Supernatural 1. Lincoln County, Nebraska, 1984

**Title: **Coming Down on a Sunny Day  
**Author: **Maychorian  
**Characters: **Winchester Ensemble  
**Category: **Big Bang, Angst, Hurt/Comfort, Drama, Gen-with-minor-het-in-second-half  
**Rating: **PG-13  
**Warning:** Allusions to child abuse that may be triggery, OC character death, minors in peril, somewhat pro-church/religion, scary imagery  
**Spoilers: **Through S4 in general  
**Summary: **In 2009, Castiel watches the Apocalypse end disastrously and makes a decision. In 1984, John Winchester suddenly finds himself with another little boy on his hands, one with dark, messy hair and sad blue eyes who won't leave John and his sons alone. And so Sam and Dean get a weirdo big brother. Because their lives aren't complicated enough.  
**Word Count: **~34,000  
**Author's Note:** AU of the Rain Falling Down 'Verse.

**Book One: Like Superman**

1984  
Lincoln County, Nebraska

Dean had a cold. His warm little arms wrapped around John's neck, clinging close, almost stifling. John could feel his son's tiny ribcage rising and falling, wheezing, pressed against his own through the layers of shirts and jackets. Dean's face was hot where it lay against John's neck, but his weight was limp and solid and heavy, almost too much to bear.

Rain fell from the sky in sheets and torrents, and John looked up at the clouds from under the thin protection of the motel overhang, listening to the water rattling in the gutters. The gutter above must've been blocked with debris, for a column of water as thick as John's arm fell to the concrete in a cascade just a few feet to his left. Another mark of this particular establishment's poor maintenance. He hadn't noticed it last night, too tired from driving, from pushing, from fighting, roving the roads with his sick toddler and his crying infant. He had poured the three of them into the ratty beds without noticing the rusty pipes and moldy skirting and frayed electric cords.

Only the light of day had revealed these dangerous defects to him, and John knew that they had to move out. Even though he had hoped to stay in one place for a few days and give Dean a chance to get better. Even though the cash in his pocket was running dangerously low and he needed a break to build it back up. Even though road-weariness had seeped into his very bones, weighing him down and making everything just that little bit harder.

Dean coughed on his shoulder, wet and loud, and John's eyes slipped back to the car. Just ten steps away into the rain, and he'd already packed everything else, even gotten baby Sammy into his seat in the back. But something inside him—maybe the memory of Mary and her fierce motherhood—made him hesitate to take his sick son out into the rain.

At last, he forced himself to do it. He crossed through the rain and bundled Dean into the backseat, letting him lie down next to Sammy's infant carrier and covering him with a blanket from the floor. Dean's hands slipped away from his neck reluctantly, but the poor kid was half-asleep already, snuggling into the purr of the Impala rumbling warm around him. John's hand lingered on his forehead for a moment before he pulled himself away and into the driver's seat.

There he sat, hands wrapped too tight around the steering wheel, and stared into the rain. Where next? Where could he go? He had never wanted to leave Lawrence, but the fire hadn't ended with that one terrible night, the deaths hadn't ended with his beloved wife, and Missouri Mosely had scented the taint of evil. And so he had gone, hoping to draw it away, outrun it, keep his boys and his remaining friends and family safe. But now he had nowhere to go, no home to return to. He was wandering without purpose, without a plan, and that was the worst thing of all. What was he supposed to do?

He was so tired.

Something moved in John's peripheral vision, and he jerked his head around just in time to see a gray figure loom out of the rain like a ghost, slipping in between one moment and the next, and a pale hand splayed across the window with a _splat_ of rain and glass. He jumped at the sound, helplessly, and then was furious at himself for reacting like that. It was just a kid, he saw, just a boy soaked and shivering, staring at John through the glass and the torrent.

He stared, breathing hard, not sure what he was supposed to do. The boy stared back at him, grim and silent, like some unwelcome harbinger. Then his palm lifted from the window, his hand curled into a fist, and he knocked, gently, once, twice, and again.

"John Winchester," he said, and somehow John heard him even through the patter of water over metal, the rumbling of the engine, the roaring of the sky.

John breath caught in his throat. He fumbled for the automatic lock, found it, and listened to the _ka-chunk_ as they depressed, sheltering him and his boys from this strange specter.

The ghostly boy had blue eyes, he saw. Blue eyes and a battered face, scraped and bruised, blood in his hair slowly being diluted by the rain to run across his forehead and down his cheek.

"I must speak to you, John Winchester," the ghost said. "Will you let me in?"

He shook his head numbly. Of course ghosts were real. Of course they were. Hadn't Missouri said? _More things out there in the dark than you've ever imagined, John,_ she'd told him, her voice both kind and sorrowful. _Most o' those stories we tell our youngsters to keep 'em out of the woods... Most of those stories are true. You take care now, y'hear?_

But he didn't know what to do about it. He didn't know how to fight them. That was what he needed—he needed information, he needed knowledge, he needed weapons. And he didn't have anything, anything at all, just a car and some clothes and a gun from his service days.

And two sons, sleeping behind him, secure in the trust that Daddy would always keep them safe.

That was what started John's hand toward the gear shift. That was what pulled his face into a fierce snarl. "Fuck no! You get away from me and my kids!"

He put the car in drive and pulled out, ignoring the way the ghost snatched his hand back and stumbled away from the car. In the rearview mirror John saw the pale figure standing there in the rain, watching them go, before he turned his attention back to the road ahead. They were getting out of here before even more supernatural creatures sensed the taint on John and his boys and sought them out.

Someday John would know how to deal with these threats, how to kill them and destroy them and drive them back. Someday soon, God willing. For now, though, all he could do was run.

~*~

It was still raining when John found a new town, a new motel. He backed the Impala into the space next to the door of their room so he wouldn't have as far to walk, but they were still going to have to pass a step or two through the rain. When he opened the back door, Dean was awake, staring sleepily up at him, still bundled in the blanket. He didn't say anything—he rarely said anything—but there was the same weary question in his eyes as always. _Where are we, Daddy? Where we going?_

"We're here," John said, felt the gruff rasp in his voice. Too long since he had spoken to anything but ghosts.

He carried Dean inside first and settled him in the bed, then brought in the portable crib, then the baby, who by that point was crying, fussy from enforced captivity. He brought the duffels next, set out the few toys they had for Sammy to play with, then went back out to make sure he hadn't forgotten anything.

The ghost-boy stood there in the rain, watching him.

John halted one step outside the motel door, and the keys fell from his hand and splashed down on the wet concrete.

The boy stood straight and pale, directly across from John in the aisle between the Impala and the car next to it. His arms hung at his sides and his face was blank and white where it wasn't bruised and bloodied. John stood there numbly, watching the rain bounce off him and sluice down his flesh.

"John Winchester," the boy said again, solemn and ringing. He spoke like someone who was used to being heard, a voice of command completely at odds with his pitiful, waif-like appearance. "Will you speak to me now?"

This time John was ready. He pulled his gun, pointed it, held it steady, and took one step forward. "What are you? What do you want with me?"

Yeah, holding a gun on a ghost was probably not his best plan. But it was all he had. So he held on to it, and tried to make himself believe that it would work, that this was all he needed to protect his sons.

Strangely enough, it actually had an effect. A change swept over the boy, fear transforming his face in an instant, and he flinched sharply. His head jerked and he stumbled back a step, a low cry bursting from his mouth as his shoulder hit the Impala's side mirror, and both hands reached out for something to hold on to and found nothing but rain-slick metal and glass.

A dart of regret pierced John's heart. Ghost, monster, or supernatural beastie, the thing still looked like a child, only a few years older than Dean. He felt monstrous himself for causing that sort of gut-wrenching terror in that small face, that trembling frame. "What are you?" he barked again, forcing it down.

The specter groaned and leaned against the car, trembling all over. Did ghosts tremble? Did they interact with physical objects like that? John shook his head. He didn't know. He didn't know.

"I'm...just a boy," he said. "I'm just a boy. A human boy. I know...I know why you're scared of me, but don't be. Please don't be. I'm just a little human boy."

"I'm not afraid of you," John spat, but they both knew it was a lie. He took another step forward, holding his gun straight and bracing his arm with his other hand, tipping his head to sight along the barrel. "Why should I believe you? How did you find me? How do you know my name? How did you _follow_ me from the last place?"

"I just...I know things. I know you, and Dean, and Sam. I knew where you were because I...I saw it. I know you. I know...what you need to know."

Could this boy see into John's mind, read his desires? That was what he needed more than anything. Knowledge. Answers.

One more step, and the muzzle hovered only a few inches from the boy's temple. If John leaned down, he could press it right into that pale, wet skin. This close, John could see that his nose was bleeding, a sluggish tongue of dark red trailing across his upper lip. It looked like blood. It smelled like blood. The coppery scent was clear through the fresh fall of rain, utterly unmistakable. John was very, very familiar with that smell.

Did ghosts smell like flesh and blood? Surely they only smelled of wind and night and grave dirt.

John let go of the gun with one hand, slowly, slowly, and reached a finger toward that ugly trickle. His own hand was trembling, too. He ignored the boy's instinctive flinch at his nearness and pressed down.

It felt like blood. The skin below was clammy, but it felt like skin.

"I'm just a boy," the child whispered. "I know who you are, and I came to help you. I know what killed your wife."

_Mary._

For a moment John couldn't breathe. The ability had been taken away from him, just like that.

Then the boy collapsed, his knees buckling, and he slid down the side of the Impala as his strength finally failed. John was frozen, staring, unable to catch him even from only inches away. The kid folded to his knees in a puddle by the front tire, bent and trembling, utterly spent.

John stood, towering over this exhausted, bloody boy. He felt the rain in his hair, on his face, saw the child's chest slowly rising and falling. They were done. They were both done.

He put the gun away and gathered the kid into his arms to carry him inside.

~*~

John remembered enough first aid to know that the kid was dangerously close to hypothermia. His body was heavy and cool in John's arms, his breath too slow, too labored. His lips were tinged with blue, eyes glassy, head a limp, wet weight on John's shoulder. John pushed the door shut behind him with his hip, saw Sammy playing on the floor, Dean asleep and dwarfed in the queen-sized bed. His sons were all right, for now, so John had a little time to try to figure out this new burden.

He carried him through the living area to the bathroom, leaving a trail of rain behind them on the carpet. John was soaked, too, but he didn't feel his own shivering, only the child's. In the closer quarters, the boy twitched against John, tensing up, and John didn't like what that signified. Not one little bit.

"Shh," he ordered gruffly, carefully setting the boy on the toilet to rest for a moment. He had to keep a hand on the shivering shoulder to hold him steady while he leaned down to turn on the taps, start the tub filling with warm water. "We gotta get you warmed up, that's all. You've been out in the rain too long."

The boy nodded, chin jerking with the movement.

"What's your name? You seem to know all about me, but I don't know anything about you."

"J-J-Jimmy." Now that the adrenaline of the confrontation was gone, the kid's teeth were chattering, thin little body shaking uncontrollably with bone-deep chill. "M-my name is J-Jimmy."

"Nice to meet you, Jimmy. Let's get you out of those wet clothes, okay?"

Jimmy's hands clenched in the wet fabric over his stomach, unwilling to give up this scant protection. John didn't give him much of a chance to get over his shyness, just reached for the shirt and started stripping it off. The kid's fingers were weak, and the ragged, stained clothing slipped out of his grip at John's tug.

Then it was off, and John sat back on his heels, staring. Jimmy looked away. John felt the wet shirt clenched in his fist, dripping over his knee and thigh, wringing out in his grip as he sat there.

The kid's torso was completely covered with bruises and marks, half-healed but still awful, still ugly, still clear as a fucking bell. They weren't the kind of scrapes all kids got in the summer, either, falling off fences, sliding into home. This was something else entirely.

John wanted to ask who had done this. He wanted to hunt the bastard down and beat him to a pulp. He wanted to tell Jimmy that nothing like that would ever happen to him again, not ever, not in a million years.

But John had his own family to protect, his own two children who depended solely on him now. He'd made similar promises to them _(not again, gonna be okay, safe from now on, I promise I promise I promise),_ and those were first on his heart. He couldn't make another promise, not now, maybe not ever.

So he just set the shirt on the linoleum by the tub and reached back again, carefully but inexorably forcing Jimmy to relinquish the rest. The kid tried to resist, a little, where he could, but he was nothing against the will of John Winchester. Before long he was shivering in the tub, head bent so John couldn't see his face, knees drawn up to his chest in the circle of his arms. He let John minister to him, drawing up warm water in a plastic cup, pouring it over his welted back, his matted hair, washing away the cold and grime and leaving the livid evidence of long-term torment.

John didn't say a word. Just got the kid clean and warm, draped him in one of his threadbare Marine t-shirts, and folded him into bed next to Dean. The toddler was a furnace of fever, flushed cheeks and sweaty gold hair. At the new presence in his bed, he turned over in his sleep and snuggled up to Jimmy, digging into his side and throwing an arm around his chest.

Jimmy lay frozen for a few seconds, then wrapped an arm around the little boy and held him close. He stared down at the five-year-old for a long moment, his face unreadable. Then he closed his eyes and seemed to just pass out, right there. John watched it all, not sure what to think about the conflicting currents tugging around inside his chest. He tucked the two children in, then sat back on the side of his bed, watching them, holding his chin on his folded hands. Two sick, traumatized boys... They ought to be together, he thought, still somewhat fuzzy with reaction and confusion, only that thought even marginally clear. And it seemed that the two of them agreed.

He watched them for a long time. Until Sammy started fussing, demanding food, and his own stomach growled, and other needs intruded.

That was the beginning.

~*~**  
**


	2. Fort Douglas, Wisconsin 1989

1989  
Fort Douglas, Wisconsin

Dean had always known that there was something different about his big brother. Jimmy was...strange. He did things and said things that just weren't normal. Dean was used to it, couldn't even remember life without Jimmy, without this occasionally fierce, occasionally abstract presence beside him, around him, over him. He knew, though, that Dad didn't really get Jimmy, that he got weirded out by the oldest Winchester boy on a regular basis. Jimmy would make one of his weird comments, give one of his faraway looks, and Dad would stare at him sideways, eyes wide and face blank. He didn't know how to deal with it, so he mostly ignored these things when they happened.

Dean didn't really understand Jimmy either—sometimes he was just _too_ weird, _too_ out there, as if he was from another planet or something—but he accepted him. Jimmy was his big brother and he loved him just much as he loved Sammy, though in a different way. So Dean listened hard to Dad's instructions and tried to follow them, for both their sakes.

"And if someone calls..." Dad said, waiting for Dean to finish the familiar rule.

"Don't answer," Dean repeated patiently.

Dad shook his head. "What's the rest? Dude, this is important. If it's me, I'll let it ring once, then..."

"I know! Yeah, you'll ring once, then call again."

"If I'm not back by Sunday night..."

"Get Jimmy to call Pastor Jim." Dean stifled a giggle at this. He and Sammy still thought it was pretty funny, how their brother and their dad's friend had almost the same name. The two had some similar ideas, too, a similar seriousness about God and faith and religion, though Dean had heard them debating theology behind a closed door once and quickly found something else to do. That stuff made his head hurt.

"And if someone tries to break in?" Dad asked, nudging his shoulder.

"Shoot first, ask questions later," Dean said promptly. That was his favorite of Dad's rules, because it made the most sense.

"All right. That's good, buddy." Dad looked over to where Sammy sat on the leather armchair, watching Thundercats. He loved that show, was totally engrossed it. Didn't even notice that Dad was leaving them again, but later there would be tons of questions and whining and complaining and demanding that Jimmy sing to him or Dean tell him a story or something. Sammy was annoying like that.

Dad put a hand on Dean's shoulder and gave him a gentle shake. "And most importantly?"

"Listen to Jimmy, look out for Sammy."

"That's my boy." Dad's hand circled around the back of Dean's neck and gave it a gentle squeeze. "I'm gonna go outside and talk to your brother before I go. Have a good weekend."

"Sure, Dad."

Dad scooped up his heavy duffel in one hand (always impressive to Dean—he had to use two hands and always grunted a lot when he tried to carry Dad's bag) and went out the door. Dean turned the lock behind him, even though he would have to open it again when Jimmy came in, and went to the window to watch Dad go. Jimmy stood by the open hood of the Impala, doing some last-minute maintenance. Jimmy didn't love cars, not the way Dean did, but he knew his way around them, and he always insisted on checking the engine before Dad took off for a few days. It was his way of taking care of Dad and making sure he came back to them.

Dad paused by the side of the car as Jimmy straightened up, facing him. They left a few feet of space between them, way more than when Dad talked to Dean or Sam. They spoke for a few minutes, probably the same instructions, Dad doing most of the talking while Jimmy nodded solemnly, closed the hood, wiped his hands on a shop rag. Right at the end Dad took a step forward and put a hand on Jimmy's shoulder, moving slowly and making sure Jimmy could see it coming. Jimmy still flinched, though. He almost always flinched when Dad touched him. That was why Dad didn't do it very often, Dean figured.

Dad looked sad at that, like he always did. Dean wanted to tell him not to give up, that it was gonna be okay. It had taken Jimmy a long time to get used to Dean and Sam hugging him, tackling him, wrestling him to the floor and covering him with tickles until he all but choked on his laughter. Surely he would get used to Dad too, eventually.

But Dad just stepped back and opened the driver's door, giving Jimmy a last wave before closing the door and driving away. Jimmy stood watching him go, then turned back to the motel.

"Hey, where's Dad?" Sammy asked suddenly, and Dean turned around, already rolling his eyes. Of course the kid had to notice _now._ "Did he leave again?"

"He'll be back in a couple of days, short stuff. You know he will. We told you what was going on just a little while ago, remember?" Dean moved to the door to unlock it for Jimmy.

"I thought you were talking about tomorrow." Sammy's little face scrunched up in displeasure.

Dean huffed, already tired of it. "Today, Sammy! It's today! Jeez, why can't you listen to Dad like the rest of us do? This stuff is important!"

Jimmy came in and closed the door behind him. He knew at a glance exactly what was going on, of course. He always did. "You should pay more attention," he told Sammy, in that super-serious way he had, blue eyes big and round, mouth pulled down in a tiny circle. Dean wasn't off the hook, though—Jimmy turned to him and tilted his head, giving him that same serious frown. "You should be a little more patient. He's only a child."

"I know." Dean turned away and scuffed his shoe on the carpet, feeling the warmth rise in his cheeks. Jimmy was just as good as Dad at making him feel awful with just a look, a few words. Dad had never needed to spank them, though Dean privately thought that Sammy could have used it once or twice—that disapproving glare and disappointed tone were plenty punishment enough.

Sam shuffled over to put a hand on Jimmy's arm, looking up at him with his big, pleading eyes. "Can we have saghettios for supper?"

Of course Jimmy said yes. Dean couldn't blame him, though. He couldn't say no to Sammy when he looked up at him like that, either. Even their dad had problems with that look.

Dean cooked for them. Jimmy had burned their dinner once too often when he got distracted with something. Usually he was very responsible, and he watched over Dean and Sam like a spiky-haired hawk, but ordinary, everyday tasks escaped him sometimes. Dean didn't mind. He felt important and grown-up, standing at the stove, stirring the canned food every now and then until it was hot. Jimmy was busy with his own project, anyway.

He did it in every new motel. Got out his little pot of homemade ink and slender paintbrush and went around the room, thorough and exact. He painted symbols on the door jambs, on the windowsills, in each corner of every room. It was better than salt, he said, more permanent and effective. Usually he did his best to hide the symbols in places people wouldn't see, so they wouldn't get painted over or cleaned off, so the next people who used this room would be protected, too. It took a long time.

"They won't keep everything out," he'd told Dean once a couple years ago, when Dean was in a phase of following his big brother around, watching everything he did and trying to get involved. "These are symbols from one religion, only. I don't know any more than that. But they will protect us from many things."

Dean had wrapped his little fingers in the hem of Jimmy's shirt and held on tight, a lump rising in his throat. "From the thing that killed my mommy?"

Jimmy looked down at him very solemnly, nodding his head slowly. He always treated Dean with great gravity, as if everything he had to say was important, worth listening to, as if every question he had was worth an answer. Even Dad wasn't always that great at listening to Dean and answering him, and he was the best dad in the world, for sure, just like Jimmy was the best big brother and Sammy was the best little brother.

