Chapter Text
Dean had the equivalent of an Atomic Bomb in his chest because he was about to kill God’s sister.
It was a lot for even him.
Over the last thirteen years, so much weird freaky shit has happened that he was half convinced that he was actually in some psych ward hopped up on so many drugs that reality wasn’t a thing anymore.
That would be more believable than whatever the Hell his life was now.
Amara knows he has an Atomic Bomb in his chest, and she isn’t very happy, so he starts to make shit up, trying to stall so he can figure out how to get closer to her and blow them both up.
It was hard to come up with some half-assed argument when his chest and limbs felt like they were melting from the inside out and his nerve endings were burning like ash—it vaguely reminded him of his times downstairs, the way his skin didn’t feel like it fit, and the heat that never left, that burned away part of his soul forever.
But he persevered. He was stubborn like that.
One of his skills—one of the only things he prided himself on—was his ability to talk to people. Sammy and Dad had all the book smarts, but Dean had gotten all the people skills.
He went on about “family” and other nonsense, inching closer to Amara. He was running out of time. He could feel it in the way his heart started to stutter from the immense power in him.
Then, Chuck was there, and he and Amara were having a Family Reunion.
Cute.
Not sure what that meant for him and the rest of humanity. Chuck was a selfish asshole on the best of days, and Amara a psychopath. Not a winning combination, especially when they had both tried to kill each other on multiple occasions.
Amara waved a hand at him. “Dean Winchester.”
He stiffened. He’d rather avoid any more attention from the psychotic younger sister of God.
“You gave me what I needed most,” she said. “I’d like to do the same for you.”
Amara touched him, and the burning, melting, Hell-like , sensation was gone from his chest, and he could breathe again.
She gave him a long look. It was hard to read the ancient being, but he thought it was gratitude.
“Enjoy your second chance, Dean. Don’t waste it,” she said before tapping two fingers to his forehead.
Before he could move away—he knew the two fingers of doom personally from Cas—everything went dark.
*
*
*
Wrong.
Everything felt wrong.
His body didn’t ache like it should. He couldn’t feel the tension in his shoulders from the time he threw his back out in Purgatory or the achy knee from when it had gotten kicked in by a Werewolf, the headache that had been behind his eyes since the Mark of Cain was gone, and he felt lighter than he had in years, not weighed down by all his pain and suffering.
Wrong.
He didn’t like it.
It felt like Hell.
Alastair liked to play with his body, change how it felt, and redo all his nerve endings to make all sensations a thousand times more painful. He would change him until his body wasn’t his own anymore. To the point that it was unrecognizable. And he did it thousands of times.
He bolted upright, breathing heavily, and found himself tangled in blankets.
His thoughts weren’t clear, just that he needed to move.
He scrambled, trying to get out of the covers, and landed flat on the ground, knocking the little air he had out of his lungs.
Before he could even try to get his bearings, the lights switched on, and Dean almost threw up; it was so blinding and overwhelming.
“Dean?” Someone with his brother's face asked.
Because that was not Sam.
The Shifter or whatever the Hell that was in front of him had that stupid Justin Beiber haircut that Sam used to have and was all gangly limbs and baby-faced, with innocent eyes and an open expression.
His Sam was tall and had broad shoulders with his princess hair that he maintained almost psychotically. He was hardened and stoic and dependable and he was his brother. Not this baby.
Everything was wrong.
Sam was wrong.
His body was wrong.
The room—a crappy motel room, not the comfy Bunker—was wrong.
“Boys, what’s going on?” a deep, gravelly voice asked, rough from sleep.
Dean knew that voice well, better than his own, even if he hadn’t heard it in over a decade. But it couldn’t be who he thought it was because that man was dead.
He pushed himself shakily onto his feet.
His dad—his very dead dad—was pushed up onto his elbow, staring at him with stern eyes. “Dean?”
“Not real, this isn’t real,” he muttered. “I’ve finally lost my mind.”
It couldn’t be. Dad was dead, and that wasn’t his Sam. His body wasn’t his body.
