I don’t even know your names, boys.”
“Doesn’t matter,” Sam says quietly, and Mary is still before she nods her understanding. Her four year old returns then, holding his precious bundle close but gentle. He lurks behind her knees and stares up at both of them.
Dean kneels, and smiles at the face that will one day become his own. “Hey kiddo.” He doesn’t remember this from his childhood. He improvises: takes off his rams-head talisman and slips it over the kid’s neck. “You just hold onto that, okay? Pretty neat, isn’t it?”
“Yeah,” the kid whispers, and smiles goofily.
“Alright, little man, into the car with you. Gimme your brother.” Dean stands as the orders are obeyed. Mary smiles at them again. “Thank you.”
“Least we could do,” Dean tells her, and she smiles.
They return to the Impala, where they watch her strap her youngest into his car seat, check her eldest in his booster seat, and then get in herself.
And then time unwinds itself.