"The symbols will protect us from that, yes. And also from the thing that killed _my_ parents. That is their main function."

Jimmy's voice always quivered a little when he spoke of his parents, gone long before he had become Dean and Sammy's brother, but Dean knew that they had died around the same time as his mommy had. Then Jimmy had had a bad family, one that hurt him, and then he ran away and came to them, and Dean was awfully glad about that.

He wrapped his arms around Jimmy's waist and squeezed him tight, and Jimmy hesitated, then hugged him back with one arm, holding his ink-stained fingers above Dean's head. They never talked about that again, but the knowledge was always clear and sharp between them. They knew what the bad things in the world were; they knew what they could do and they knew to be afraid.

Sammy didn't know. Dean didn't want to him to. Neither did Jimmy and Dad. That was another silent understanding they had, among the three of them. It was kind of a Winchester thing.

Jimmy was just finishing up when Dean finally decided the Spaghettios were ready. He called Sammy to the table, and Jimmy poured the milk while Dean spooned the pasta and sauce into three bowls. It just figured, of course, that Sammy decided then that he didn't want "saghettios" after all. He wanted Lucky Charms.

"There aren't any Lucky Charms!" Dean burst out, losing his patience again. He didn't want to, but Sammy just brought it out in him sometimes.

"Yes, there are, I _saw_ them," Sammy said.

"Well, maybe there are, but there's only enough for one bowl, and Jimmy hasn't had any!"

Jimmy blinked at him. "I thought you were saving those for yourself."

"Yeah, but..." If they were just for himself, Dean would give the Lucky Charms to Sammy, no problem. He'd give anything to Sammy, though he would mutter about it and stomp around some to make his point. And Jimmy would give anything to _him,_ he knew that, and he didn't complain about it either. So by trying to save something for Jimmy, was Dean saving something for himself, too? But then, if Dean didn't stand up for Jimmy, no one would, because Jimmy sure didn't do it for himself.

This was complicated.

Jimmy shook his head. "In any case," and he gave Sammy a stern look, "it doesn't matter, because we are not having Lucky Charms for supper. We are having Spaghettios."

And that was pretty much it. Jimmy's word was law when Dad wasn't there, and Sammy knew it.

He ate his Spaghettios.

X

By Sunday, Dean was climbing the walls. They hadn't left this room in three whole days. And as much as they liked each other, they didn't like each other _that_ much.

"Can I please go play at the arcade?" he asked again. "It's just next door. I won't be gone for long."

Jimmy was having one of his abstract phases, laying on the floor with his arms outstretched, staring at the ceiling as if he could see something beyond it. When Dean asked what he was doing during this he usually said "praying" or "meditating," but it was weird that he seemed to prefer to do it with his eyes open. Jimmy was just plain weird, sometimes. He was fifteen, but sometimes he seemed to be way, way older. Like, forty-five, or something.

Occasionally Dean could get away with something while Jimmy was like this. Not this time, though. "No," he said softly, absently, blinking serenely at the ceiling as if it had some kind of secret to tell him. "No, you shouldn't leave. It's dangerous."

"But, Jimmy..."

"No." This was more firm, and Jimmy gave him one of his gentle little glares, which was the closest he ever got to saying, _Fuck off, you pest. I'm busy._ "Sammy's ready for bed and he wants you to tell him a story. Mine are boring."

"Okay, okay! Jeez." Dean waved his hands in the air and stomped to the bedroom off the main living area. Sammy was already tucked in, washed and brushed and in his jammies, waiting expectantly for Dean, his big eyes and his chubby round cheeks peeking above the covers.

Dean told him a story full of guns and ghosts and pirates and beautiful damsels in distress, with plenty of explosions and fighting and bloody wounds. Sammy ate it up, as always, and asked for another one, but Dean told him "no" in the sternest Jimmy-Dad voice he could manage. He pulled the covers up around Sammy's shoulders and turned off the light, ruffling the kid's hair all over the place as he stood.

In the main area, Jimmy's arms were folded over his chest, his eyes closed as he hummed to himself. It sounded like one of those hymns he liked so much. Dean stood there for a little while, watching Jimmy's fingers curl and tremble at the edges of his ribcage, as if he was struggling, fighting, as if prayer and meditation was this active thing that took up all of his concentration and will. Which must be true in a way, he realized. Jimmy was always way tired after one these times, as if he'd been running for miles or doing push-ups until his arms were noodles, not lying on the floor or staring out a window.

Dean sneaked past him and gently, carefully turned the lock on the door. It opened with only the barest hint of a click, and he turned the door knob with the same care, holding his breath. Jimmy didn't notice, didn't stir. He just kept humming, low and almost breathless. Dean stepped carefully outside, lifting the key from the counter as he went, and closed the door behind him.

Then he breathed out in relief, listening to the crickets sing, smelling the asphalt and the crisp evening air. Free. Probably for just an hour or so—he'd have to get back before Jimmy noticed—but he was free.

Dean didn't get much pocket change, so he had learned to make one quarter go for a long, long time. He didn't realize how much time was passing, busy killing aliens and defending the home planet, and he startled near out of his skin when the owner of the arcade leaned in the door and told him it was closing time. Dean glanced guiltily at the clock. Damn, it was late.

Maybe Jimmy hadn't noticed. Maybe he was still busy doing his thing. Surely he would have stalked over and dragged Dean back if he'd noticed he was gone. But then again, maybe he hadn't wanted to leave Sam alone. He said it was dangerous out—maybe he wouldn't risk leaving the six-year-old alone to go after a disobedient little sneak.

Dean wouldn't blame him for being mad. He kinda wanted to beat himself up for being such an idiot. His sneakers slapped on the blacktop as he rushed back to their motel.

No Impala in the lot, so at least Dad wouldn't be there to chew him out for this astonishing breach of Winchester rules. Dean let out a breath of relief as he turned the key in the lock and let himself in.

And then he halted in the doorway, staring, feeling the blood drain away from his face.

Jimmy was nowhere in sight, and something was going on in the bedroom. The door was only partly ajar, but Dean saw a sickly white light inside the smaller room, heard a weird sucking noise like a wind blowing through a cave. Something was happening and his brothers, his brothers were both in there. They were both in there and Dean had left them alone and how could he, how could he have done that? It was dangerous out tonight, Jimmy said, and the symbols didn't protect against everything, and Dean had left them to go play...

Slowly, ever so slowly, Dean stepped toward the bedroom. He reached carefully for the sawed-off in the corner, lifted it to his shoulder with one hand while he touched the door with the other. Slowly, silently, he pushed the door open, letting out more light and sound. And he stared, gulping.

Jimmy was kneeling on the bed over Sammy, who was still asleep on top of the covers. The older boy's back was bowed in tension, fighting to maintain his grip, absolutely still, pushing against... He was pushing against a big..._thing_ in a black robe, his hands on the creature's chest, holding it still. It was a monster, and its mouth was open, the source of the strange white light, impossibly long, sharp fingers curved around Jimmy's shoulders as if holding him still. They were locked in some strange, stiff-armed wrestling hold, keeping each other off, fighting with their eyes.

Because, because... Dean's mind stuttered, unable to take it in. Jimmy's eyes were glowing, white too, but pure and intense and holy, not at all like the sickly radiance in the creature's mouth. He panted, sweat sliding down his forehead and pale cheeks, throat convulsing as he swallowed as if trying to keep himself from being sick.

As Dean stared, the monster jerked its face forward, closer into Jimmy's space, and Jimmy's mouth began to open, too. There was light in there, white and pure, and the monster was _sucking_ it, it was _sucking_ it out of Jimmy and into itself, it was _eating_ Jimmy, it was _eating him..._

"Dean, get down!"

Dad's huge hand landed on Dean's shoulder and shoved him out of the way, roughly enough that it made Dean stumble, and then Dad was shooting, striding into the room with his gun held out straight from his body and shooting, shooting, shooting. Dean hit the door jamb, the sawed-off falling from his numb hands, clattering on the floor. Just as Dad shot, Jimmy seemed to just..._push_ with his hands, and there was an explosion of awful white light. Dean and Dad both fell back, shielding their eyes. In a small, clear snapshot of shock just as his eyelids slammed shut, Dean saw Jimmy's painted symbol on the windowsill, now scratched through as if by a long, evil fingernail.

The creature shrieked, a horrible sound, like a million nails being scraped over a million chalkboards. It went higher and higher and then it just...stopped. Cut off right in the middle, as if it had been sliced by a knife. The light beyond Dean's shielding hand diminished just as suddenly, winking out like a firefly. Dean raised his hand and looked, blinking dazedly at the bright spots that clouded his vision.

He was just in time to watch Jimmy collapse, falling over Sammy to lay terribly, scarily still on the bed. Dad scrambled to his feet and was there in a second, tossing his gun aside and hauling Jimmy up in his arms. "Dean, get Sam!"

His breath loud and rasping in his throat, Dean moved, pulling Sammy out from under their older brother and cradling him in his arms. Sammy had slept through the whole thing, he saw, a small corner of his brain laughing high and wild in hysterical relief. Still innocent of the darkness, the youngest Winchester was, even though it had been standing _right over his bed._

Oh, holy shit.

Sammy woke up as Dean accidentally gripped him too tight, startling in his arms and looking wildly around. Dean sat on the bed and held him, watched their Dad holding Jimmy. Jimmy's nose was bleeding and his eyes were shut.

"C'mon, kiddo," Dad muttered, noticing the thick trail of bright red just as Dean did. He pulled a handkerchief out of his pocket and held it to Jimmy's nose, pinching his nostrils shut to stop the bleeding. He looked at Dean, his dark eyes abruptly sharp and hard. "What happened?"

"I...I went out," Dean stuttered. The thought of lying never crossed his mind. He couldn't lie, not about this, not to his dad. "Just for a minute! I didn't...Dad, I swear..."

"Dean?" Sammy's voice was high with fright as he jerked in Dean's arms. He wrapped his hands around Dean's forearms and dug in deep, making him wince. "What's going on? Is Jimmy okay?"

"Shhh, he's fine," Dad said, his voice going soft, just for Sammy. Dean knew he was just saying that, couldn't possibly know if Jimmy was going to be okay, lying so still and pale against Dad's chest with blood spattered over his collar and down his front. He would never let Dad hold him like that if he was awake, would never...

Dean could feel his heart hammering, trying to crawl up his throat. Surely Sam had to be able to feel that too, pressed so tight in Dean's arms. "Come...come on, Sammy," he said. "Let's go to the living room and see if there's anything good on TV. Dad'll take care of Jimmy."

Dad gave him a grateful look, still mixed with anger that Dean had disobeyed strict orders like that, that he had failed his family to utterly and completely. Dean lifted Sammy off the bed and led him into the living room, shutting the door behind them, getting out of the way. At least he could do that right.

Nothing was good on TV and Sammy didn't want to settle, kept straining toward the bedroom, wanting to see what was going on with their brother. Truthfully, Dean wanted to be over there, too, standing with his ear pressed to the closed door. But he forced himself to stay, to entertain Sammy. He tried coloring books and puzzles and their few toys, even tried a couple of stories Sammy didn't want to listen to, then finally started singing one of Jimmy's hymns. He got all the words mixed up and he couldn't remember some of the tune, but he did his best, and Sammy finally leaned against him, listening. The kid had worn himself out with anxiety and wondering, and he fell asleep, finally, lolling on Dean's arm. Dean sat there, supporting him, tension drawing his shoulders up and tightening his neck, listening for any kind of sound from beyond that door.

He heard some soft murmurs now and then, but he couldn't tell if they were coming from his father or his brother. Once he got past the squeaky stage of being a teenage boy, Jimmy's voice had gotten pretty deep, almost like Dad's.

After what felt like a long, long time, the door finally opened and Dad stepped out, his eyes immediately finding Dean where he sat in the leather armchair, Sammy curled up against him. Dean gulped, expecting to be chewed out, but Dad just gave him a slow, sad smile, little more than a twist of the lips. "He's gonna be okay. Just really, really tired. C'mon, let's get you guys to bed."

Dad scooped up Sammy in his arms, careful and slow, trying not to wake him, and carried him back toward the beds. Dean followed at his heels, eager to see his big brother. A little bit of the tension holding him strung tight as a wire had leaked out at his father's words, but not very much.

Jimmy lay limp and pale in the bed that was usually Dad's, his eyes only half open. At least the bleeding had stopped, though, and he wore a clean shirt, somewhat askew on his chest as if he hadn't been the one to dress himself. He smiled, weary and half-absent, when Dean rushed to his side and grabbed his hand. "Jimmy, I'm so sorry, I didn't mean..."

"Shh," Jimmy said, his voice a low, throaty murmur, as if he was too tired to talk very much or very loud. "It's all right. I'm glad you weren't here. It might have gone after you."

"But I didn't... I shouldn't have..." Dean started, helplessly.

"It's over now," Jimmy said soothingly, wrapping Dean's fingers around his and squeezing them close and warm. "The creature is dead. It will never harm another child."

"What was that thing? What did you do? I saw this flash of light, and...and then..."

"Hey now." Dad's hand landed on his shoulder, heavy and warm. Dean looked over, saw that Dad had tucked Sammy into the other bed. The little guy was fast asleep, arms curled up under his head. "We can talk about that tomorrow. Jimmy really needs to rest."

"Okay," Dean said miserably, unconsciously leaning away from his father with his hip on the edge of Jimmy's bed. He glanced over at the fold-up cot in the corner, the one Jimmy would usually take when all four of them were together. "Dad, can I...?"

Dad sighed, understanding right away. "Sure, buddy, you can sleep with Jimmy tonight. I'll cuddle up with Sam."

Dean nodded gratefully. Dad went out to unpack the Impala while Dean slipped out of his clothes and into his PJs. Then he crawled in with Jimmy, who was already dozing, his cheek pale and smooth against the pillow. Dean took his hand again and curled up close, curving himself into his big brother. Close enough to feel the warmth and weight of him, strangely lightened now, as if the evening's events had taken something substantial away from him, something vital.

"You really gonna be okay?" he whispered, needing to hear it from Jimmy's lips.

The older boy's dark eyelashes fluttered before he forced them up halfway to look at Dean, his blue eyes faded and dull in the light from the single lamp Dad had left shining. "I will be as okay as I can be."

And that was as good as a promise.

It still took Dean a long time to fall asleep.


	3. 1984

A/N: For the record, I want to make it clear that Jimmy is really the main character of this story. Dean and Sam (and John and Castiel) are still important, very much so, but it's definitely a Jimmy fic. So...let that shape your expectations, I guess. I didn't expect him to become the main character when I started writing the story, but that's how it panned out. Thanks for your reviews!

**1984**

John hadn't been sure how Dean would react to waking up with a strange child in bed with him, but the boy was oddly calm about it all. The next morning John saw him stir and wake, rolling over under the weight of Jimmy's arm, and then he turned and stared at the stranger still asleep beside him, taking him in. The fever flush had receded, John was glad to see, and the five-year-old's eyes were bright with curiosity.

He saw John watching, sitting on the other bed giving Sammy his bottle, and sat up to look at him questioningly. It was too bad that he still barely talked, but he managed to communicate pretty well without it. John gave his son a cautious smile. "His name is Jimmy. He came yesterday."

Dean nodded and looked down at the boy beside him, the blankets bunching around his waist as he wiggled to a more comfortable spot. He reached out and gently, cautiously patted Jimmy's arm. Jimmy twitched and pulled away, fear crossing his face even in his sleep. He turned his back on Dean and curled up, protecting himself. Dean frowned.

He climbed down from the bed and circled around to climb up by John so he could watch Sammy, which was his favorite activity. Next to John where he could lean on his arm, he alternately stared at Sammy, then at Jimmy. The feeding was taking too long for Dean's patience, though. He kept looking back at Jimmy, then up at John.

"What is it?" John asked, mystified. Dean obviously wanted him to do something, but he couldn't figure it out. Sammy mewled a protest when his hand drooped, making the milk harder to suck, and John lifted his hand again.

Dean shook his head in a fit of (admittedly adorable) toddler exasperation, then pushed himself down from the bed and crossed over to stand by Jimmy. Chubby little hands tugged on the blankets, straightening them out where they had gotten disarranged around the sleeping boy. He pulled them up around Jimmy's chin and smoothed them to his satisfaction, then finally crossed back over to John and climbed up next to him again.

"Oh. Good job, buddy. We don't want him to get cold, huh?"

Dean nodded and leaned his head on John's arm, pressing almost painfully into the bicep, which made it more difficult to hold the bottle steady. John grunted slightly but didn't try to dislodge him. Dean yawned cavernously, and John could feel his eyelashes flicking against his arm.

"You hungry, Dean?" John asked. The boy had had very little appetite over the course of his cold, but the coughing seemed to have stopped sometime last night and he seemed much more alert and energetic. He nodded toward the table in the kitchenette. "I got Cheerios. That sound good?"

Dean nodded and turned his head to wipe his nose along his father's arm, leaving a strip of yellow slime. John bore it with a grimace. "Okay. Sammy's almost done with his bottle, and then I'll get your milk. Think you can pour a bowl of Cheerios for yourself?"

Dean nodded again, more firmly. He sat up, then slipped down the edge of the bed and padded across the carpet in his cowboy pajamas. He had to kneel on the chair and lean his whole body over the table to snag the box of cereal and a bowl, but he managed the task with great competence for such a small boy.

Sammy finished the bottle, alerting John with the hollow, sucking sound of emptiness, then squirmed to be let down. John took a few minutes to burp him, then let him toddle across the floor, and he lost himself in the morning routine of caring for his boys. There were tiny garments to draw over fragile limbs, bellies to feed, teeth and hair to brush. Through it all, Jimmy slept, a round lump of uncertainty and questions coiled under blankets smoothed by a little child's hand.

John had seen a library in this town and had planned to go there this afternoon. Libraries were good—he could let Dean and Sammy play in the children's section and keep an eye on them while he read. And eventually, someday, one of these libraries would have to hold some information that he needed. But now this little boy had come, and plans would have to change.

He hadn't forgotten what this strange child had promised, either. _I know what killed your wife._

At last, he tired of waiting for the boy to wake on his own. John stepped over to the bed and crouched down so he wouldn't loom over him, then carefully shook a blanket-wrapped shoulder. Jimmy had burrowed even further under the covers while he slept, but at the touch he jerked up, staring, blue eyes wide and panicked.

"It's okay, it's okay," John said. He glanced over his shoulder to Dean, stomach-down on the floor coloring in a dog-eared coloring book, Sammy pulling himself up on the kitchen chair and swaying on his fat baby legs. They were all right, wouldn't be able to hear low murmurs from all the way over here. "I need you to tell me now. What's going on? What do you know?"

The panic didn't just fade—it vanished abruptly. Jimmy's face seemed to shut down, just like that, from wide-eyed fear to a cool, blank slate. "I know quite a lot, Mr. Winchester."

John rubbed a hand over his face. "Yeah, like that. How do you know my name? How did you find me and follow me from the last motel?"

Jimmy sat up, cautiously, moving slowly as if every muscle ached. Which it probably did, John thought, remembering the bruises and welts that marked this boy. Jimmy leaned back against the headboard and sat cross-legged, his hands hanging limply in his lap. "I know things. I know the future. Terrible events are going to occur, and you have the power to mitigate them."

"You're a psychic?" John rose to sit on the edge of the bed, facing the child. He hunched his shoulders consciously, aware of how large and broad he was. He remembered Missouri Mosely, who had given him his first glimpse into the darkness that crowded the world. If this boy was like her...

Jimmy was watching him, still with caution, his slight young body tense against the headboard, but also with a kind of calculation that was strange to see in someone so young. Had John had any room in him for anything but worry about his own family, his own sons, he would have felt grief for this boy, made so old before his time by the horrors he'd been forced to endure. As it was he only gazed back, similarly calculating.

"Something like that," Jimmy said at last.

"But it's more than that," John said. "You can do things, too. Unless you hitched a ride just after I left that last motel, one that took you_exactly_ where you needed to go to follow me, there was no way you could have caught up with me that quick. What, can you fly?"

He said it jokingly, but the response he saw in those blue eyes, the shuttered flick of a dark, trembling eyelash, made him sit back with a gasp, unbelieving. Unconsciously, his hand began to inch toward the gun he always kept in the back of his belt.