He squeezed his eyes shut and tried to remember the last thing that had happened. The Darkness. End of the World Part One Million and Two. Chuck. Giving up his life again. Amara….Amara.
No, it couldn’t be.
“Dean? Are you alright?” Sam asked hesitantly.
Enjoy your second chance, Dean. Don’t waste it.
Sam touched his shoulder lightly and everything came crashing down around him—because he could feel that . It was real.
Baby Sam was real. And that meant—that meant his dad was real, too.
It was too much, far too much for Dean. He had thought he was going to die, had been prepared to, had maybe even looked forward to the peace that it would bring.
And now this.
His stomach turned violently, and he practically ran to the bathroom, slamming the door shut behind him and locking it. He ran over to the toilet and emptied his stomach of food he didn’t remember eating.
He wiped the bile off his mouth with the back of his hand and leaned against the wall.
If this was real—and deep down, he knew it was—then he was back before the whole Stanford debacle. Before the visions, and the Demons, the Angels, and the torture and death. When his family was a family and not two broken shells of people trying to get by.
Nothing had happened yet.
Nothing.
Everyone was alive— everyone.
Dad, Bobby, Ellen, Jo, Ash, Charlie, Kevin, Pastor Jim, and dozens of others. All the people that he had lost, who had left him and taken a piece of his soul with them, they were here. They weren’t gone.
He choked back a sob and covered his mouth with his hand.
It couldn’t be real. Yet he knew it was.
Thank you, Amara.
None of the bad things had happened yet—none of the really bad things—Sam was just a normal kid. He hadn’t died a dozen times, gotten addicted to Demon blood, gone to Hell, or anything .
“Dean, I really need to hear something from you, man, or I’m breaking the door down,” Sam called, his voice holding a note of hysteria.
Right.
This Sam still tried to comfort him because he didn’t know that there was no way to comfort him for the things he went through. This Sam didn’t follow the unsaid rule of letting the little emotional breakdowns go in favor of the world-ending ones.
This Sam didn’t know anything.
“I—I’m fine, just a bad dream,” he called hoarsly.
Just a bad dream . That was essentially what the last seventeen—fifty-seven?—years were now. A bad dream .
He shivered at the thought. Everything he fought for, every injury, everything he had paid for in blood, it had never happened.
Hell, Purgatory, that year without Sam.
It was just a dream now, one he would have to live with for the rest of his inevitably short life without anyone to lean on. Because there was no way in hell he was telling his dad or Sam that God's sister had sent him back in time because she had the hots for him .
His dad would probably kill him.
Dean wouldn’t exactly blame him if he heard the same crackpot story.
“Son, I think it’s best if you come out here.”
His lungs froze in his chest. The young side of him, the soldier, was moving to his feet, but the real Dean stayed put. The Dean who had lived through a dozen apocalypses and lost everyone he loved, the one who had hunted far greater evils than his father could ever even imagine, the one who was decades older than his father, the one who had spent longer in Hell than on Earth—he didn’t move.
“I need a minute,” he said firmly.
He had just been sent seventeen—fifty-seven?—years back in time. He needed time to adjust. He deserved at least five minutes to himself. It wasn’t that much to ask.
There was mumbling behind the door he couldn’t make out. If he had to guess, his dad was about to kick the door in, and Sammy was holding him back.
“You got it, Dean,” Sam said.
His head thumped against the back of the wall. No matter if this Sam wasn’t really his Sam, he had Deans back like always. That would never change.
“Thanks, Sammy,” he said.
*
*
*
After ten minutes of pulling himself together and wiping all traces of vomit and tears away, he pulled on the mask of Young Dean, one he hadn’t worn in a while.
He had cultivated his entire being ever since he was four to hold his broken family together, to keep the peace, to tone down the constant gloom and doom, but the mask had cracked almost completely after his dad's death and had been obliterated after Hell, and he was struggling to shove himself back into that persona.
He opened the door, and instantly, Sam was on his feet, puppy dog eyes in full force. “Dean.”
Dean tried to grin. “Sam.”
Sam hesitated as if he wanted to give him a hug or something. “What was that?”
He kept the tired grin on his face and shrugged. “Don’t really know. Just a dream that freaked the living daylights out of me.”