Jimmy's arms wrapped around his belly, his breath coming a little faster, the fear returning. "You don't need that."

"Don't I?" John huffed out a laugh, heard how menacing it sounded and was not sorry. "Tell me what you are."

The quiet noises of Dean and Sammy playing had ceased. John noticed Jimmy staring over his shoulder and flicked his eyes over to his boys, saw them staring and silent. The room felt too tight and close, the air thick and heavy.

Jimmy's heels and hands dug into the mattress as he crab-walked away, slowly, toward the other side of the bed. He kept his eyes on John for every second, not even blinking. "I'll tell you, but not here."

John nodded, followed the boy and stood up next to him, large hand circling the boy's upper arm before he thought about it. Jimmy startled at the touch, and John could see the pulse pounding in his throat, could feel the weakness of the boy's slender limbs and fluttering chest. He didn't lighten his grip, just walked them into the bathroom and shut the door.

Bringing them into even closer quarters was a mistake, he saw instantly. Maybe they should have gone outside, even though it was still raining. Sat in the Impala, maybe, something, anything besides this closet-sized room where the kid obviously felt even more trapped, more out of control. The instant the door shut behind them Jimmy wrenched his arm free of John's hand and shrank back against the wall, as far as he could go—which wasn't very far at all—arms automatically rising to shield his face from a blow.

John lifted his hands, open, conciliatory, and sat on the edge of the tub. It made Jimmy slightly taller than him and also put the boy between him and the door, so he could escape if he felt the need. Jimmy slid away along the wall, brushing over the towel racks as he went, and pressed his back to the door where he bumped his head painfully on a garment hook. His hand fell on the knob, and John thought that was it. He was going to get out of there, run away, never come back, and John would lose the first lead he'd had on what really happened to his wife. But the boy stood there, panting, watching John but not running yet.

"Okay," John said, low and soothing. "Okay. Dean and Sammy can't hear us now. Tell me what you need me to know."

A spasm of frustration crossed the young face. "You won't believe me."

"I have no reason not to believe you." John rested his hands on his knees. "I don't know anything about what's out there, anything at all. You obviously do. I have no preconceived notions. And you...you know my name, and you say you're here to help me. You say you know what killed my wife and you look at my children as if you know them, as if you love them. So... I will listen to you. Whatever you have to say, I will listen. And I'll do my best to believe you. I promise."

Jimmy still shook, but John could see the struggle in his face, the calm mask fighting to smooth over his terror. At last the calm won, and the boy stood up straight, removing his hand from the doorknob. He still trembled lightly, but it seemed to be a purely physical reaction, completely out of his control.

"My name is Jimmy," he said. "That is the body I wear, the child James Novak of Illinois. But I am also Castiel, angel of the Lord."

John felt frozen. Only his eyes moved, widening and widening.

"Angels aren't real," he whispered.

"I assure you that we are," Jimmy...Castiel...Jimmy said firmly. "You believe now that monsters are real, that ghosts are real, that darkness is real. Why not the light as well? The woman Missouri does not know everything in creation. She couldn't even tell you for certain what it is that killed Mary Winchester."

That was true, John thought, though the world was buzzing in his ears and everything seemed to float.

"And you promised you would try to believe me," the boy added, plaintively. "You promised."

"I'm trying," John muttered. He gripped the tub on either side of him to steady and ground himself.

The kid's hand was on the doorknob again.

"If you're an angel, why do you need this Jimmy kid?" he asked, trying to regain his footing. "Shouldn't you just be yourself...Castiel? Like the angels who go visiting in the Bible?"

"Those visited by angels in the Bible feared them greatly," Jimmy said. "And only certain humans can see our true selves without burning at the sight. This vessel is for your benefit, not mine."

"But this kid...Jimmy... Jimmy's hurt and in trouble. You think I can't see that? Why are you using a child who's obviously been beat up enough? He can't possibly want this. He should be in a hospital. Or...or in a court room somewhere, testifying against whoever did this to him. Why are you using him?" John felt righteous anger rising in him again, and it felt good, it felt right. If there really was some kind of creature inside this boy, he couldn't possibly be a good guy.

Jimmy-Castiel slumped at this, misery pouring over his face. His knees, trembling for the entirety of this conversation, buckled at last, and he slid down to the floor, staring up at John with those big blue eyes as if asking for something he couldn't say aloud. "I know. I know Jimmy is hurt, and frightened, and I am unable to help him. But, Mr. Winchester... Mr. Winchester, I am also injured. I was wounded in the journey that brought me here and I...I am trapped. I cannot leave Jimmy's body. He deserves much better, and I deeply regret that this has happened, but there's nothing I can do about it. We're...stuck with each other."

John wasn't sure he should trust his perceptions about it, but the creature, the angel, the kid, whatever it was sitting there on the bathroom floor looking up at him with those enormous eyes...he seemed sincerely unhappy about this. John saw pain there, sadness, and a guilt so deep and overwhelming that it made him catch his breath.

"Can I...can I talk to Jimmy?" he asked. "The real Jimmy? Is he still in there?"

The boy nodded, and a change swept over his face. The thin edge of calm he had maintained was swept away in a flood of all-too-human fear and grief and weariness. His body language changed, too, arms wrapping around his chest to hug himself, and he held himself differently, more loose-limbed and more tense at the same time. He looked like a little boy, instead of a supernatural creature inside of a little boy, and John believed Castiel's story just that little bit more.

"I'm Jimmy Novak," he said softly, and his voice was different, too, higher, more emotional. And shaking with nerves. "Everything Castiel said is true. I can...I can see inside his mind, and he can see inside mine. We're...bound together. I was...I was locked in the closet again, Mr. Baker put me there, and then Castiel came and saved me. I was scared at first but I can...I can _see_ him, Mr. Winchester. I can see everything about him. He's weak and hurt and scared, and he's not used to that, he's never been weak and hurt and scared before. But he's also brave and strong and _righteous,_ and he wants to save your son from dying."

"My son?" John whispered. "My son is dying?" He didn't bother to ask which one. Either would destroy him. He could barely think, he... What was he supposed to do? It couldn't happen, it couldn't, it couldn't...

"Not now," Jimmy said hastily, seeing the terror in John's face. "But someday, yeah, things are going to happen... But, but we can change the future! That's what Castiel wants, that's why he came back here, came back in time from way far in the future. That's why he's here, that's why I'm here. To change things. To make them better." His arms unwrapped from around his chest and he lifted his hands as if in supplication, pleading for John to believe, to accept. "I want this, I do. We're stuck like this, but I want to help Castiel. I want to help you and your sons. Please don't send us away."

John buried his face in his hands, trying to breathe through it. He smelled the generic soap and shampoo of this tiny motel bathroom, and under it the smell of mildew and rot barely buried in bleach. He heard the soft, aching pants of this desperate boy, and he wanted to believe. Oh, he wanted to believe.

At last he pulled his hands down his face, looked at Jimmy over the long tan blobs of his fingers. The boy stared back at him, wary and hopeful in equal measure.

"So what you're saying..." He chuckled, deep and soft, and rubbed his hands over his face before giving the kid a slow smile. "What you're saying is that you really did fly, huh?"

Jimmy caught his breath, and then he laughed, broad white grin splitting his face. It was a little too hysterical, but it was real, genuine and joyful with relief, so young and sweet and true that it made John's heart ache in his chest. "Kind of, yeah. I mean, it hurts like everything, but it does feel a little like flying. Castiel can't do it very much, though. He's too hurt. But yeah. Flying."

John smiled. It felt good.

~*~


	4. 1989

**1989**

Unlike Dean, Jimmy had never seemed at all interested in being a hunter. Dean didn't get it. His dad was a hero, saving people, killing monsters. Who wouldn't want to be involved in that? Who wouldn't want to be a squire to a knight?

As soon as Dean was old enough that Dad would let him hold a gun, he was out there every chance he got, shooting targets at his father's side. He ate up every lesson in hand-to-hand, tried to pass them on to Sammy, pestered Jimmy to spar with him when Dad wasn't around. He even did his best with the Latin, though he didn't really like it, because someday it was going to be very, very important. Dad said so and Dean believed him. More than anything else in his life, Dean believed in his father.

It wasn't that Jimmy ignored the hunting stuff or didn't take it seriously. He totally did. Jimmy took just about everything seriously, but especially this. It was his job to look out for Dean and Sammy, kinda like it was Dean's job to look for his little brother, only Jimmy was even more intense about it than Dean was. He just...didn't seem to like it. He made faces when he cleaned the guns, as if they smelled bad. Dean beat him more often than not when they were sparring, and he'd finally figured out that Jimmy really wasn't letting him win all the time because he was younger and littler—Jimmy just sucked at hand-to-hand. When Dad let them meet another one of his hunting buddies Jimmy didn't push forward and ask every question he could think of, like Dean did. Instead he stood back and watched the stranger with narrowed eyes, the way someone would watch a snake, expecting it to strike.

Jimmy was weird.

But that night, the night Jimmy somehow killed a monster that had attacked him and Sammy... That night, Dean lay awake, holding Jimmy's hand, watching him sleep. He saw the shadows under his big brother's eyes, the bits of dried blood on his upper lip from where his nose had been bleeding. He thought about the light leaking from Jimmy's eyes and mouth, the flash that had killed the thing attacking him. Was that really all caused by the monster, or was it just something inherently...Jimmy? For the first time, Dean wondered if maybe the hunting stuff wasn't so important to Jimmy not because he didn't care about saving people and hunting things, but because he had something else going on, something else that was more important to him. Some other task or mission or quest.

Hadn't he even said something like that in the past? Dean remembered being a little younger, maybe six or seven. It was a long time ago so he wasn't sure. But he still remembered a time when Jimmy was not his brother, unlike Sammy. He remembered things being different, a house and a garden and a mother with soft hands and long golden hair. Even at the age of six or seven, he was aware that other families weren't like theirs, that the Winchesters had been changed on the night his mommy died, and things would never be the same again.

At the time he had thought, with the reasoning of a little kid, that Jimmy wasn't a Winchester, so his life should be different, too. He should have a mom and a dad and a house and go the same school for years and years. He should have more. And he had asked Jimmy a question which ten-year-old Dean was now aware had been very, very rude.

Jimmy had just looked at him with those serious eyes for a moment, then said slowly, "My place is here, with you and Sam and your father. My job is to take care of you and guide you into the future. I'm a Winchester now." He glanced around and lowered his voice, so only Dean could hear. "And my parents...my parents died, too. A...a monster killed them. We are the same, Dean. We are very much the same."

But they _weren't_ the same, Dean thought now, watching him sleep. Jimmy was weird, and Jimmy was different, and something was going on.

Dean wanted to ask the next day—Dad had said they would talk about it tomorrow—but they were really busy with packing up and heading out. Dad was in a hurry to leave, shaking Dean awake when it was still gray and early to come help him. Usually Jimmy did most of this, organizing and sorting things into all of the correct pockets and compartments, but they let him sleep, curled and still in the warm cocoon Dean was forced to leave behind. Dad even dragged Sammy out, mumbling and rubbing his eyes, to clean up the little box of Legos he'd left scattered in the corner. Sammy wasn't happy about that. Jimmy slept through it all.

Dad still smelled a little bit like fire and salt from last night. Dean knew he must have dragged out the body of that monster and burned it. He had picked up a lot of things about hunting, even though Dad mostly tried to keep him away from it. They ate the last of the cold cereal and dumped out the leftover milk, and it was time to go. Dad went to the bedroom for Jimmy, and Dean took Sammy out to the Impala and made sure he was in there safe before going back. (Sammy rolled his eyes a lot but said, _"Yes,_ Dean, I promise to stay in the car, okay?")

Dean went back and checked everything one last time, the way they always did, making sure nothing was left behind. He knew Dad had already checked, though. He just wanted to be there when Jimmy woke up. After awhile he quit even pretending to look around and went to lean in the bedroom doorway, watching.

Dad was shaking Jimmy's shoulders, gently but insistently. By the tone of his voice, Dean could tell that he'd been doing it for awhile. "C'mon, Jimmy. C'mon, kiddo. Wake up now. Can you hear me? Wake up. We'll get doughnuts. You like doughnuts. Time to get on the road. Castiel? You in there? C'mon. C'mon. Wake up!"

"Dad?" Dean whispered. His voice echoed strangely, so small and scared. Tiny. You almost couldn't hear it at all. Castiel? Who was that?

Dad heard him, though. He whipped his head around, eyes sharp and hard. "Dean! Shouldn't you be with Sammy?"

"He promised he'd stay in the car." Dean swallowed, his eyes still on his brother. "What's wrong with him? Why won't he wake up?"

Dad sighed, swiped a hand over his face. "He's just tired, Dean. You remember last summer, when you fell out of the tree? This happened then, too."

"It did?" Dean's eyes just about bugged out of his skull.

He barely remembered that day. They had been running around at Uncle Bobby's, messing where they shouldn't have been messing. He'd been excited by the trees at the edge of the property, especially one with a thick, low-hung branch that seemed to beg for a small boy to climb on it. He slung himself up, all but cackling in his delight. Motels almost never had good climbing trees.

He remembered Jimmy's worried voice, below, ordering him to come down. Remembered calling back, telling his brother to come up, instead. Dean climbed into the high branches, relishing in the rough bark scraping his hands and knees and feet, the rustling of green leaves all around, the cool, fresh breeze...

And then there had been a snap, and he fell and fell and hit just about every branch on the way down...

The pain in his leg and head had been blinding, Dean remembered that much. It hurt worse than anything he'd ever felt in his entire life. His vision was almost white, everything in the world turned transparent, and he wondered if this was what it felt like to be burned alive, burned on a ceiling, burned to ashes.

Then Jimmy was there, blue eyes above him like a corner of sky. His face was terrible with fear and concern, almost nothing like Jimmy's face at all. His mouth was moving but Dean heard nothing. Then Jimmy's hands, on his forehead and his chest, two points of soft coolness in the world of fire, and everything went white.

When he woke up it was dark out, and he was in bed. Sammy was sitting there at the foot of his bed, waiting, and when he saw Dean's eyes open he started bouncing up and down, shaking the mattress and yelling, "You're awake, you're awake, you're awake, you're finally awake!" Dean had roused himself enough to shove his little brother off the bed and tell him to shut up, then promptly fell asleep again.

In the morning everything had been back to normal.

Hadn't it?

Dean tilted his head and stared at Jimmy, so pale and still on the crappy motel pillow, and tried to remember. Jimmy had been sick for almost three days after Dean fell out of the tree. He had stayed in bed the whole time, barely waking up long enough for Dad or Uncle Bobby to make him eat and drink, go to the bathroom, brush his teeth. Dean had figured it was the flu or something and was just glad he hadn't caught it, too. He was busy, anyway, trying to keep Sammy happy and out of the sickroom.

Now he looked at his big brother, and he tried to figure it out.

When he woke up the morning after falling out of that tree, he hadn't hurt at all. Not anywhere. He'd felt fantastic. And Jimmy had been so sick, sicker than Dean had ever seen anyone ever before.

"Did he..." Dean stopped, because it just sounded too crazy. "Did he, Dad... Did Jimmy...? Did he _heal_ me?"

Dad was watching him, carefully, his eyes warm and sympathetic. "He didn't want you to know. Not for as long as possible. He just wanted to be your brother."

Dean leaned more heavily on the doorway. "Jimmy has _powers?_ Is he... Is he like Superman?"

Dad chuckled, but it seemed awfully sad for a laugh. "That would be nice, wouldn't it? Not quite. But...something like that, yeah."

Jimmy moaned, rolling his head weakly on the pillow, and Dad turned back to him. "Jimmy? You waking up?"

Dean stepped forward without really thinking about it and climbed up on the bed next to the older boy, watching his eyelids flutter. Dad had a cup of water on the nightstand, one of those plastic cups that came with the room. When Jimmy finally opened his eyes and squinted up at them, face drawing tight in pain, Dad lifted his messy, dark head with one big hand and set the cup to his lips. "C'mon, kiddo. Just a little, then we'll get out of here."

Jimmy seemed too tired to even flinch the way he usually did when their father touched him. He just let Dad take care of him. He was as floppy as a baby, every muscle loose and uncontrolled, and Dean knew that all he wanted to do was go back to sleep. Jimmy tried to keep his eyes open, though, tried to keep an eye on them. After the water, Dad flipped the blanket off him, only his boxers and t-shirt protecting him from the cool air, and Jimmy shivered and woke up a little more. He still couldn't really do anything for himself, though.

Dad handed Dean a pair of Jimmy's socks. "Get these on him. I forgot to leave his shoes out." He went out to the car while Dean knelt at Jimmy's feet and pulled thick cotton over bony heels and protruding toes, white and cold as fish bellies.

Jimmy watched him from the pillow, eyes half-open and glassy with exhaustion. "Y'r hands're warm," he slurred. "S'nice."

Dean gave him a hesitant smile and held those cold feet in his lap, waiting for Dad to come back. "Jimmy?" he asked carefully. "Or...or are you Castiel?"

A shrug and a long, slow blink. "Cas...Cast'l's real tired. Real, _real_ tired, so tired it's makin' me tired too. Took him months to get back that much energy, conce...concentratin' alla time, n' then he blew it all in one shot." He snuggled his head back into the pillow and flopped his arms over his chest, too exhausted even to hug himself. "Mmm. S'comfy."

"Who is Castiel, Jimmy? Alien, ghost? What is he?" Dean kept his voice soft and gentle. He wasn't good at that, but he could do it, for his brothers.

Jimmy stared back at him a little more lucidly. His eyes were as serious as ever, though. He was thinking about it, deciding whether or not to tell him the truth.

Dean all but held his breath.

"Angel," Jimmy said. "Castiel is an angel. He's...inside me, but not me. I'm Jimmy. You know us both."

Dean nodded, rubbed Jimmy's feet. "You're my brother."

And that was all the energy Jimmy had. Dad got back just in time to watch his eyes slip shut again. The man cursed, but there was no heat in it.

He wasn't carrying Jimmy's shoes after all, just a pair of sweats. Dad sighed. "Come on, Dean, help me dress him."

It was both harder and easier than dressing Sammy when he was a baby. Easier because Jimmy wasn't wiggling all over the place and trying to get away so he could go play, harder because he was bigger than Dean and even kind of a handful for Dad—not heavy or anything, just long-limbed and gawky. When they were done Dad scooped Jimmy up with one arm under his knees and the other around his upper back, and Dean opened and closed doors on the way out to the car.

Sammy was kneeling on the backseat, staring out the window and watching them come. He threw open the door before Dean got there, scrambling out to hover around Dad, watching Jimmy with wide, worried eyes. "Is Jimmy okay? What's wrong? Wouldn't he wake up? When will he wake up? What are we gonna do without him? What if he never wakes up? I want him to wake up!"

"He's fine," Dean and Dad said almost exactly at the same time and with the same exasperated tone. Dad shook his head and went to lay Jimmy down in the back while Dean grabbed Sammy's shoulders to keep him from getting underfoot.

"Jimmy's okay. He's just really sleepy, so we gotta let him sleep, okay? He woke up for a while already, and he'll wake up again. We won't have to figure out how to get along without him because he's _fine._ Okay?"

Sammy's head was on a swivel, switching between staring at Dean and staring at Jimmy and Dad. "You sure?" he asked in a small voice.

"I'm sure." Dean looked over, too, watching Dad leaning all the way into the car, lowering Jimmy's head, held cradled securely in one hand. "Hey, Sammy, you want to sit in front today?"

The little boy's eyes widened. Dean never let Sammy sit in the front when it was his turn. He nodded, little face lighting up with easy joy.

Dean was glad it was so easy to make Sammy happy. He hoped that never changed.

Once Dad got out of the way, Dean got in the back with Jimmy.

X

Now that Dean knew the big secret, he couldn't stop wondering if there were more.

The next time Jimmy woke up was at a rest stop in central Illinois. He'd been working up to it for about ten minutes, making little shifts and moans in his sleep, and by the time his eyes finally slipped open, Dean was ready for it. He had squeezed himself into the footwell by Jimmy's head, rubber sneaker soles squeaking in the perpetual grit that littered the floor, and was staring into his eyes from only inches away, patiently waiting for the first sliver of blue to be revealed. Dad and Sammy were getting snacks from the vending machines, so it was a perfect opportunity.

Dean knew better than to pull this kind of crap on his dad—he was likely to get a hasty swat and a torrent of cuss words for something so stupid—but Jimmy just blinked at him, unmoving and calm. Of course, that could have had something to do with how utterly exhausted he still was, too. The older boy's eyelids were heavy, constantly sinking and rising again as he tried to meet Dean's gaze.

"Are you Jimmy?"

His big brother nodded, slow and steady, and Dean tried to believe him. It was hard.

"Were you an angel all along?" he asked. "This whole entire time?"

Jimmy didn't even blink, didn't even shift his body on the seat. "Since we've been brothers, yes. Castiel has been here since I was ten years old. He saved me."

Dean didn't have to ask what Jimmy had been saved from. "And he's always there, inside you? All the time?"

"All the time. But he doesn't force me, Dean. He's not a demon. I'm not locked up in here. I can take control of this body whenever I want. In fact sometimes I take over even when I don't mean to, if I get scared or startled."

Dean's fists were clenched at his side. He looked back on five years of memories, playing with his big brother, talking to him, learning from him. How many of those conversations had been with Castiel, not Jimmy? How many of them were lies?

"Would he leave? If you asked him to, would he leave?" If he wouldn't, Jimmy was still a prisoner, no matter how well he was treated by his captor. Dean wondered if any of the exorcism rituals in Dad's journal would work on an angel.

Jimmy watched him carefully, his eyes understanding and sad. "Dean... He can't."

"He can't _leave?_ Why not? Doesn't he want to? What if he has to?"

"He can't leave my body. He's..." Jimmy yawned, a huge, jaw-cracking one. The bags around his eyes seemed even bigger, darker, and Dean was sorry, but he had to know, he had to understand. "He's hurt, he... He's weak. He's been trying to heal but it takes such a long time, and then he has to use his grace to heal you, or save Sammy, or check on Dad when he's gone too long, or put a little power in the warding symbols, and it just... It's too much, Dean. It's too much..."

Jimmy's voice faded a little more with each tiny tidbit of information, and then his eyes fell shut and he was sleeping again.

Dean huffed out a frustrated breath and tried to make his fists let go. By the time he managed it, Sammy was running back to the car, grinning ear to ear and waving a package of Snowballs in a triumphant fist, and Dad followed behind him with peanut butter crackers and Mountain Dew. Dean got back up on the seat, pulled Jimmy's shoulders into his lap, and ate his snacks, still listing question after question in his head.

The next time Jimmy woke up was at another motel, and it was only because Dad had spent five minutes shaking him. He made Jimmy drink some apple juice and eat a few crackers, and then Jimmy was asleep again and Dean didn't get to ask any more questions. They just kept building up in his mind, though, an avalanche ready to fall if someone just whispered too loud. He could feel it looming over him, heavy and hushed. He didn't want to get buried.

Sammy pestered him to play Tic Tac Toe with him until Dean snapped and yelled at him to leave him alone, scaring the kid so much that he burst into tears. He felt bad then, spent the rest of the evening trying to make it up to him. But all the time he was thinking about Jimmy, and Castiel, and everything he had figured out about possession by eavesdropping or poking until someone answered. He remembered more and more times when Jimmy went weird, when he tilted his head like a bird and used big words that most kids didn't know. Other times when he relaxed and smiled and acted like a kid again. Around and around like a merry-go-round that never stopped, and Dean's brain couldn't stop spinning, either.

He didn't even know why he was mad. He just was. He really, really was.

The next day Dad had to go get supplies, and Dean volunteered for apple-juice-and-cracker duty. He sat next to Jimmy on the double bed, back straight against the headboard, watching him sleep yet again. He hoped that Jimmy would wake up then, without Dean having to do anything, just because Dean wanted him to. It would be like Jimmy to do that—he was always very accommodating and often did exactly what Dean wanted. Not always, though.

Not this time.

"Hey, Sammy! Bring me some ice from the bucket!"

Sammy grumbled, but did as requested before going back to his morning cartoons. Most days Dean would be right there with him, but something more important was going on today.

A piece of ice held against warm, sleep-toasty toes was a powerful thing. Jimmy groaned and curled his feet away, pulling them toward his body and drawing his body into a tight ball wrapped around his pillow. Dean chased him, relentless. "C'mon, Jimmy. C'mon, big brother. Time to wake up."

Jimmy turned his head toward the sound of Dean's voice and slowly, slowly opened his eyes. "Dean?"

"Yeah." Dean plopped down on the bed beside him, making the mattress bounce with the creak of springs and _foof_ of cloth. "You gotta eat something. Do you need the bathroom?"

Jimmy sighed and stared at the ceiling. "Yes. And you have more questions, don't you?"

"Yeah."

"Let's get those out of the way first. I don't want you to bang my head on the wall accidentally on purpose."

Dean huffed. "I wouldn't hurt you."

"You're upset, Deaners. You don't always act the way you mean to when you're upset."

Dean gave him a sideways stare. That was Jimmy's favorite nickname for him, but he didn't use it all that often. His voice was full of understanding and affection, and it sort of pricked a hole in Dean's balloon of indignation. "You can tell I'm upset?"

"I can always tell when you're upset. I know you, little bro."

Dean bumped his head back against the headboard, staring across at Sammy, who was completely oblivious. "I don't know why."

"Mmm." Jimmy hummed thoughtfully, blinking slowly as he stared at the ceiling. His movements were still sluggish and weak, but his voice was clear and sharp. "You feel betrayed. You feel like Dad and me didn't trust you, not telling you something this important."

"Yeah. Yeah, that's part of it." Dean's fist thumped down on the mattress between them, making Jimmy jump slightly, and he felt bad for that. "I just... Jimmy, how can I know it's really you? If this...this _angel_ was inside you the whole time, how'm I supposed to know when it's my brother talking to me and not some supernatural freak? How do I know it's really you here _right now?_ What if this Castiel is trying to fool me? How can I...how can I believe anything you say?"

"Dean...you've always been able to tell." Jimmy reached over, slow and careful, laid a gentle hand on Dean's knee. Gentle, Jimmy was always so gentle. And when he wasn't... "I've always seen you looking back at me, and I know you could always tell. You knew there was something weird about me, but you didn't mind, because you loved me all along. Me, and Castiel, too. You did, Dean, you always did. Whether it's me talking to you right now, or Castiel, it doesn't really matter. We're the same Jimmy you've known all along, and you've never hated us before. Please don't start now."

When he wasn't, that was Castiel. Dean pressed his head back against the hard surface, felt the little pain in his scalp, and squeezed his eyes shut to deny the tears. "But why didn't you tell me? Why didn't _he_ tell me? If you knew I could tell, why not trust me all the way?"

Jimmy sighed. "Castiel... He brings enormous burdens with him. Knowledge of the future. Terrible things. He didn't want to have to tell you. He wanted you to grow up as innocent as possible for as long as you could."

"Oh." Dean opened his eyes. He saw Sammy across the room, watching his cartoons, oblivious. Jimmy...and Castiel...they had wanted to protect him the way he wanted to protect Sammy. He couldn't blame them for that.

"He really is an angel? Castiel?"

His voice sounded very small.

Jimmy just nodded, gave Dean's knee a little squeeze. His eyes were drifting again, and he was almost out of energy. Dean shouldn't have wasted so much time with his questions, should have taken care of him first. But this had been important, he knew that now.

He wouldn't let Jimmy's head bang on any walls.

"My mom used to say that angels were watching over me. And then, after... I didn't believe. I didn't want to believe. It hurt too bad."

"I know," Jimmy whispered. "It's okay."

Dean watched Sammy watching his cartoons, and he firmed his jaw in determination. "We're going to have tell him. We have to tell him everything. I don't want him to be mad at us, too."

Jimmy hummed a gentle agreement and turned his head to get a glimpse of their little brother without lifting his head. "Yes. But not today."

"Not today."

The time would come soon enough. If Sammy started asking questions, Dean would tell him the truth.

~*~

**1984**

A sunny June day, and the Winchesters were at a playground somewhere in Oklahoma. John sat at a picnic table, keeping an eye on Dean and Sammy as they kicked across the red-brown dirt toward the kiddy slides, Dean holding his baby brother's hands, helping him walk. The baby gurgled laughter, and Dean's tiny chuckle rang out, too. It was beautiful; everything was beautiful.

Across from him at the picnic table sat Jimmy Novak, Castiel the angel, busily licking an ice cream cone with a wet, pink tongue. As John watched, he turned the cone in his hand to lick up a trickle of melted white running down the side, capturing it before it hit his fingers with a happy smack of the lips. Dean and Sammy had already finished off their shared sundae, leaving behind a paper bowl on its side, smears of chocolate and butterscotch on the warped wood and sticky fingers that would need to be washed, and John worked steadily on his own cup of chocolate ice cream. Jimmy kicked his feet under the table, as childlike and carefree as John had ever seen him.

The bruises were gone, the cuts faded to faint red. John didn't know if the flinch would ever leave, though. Some scars didn't heal.

Out of respect for the wounded boy, John had put his questions off for as long as he could, but they burned inside him, hotter and more painful for every hour of delay. Now, though, all three children were as content and happy as they could be, and John could wait no longer. He had to know.

"Jimmy. Castiel."

The boy looked up at him sharply, blue eyes bright and steady. His face was calm and controlled, a sudden mask. Castiel. A rivulet of melted ice cream trailed down the cone, reached his fingers and crossed all four in a rippled stream of white. He didn't react. "Yes, Mr. Winchester?"

John drew a deep breath. "I need you to tell me what killed my wife."

Castiel nodded solemnly. "I will tell you. But you have to make a promise first."

"What sort of promise?"

Castiel turned sideways on the bench to look behind himself at Sammy and Dean. They were climbing up the ladder to one of the plastic slides, Dean behind his brother, guiding his steps and protecting him from any fall. "Your sons have to come first."

"What?" John's fingers froze around his bowl. He didn't know whether to be offended or infuriated or simply flabbergasted at the implication. "Why the hell wouldn't they?"

"I know that revenge is a strong motivator." Those blue, blue eyes caught John's and held them steady. "Once you know who is responsible for the death of Mary Winchester, you will want to pursue that entity to the ends of the earth, even at the cost of everything else that you hold dear. You must not."

John just stared. Yeah, definitely leaning toward offended. "What kind of father do you think I am?"

"A good one," Castiel said earnestly. "Truly, you are a very good father. But you must not let that change. As you travel on down this path, as you become a hunter and begin to face monstrous creatures of all kinds, your priorities will be challenged many times. But I tell you now, _nothing_ on earth is more important than your sons. Dean and Sam are...they are the most important pair of brothers in ten millennia, and nothing is more important than keeping them safe and strong and free from all taints. _Nothing._ And so you must promise that they will always be first to you. You must guard not only their bodies but their souls as well."

The intensity in that young-old gaze raised goosebumps on John's neck and shoulders. He sat back, trying to meet this strange boy's gaze, and he couldn't manage it. Eventually he looked away, found his sons again. They sat together at the top of the slide, Sammy between Dean's legs, four little hands gripping the sides of the slide. Then Dean pushed them off and they slid down, shrieking their delight.

He felt the weight of this precious burden like a lodestone in his chest. Surely he could never lose his way. But the way Castiel spoke, the things he had seen... Something must have gone wrong in the future that he had come from. How was John to prevent that, alone and hapless as he was? He didn't even know how to fight a _ghost,_ for God's sake, let alone whatever threats Castiel saw coming that made him speak so powerfully and sternly.

"I'll help you."

The young voice was quiet now, pleading. John looked back to him, caught off-guard by this new softness. Still the ancient face of Castiel, the angel of the Lord, but his face was soft with longing.

"I don't have much to offer...I am wounded and weary and far from the powerful ally I should be. But everything I have, I will give to you and your boys. My life is yours."

His spread his hands, one sticky with ice cream, both young and small and helpless. It should have been a ridiculous gesture, worthy only of scorn or pity and careful refusal, but John felt the prick of unexpected tears. He could not reject this heartfelt plea.

He nodded, a swift jerk of the head. "I promise."

Castiel lowered his head, chest heaving with a deep sigh. "Then I will tell you everything."

John looked down at his cup, stirred the chocolate soup around, and took another bite. "Eat your ice cream."

The angel-boy stared curiously at the cone in his hand, then raised it to his mouth, sniffed it, licked the melting trickle across his fingers. John stifled a snort at the look of shocked delight, the spark in his eyes and sudden, startled smile. So Jimmy and Castiel didn't experience everything as one being, and it seemed that the angel had never tasted this treat before. He seemed to like it.

Perhaps this wouldn't be so bad.

"I have much to teach you. I'll do my best to give you all the tools you need." Castiel looked to the playground, watching Dean and Sammy walk around the slide to climb the ladder again. "The creature that killed your wife is a demon of the highest order, Azazel, a son of Lucifer..."

John ate his ice cream and listened to every word.

**End of Book One**


	5. Interlude

**Interlude: Stand Your Ground**

"Hey, isn't that your big brother?" Eric asked, pointing.

Sammy glanced toward the edge of the playground, expecting to see Dean hanging around, looking cool with his hands in his pockets and a small scowl on his face, watching the elementary kids with narrowed eyes. This was one of the towns where Dean and Sammy's grades weren't in the same school building, but Dean usually came by to walk him home. Sammy didn't mind waiting for him—it gave him time to play around with his friends or just decompress after a long day of school, whether running around like a crazy boy or lying on his back watching the sky.

It wasn't Dean, though. It was Jimmy, tall and slim in his long-sleeved shirt, his face all angles and blue eyes. He peered across the playground with a tiny frown that managed to be more disapproving than Dean's most ferocious scowl. Sammy followed his gaze and saw Dylan, that older neighborhood kid who came around sometimes, selling a dime bag to a kid Sammy didn't know.

"Hey, Jimmy!" Sammy called, waving at him with both arms from where he sat in the chilly April dirt.

Jimmy turned at the noise, gave him a tilt of the head in acknowledgment. He didn't smile, though, and Jimmy almost always had a smile for his littlest brother. He must be in one of his weird moods again.

As if to prove that, Jimmy immediately turned his unnerving blue stare to Eric, watching him frankly and without blinking. Eric shrank slowly down beside Sammy, hunching his shoulders, small round face drawn in dismay. "What is he _doing?"_

Sammy shrugged. "He's just...lookin'. Jimmy looks sometimes." He patted Eric's shoulder and used it to push himself to his feet. "I'll see you tomorrow, okay? I'll ask my dad or Jimmy about coming over to your house sometime."

"Hello, Sammy," Jimmy said when he approached, finally taking his eyes away from Eric. "Did you have a good day at school?"

"Totally kickass," Sammy said, just to test him. Jimmy didn't immediately say, _"Don't say ass."_ Yep, definitely in one of his moods.

Jimmy just nodded solemnly, still staring off into the playground. "You know that drugs aren't good for you, don't you?"

Sammy rolled his eyes, holding his backpack by one strap and letting it bump against his leg. "Yes, I know."

"Not just when you're small. All the time. Not just marijuana. All of them." He looked down at Sammy for a second, still not blinking, then looked back to Drug-Dealin' Dylan. "They're bad."

"I _know."_

Jimmy stared for another second at Eric, then finally nodded and turned to start the walk home. Sammy forgot to move for a second, then hurried to catch up. Jimmy slowed his pace to wait for him, and they walked on together.

Sammy turned around as he walked to wave good-bye to Eric, who still looked kind of freaked out, then turned back, skipping a few steps at his big brother's side. "Where's Dean? Is he busy or something?"

"Your father is home early from his hunting trip. He picked Dean up from school to practice firearm shooting."

Sammy frowned, bumping his backpack harder against his leg."I wish Dad would take me to go shoot targets. I'm gonna be eight in nineteen days! That has to be old enough, right?"

"No, not really."

Sam huffed and scraped his shoe on the sidewalk. "Well, can I go over to Eric's house tomorrow?"

"Tomorrow?" Jimmy cast a glance behind him, but the school had already vanished around a corner. "That's short notice. Is he the boy who was sitting next to you when I arrived?"

"Yeah, that's him."

"I think you should invite him over to our place instead."

"Really?" Sammy beamed up at him. They almost never had strangers at their place. Not unless they had to, like if it was a teacher visiting or something. Even when they were living in an apartment, like now, instead of an icky motel. "Will Dad be okay with that?"

"I'm fairly certain, yes. You know I have the trust of...Dad."

Sammy bumped into Jimmy's side, still grinning. "You're awesome, Jimmy. Even if you do talk weird sometimes."

"Thank you, little brother. You're quite awesome, yourself."

X~*~X

Two days later, Dean walked Sammy and Eric home to the Winchester apartment, chattering amiably about the fun afternoon they were going to have. They had a TV and a Nintendo here, did Eric like Mario? Jimmy said he was going to make brownies... Dean hoped he wouldn't burn them this time. You kids'll have a good time, but just remember not to make too much noise when Dad gets home from work. The job he has right now makes him really cranky sometimes.

Sammy knew that their apartment wasn't in a very nice part of town, but the school wasn't either, and Eric said his place was near the school, so Eric probably didn't live in a better neighborhood. And his parents had let him come here, so it must be okay. And still... Still, the closer they got to home, the slower Eric walked. He wrapped his hands around the straps of his backpack, tugging them across his chest, and his feet scuffed on the carpet after they left the elevator. Dean has stopped talking, watching Eric with a strange look in his eye. Sammy didn't understand it, and it really bothered him. It was like Eric, his very own friend, was some kind of weird bug, and Dean didn't like him.

Jimmy opened the door to the apartment while they were still about ten steps away, and then he just stood there in the doorway, watching them come. It was so weird, both of his big brothers watching Eric with that intent, focused look in their eyes, and Sammy looked between them, from one to the other, trying to understand. Eric hunched his shoulders up and quit walking just before the door, looking up at the older boys with big pleading eyes. Sammy didn't get it at all. It was really freaking him out now. What was going on?

Sammy was just about to stamp his foot and demand an explanation when Jimmy moved over to make room, still staring at Eric, but now making a little welcoming wave with his hand. "Come inside, Eric. Sammy's told me all about you."

Dean sniffed the air, leaning toward the apartment door. "Dude, do I smell brownies? Did you actually manage not to burn them?" As he leaned, his hand fell on Eric's shoulder, pushing him forward.

Jimmy nodded. "Of course I didn't burn the brownies. I know how much you love them. Come in, Eric. Have a brownie."

This time Sammy really did stamp his feet. "For Pete's sake, you guys, why are you being so _creepy?"_

It was too late, though. Eric had already been lured in through the doorway, and all hell broke loose.

Sammy really didn't understand what happened next. Dean pulled him inside and shut the door, tugging Sammy with him to stand against a wall, out of the way. Something weird was going on with Eric, something really weird, his eyes were all black and he snarled and tried to run at Jimmy, his fingernails like claws, his voice much too deep and strange to really be his... Jimmy just stood there while Eric rushed at him, waiting, and it was like Eric hit an invisible wall in the air. He bounced back, curly brown hair flying, and he looked up at the ceiling for a second before turning back to Jimmy. He growled like an animal now and it was so weird and scary and Sammy was so confused and his breath wasn't working right and what was going on, what was going on? There were marks on the ceiling and pieces of white light coming out of Jimmy's eyes and his voice was deep and sonorous and as powerful as Dad's and Sammy didn't understand it at all.

"I knew I felt your foul taint," Jimmy said, glaring at little Eric with such force that a lightbulb next to the door burst, just popped in a fizzle of sparks and a wisp of smoke. "Come out of him immediately."

Eric _howled._ He sounded like the creepy werewolf in that movie that Dean wasn't supposed to let Sammy see. And Eric ran at Jimmy again and hit the wall again and Sammy couldn't breathe, he couldn't breathe, his throat and chest hurt and he was so terrified he was crying without breath and it felt like the top of his head was going to fly right off.

"Oh, crap," Dean's voice murmured in his ear. He had wrapped his arm around Sammy's chest, holding him near the wall. Now he spun them, putting their backs to the room, and pulled Sammy down into his lap. "Sammy, Sammy, breathe. C'mon, dude, you gotta relax. It's okay, Castiel will take care of everything. Eric is okay, he's going to be okay. You gotta breathe, Sammy."