Sam gave him a Look—one that said he didn’t buy it. “You don’t have bad dreams.”
Dean clapped him on the shoulder. “What can I say? There is a first time for everything.”
Sam was still watching him warily, but eventually, the look fell away. This Sam trusted him wholeheartedly, even if he was a teenage brat. Dean hadn’t broken his trust a thousand times over yet.
“You freaked me out there for a second,” Sam said, relief written on his face. “Don’t do that again.”
Dean gave him a cocky grin. “I’ll try not to, Sunshine.”
He hesitated a moment before glancing at his dad, who was glaring a hole in his head. His heart still stuttered at the sight of him, and the air seemed more like water in his lungs, but he managed to keep his composure.
They had a stare down, Dad giving him a substantial look, like he was supposed to do something, but Dean couldn’t think of what he wanted from him.
“You boys get some sleep. We ride at dawn,” Dad said after Dean didn’t say anything.
Sam gave him a clap to the back before muttering goodnight, and Dean shuffled into his sweaty bed.
He missed the Bunker at that moment. He missed his memory foam mattress, his soft blankets, and the walls that were decorated with his guns.
But his family was whole for the first time in forever, so he couldn’t complain.
He jerked awake when someone grabbed his shoulder—which was weird because Sam and Cas knew not to touch him while he slept—and was halfway to his gun before he realized it was Sammy —not Sam —trying to get him awake.
It took a second for it all to come back, all the crazy nonsense that was his life.
Amara. Time-travel. Second Chance.
“Time to go, Dean,” Sam said impatiently.
He gave himself five seconds to readjust to this, to his baby brother being a child again, to his dad being freaking alive before he pushed himself up and slapped Sam away.
Sam glared at him petulantly.
Dean rolled his eyes and got out of bed, shoving on his boots. This was familiar. This was almost normal. Even in their ancient age, he and Sam still went about the same routine they had years ago.
The one thing that wasn’t normal, the one glaring difference that made his heart beat too fast and his hand tremble, was his dad.
He could sense his presence in the corner of the room, but he couldn’t make himself look over there. He couldn’t even point his body in that direction.
His relationship with his father was complicated, to say the least. He loved the man. He hated him. Dean felt like he had never really been the man's son , only a soldier. But all Dean knew was being a soldier, even after he was gone, so how could he judge him for it?
He had spent the years without him trying to grapple with everything he felt, but he never really came to a conclusion. After a while, he just shoved all his feelings into a box because he didn’t have enough mental energy to try and deal with his “feelings” while also saving the world and keeping his idiotic brother alive.
Dean grabbed his old duffle, which looked practically new, and followed Sam and his dad out the door.
His dad gave them brief orders—apparently, they were in North Carolina and heading to Vermont—before he got in his giant truck.
Sam threw him the keys to Baby, and he froze for a second.
It probably wouldn’t be the smartest thing to drive right now—the world still seemed fuzzy and staticy around the edges—but Sam was giving him one of his Looks, and he really couldn’t afford to let Sam or his dad getting suspicious, so he slapped on a grin and hopped in the driver's seat even as his gut rolled.
To keep his sanity, he slammed in a random cassette to distract his brain from his teenage brother, who had been in his thirties yesterday.
“You all right, Dean? You’re looking kinda pale,” Sam asked, voice ridiculously high pitched.
He was his brother.
But he also wasn’t.
Not the one he remembered.
“Yeah, I’m fine, still shaking off last night,” he said.
Sam hummed thoughtfully. “What did you dream about?”
Dean almost choked; he asked it so casually. In his time, Sam would corner him first, guilt trip him, and choose his words and time carefully so that he could manipulate him to the fullest extent.
His Sam was diabolical in his efforts to get him to “talk about his mental health.”
Sammy was…innocent. Naive.
And that made him smile.
“Some real freaky shit. Trust me, you don’t want to know,” he said.
Sam cracked a grin in the corner of his eye. “Alight, Mr. Macho Man, who can’t talk about feelings.”
This Sam could still smile easily and brightly, and that was something that Dean would die for.