Sammy heard Jimmy's voice behind him, above Eric's weird, disturbing howls. Jimmy was speaking in a language Sammy didn't know, but it reminded him of Pastor Jim. The words were swift and powerful, spat out like rapid-fire bullets, and Eric sounded like that was exactly what they were, bullets pounding into him, tearing him apart. Sammy sobbed for breath and sagged against Dean's arm, trying to listen to Dean's voice instead. Dean kept talking, sounding strong and sure, like he knew exactly what was going on and it really was gonna be okay, somehow, someway.

At last Jimmy's voice rose to a crescendo, all but yelling the last words of his strange speech, and a rush of wind and darkness flooded the room. Sammy hunched over in Dean's arms, squeezing his eyes shut, and Dean pulled him close. Then it was over, but the stillness didn't seem real. Sammy sat there, gripping Dean's shirt tight in both fists, listening to the three of them pant for air.

"It's over," Jimmy said gruffly, after a few minutes of tight-strung silence.

Sammy felt Dean shift, looking over his shoulder back at their big brother. He gripped Dean even tighter and still refused to open his eyes.

"Eric?" Dean asked.

"Alive. Unconscious, though. I believe he will recover, eventually."

Dean sighed, muscles loosening everywhere except for where he still held Sammy. "That's good. And you, Castiel? Are you okay?"

"I'm fine. I did not use my power for this exorcism, except by accident. Your father will be displeased about the bulbs, I think."

Dean laughed shakily, clutching Sammy tight against him. "He won't care, man. He won't care one tiny bit."

As soon as he was feeling a little better, Sammy was going to demand answers about _all_ of this. Right now, though, he just held Dean's shirt and tried not to cry.

X~*~X

They were going to take Eric home later, when he woke up and was feeling better. And after Daddy had a chance to check out his house and his parents, make sure that they weren't possessed by demons, too. Right now Eric was sleeping in Sam and Dean's bed, limp but uninjured.

The three Winchester boys sat on the sofa, Sammy between Jimmy and Dean. The older boys had just finished explaining...a lot. Sammy rubbed his forehead, still aching from how much crying he'd done earlier, and tried to understand.

"So... Dad hunts ghosts?"

Dean nodded. "Other stuff, too." His voice was rich with pride. "Someday I'll help him. Jimmy already does."

"I'm sorry you found out this way," Jimmy said. "But I sensed the demon inside that little boy and I had to try to save him if I could. This was the most expedient way to make that happen. Dean helped me plan it."

Sammy looked up at Jimmy, blinking slowly. "And you're an angel?"

"I am Castiel, angel of the Lord," he said.

"Angels are real?"

"Yes." Castiel met Sammy's gaze. "But Jimmy is real, too. We share the same body."

Sammy slapped his knee. "I knew it! I always knew there was something weird about you!" He grinned suddenly, wide and vindicated. "You're an angel! That explains _everything."_

Dean's blink was all but audible. "It...does?"

"Well, it explains a lot." Sammy leaned back between his brothers, snuggling down between them. He was still pretty freaked out by what had happened earlier, by the knowledge that there had been a _demon_ inside his friend, possibly for the entire time he'd known him. But he was safe here, Jimmy and Castiel on his left, Dean on his right. Everything really was going to be okay.

"You gotta tell me everything now," he said. And they sighed in unison.

It was pretty freaking hilarious, actually.

"No, I mean it," Sammy said. "I'll keep bugging you until you tell me. I swear I will do it. Just get it over with now."

Heavy silence for a moment, then Castiel shifted slightly, tucking him in closer. And he began. "I will tell you as much as you can bear to hear. Some it is not meant for such young ears. But yes, I am an angel, and in 2008, I was sent to save your brother from a bad situation..."

It was the weirdest, freakiest, coolest bedtime story ever. And also the best, because it was a hundred percent true. And they were all the heroes.

**End of Interlude ****  
**


	6. These Wandering Blues

**Book Two: These Wandering Blues**

They moved around all the time. It shouldn't have been a surprise to Jimmy that they eventually ended up here. Pontiac, Illinois. Pontiac Township High School.

Seven years later and almost nothing had changed.

Jimmy didn't know what he was doing going to school, anyway. He already knew what he was doing with his life, and nothing high school could teach him was going to be the slightest bit useful. His life had been mapped out for him from the moment Castiel showed up in his head that day when he was locked in the closet listening to the rain patter down outside. Had been from the moment his parents had died in smoke and fire, really. His former life—any potential future he might have had, any dreams and desires and hopes—had all been eaten by a demon, and his body was given over to Heaven now. That was the way it was and that was the way it would be.

He didn't even need the knowledge, English and calculus and biology and history, any of it. He shared his brain with a freaking _angel._Whether he wanted to or not, he already knew just about everything. Sometimes it was almost too much for his puny mortal mind, sometimes it was like bright white lights in his head, burning and burning, always there. But he'd learned to live with it. Castiel did his best to protect him, to tamp the fire and keep it tamed, but sometimes it shone through anyway, the infinite glory of the ages. Even in the pain, it was amazing, and Jimmy didn't blame Castiel for any of it. It was just a little much, sometimes, that was all. And it rendered any human education he could receive completely and totally useless.

_You should be a child for as long as you can,_ Castiel chided him. _This is healthy and normal and good._

Jimmy rolled his eyes. _We've been over this, dude. I'm seventeen. Besides, anything childlike in me was consumed long ago. And what do you know about healthy and normal, anyway? You're a freaking angel._

Castiel shut up in his head, but it was sort of a resentful silence, Jimmy thought. Sometimes Castiel was more of a nagging dad figure than John Winchester could ever aspire to be. It was starting to get annoying.

So Jimmy Winchester sat in homeroom, waiting for another boring, useless day at school to start. He leaned his head on his hand and flipped through his big, leather-bound Bible, a present from Dean and Sam on his last birthday. They had been so excited to give it to him, had spent months preparing, asking Pastor Jim to find a nice one, then pestering Dad to take them by Blue Earth sometime before the big day... He hadn't had the heart to tell them that he wasn't sure he wanted it anymore. It had been years since he had stopped asking if they could try going to church in whatever flyspeck town they'd stopped at for the moment. He could have kept getting by with Gideons whenever he got the rare urge to look again at the holy book that reminded him so strongly of his parents, his lost life.

But this Bible... It was nice, it really was. Big and thick, nice big concordance in the back, silky red ribbon to mark his place, pronunciation guides and wide margins for notes and interesting footnotes and the words of Jesus in red. They'd even gotten the front engraved with his name and just... It was sweet, it was really sweet. So he read it.

Having the knowledge of an angel in your head kind of messed up the enjoyment, though. At least Castiel was politely silent on this subject, didn't point out the inaccuracies and omissions. It still left a bad taste in Jimmy's mouth, knowing what he knew.

Something jostled Jimmy's seat. "Oh, sorry."

He looked up at the shy voice, saw a girl bending over from the seat across the aisle, stretching for a pencil that had dropped near Jimmy's shoe. She looked up at him with her head bent near the floor, long blond hair swinging over her shoulder, gathered away from her forehead in a simple black clasp. She smiled, slowly, just one side of her mouth, still stretching her pink-nailed fingers for the pencil. "'Scuse me. Don't mean to bother you."

Jimmy stared at her, cleared his throat, and then his foot twitched involuntarily, sending the pencil rolling toward the girl's fingers. She lifted it delicately between thumb and forefinger and straightened up, still facing him. She smiled, ducking her chin against her shoulder to watch him from across the aisle. "Thank you."

Jimmy looked down at the Bible on his desk, then back to the girl. He gave a firm nod by way of welcome, completely tongue-tied.

Why couldn't Castiel take over in _these_ situations? He was so much better at talking to...normal people. But no, the angel was stubbornly silent in his mind, insisting that he do this, that he "be a child." Naturally.

Jimmy wasn't good at this. Dean made friends everywhere they went, even if he forgot them the second they put that town in the rearview mirror. He always had someone to play with, someone to hang out with and talk movies. Sammy connected with one or two kids of like interests and formed a study group. (At the age of _eight,_ for pity's sake. That kid was going to be something amazing if Azazel didn't succeed in ruining his life.) Jimmy sat in the corner and avoided making waves. It was how he survived.

But this girl was pretty, and nice, and attractively dressed in a light green sweater and long jean skirt, and she was smiling at him.

For lack of any better ideas, Jimmy sighed and went back to reading Ephesians. He leaned his burning cheek on his hand, though, and couldn't resist peeking through his fingers to see what she was doing. She was still looking at him.

Nuts.

Jimmy glanced to the front of the classroom. Mrs. Whitley was sitting at the desk, going through papers. They had already covered the administrative tasks of the day and now it was basically free time. They weren't really supposed to talk, but other kids had their heads down in low conversation, anyway.

Jimmy had never expected to be one of them. Even if he felt like flaunting the rules, which he usually didn't, it wasn't like he had anyone to talk to.

Another quick glance through his fingers, which he hadn't moved from his face. She was still watching him, tilting her head slightly to the side as if to study him better.

"What are you reading?" she asked.

And now he couldn't stop staring at her. Great. Jimmy dropped his hand from his face and wordlessly flipped up the left side of the book so she could read the lettering on the front. That was usually enough to chase a pretty girl away—he was so obviously both a weirdo and a Jesus freak.

But her smile only broadened. She turned sideways in her seat as much her desk would allow, and he saw the glint of the gold cross resting in the hollow of her throat. "You're new to town, aren't you? Do you have a church yet?"

He nodded slowly, then shook his head.

"Wanna come to mine?"

Jimmy felt his eyes widen. He nodded quickly, before he forgot how.

She smiled again and ducked her head. Was this what he looked like from the outside when he did the very same thing? But it looked...it looked cute when she did it.

"What's your name?"

Well. Now he was going to have find his voice. Jimmy looked down, kicked the leg of his desk a couple of times, then finally looked back at her. "Jimmy," he whispered.

Her smile was so broad and beautiful that he felt practically blinded by its brilliance. "I'm Amelia."

It was much nicer than the white light of Castiel's power, that was for sure.

X~*~X

Jimmy walked out of school in a daze, hunching his shoulders under his jacket against the brisk autumn wind. Today...hadn't sucked. This was such a massive departure from the norm that he really wasn't sure what to do with it.

It turned out that he and Amelia had a couple of other classes together besides homeroom. Jimmy couldn't remember what they were, not that it mattered. He rarely paid attention to whatever class he happened to be in at the time, depending on Castiel's innate geekiness and compulsive attention to detail to carry him through. It was like having a pocket calendar in his head, always reminding him of what he needed to do next, which homework assignment to turn in, how many minutes till the bell, and on and on. That gave him plenty of time to daydream about Amelia and how pretty and sweet and nice she was, even when he couldn't see her, so, for the first time in several years, Jimmy didn't really mind Castiel's constant nudging.

_You really should be more responsible for yourself,_ Castiel said, because he hadn't mentioned it in, oh, a whole half hour or so.

_Quiet, you,_ Jimmy replied, giddy and reckless, if only in his own mind. _I'm having a good time at school for once. Don't ruin it, okay?_

Castiel mumbled something in Enochian and subsided. The poor angel still blamed himself for Jimmy's problems, every last one, so he was almost as glad as Jimmy was that he'd finally found something about school to make him happy. Grudgingly, of course, but he was glad. Every small goodness in Jimmy's life eased Castiel's guilt, however lightly.

Jimmy detoured to shuffle through a twisted pile of leaves in the parking lot, just because he could, dark red and orange and gold sliding over his worn sneakers with a rustle like pages in a book. The breeze was cool and brisk, the sun a bright disc above. He felt like singing and dancing, clicking his heels in the air, hugging his brothers and his dad, kissing the world just because it had someone as wonderful as Amelia in it.

He finally reached his little red Ford Tempo, got inside and started the engine. He'd saved up for a year for this little junk heap, doing odd jobs wherever he could. Dad had supported the project, even contributed a few dollars from hustling, and he was the one who had checked out a dozen different used cars in the Chicago area before settling on this one. He'd actually been kind of over the top about it, insisting that Jimmy let him find a good deal for him, something reliable and worth the money. He had whittled the seller down a few hundred bucks, too. Which wasn't that much of a surprise, honestly, considering that this was John Winchester. He could be scarily intense about whether they were having hamburgers or meatloaf for supper, let alone finding a car for his adopted kid.

It even had a tape deck. Jimmy popped in the Peter, Paul & Mary album Uncle Bobby had given him and drove down Indiana Avenue, singing along at the top of his lungs with the windows down. It was only a few minutes to the elementary school Dean and Sammy attended , so he took a long-cut to prolong the journey, got a couple of songs out of the deal. He really loved Peter, Paul & Mary. It was his car, so his little brothers were not allowed to whine about his music, but he liked having a couple of songs to himself.

He reached the elementary school's parking lot and found Dean and Sammy waiting on the grassy edge, Sam sitting with his backpack propping him up, scribbling in a notebook, while Dean sprawled beside him, flat on his back staring up at the sky. Both little faces popped up at his honk, and they gathered their stuff and hurried over to get in the car.

There was a brief scuffle for shotgun, which Dean won as usual, and Jimmy's car was full of young chatter and bright, fresh faces. They always had plenty to say, plenty to tell him about what they'd done that day. The breeze combed through their hair as Jimmy drove back to the motel.

Dean propped his feet up on the dashboard, smearing dirt which Jimmy was going to make him clean up later, his backpack jammed into the footwell below. The twelve-year-old scowled when the tape switched over to another track. "Dude, you know this song is about drugs, don't you?"

"It is not," Jimmy said. On another day he would have been scandalized by the suggestion, but today was too bright and pleasant and sweet and wonderful and amazing. "It's about an awesome dragon who lives by the sea and has awesome adventures with an awesome kid who is his best friend."

Dean waved a small hand in arrogant dismissal. "Nope, it's all about the Mary-Jane. Trevor told me."

Trevor was Dean's new best friend at this school. Jimmy hadn't formed an opinion about the kid yet. Now he thought that he probably hated him.

All he did now was point an imperious finger at his little brother. "Driver picks the music. Shotgun shuts his cakehole."

Dean scowled and crossed his arms over his chest, but he shut up. At least he had the good sense not to kick the dashboard or anything. Jimmy would have had him on dish duty for a week.

"What did you do today, Sammy?" he asked, turning his attention away from the bratty little brother to the good, sweet, nice little brother who never caused problems.

Sammy leaned over into the front to tell him, holding onto the edge of Jimmy's seat with both hands and chattering in Jimmy's ear. Sounded like it had been a good school day for all of them. Jimmy flipped on the turn signal and let the words wash over him.

He waited till they got their things inside the motel room before dropping the bomb. "We're going to church this Sunday."

Both boys turned to face him, mouths hanging open and eyes wide. Dean's backpack dropped from his hand and thumped to the floor.

"What the _hell?"_

"Don't swear, Dean." Jimmy brushed past him to set his books on the kitchenette counter. "And leave those muddy shoes by the door or you'll be scraping it out of the carpet with a butter knife."

Dean did his usual muttering about "a freaking motel room" and "there's a maid and everything," but did as he was told. Sammy, though, still stood by the door, staring at Jimmy. "We've never gone to church before. Except Pastor Jim's, I mean."

Jimmy sighed and slumped, turning to face his littlest brother. It was true—the Winchester boys' religious instruction had been sadly neglected. Infrequent visits with Pastor Jim and the little he'd taught them from Sunday School lessons and parents seven years gone were no substitute. He had done his best, but that was hardly likely to be enough, was it?

"We're going now," he said.

"Why?" Dean asked, hazel-green eyes narrowed in suspicion. "You quit with that stuff like five years ago. I thought the Bible we got for you was all you needed. You said so. What made you change your mind?"

Jimmy hesitated. And he who hesitates is lost.

"You're blushing!" Dean stared unabashedly, even taking a step forward to get a better look. "You're...you're like totally red now, Jimmy! What the he...ck?"

"I want to go to church," Sam declared. He stuck out his chest a little and gave Dean a narrow look, daring him to disagree.

Dean did everything Sam wanted almost all the time. He gave the younger boy a pleading tilt of the head, then sighed. "Okay. We're going to church."

Jimmy nodded in relief. "Okay. Who's got homework?"

X~*~X

On Sunday morning, though, the whining started up all over again. Dad was gone on a hunting trip, which meant Jimmy was in charge. Usually that was enough for Dean, but not today. He couldn't find his nice shirt and when he did it was all wrinkly and ties were stupid and made it hard to breathe and he didn't need to comb his hair it was fine for gosh's sake and why were they out of Lucky Charms and this whole thing was stupid and it was too early and he wanted to go back to bed and Sunday was supposed to be a day of rest, right, so you weren't supposed to go anywhere, just relax and _lay off with the comb, Jimmy, geez_ and church was boring anyway and this was going to blow so hard and he didn't want to sit on a hard bench for hours. And on and on and on.

Jimmy sat on the rickety table and held Dean trapped between his knees, combing his hair by brute force. He dipped the comb in the cup of water by his thigh and swept it through the gold-touched brown, again and again, slicking it down nicely despite Dean's squirming and continuous chatter of objections. Sam had already combed his own hair—he polished up bright as a new penny, that kid—and Jimmy loved him for it, he really did. And now he was even trying to polish their shoes, which was an extra level of devotion that Jimmy had never asked for or expected.

"What about wards?" Dean demanded. "We can't go hang out for hours in a place that doesn't have wards. A freaking movie theater won't be consecrated ground."

"It's still a church," Jimmy said. "So there will still be some blessing hanging around it. But yeah, I already checked it out and warded all the windows and doors, like I do for our schools and where Dad works when he finds a place. I did a holy oil prayer ritual too. It's as consecrated as it can be without decades of worship soaking into the ground."

Dean yelped when Jimmy's comb caught in his hair, and Jimmy sighed and tried to gentle his touch. "Listen, Dean, it's not gonna be that bad. We won't be sitting on rock-hard pews, for one thing. This isn't like Pastor Jim's church."

"How do you _know?_ Have you been there before?"

"No, but A...a friend of mine told me all about it. It's not your regular church. For one thing, it's in a movie theater."

Dean stilled, leaning against Jimmy's thigh. "Really?"

"Yeah. It's non-denominational—not Catholic or Presbyterian or Baptist or Lutheran or Methodist or anything, really—and they rent a movie theater on Sunday mornings when it's not being used for movies. That's kind of cool, isn't it?"

"I don't know what those words mean," Dean said, "but yeah, I guess that's kinda cool. Can we stay for a movie later?"

"Uh. Sorry, Deaners. We don't have the extra cash right now." Jimmy hadn't yet found a job in this town, and the money Dad had left was just enough for rent and food and gas for the Tempo. "But you know what else? They'll have snacks!"

"Movie snacks?"

"No, coffee and donuts and orange juice. In the lobby before the service. My friend told me. And we don't have to bring anything, just ourselves. It's a gift for their visitors."

"Okay, that's kind of cool," Dean said grudgingly. "Think they'll have the cream-filled kind?"

Those were Dean's favorites. Jimmy smiled and carefully smoothed the hair over the kid's ear. "I don't know. I guess we'll have to go and find out."

Dean mumbled something, careful to be quiet enough that Jimmy couldn't catch it. "What was that, kid?"

"Nothing. I didn't say anything."

"Right."

Jimmy slicked down one last cowlick, then sat back a little, signaling that Dean could finally move away. The younger boy hopped away the second Jimmy let up the pressure, raising a hand as if to touch his hair, then stopping himself at the moment.

"Are we good?" Jimmy asked. "Are you gonna be a gentleman, just for a few hours at my friend's church?"

Dean looked at him over his shoulder, green eyes wide and guileless. "Yeah. We're good. I'll be the classiest guy you ever saw. As long as they have the cream-filled kind."

Jimmy rolled his eyes heavenward, but accepted it for the concession it was.

By the time they headed for the car, though, Dean was dragging his feet again. He had come up with another two dozen reasons not to go, and Sammy was starting to be persuaded, too. He almost always went along with Dean when he was like this, and Jimmy couldn't really blame him much, because it was _Dean._ Even stupid freaking _Castiel_ went along with Dean most of the time, unless he judged it to be against Dean's own best interests.

Sam wanted to go, Jimmy knew that—Sam had always had more faith than Dean, even before he found out about the existence of Castiel through the simple act of asking why Jimmy was so weird. (Jimmy and Dean had kept their promise to each other to always answer Sammy's questions as truthfully as possible.) But Dean was so obviously dreading the experience that Sammy now wanted to spare him. And that was just... C'mon. They were talking about going to _church,_ for Pete's sake, not camping out in a Wendigo's lair or something equally disgusting.

The two boys ended up standing by the car, as if blocking Jimmy from getting in. They stood shoulder-to-shoulder, a single force arrayed against the enemy, staring up at Jimmy with the full force of their huge, pleading eyes. It was ridiculous.

Jimmy stood with his back to the motel door, having just locked it, and stood looking at his little brothers with a kind of despair. Why did they have to do this to him? Once, just once, just one freaking time, Jimmy would really, really like someone to take his side.

Just once.

_I'm on your side,_ Castiel said. _You should go. We should all go. It will be a good thing for all of us._

Jimmy tilted his chin up and gave Dean and Sammy the sternest John Winchester-like face he could. "That's enough. _We are going to church."_

Their eyes widened slightly, and they scrambled to get in the car.

Huh. Good to know that one worked.

X~*~X

This church wasn't so bad, Dean guessed. The theater carpet was kind of sticky, and the whole place smelled like stale popcorn and sweat, but Jimmy hadn't been lying about the donuts and juice. Two long folding tables stacked with the promised treats lined one side of the lobby, and Dean had spotted them and headed for that way the instant they came in the door, dragging Jimmy and Sammy behind him.

The place wasn't full at all, and there weren't a lot of old people, but not many kids either. Dean shifted from foot to foot on the squishy carpet, balancing his Bavarian-cream-filled thing on his styrofoam cup. Sammy stood next to him, trying to be all prim and proper in his nicest outfit and polished shoes, but he couldn't help fidgeting no matter how hard he tried. He was just a little kid.

Dean grinned and nudged Sammy with his free arm, almost making him tip over and spill his juice, but Sammy caught his balance and righted himself with an indignant _"Hey!"_

Sammy immediately looked to Jimmy, expecting back-up, but their big brother wasn't paying any attention to them at all. He was looking into the sparse crowd, eyes constantly darting here and there. He kept wiping his hands on his pants, too. Dean watched him, eyes narrowed, unsure of what to make of this.

Jimmy and Castiel didn't get nervous. Not unless something massively dangerous was going on, and usually not even then, because in times of crisis Castiel usually took over. The angel was as calm as any superhero, steady and almost blank-faced in the face of danger. The only times he got even a little upset was when it looked like Dean or Sammy or even Dad might be in trouble, and then he moved almost faster than the eye could follow and made it _stop,_ whatever it was. No matter what it was. Castiel was scary like that. And cool, very cool, in all senses of the word.

Dean still didn't get what made Jimmy insist on going to church _here,_ of all places. If he was going to start that up again, Dean would have figured on some big brick building with stained glass and a bell in a tower. Jimmy was traditional like that. But he'd wanted to come here. Because of his friend? And he was nervous, really nervous. Why? Dean didn't get it.

A couple of adults had tried to engage Jimmy in conversation, welcome him and his little brothers to the church. When they asked if Jimmy wanted to come into the "sanctuary," though, Jimmy just shook his head and said he was waiting for someone.

At last, Dean saw her coming—a blond girl about Jimmy's age, followed by a younger girl with sandy gold hair and a sour expression. The older girl's face lit up when she saw them standing there, and Dean flicked his eyes over in time to see Jimmy's face light up in response. It was...blinding, almost. Jimmy didn't smile like that, not ever. He didn't _grin,_ it just wasn't in him. But he sure was grinning now.

The girl had been walking quickly, but now she slowed down, ducking her head, still smiling, and made a beeline straight for Jimmy. "Hi, Jimmy," she said, almost breathless. She spared barely a glance for Dean and Sammy, preferring to stare at Jimmy.

And Jimmy was doing the same, watching her like there was no one else in the room. "Hi, Amelia."

"Hi," she said again.

"Hi," he said back.

Oh, _God._ Dean almost choked on his delicious donut, which was a real shame. Oh, God, he _liked_ her. It all made sense now.

"Jimmy," Dean said, brushing Jimmy's sleeve with the side of his own donut. A little glaze slid off onto the pristine cloth and that was too bad, but the cause was worthy. "Hey, Jimmy. Pay attention to us."

Jimmy looked down at him, a quick glance, too fast to realize what Dean had done with his donut. "Oh. Amelia, these are my brothers, Dean and Samuel."

"Sammy," Sammy said.

"Oh. Nice to meet you." Amelia ducked back a little and pulled on the younger girl's arm, forcing her forward. "This is my sister, Deirdre. She's thirteen. That's about your age, right, Dean?"

Deirdre scowled at them all indiscriminately. Dean stared back with wide eyes. She was...really pretty. _Really_ pretty. Maybe Jimmy was on to something with this family of girls.

"Nice to meet you," Deirdre said. Dean had never heard anything more sarcastic in his life.

Oh yeah. She was definitely Dean's kind of girl. Or she would be, if Dean knew what his kind of girl was. Maybe Deirdre could help him figure it out.

"Let's go into the sanctuary, okay?" Amelia sugested, pointing the way toward Theater Two. "Dad's going to start the service soon, and we actually have a live worship band this week!"

Oh great. That meant even more of Jimmy's super-boring Jesus music. Dean sighed and dragged his feet, but followed the group when Jimmy's hand on his elbow threatened to dislodge his juice.

This was going to suck. A lot.

X~*~X

Jimmy didn't know any of the modern "praise" music, and he found most of it very repetitious, dull, and bland. He didn't blame Dean for squirming in his seat, bored and restless, though Sam stared wide-eyed at the three-piece band on the movie theater's narrow stage and Deirdre at least hummed along, bobbing her head desultorily but with a modicum of sincerity. Amelia, though...she seemed transported by the music, lifting her arms and swaying back and forth, eyes closed and face radiant in worship. Jimmy missed a lot of the words on the distant projector, more interested in watching Amelia's face. She was so incredibly beautiful. (And he could follow the songs well enough without looking, anyway, the words uniformly predictable, the musical progression almost too easy to figure out after a lifetime of loving hymns and folk songs.)

He started to sink into the familiarty of the Sunday service, fundamentally identical to hundreds he had attended as a child, no matter how this church tried to embrace "contemporary" and "non-traditional." Amelia's father, Andrew Graves, was the pastor, and he spoke from familiar passages and never strayed into the controversial or profound. It was all right; Jimmy didn't mind. Simple was nice, sometimes. It was kind of funny how Pastor Andrew kept using movies and TV shows for his illustrations, though. Sometimes Jimmy thought he was kind of stretching, but it was interesting to listen to.

Inside him, Castiel's presence began to calm too, despite how he nearly constantly shivered with a nameless, useless anxiety and sense of urgency. Castiel could never be still, never be quiet, not even when Jimmy himself desperately needed peace and rest. Castiel was always thinking about the future, trying to push his senses outward in ways he was no longer capable of, trying to rebuild the Grace long ago fractured and mangled by the claws of a demon. He was always trying to escape the frail prison that Jimmy's body had become for him. It hurt and frustrated them both, yet the angel never stopped trying.

Sometimes, in the strangest, most unsettling dreams Jimmy had ever experienced, Castiel tried to fly. It always ended in a rending crash, the two of them awake and panting, staring at the ceiling and clenching the sheets in their fists, sometimes with a trickle of blood painting Jimmy's upper lip. It hurt and it was stupid but Castiel couldn't help it.

It turned out that having a wounded angel inside of you was kind of like being a jar full of broken shards of glass that glowed hot and bright and painful as the sun. They rubbed up against each other constantly, they shared too much, and it was intensely uncomfortable for them both. But there was nothing either of them could do to change it.

But now, as the band played one of the few hymns in their setlist and all the people in the theater sang along, Castiel settled, bit by bit, into the contours of Jimmy's spirit. _Though Satan should buffet, though trials should come, let this blest assurance control..._ Without looking hard at all, Jimmy could see Castiel's bright, confusing memories of heaven, of his brethren, of raising his voice in songs of praise to God the Father with a hundred thousand other angels. The memory was awash in peace and harmony like nothing anyone on earth could ever imagine. It was too much for Jimmy to look at, overwhelming to his young, human mind, and he shrank back from it mentally. After a moment Castiel noticed his discomfort and shielded him as best he could, but it was impossible for them to truly keep secrets from each other.

The memory was beautiful, indescribably gorgeous, but a rush of melancholy poured over them both. It reminded Jimmy of his own memories of his parents, a time in his life now tinted gold in his mind, impossible and gone. Neither he nor Castiel could ever go back. Their lives were here now. They were Winchesters.

A demon had started this, killing Jimmy's parents, shredding Castiel's grace. But they had chosen this, too, in the end. Dean and Sam and John...they belonged to Castiel and Jimmy now, and both were determined to do whatever it took to protect this little broken family no matter what it cost them.

The spell of momentary peace had shattered, though the band continued to play and the people sang on. Even Sammy sang, knowing the words to this one from seven years of living with Jimmy, and Dean reluctantly nodded his head and tapped his foot. A shudder passed through them both, from Castiel to Jimmy, and the human sat up straighter in his seat.

_What is it?_

_It's...nothing. I thought I sensed..._

_What?_

_Never mind. It's gone now. My senses are far from reliable, in any case._

After the service, the five of them stood in the aisle, talking. Dean was trying to flirt with Deirdre, which Jimmy did his best not to watch, even out of the corner of his eyes. He had seen in Castiel's memories of the future the man Dean would become, almost preternaturally handsome and very charming to many of the women he met, but the kid wasn't there yet. He had only recently gotten over the "girls have cooties" stage. He seemed to be very, very over it now, though.

"What—what are you doing after church?" Jimmy asked Amelia, trying not to get his hopes up. Maybe they could just...go for a walk, or something. A walk would be great. He just wanted to be with her.

She smiled at him the way she always did, eyes crinkling up, cheeks rosy-bright. "We're going to help Dave pack up the drum kit and take it back to Grace Baptist on the other side of town. Dale and Margie will take care of their guitar and bass, but the drum kit is a pain and we can't leave it here."

"We'd love to help," Jimmy offered immediately. Without turning his head, he saw Dean's outraged glare. "Okay, _I_ would love to help, and my brothers will come along _because they have to."_ He glared at Dean in return, moving only his eyes so that he still faced Amelia.

"I'd love to help, too," Sammy said, and Jimmy gave him a smile. Sammy was a such a sweetheart, most of the time. It was hard to believe that he had demon blood swimming in his veins.

They ended up helping with most of the clean-up, packing up the music and sound equipment, carrying the folding tables out to someone's van, running a vacuum over the lobby carpet for crumbs. Then they followed behind the van in their car to the baptist church to help unpack. And Dean could just sit in the car and wait if he was going to be such a snot about it, that was all Jimmy had to say.

Some of the parishioners at Grace Baptist were still standing around in small groups at the front of the building, chatting. Jimmy's eyes scanned over them reflexively as he walked toward the back, the kick drum in its case bouncing off his leg. And then it was his turn to shudder.

_What is it?_ Castiel asked, sharp and urgent.

_N-nothing. I thought I saw...but it couldn't have been._

_Are you sure? Be sure._

Jimmy halted and turned to stare at the church-goers, scanning each face. It wasn't there now. _He_ wasn't there now. It was just a memory, a random firing of synapses, that was all.

_I'm sure. I didn't see anything._

Castiel let it drop, as Jimmy had let the other matter drop back at Amelia's church. But they could not keep secrets from each other. Both knew what the other had thought he'd seen, thought he'd sensed.

But it couldn't have been. Not at church. Not on consecrated ground.

X~*~X**  
**


	7. Book Two, Part Two

The weeks followed in similar pattern. John found them a house on Michigan Avenue, not far from school, and sometimes the brothers walked. John in this life did his best to keep his promise to Jimmy and Castiel, making sure to always keep his sons as his first priority. The first time around, Jimmy figured, they had probably never moved out of the motel. John probably hustled pool and cheated at cards to keep them in money instead of finding work at a construction site. They probably spent only weeks here instead of months. The Winchesters still moved around a lot, following the hunt, but Dean might get a chance to graduate high school this time. He liked school, liked making friends, while the Dean in Castiel's memories had always spoken disparagingly of such matters. And this John would never think of missing Christmas, not even for the most important hunt he'd ever come across.

He could afford it, now that he had Castiel—and even Jimmy—to back him up and help him out. The other John had been alone and desperate, unwilling or unable to trust the few hunters he met who could have supported him, flailing for a way to protect his boys from the monster that had killed his wife, not to mention all the other creatures in the night. This John had an angel on his side, and his life was better for it.

All of their lives were better now. Except for Jimmy's. At least he assumed so—the one thing Castiel had managed to hide from him was what Jimmy's life would be like if none of this had happened. Castiel had excised it from it own memory somehow, saying that it would only cause Jimmy pain and be of no use in stopping the coming Apocalypse. Jimmy knew, though, that without Castiel his life would be better.

He tried not to resent the angel. It wasn't his fault, not really. Not...entirely. Sometimes it was hard, though.

Like the time Jimmy went grocery shopping at the corner market down the street. He was just there for milk and eggs on this crisp Saturday morning, planned to make French toast for his brothers when they finally dragged themselves out of bed. This early on a weekend, the shop was all but deserted, cool under the fluorescent lights. The only shoppers were Jimmy and an elderly lady kneeling by the milk case pulling out every single gallon to find the one with most distant expiration date. The teenage clerk at the counter watched over them with a dull, sleepy gaze, chin propped on one hand, occasionally yawning. Jimmy got his eggs, then stood a few feet back from the lady, trying not to fidget while she took her time with the milk.

She was humming "Onward, Christian Soldiers," Jimmy recognized, and he smiled gently and began to hum along without realizing it, his gaze softening and his arm falling limp at his side, no longer fidgeting. That was one of the nice things about this part of central Illinois. So many people knew the hymns.

The lady finally found her jug of milk and began to laboriously replace all the others. Jimmy set his eggs aside and knelt down to help her with a swift, "Here, let me get that for you."

She grinned and sat back, letting him work. "Oh, what a polite young man! You don't see much of that around these days. No, you certainly don't."

Jimmy gave her a little smile and ducked his head, continuing to work. She reminded him of... She reminded him of something, someone. It was nice.

He finished with the milk and held on to the last jug for himself, then pulled himself to his feet and gave the lady a hand up. She grunted as he pulled her up, holding his hand with a crushing grip. Once straight, she stared at him, eyebrows wrinkled. "Oh my... Do I know your parents, sonny?"

He stared back at her, eyes suddenly wide. "N-no, I don't think so."

"Who are they? You certainly do look familiar. Are you sure I don't know you from somewhere? Maybe it's your grandparents."

Mrs. Kriegel. She had taught him Sunday School when he was in third grade. Jimmy took a step back, suddenly afraid, though he didn't know why. "No...I just moved here with my dad and my two brothers. My father is John Winchester...I don't have a mom."

"But I could have sworn..." Mrs. Kriegel squinted at him, then fumbled for the glasses on the chain around her neck, lifting them to her eyes to get a better look at him. Jimmy backed another two steps away. "I'm sorry, young man, but you do look an awful lot like... Why, you look like little Jimmy Novak, gone these many years."

"I'm sorry, ma'am. My name is Winchester." Jimmy turned and hurried toward the clerk, in a rush to get out and get away. Mrs. Kriegel mumbled behind him, stuck in old memories, and he just wanted to leave.

He didn't want to think. He didn't want to remember. Jimmy barely gave the clerk time to ring him up, just shoved a few dollars at him and blurted, "Keep the change!" He hurried down the sidewalk as fast as he dared without danger of breaking the eggs, his mind almost blank with terror.

He didn't want to remember.

But he did, oh he did. He remembered everything that happened that night. It had been an ordinary evening, the Novaks after dinner, Dad reading his thick magazines full of big words, Mom working on her crochet project. She had been making a baby blanket, blue and pink and yellow, little squares... Jimmy had been doing his homework, dawdling as he usually did, unwilling to finish and go upstairs for bed. The lamps in the living room were warm and yellow, and everything was comfortable and quiet, and Jimmy wasn't sleepy, he wasn't, he...

Jimmy rubbed the back of his wrist over his eyes, denying the tears, fingers aching from carrying the milk jug while he walked. He didn't want to remember.

_Jimmy._

Castiel. And his voice was gentle. Castiel's voice was almost never gentle. He didn't really know how to be gentle. But he tried, for Jimmy and his brothers. For their family, he tried.

_Jimmy. I am sorry._

"Don't be sorry!" Jimmy spat. "Don't be sorry! The world will be better because of this! We're going to keep it from ending, keep everyone safe, keep people from hurting and suffering and dying. So many people! What does it matter if my parents had to die for that to happen? What does it matter? It doesn't matter, not at all, not even a little tiny bit!"

_I am sorry, Jimmy._

A scraggly young maple stood in their front yard, and all of its leaves were red now, though not many had fallen. Dean and Sam were looking forward to raking those leaves, turning them into piles to jump into and scatter. They liked playing, they liked... Jimmy stumbled to the tree and turned to lean his back on it, scraping down to sit on the ground. He let the eggs and milk rest where they'd fallen and buried his head in his hands.

_They matter, Jimmy. You matter._

"You wouldn't have thought so, once. The first time around. I was just a tool to you then. Just a body for you to wear like a suit."

_I was wrong._

Jimmy had felt the jolt, that night, felt something pour into him like liquid fire, instantly banked to nothing. He hadn't felt anything after that, hadn't known what it was. Hadn't even thought about it, considering what happened next. But he knew now what it signified—Castiel traveling backward in time, thumping into his vessel in an earlier moment instead of carrying the older body along as he'd meant. All of it had been completely against his will. The angel had been injured by the journey, had been unconscious for months, and then when he woke...

Well, it was all in the past. Or the future, whatever. Castiel was trapped in Jimmy now and they both had to deal with it.

_I never meant for this to happen, and I am sorry._

"I know," Jimmy murmured. He knew everything Castiel felt.

But the fact remained that Castiel had brought a demon along with him on that journey back in time, and the demon had killed Jimmy's parents.

X~*~X

Jimmy dreamed of smoke and fire that night. He knew it wasn't one of Castiel's dreams—those were bright and confusing, unless they were of the event that had made him choose to throw himself backward in time, the final battle that ended with an adult Sam grinning with bloody teeth, Lucifer shining golden from his eyes, and adult Dean dead on the ground with intestines hanging from his gut like broken rope. No, this dream was Jimmy's, of the line of demarcation that separated one half of his childhood from the other.

It had been sudden, like a bomb, or a war. One moment Jimmy and his parents were quiet and at peace, and then the room was full of smoke, a roaring, choking wave of smoke that was somehow a physical thing with physical power. An invisible force threw Jimmy's mother and father against the wall as he instinctively rolled under a table and covered his head, staring in horror, watching the blood burst out of his father's mouth, watching his mother scream and writhe in agony.

Jimmy's heart thumped against his chest, loud and aching, eyes so wide they hurt. He didn't understand what was happening, he didn't know what he could do. This wasn't supposed to happen, this was never supposed to happen. "Mom!" he screamed. "Dad!"

They didn't answer him. They couldn't. Fire poured from the walls and engulfed them both and Jimmy screamed until he couldn't scream anymore.

_Thud._ Jimmy landed on the floor, his heart racing and his breath rushing in and out. The room around him was cool and dark, no fire, no smoke. Sweat coated his skin, rapidly cooling in the night air. In moments he would be shivering, but for now all he felt was heat. Sheets and blankets tangled around his legs like shackles, and he trembled in their grip, paralyzed and unable to free himself.

Dream. It was just a dream.

"Jimmy?" Dean's voice from the other bed was sleepy and low. "You okay?"

_I'm fine,_ Jimmy tried to say, but nothing came out, his throat choked and dry, scarred by ashes and fumes seven years gone.

_Castiel, take control and tell them I'm okay._

_I will not._ The angel sounded ticked off. _It is not true._

"Wha's gon' on?" Sammy's voice now, muffled on the other side of Dean in their double bed. Great. Now both of his little brothers were awake.

"I'm...okay," Jimmy choked out.

Rustling from the other bed, still sluggish and sleepy, and Dean thudded down to the floor next to him. "Aw, Jimmy..." The kid sounded sad, but not surprised.

This scene was all too familiar, really. It played out for the Winchester boys at least once or twice a month. The only question was which boy would be on the floor.

Dean helped Jimmy get untangled, grabbed his arm to help him up, pushed him into bed. It wasn't right for someone so young to be taking care of everyone around him, but Dean took to it so naturally, as if there was nothing else he'd rather do... And Jimmy was too weary, too frightened, too grief-stricken to refuse his help.

Jimmy curled up on his sweat-damp pillow, shivering now, throat still clogged and dry. Dean smoothed the covers over him and patted his shoulder. "No more dreams, okay?" It was half order, half plea.

Jimmy nodded and listened to Dean climb back into his own bed.

_No more dreams,_ Castiel echoed. But he was no more capable of shutting them out than any of the humans in the room.

X~*~X

When they'd been in town for a month or so, Jimmy and Castiel made the rounds. That was what Jimmy called it, anyway—revisiting all the buildings they had protected when they first moved here, refreshing the wards, saying the prayers, performing the rituals. It was what they did to keep the family safe. John kept an eye and ear on the news for monsters and ghosts, Dean made sure they all got enough to eat at every meal, Sammy worried rather too much about anyone who was away even for a few hours, and Jimmy and Castiel kept the wards.

They made the rounds on a crisp, clear Friday afternoon, full of the rush of autumnal breezes and alive with the rustling of falling leaves. Sammy was with one of his study groups and Dean had something going on with friends, so Jimmy had the house to himself while John was at his job. Usually Jimmy relished such rare opportunities to be alone, but today he had work to do. They went around the house first, checking the sigils on the windows and doors and walls, painting holy oil on the lintels and praying blessings down on the Winchester family. Jimmy fell into the routine of it, as relaxed and at peace as he ever felt. No demons would touch his brothers and father here, no matter what had happened in the past. Here were allowed only goodness and light...and the busted-up angel who rode inside Jimmy's skin.

Next, Jimmy drove to the middle school. He was the most thorough with this building, as it was where Dean and Sammy spent most of their time. So many windows and doors, so many oddly shaped corners and walkways. Castiel painted the symbols with their hands, carefully tracing the marks already made, and Jimmy hummed with their voice in absent hymns and prayers half-spoken, half-silent. On the edges of dulled angelic senses they could feel echoes of their little brothers' presence, Sammy's voice eagerly answering a teacher's question, Dean's sticky fingers trading desserts with another child at lunch. It made Jimmy smile to know that they were so very much themselves, his brothers, Dean and Sam, young and innocent and free of cares unfit to childhood.

Jimmy lit an incense stick and waved it slowly back and forth as he walked around the school, chanting a Greek home blessing and invoking the Father, the Son, the Holy Ghost. It wasn't quite authentic—the incense wasn't in a censer, he hadn't brought the other materials along, and Jimmy wasn't a Greek Orthodox priest—but the blessing was worth saying even so. The chant rolled off his tongue in mellifluous syllables, round and low and powerful. He'd always liked the sound of the Greek language.

_Let us pray to the Lord. Lord have mercy. God our Savior, the True Light, Who was baptized in the Jordan by the Prophet John, and Who did deign to enter under the roof-tree of Zacchaeus, bringing salvation unto him and unto his house: do You, the same Lord, keep safe also from harm those who dwell herein; grant to them Your blessing, purification and bodily health, and all their petitions that are unto salvation and Life everlasting; for blessed are You, as also Your Father Who is from everlasting, and Your All; Holy, Good and Life; creating Spirit, both now and ever, and to the ages of ages. Amen._

Unfortunately, the sound of his own voice was just loud enough that Jimmy was not aware of the other young, murmuring voices until he rounded a corner and all but ran right into them.

"Holy mackerel!" he yelled, falling back and throwing up his arm to cover his eyes. That was the hand holding the incense stick, though, so he got a nose and mouth full of thick, pungent smoke along with his shock and consternation. The thread of the blessing completely deserted him, and even Castiel seemed to be flailing inside his head, though he quickly regained control, his spirit radiating waves of pure amusement.

The image was burned in his brain of his little brother and his friend's little sister leaning against the wall beside the dumpster, their lips locked together, and there was no getting rid of it. Once seen, some things could not be unseen.

"My eyes!" he squeaked. "Dean, you're too young!"

_Actually, I believe his first kiss is happening somewhat later in the timeline this time around,_ Castiel said, and oh, his amusement wasn't helping a thing.

_Shut up,_ Jimmy responded with all the maturity he could muster at the moment.

"Jimmy?" Dean's voice squawked in outrage, too. "What the heck are you doing here? Go away!"

Deirdre made a noise that Jimmy thought must be what teenage eye-rolling sounded like. "This is _stupid."_

Jimmy lowered his arm far enough to see that Dean and Deirdre were still standing there, staring at him, way too little space between them. Then he raised his arm again and turned around to flee. "I'll see you at home!" he called over his shoulder.

"Your brother's kind of a prude, isn't he?" Deirdre's voice floated behind him as he trotted away.

_What about the blessing ritual?_ Castiel asked.

_We'll finish it later._

_But what about..._

_We'll finish it later, Castiel! Just...shut up!_

Yep, the angel was still vastly amused. Jimmy would be ticked at him if he could spare the energy.

X~*~X

Sometimes, in some things, usually very small, Jimmy got what he wished for. They took walks together after church almost every Sunday, Jimmy, Amelia, sometimes with their siblings and sometimes alone. After they took the equipment back to Grace Baptist Church, sometimes they walked around the neighborhood there. Sometimes the Graves family invited the Winchester boys back to their home for Sunday dinner, and sometimes when John was gone they went, and they walked. Sometimes there were "youth group" activities around town with the tiny church, the group consisting of little more than their two families and perhaps two or three other teenagers. At school Amelia had other friends, small social groups Jimmy still felt no part of, but these Sunday walks were just for them.

Jimmy lost track of time that way, walking with Amelia, talking of almost everything under the sun, laughing, joking, enjoying, letting crisp autumn air burn in his throat and nose and puffing it out in dragon-fumes of steam. Feeling human. Alive. If Dean and Deirdre weren't there to whine about wanting to go back, if Sammy wasn't there to tire and insist on a piggy-back ride, he could lose all sense of time's passage until evening shadows began to stretch across the pavement and he glanced up to see just how far the sun had fallen in the sky. Castiel was silent in his mind, indulgent, for once unconcerned with schedules and forever looking forward to what came next. For the first time in this half of his life, Jimmy had a friend, and the angel who lived inside him was content. If Amelia noticed when their walks went on too long, she didn't mention it. Perhaps she was indulging him, too.

It was his own fault, then, for not paying attention to where they wandered, for not realizing where they were, what street they were passing down. Until suddenly, one gray, cool Sunday evening soon after Halloween, Jimmy looked up and realized where his feet had taken him. His froze, breath catching in his throat, eyes widening until they burned. Castiel had been somnolent in their mind, all but soothed to a slumber he never needed by the familiar contentment of the walk, but now he startled and bristled, fierce and bright, a pulsing of angry light behind Jimmy's eyelids. He knew where they were, too, and if ever an angel of the Lord could hate and despise a place, a single point on the map, Castiel hated this one.

Amelia had been talking about something...music, movies, Jimmy no longer remembered...and now her voice faltered and trailed away. "What... Jimmy? What are you looking at?"

Jimmy remembered this house. He remembered his first day here, the social worker's hand on his shoulder pushing him gently away, setting him adrift in a wide, trackless sea that she didn't know hid a shark in its depths. He remembered the dread filling his belly as he reluctantly left the safety of the school bus and stepped toward the door, knowing what would greet him inside. He remembered awkward meals, his foster mother trying to soothe and keep her husband happy. He remembered how it never worked, not really, not for long.

He remembered the first time Mr. Baker had hit him. How shocking it was, how much it had hurt. He had been frozen then, too, a nine-year-old boy completely unable to move, paralyzed by terror. Later he learned that that was the best way to deal with it, to just stand still and take it, because it was worse if Mr. Baker had to chase him. Once it started, it didn't stop, not until Mr. Baker was done.

It never stopped.

_Remember also your last day here,_ Castiel said. His light pulsed in Jimmy's mind, fighting to spread outward, to warm and soothe and heal. He couldn't do it, not really, not all the way, but he never stopped trying. _Remember when I woke, when we met, when you trusted me. Remember how I helped you and how we escaped. You are not alone, and that foul excuse for a human being will never harm you again. I swear it, Jimmy. Remember that, too._

"Jimmy? What's going on? Are you okay?"

Amelia's hand slipped into his. They had never held hands before.

Something snapped, allowing him to move again. Jimmy looked down at their linked hands and swallowed against the dryness of his throat, trying to find something to say. Her hand was small and soft and cool. It fit into Jimmy's palm as if it belonged there, young, tender fingers sliding around his palm, covering the tiny scars, the gun calluses. He still couldn't speak, tongue too large and thick.

He slipped backward in his mind, pushing Castiel forward, though it meant that he could no longer feel her so immediately. The loss hurt, but he needed to reassure her more than he needed to be reassured. _Tell her I'm okay._

Castiel flared defiantly, but moved forward to take control. "I used to live here," he said.

_That's not what I said!_ Jimmy flailed, panicked. _Don't tell her about this!_

_You are not okay,_ Castiel responded, fierce in his truth. _I will not lie to her._

"In Pontiac?" Amelia asked, eyebrows bent in puzzlement.

Castiel nodded Jimmy's chin toward the house. "There."

Amelia looked into his eyes, trying to understand. Her hand gripped his, tugging it closer, and she wrapped her other hand around it, too. "It's not a happy memory? You seem so...upset."

Castiel looked at the house for a moment, and Jimmy felt a brief flash of the angel's own unpleasant memories of the place. The confusion of waking from unconsciousness inside a younger body, his horror and guilt when he realized what had happened, his pain and sorrow when he couldn't fully heal Jimmy's body, couldn't make everything better, couldn't do what an angel was supposed to do. How alone and helpless and desperate he had felt.

The angel looked back to Amelia, regarding her gravely. "Something bad happened to me there."

Amelia looked at the house, staring for a long, tense moment, as if memorizing everything about it. Then she looked back to them. "Will you tell me?"

_No!_ Jimmy cried. _I don't want her to know!_

"Someday," Castiel said. "Someday I'll tell you. You deserve to know."

_Don't you dare. You stupid freak, don't you dare! It's not your place—you can't do that to me._

_Someday you will tell her yourself,_ Castiel said, infuriatingly calm and cool, certain. _It is a human thing to need the support of those you love. And you are still very human, Jimmy Winchester._

Jimmy had been preparing to push forward, to take control whether Castiel would let him or not, but he froze again at the mention of that one word. _Wait, you... Love?_

_You love her._

"Jimmy?" Amelia asked, tightening her grip on his hand, and Jimmy looked into her eyes and knew it was true. His eyes watered, whether from holding them so wide in the cold air for so long or from something else, he couldn't have said.

He barely felt Castiel slipping backward, giving control back to him. "Sorry," he whispered through his tight throat, hating how weak and small he felt.

She let go of his hand, and he instantly missed the warmth of her touch. But it was only so she could lean forward and wrap her arms around his neck, resting her head on his shoulder and holding him close, tight, safe. Jimmy trembled.

He blew out a breath and ducked his head, hiding against her blonde locks, and he hugged her back. For a long time, that was all he could do.

Amelia didn't seem to mind.

X~*~X

"You wanna go to church with us, Dad?" Dean poked his father across the table with his spoon, trying to get his attention.

John blinked and yawned, managing to glance up from his coffee. He had been up late the night before, checking out a possible haunting at St. Mary's Cemetery. "Uhhh, no thanks, sport."

Dean made a face of disappointment, but went back to his cereal without comment. It wasn't like Jimmy hadn't asked him before. John never wanted to go.

"Since when did you like going to church?" John looked at Dean, squinting, peered from him to Jimmy and Sammy. "I thought this was your big brother's idea and he was just dragging you along."

Dean shrugged. "It's not that bad. I like watching Jimmy blush his face off when he's around Amelia. 'Sfun."

Jimmy choked and kicked him under the table, and Sammy laughed, banging his fist next to his bowl hard enough to make milk spurt up. "Yeah, it's awesome! Jimmy and Amelia, sittin' in a tree, kay eye ess ess eye en gee..."

"Shut _up!"_ Jimmy poked him, too, not very hard because Sammy was still little and didn't really get it. "Stop singing that!"

"Why?" Dean asked, wide-eyed with exaggerated innocence. "You know it's true. You and Amelia are in looooovvvvvvveeeeee..."

Jimmy tackled him out of his chair. Breakfast was pretty much a complete loss.

John watched them get ready for a church with something like an indulgent smile, or at least as close as John Winchester ever got to an indulgent smile. As usual, Jimmy had to wrestle Dean to the floor to comb his hair, and Sammy was gallantly and heroically above it all. There were the usual arguments about which shirt was better ("But _other_ people in that church don't dress up all fancy, Jimmy!" _"We are not other people!"_) and whether the shoes were shiny enough ("Oh my go...sh, Sammy, leave me alone!" "...Yeah, actually, that's probably good."), and John just let them do their business.

Jimmy sent Sam and Dean out to the car and checked himself in the mirror one more time. He turned around to find John standing right behind him and just about jumped out of his skin, and John raised his hands, his face apologetic. "Sorry, sorry. Didn't mean to startle you."

Jimmy pressed a hand to his chest, trying to settle his heart. "'Sokay. Just...wasn't expecting you to be there."

"Yeah." John tucked his hands in his pockets. His eyes were big and brown and sympathetic. "So you really like this girl, huh?"

He looked down at his shoes, scuffing it on the floor. "Yeah." He looked back up. "It's not a big deal or anything."

"No, of course not. It's just...I'm glad you're...I'm glad you like it here, is what I'm saying. You don't usually...I'm just glad you like it here." John's broad shoulders lifted in a shrug.

"Yeah." Jimmy looked at his shoes again. He never knew how to act around John, his adopted dad, one of the people Castiel had come back in time to protect.

John waggled his eyebrows, giving him a grin that looked way too much like Dean's. "So, have you asked her out yet?"

Jimmy squirmed and took a step toward the door. "No, not really. I mean...um... We go for walks. With Dean and Sam and her little sister, and um. Sometimes just the two of us."

"Well, that's a good start. But what about dinner? A movie? The school dance?"

"I don't...I don't know if she even dates. Some of those Christian girls don't, and..."

"Have you asked her what she thinks?"

Jimmy just stared at him.

John chuckled. "I guess it's easier to hang out when you have a bunch of siblings around, huh. I'm glad Dean and Sammy are being so kind to you." He paused for a moment, then pulled one of his hands out of his pocket, now holding his wallet. "Here...here's some money. Take them out for ice cream after church. All of 'em."

Jimmy stared at the twenty-dollar bill in his hand. "Dad, you don't have to..."

"I know. I want to." John touched his shoulder, hesitantly at first, just a few fingers, then covering it with his warm, broad palm when Jimmy didn't flinch away. "Listen, Jimmy. I'm sorry I kept ignoring you, those years ago when you kept asking again and again if we could go to church. I know it was important to you and I just...let it slip by. I was...I was angry then, at God, at everything. I felt like He'd let me down when Mary died and even you and Castiel coming to me like that... Well, it wasn't enough to convince me otherwise, I guess."

Jimmy tried to look back him, tried to meet his earnest gaze, but his eyes were getting all blurry and he had to look down again.

"Look, son. I was stupid and selfish. I ignored you every time, and eventually you quit asking. I'm sorry I did that to you. You deserve to go to church if that's what you want. You deserve to have a relationship with a girl and get to know people outside our screwed-up little family. I'm sorry I let your desires fall through the cracks like that, and I hope you can make up the time now."

"I..." Jimmy gulped. "Thanks, Dad."

Dad held his shoulder in a strong, gentle grip, gave it a little shake, then let go. "Have fun with your friends. Ask Amelia about that date. Maybe over ice cream."

"Okay." Jimmy shook his head, dazed, and made his way to the door. His hand on the knob, he turned and caught his father's eyes again. "Dad?"

"Yeah?"

"Are you still mad at God?"

Dad's mouth quirked in a crooked little grin, small but there. "Not anymore. He sent me an angel. No, actually... He sent me two of 'em."

"Thank you."

Jimmy stuffed the bill in his pocket and went out to meet his brothers.

X~*~X

They never got that ice cream.**  
**


	8. Book Two, Part Three Conclusion

"What was that?" Deirdre asked, her voice starting to rise in hysterics. "Who was that? Was that a person? It looked like a person! It wasn't, was it? How could it have been a person?"

Amelia wrapped her arms around her sister and pulled her close. Her face was pale and set in terror or determination. Jimmy wanted to reassure her, wanted to embrace her the way she was embracing Deirdre, but he couldn't. He couldn't do a thing. Castiel had taken over and Jimmy had let him.

Castiel prowled the borders of the rec room at Grace Baptist Church, inscribing wards of protection on every wall, every window, every doorjamb, digging the blade of Jimmy's boot knife into the paint and wood with strength born of anxiety, dread, and the overwhelming need to protect. That person..._it_ was there, and it was going to come back. They had to be ready.

Sammy knelt on the floor in the middle of the room, near where Amelia and Deirdre huddled. He counted out the amulets and charms the Winchesters had had in their pockets, laying them on the floor in Sammy's own system of tidy organization. There wasn't much. You weren't supposed to need this stuff on consecrated ground.

"It was a demon," the little boy said. He spoke with a calmness and clarity that Jimmy recognized must sound chilling and horrific to the two girls. "The eyes turned black, right? Demon."

"Okay, I got some!" Dean returned from a storage room somewhere, hauling an armful of water bottles. "Good thing those Baptists like to stock up. Will this be enough, Castiel?"

Castiel glanced up from his work long enough to nod.

"What...what did you call him?" Amelia asked.

Deirdre was still struggling. "But it can't...it can't be a demon! That's Mr. Baker, he's the one who told us Grace would lend us their equipment, he's the one who, who... He can't be a demon, he can't!"

"Sorry, sweetheart," Dean said, dumping his water bottles next to his little brother and the two girls. "He definitely is."

"But Mr. Baker is a Christian! The devil can't come in your heart when Jesus is in there!"

"Sorry," Sammy said, picking out two amulets from the small pile. "It doesn't always work like that. Here, put these on."

He gave one to each girl. They stared at them, silent in shock.

Castiel approached them, still holding the knife in his fist. He had a few more symbols to carve. "This man claimed to be a Christian, you say? I highly doubt that he's sincere."

Amelia stared up at him, her eyes round and blue. Jimmy ached for her, but there was nothing he could do to make it better. "Why do you say that?"

Castiel's lip curled in a righteous sneer, alien on his face, yet Jimmy knew that the angel felt true loathing for this man. "He is the same one who severely abused Jimmy Novak for more than half a year in 1983 and '84. And he was not possessed by a demon then."

This was not the way Jimmy would have chosen to tell Amelia that he had been abused as a child. Or that he was adopted and Winchester wasn't his real last name. Or that he had an angel inside him. But, well, a lot of Jimmy's choices seemed to get taken away from him.

"...Jimmy?" Amelia echoed. "You?"

Castiel nodded and put a hand to his chest. "Jimmy Novak, now Jimmy Winchester, is my vessel. I am Castiel, an angel of the Lord."

"No, no, no, no no no no," Deirdre said, quietly at first, then rising to a wail. "No, no, no, this can't be happening!" Her hands lifted to frame her face, fingernails digging into her temples. "This can't be real, this can't be... It's all stories, just stories!"

At this Amelia jerked in shock yet again, pulling back from her sister.

Jimmy sighed inwardly. _Castiel, please let me talk to them._

Castiel was still weak enough that he could have wrenched back control on his own if he really wanted to, but the angel acquiesced graciously enough, bowing his head as he receded back into Jimmy's mind. Jimmy raised his head and knelt down beside the girls, carefully setting the knife aside. "Amelia, it's me."

She just sat there, frozen.

"Amelia, please look at me."

Amelia turned to face him, eyes and face blank, empty.

"Amelia." He lifted a hand and caressed her pale, smooth cheek, something he would have been terrified to do only an hour before. That didn't matter now, nothing mattered but this. "Amelia, you believe the Bible, don't you?"

She breathed, in and out, struggling for balance. "I do but... Jimmy, this is so insane..."

"Castiel is telling the truth. He's an angel. He's been inside me since I was ten years old."

"Jimmy, Jimmy, that's _crazy..."_ She was shaking hard now, unable to believe.

He shook, too, as desperate to convince her as she was to have none of this be true. "You believe in God and Satan, don't you? Why not demons and angels?"

"But, you know..." She flapped a hand, the other still fisted in her sister's shirt. "I thought, invisible forces, powers and principalities. I didn't think...I didn't think they were so..."

"So what?" he asked, as gently as he knew.

"So _real,"_ she admitted, and the tears began to fall.

He brushed her cheek with his thumb, catching her tears. Then he leaned forward to kiss the other cheek and tasted them, too. "Amelia, I... Castiel says I love you. I'm pretty sure he's right. Will you trust me?"

She closed her eyes and drew a deep breath, steadying under his hand. "I...I will. I do."

"All right." He sat back, picked up the knife again. "I'm letting Castiel take control now so he can fight the demon. But I'm still in here, Amelia. I'm still Jimmy."

Amelia nodded. She put on the anti-possession charm Sammy had given her and helped Deirdre do the same.

One door to go. Castiel leaned on it, carving into the painted metal and scoring the marks as deep as he could. They just needed to buy a little more time, needed to figure out some way to get a Devil's Trap marked on the floor. They had no paint, no markers, no chalk, no salt, nowhere to get any of those items, and the knife was now dull and almost impossible to cut with. Castiel persevered, though, aware that the locks on this door would never hold against the strength of a demon. It had trapped them in one of the least defensible places Castiel could imagine, and they had never anticipated danger on holy ground.

Maybe a church's rec room didn't count as holy ground. Castiel would have to keep that in mind for later. He could hear Dean and Sammy behind him, chanting over the holy water.

_Slam!_ Something heavy hit the door on the other side, jolting Castiel's slim teenage body, and a grinning face appeared at the window. Mr. Baker, the demon, both and one together. Castiel pushed back with all the strength in his young legs, grimly determined to finish this last warding mark. One more downslash, then the crossing line...

"Hello, little angel!" the deep voice boomed, barely muffled by the door at all.

The door burst inward, broken metal flying from the shattered locks, and Castiel was thrust backward into the room to land in an undignified sprawl. He leaped to his feet in one motion and crouched there, snarling. He held the knife in a defensive position in his hand, between himself and the demon. "Stay back, foul imp!"

Booming laughter, ugly and wrong, defiling this poor sanctuary. "Oh, how you amuse me, little angel! Did you really think I wouldn't find you? Did you really think you would be _safe?_ And oh, the pure impudence of you, coming back here of all places! What else could you possibly have expected?"

It approached, moving sideways along the wall and toward Castiel, and Castiel circled, keeping himself between the demon and the children. "I expected you to know better than to meddle in the affairs of a servant of the High One, imp. You are far out of your depth. Leave now before I see reason to destroy you where you stand."

"Oh ho, pretty words, little angel." The demon grinned, two steps closer, gesturing as if to swipe at him. Castiel raised the knife, but the demon did not come near enough for him to slice at it. "What angel uses such puny mortal tools? If you were truly a servant of the High One, as you claim, you would need nothing but your hand and your righteousness to send me back to Hell."

Castiel looked into the black eyes and tightened his mouth into a thin line. "Come closer and say that again."

Jimmy trembled inside their shared body, buffeted nearly into unconsciousness by the terror of being faced with not only a demon, but the man who had torn him to pieces for months on end when he was too small and helpless to defend himself. Still, he had to crow a little at Castiel's words. _Nice bluff, Castiel. Man, if I wasn't me, I would totally believe you._

But the demon only smiled, low and slow and feral. "You can't fool me, little Castiel. I know how much power you hold, and it is pitiful." And he thrust his hand into his jacket, the nice Sunday jacket worn by Mr. Baker that let him blend into the Sunday Baptist crowd and convince them that he was one of them. Castiel caught his breath at the glimmer of light thus revealed, and when the demon pulled his hand back out, he held a vial half-full of beautiful, shining grace.

"You see that, little angel? I have a part of you. Did you never wonder why your grace was so broken and useless? It was because I kept some of it all for myself, and oh, what a pretty thing it is."

_"Exorcizamus te!"_

Castiel gasped at Dean's young voice right in his ear, and the demon shouted, steaming from the entire bottle of holy water Dean had flung at him. "Dean, get back!"

Castiel thrust out his arm, pushing Dean behind him, and just in time. The demon leapt at them both and drove them to the floor. It yelled, writhing as Castiel buried the boot knife in the body's heart. It would not kill the demon, but Jimmy would never have to fear this man again, and Castiel was fiercely glad.

_"Omnis immundus spiritus, omnis satanica potestas, omnis incursio infernalis adversarii..."_ Sammy called, continuing the exorcism, and over him Castiel could hear the two girls shakily reciting a psalm.

All of it helped. Not enough to defeat the demon, not nearly enough, but it helped. The foul thing found its feet again and reeled back, growling and wiping at its eyes, trying to get rid of the water. Castiel got to his feet and pulled Dean up, then pushed the boy back once again. "Stay with the others," he ordered breathlessly, though he knew better than to expect Dean to obey.

"No way, dude, I got more holy water." Dean stuck a bottle into Castiel's hand, still holding more for himself. It was a superior replacement for the knife, though it would not help Castiel finish that last warding symbol.

"Hey, you yellow-bellied freak!" Dean yelled at the demon. "Give Cas back his mojo! Why don't you pick on someone your own size instead of a bunch of little kids? Freakin' _coward!"_

It was the first time this Dean had shortened his name to the diminutive. Castiel was inexplicably warmed.

"Little idiot!" the demon snarled. "I'll kill you too!"

"Not today," said another voice, and a mighty punch drove the demon ten steps back, crashing into the wall.

John Winchester. He stood between the demon and his sons, one hand in a fist, the other reaching back toward Castiel and Dean.

"Dad!" Dean's voice was effervescent with shock and delight.

John turned his head far enough to give them a grin. "Thought I'd come drag you boys away so Jimmy could have ice cream just with Amelia. I know it's sneaky, but sometimes you gotta make that first date happen. Glad I thought of it. Give me that holy water."

Dean handed it over gladly, and John stalked toward the demon, shaking the bottle menacingly. "Give my boy back what you stole from him, and _maybe_ I'll just send you back to Hell instead of killing you right here and now."

The demon leaned on the wall, one hand pressed over its jaw where John had punched it. "You can't kill me. You don't have the tools, don't even know what they are. You don't even have the sigils written to catch me!"

"Oh, you think so?" John tilted his head, smiling slow and mean. "I have an angel on my side. An angel from the future. An angel from the future who happens to know everything I need to know to defeat everything that comes after me. You really think we wouldn't have taken advantage of that? You really think we wouldn't have gathered all those tools by now? Seven _years_ later? Oh, you are the dumbest, slimiest, _stupidest_ little piss-ant ever to crawl out of Hell, aren't you?"

In a cruel mockery of the demon sliding its hand into its jacket and drawing out of the vial of Grace, John put his hand into his coat and pulled out the Colt. He pointed it at the demon, cocked it. And grinned. "Say hello to Azazel for me. Tell him I'm coming, and he can run, but he can't hide."

The demon threw back the possessed man's head and roared out of the body in a pillar of smoke that gleamed white and red within. It snaked to the ceiling and out through the rafters before Castiel had time to take another breath. Baker's empty body thudded to the floor, a graceless pile of limbs, bloody and dead. Castiel slid down to sit, too, the last of his strength running out. He panted and shook, and Dean knelt beside him, rubbing his shoulder.

"You're not gonna pass out again, are ya, Cas?" the boy asked, forehead bent in anxiety. "'Cause I don't like it when you do that, dude. It freaks me out."

Castiel gave him a smile, shaky and uneven. "Not...not this time, I don't think. Thank you, Dean. You are far too brave for your own good."

John stood by the body, prodding it with one foot. He retrieved Jimmy's boot knife, then looked back to the boys. "Castiel? Dean said it took something from you. What was it?"

"A...a vial. It will look like a vial full of liquid light. That is a physical manifestation only, though."

John bent down to look through the dead man's pockets. He straightened with something in his hand, but Castiel saw no glimmer of light. John turned toward them, holding out the vial, but it was empty.

Castiel exhaled in disappointment. The demon had escaped with his grace. He was still broken. Still useless.

_No, Castiel,_ Jimmy said. _Never broken. Never useless. It has part of your power, but it doesn't have_ you._ You're more than that._

"Sorry, buddy," John said. He knelt next to them and patted Castiel's shoulder, the one Dean wasn't rubbing. "We'll get it back for ya."

"Yeah," Dean said. "From now on we're painting Devil's Traps freakin' _everywhere_ we go, man!"

X~*~X

After a while Dean wandered back over to check on Sammy and the girls. John knelt by his oldest boy, a hand on his shoulder. He felt the rigid strength of the angel in the teenage body, the way he held himself, strong and straight but still shivering, exhausted by the battle he had just fought.

Sammy and Dean's voices registered on the edges of John's senses, sweet and calm, reassuring the girls. They were good boys. A good team. Someday they would be good hunters. For now they were just children, though. They shouldn't have seen what they had seen today, and soon John would have to talk to them about it, make sure they understood, make sure they were okay. For now, though, he was more worried about the child sitting beside him.

He felt the sigh run through Jimmy's body, the slumping of the shoulder under his hand. His posture changed, became simultaneously looser, more childlike, and more tense and curled in on himself, and John knew that Castiel had receded and left Jimmy in charge again. John looked down at him, saw the boy's head buried in his hands, shoulders hunched and trembling.

"Jimmy?" he murmured, not expecting an answer.

He got one, of a sort. Jimmy flinched at the sound of his voice and pulled his elbows in tighter, shaking even more. Turtling up, trying to protect himself. It hadn't been this bad for years, not since the first few months after Jimmy and Castiel joined their broken little family.

John glanced behind him, saw Dean and Sammy sitting by the girls, comforting them as John was trying to comfort Jimmy. "Dean?" he called over his shoulder, just loud enough to cross the distance. "Something else happen here I don't know about?"

"That's the man that hurt Jimmy when he was ten," Dean called back, matter of fact, though his young voice was cold with rage.

Oh. John looked at the broken corpse that had carried the demon. That was the "Mr. Baker" who haunted Jimmy's nightmares, the drunken, heavy-handed fuck who had turned Jimmy into the mass of bruises and cuts who first showed up in that long-ago motel parking lot, slapping his scraped and shaking hand against the window of the Impala. That was the creature who made Jimmy cringe when John reached out to touch him, the stinking _monster_ who abused an innocent child so severely that even seven years later, few of the scars had faded.

Castiel had killed him with the boot knife. John firmed his jaw to keep it from shaking and wished that he had been the one to do the deed.

He had to take a moment to breathe. He had to take care not to grip the boy's shoulder too tight. He had to soften his voice, make sure that none of his fury was showing. "Jimmy? He's dead."

Jimmy didn't respond.

John held his shoulder and shifted around to face him, gripped the other one so that he held the boy framed between his big hands. "Jimmy. He's dead. He'll never touch you again."

Jimmy shivered.

He kept his voice low, just between them, trusted Dean and Sammy to keep the girls distracted. They didn't need to see this. "Jimmy, stand up. Come look at him. He's dead."

The boy shook his head, still hidden in his hands.

"Jimmy." John firmed his voice, made it a command. "I want you to see. I want you to know. He'll never touch you again. _Stand up and look at him."_

Jimmy drew a shaky breath and lowered his hands just far enough to plead with his eyes. John stared back steadily and refused to rescind the order. Finally, the boy nodded. He pushed himself to his feet, and John rose with him, helping him up. Once standing, Jimmy's arms wrapped around his torso, instinctively hugging himself, and John put an arm around his shoulders and held him to his side. For once, Jimmy allowed it.

They shuffled over to the corpse and stared down at it. The slack face, the limbs askew, the blood soaking the white Sunday shirt and dark Sunday jacket. They stared for what felt like a very long time, frozen in a single moment of horror and understanding.

Jimmy blew out a sigh, breathless and faint. "He's dead," he whispered.

"Yeah," John said.

"He'll never hurt me again."

"No, he won't."

"Or anyone else."

"No."

"He's really dead. He's really gone."

"Yes."

Jimmy started to cry. He turned to John, hiding his face in his chest, wrapping his arms around his middle. John held him tight and let him cry. It was the first time Jimmy had let John hold him when he wasn't unconscious or nearly so.

If nothing else, the day had at least given them one good thing. At least it had given John the opportunity to hug his adopted son. If nothing else, he was grateful for that.

X~*~X

In the end, it was because of Mrs. Kriegel that they had to leave town.

John had never officially adopted Jimmy. That would have involved social workers and home visits and way too much contact with the government. Instead he just started calling the boy his son, and Jimmy called himself a Winchester. Bobby Singer provided the forged paperwork, once Castiel told John who the older hunter was and how to find him. It was a lot easier than going through channels and had never caused them a problem before.

Jimmy Novak was probably still listed as missing, presumed dead. Baker had even spent a few months in jail after the investigation into the foster boy's disappearance had turned up too much evidence of abuse for anyone to ignore. But Mrs. Kriegel was asking questions, and eventually someone might care enough to look for the answers.

"I wish you'd _told_ me you came from Pontiac," John said at one point, exasperated but not really angry. He understood Jimmy's need to avoid all mentions of his past. "We could have, you know, not moved here and spent months in a place people might recognize you."

Jimmy just sighed. "Sorry, Dad."

"I swear, from now on, I'm doing a background check on every single person I meet. Including ten-year-old kids."

Dean and Sammy weren't exactly pleased about leaving their school and the friends they had made there (especially Deirdre Graves, in Dean's case). They understood, though, and didn't whine or complain too much. They had both been woken by Jimmy's nightmares for weeks after Baker was dead, both taken turns crawling into his bed and whispering him awake, then curling up with him until he calmed and sleeping there till morning. They eventually decided that an ounce of prevention was worth a pound of cure and just started piling in with him at bedtime, ignoring Jimmy's protests and prevailing by dint of sheer Winchester stubbornness. Moving again sucked, but when it was for their big brother, Dean and Sammy put up with it.

Hardest was saying good-bye to Amelia. Jimmy didn't want to do it, so he kept putting it off, even skipped church their last Sunday in town. In the end, she found him. She looked at the small, pathetic pile of moving boxes stacked outside the garage, heard the younger boys arguing inside about what to leave behind and what to take. When Jimmy came to the door, she simply grabbed his hand and pulled him outside. Jimmy's shoulders hunched up, but he went with her.

They stood under the maple tree, now with only one blood-colored leaf clinging to a high branch, piles of red and rust drifting around their feet. Amelia took Jimmy's face in her hands and kissed him. Jimmy closed his eyes, falling into it, his blood rushing in his ears, his heart. His hands trembled, electric, and folded around her waist almost of their own volition. He knew what this was, now, and it hurt. It hurt because they were leaving, they had to leave, they always left. It wasn't right; it wasn't fair.

When she drew back, he opened his eyes and just stared.

"Do you really have to leave?"

Jimmy shuffled his foot in the leaves, looking away. His hands dropped reluctantly, buried themselves in his pockets. "Yeah. I wish I didn't."

"I don't want you to."

"I'm sorry."

As was usual with them, talking wasn't really their strength.

"Will you come back?"

Jimmy shrugged. "I dunno. We...we go all over. It's not just demons that are real. So are ghosts. And lots of other stuff. We...kill them. It's just how it is for us."

"You're heroes. You're a hero, Jimmy Winchester."

Jimmy was startled into meeting her eyes. "No, it was Castiel who..."

"No." She put a hand on his chest. "You. Now that I know he's there...I can tell the difference. Castiel is amazing, but you are too."

Her other hand still rested on his right cheek. Jimmy leaned into it, lifted his hand to hold her cheek, too. "Amelia..."

"Will you write me? Or call me? Or anything?"

"I'll try."

She pulled away, reached into her pocket. She kept her diary there, a pen on a ribbon. A quick rip, and she pulled out a page and began to write.

"Amelia... Please look at me."

Amelia paused long enough to look up at him, her eyes wide and blue. "Amelia, someday... Someday we'll find that demon, and Castiel will get his mojo back. He'll be able to leave me then, or... Someday we'll finish this, someday I'll be able to have my own life. Maybe. I hope. Will you...?"

She smiled, sweetly, so sweetly. "I'll wait for you. I don't care how long it takes."

His heart clenched in his chest and his breath caught his throat. "Oh, Amelia, please..." He didn't mean to sound so pleading, but he couldn't help it. "You don't know, you can't know what will happen... Please, please, don't make a promise you can't keep."

"Jimmy." A push, a hand tight in his shirt, and she kissed him again. This was deeper, almost frantic. Jimmy couldn't breathe. He opened to her, pushed back into her mouth, and she took everything he had and gave it back to him, larger and more beautiful. He never wanted it to end.

When Amelia pulled away this time he was dizzy, breathless, watching her retreat through a haze and wanting nothing but her return. "Jimmy. I never do."

"I'll write you every chance I get."

She pressed the paper into his hand, and he glanced down, saw the phone number and address before he closed the paper in his fist and held it close like the precious thing it was.

"Don't forget me," she said.

"Never."

It was all they had. It would have to be enough.

Jimmy returned to the house, stepped inside only to be greeted by utter silence. Dean and Sammy stood in the doorway to their room, watching him with wide eyes. Dad was in the kitchen, pretending not to watch him, but Jimmy could totally tell that he was.

"Are you okay?" Dean asked.

"Yeah," Jimmy said. "Yeah, I'm fine. Are you guys done packing?"

Sammy moved over to him and wrapped his arms around Jimmy's middle in a wordless hug. Jimmy breathed in deep and hugged him back.

And they went back to the business of being Winchesters.

X~*~X

Castiel watched the rain fall as they drove away from another town. Jimmy had retreated inside their shared mind, curled up and hurting. There was nothing Castiel could do for him. It made him ache.

The taste of Amelia still lingered on their lips. Castiel tried not to acknowledge it, knowing that it wasn't for him.

"You doing okay, Cas?" John asked.

Castiel turned to look at him, startled by the use of the diminutive. He'd never imagined it crossing John's lips, but the man seemed to take to it naturally, as easy with it as Dean had ever been. "I'm...coping."

"Yeah." John kept his eyes straight ahead, watching the road. Dean and Sammy were quiet in the backseat, watching the rain crawl backwards on their windows in branching streams. Creedence Clearwater Revival wailed on the radio, melancholy and deep.

_Someone told me long ago, there's a calm before the storm. I know it's been coming for some time. When it's over, so they say, it'll rain a sunny day. I know, shinin' down like water._

"We'll get him," John said. "That demon that took your grace, hurt you, trapped you. We'll get him. We'll get it back."

Castiel nodded slowly. "I'm sure you will do everything you can."

"Yeah, but..." John looked away from the rainy road for a moment, all but forcing Castiel to meet his eyes. "I'm not just saying that we're gonna try, dude. I'm not just saying that if it comes up, we'll take care of it. I'm making you a promise. We _will_ get this demon and give you back what he took from you. We're going to do it. We'll get 'im, Cas."

_Till forever on it goes, through the circle fast and slow. I know it can't stop, I wonder._

Castiel blinked and looked ahead into the rain. The road stretched on, endless. Dean and John called him "Cas" now. He had a nickname now; he was family. Not just Jimmy—_him._ Castiel. Cas.

"Thank you," he said.

John shrugged. "No big deal. I know you're an ancient warrior angel with thousands of years of experience and knowledge and all... But you're also my kid. You dig?"

"I dig."

Castiel Winchester looked ahead at the endless road, saw a destination somewhere beyond. He watched the rain and knew that somewhere ahead the clouds broke and fled. Somewhere they vanished. Somewhere, rain didn't fall, and the sunlight was warm and golden and full of promise.

_I wanna know, have you ever seen the rain? I wanna know, have you ever seen the rain? Coming down on a sunny day._

End of Book Two

Art: samibee dot livejournal dot com slash 19425 dot html

Fanmix: maychorian dot livejournal dot com slash 231324 dot html

Thanks to everyone for reading and reviewing! I hope you enjoyed the end. Well, the end for now-I have many more stories living in my head, both for this AU and the original Rain Falling Down 'verse.


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Supernatural, Family, Hurt-Comfort