Dean was as good as his word. First thing the next morning - well, not exactly the first thing as the trio ended up sleeping late due to the middle-of-the-night nightmare incident of which nothing was mentioned the next morning - Dean could be found in the kitchen whipping up batter and spooning it onto a pan with his Mini-Me standing on a chair right next to him so that he could help. If one didn't know better, they might mistake the boy for Dean's son, rather than for the child version of Dean himself. It was possibly shades of the future, however, as it was likely this entire scene could play itself out a few years down the road with their son Sam in little Dean's place.

They'd left Jo to sleep a little longer, but before long came the sound of the shower running, and the movement of feet back and forth as she got herself ready for the day ahead. All was going smoothly, until she let out a sound that wasn't quite a shriek and not quite a yelp, and they heard her feet come to the landing. "Dean' Dean!"

"Downstairs!" both man and boy called in unison, giving each other the same strange look before both turning their heads toward the sound of Jo's voice. Neither seemed so much concerned as curious regarding what she was yelping about. Both of them shrugged their shoulders at each other, mirror images of the other, though one was big and one was small.

"Maybe we should go see what?s the matter," the younger Dean suggested.

"Yeah, that's probably a good idea," replied the elder, turning the heat off on the stove so that the pancakes didn't burn.

Jo was standing at the top of the stairs, wrapped in a towel, her damp hair hanging over her shoulders as she glared down at her husband. One hand pointed toward their bedroom. "Big, black, hairy," she informed him, tense with fright that wasn't life or death, or even scary monster. Hopefully the words made sense to the elder Dean, because it was likely they made no sense to the little one.

"Is Rufus streaking again?" he asked with a smirk, the first image coming to mind at her description, as ridiculous as it was. Dean didn't even know if Rufus was hairy, and he didn't really want to know. He did know Jo well enough to know what she meant from her description, but he couldn't help but tease her about it.

"Rufus?" the boy echoed, completely confused. Dean didn't reply, snickering as he disappeared momentarily into the bedroom. "Who's Rufus?" he asked.

Narrowing her eyes at her husband, Jo shuddered, waving her hand toward the bedroom. "Just kill it, smarty-pants," she told him, hugging her arms around herself as she looked down at the little Dean. "Rufus is an old, old friend of Bobby and Ellen's. He introduced them to each other. But this isn't a Rufus thing. This is a ....spider ....thing."

"Ask her how she can hunt monsters but can't handle an itsy bitty spider," Dean called from the bedroom. As yet, there was no sound of any splat.

"You're afraid of spiders?" the boy asked, stating the obvious. He wasn't quite sure why the other Dean was comparing a friend of Bobby and Ellen's to a spider, and he was too shy to ask.

"Oh, come on, you're the one who has a problem with rats," Jo called back defensively, but she was the one face to face with his younger self, who was clearly interested in finding out the truth here. "Yeah, I'm scared of spiders," she admitted, reaching out to gently tweak the end of his nose. "Which isn't funny, no matter how much everyone laughs. Monsters don't dangle on invisible threads above you when you're sleeping."

"Hey, everyone has a weakness. Indy didn't like snakes; I don't like rats. So, sue me!" Dean replied from the bedroom, before uttering an expletive that wasn't really fit for a seven-year-old's ears. Apparently, he was having more trouble with the creepy crawly thing than he cared to admit.

"I'm afraid of fire," the boy replied, frowning up at her, and with good reason. It was what he'd dreamed about the night before, though he'd yet to admit it.

"And I don't like spiders!" Holding a conversation with Dean of two different ages should have been difficult, but for some reason, Jo didn't find it much of a stretch. Admittedly, the adult one was getting less of her full attention, since he was on spider duty. She matched the younger one's frown gently. "It's a good thing to be afraid of," she agreed with him. "First time he saw me freak out over a spider, it was one about this big -" she demonstrated by holding her thumb and forefinger just barely apart "- and I thought he was going to wet his pants laughing."

The boy's eyes widened at Jo's admission, and though he was only seven, he couldn't help asking, "Why didn't you step on it?" Of course, it never was that simple.

"Got it!" Dean called from the bedroom, though there had been still been no sounds of a splat coming from the direction.

"'Cos it's a spider, and ..." She shuddered, laughing at her own comical distress over what was just an insect that was probably more afraid of her than she was of it. "I just can't," she confessed to the little boy. "I can't even be in a room with one." Dean's call from the bedroom made her look that way sharply. "You better not be bringing it out unless it's waiting for a coffin!"

Much to her possible further distress, Dean exited the bedroom with a jar in his hand, the spider squirming inside it. The little creature wasn't going anywhere, except in the garden, but it was still very much alive. "Say hello to Boris the Spider," Dean said, shaking the jar to indicate its contents. "Or maybe Charlotte. I can't tell." How did one tell the difference between male and female spiders anyway' Dean didn't know. At least, he knew better than to show his prize off to Jo.

"Dude ..." She still complained anyway, covering her eyes to edged past him so she could go and get dressed. "You two go and do what you gotta do with your icky little friend, okay' I'm going to hide in the closet for a while."

Dean chuckled at his wife's irrational fear. Was this the same woman who had fearlessly taken on demons and hell hounds and God knew what else? Who had faced down a hell hound and sacrificed her own life to save his and Sam's" Dean just shook his head and chuckled. "Come on, kid," he said to the boy, ruffling his hair fondly. "Let's go set Boris free in the garden where he can live in peace without scaring Little Miss Muffet."

"Don't let breakfast burn!" was Jo's parting shot as she disappeared into the bedroom. They also heard her let out a last little shuddering "ugh" before she shut the door. It really was amazing - not five months ago, she had faced down not one, but two Olympian goddesses in a down and dirty fight, but one little spider turned her to squeaky mush. Just proved she was as human as they were.

The fact that she'd been dressed in nothing more than a towel had made an impression on the boy, though he'd said nothing about it. Thankfully, Jo was more of a mother figure for him at this age than a possible romantic partner. Romance was not something the seven-year-old thought much about.

The elder Dean just chuckled as the two of them started down the stairs. "Chicken!" he called back at Jo.

"Why didn't you kill it, like she asked?" the boy asked curiously.

Dean shrugged, not too sure himself. It was just a spider, after all. He'd killed countless monsters in his life, but "Boris" wasn't a monster, and Dean thought his only crime was being in the wrong place at the wrong time. "What did he ever do to anyone" Besides, spiders are actually beneficial. Did you know that?"

Jo stared at them, breaking into laughter once again. "What's this, the Dean-conspiracy to keep Jo from picking up anything heavier than a fork?" she demanded in amusement, the sparkle in her eyes more than evidence enough - even without the big smile - to prove that she found everyone's insistence on her taking it easy utterly ridiculous. She watched as the pancakes flipped, a little enviously. According to Sam, it was a skill she would never master, no matter how often she tried.

"Something like that," Dean replied as he finished up with the pancakes, sliding them off the pan and onto a plate. "Butter and syrup are in the fridge," Dean told the boy. He didn't need to ask if he'd prefer juice or milk, already knowing what his preference was at that age. Juice for breakfast, milk the rest of the time ....at least, until he got a little older. On his own, it was always Coke or Pepsi, until he tried his first cup of coffee at the tender age of thirteen.

Ordered out of setting her own table, Jo was still chuckling a little helplessly as she poured Dean his own cup of coffee, pulling open the cutlery drawer for the little Dean to help himself from while he attended to the task he'd given himself. "You know, it'd serve both of you right if I went into labor today," she teased them affectionately. "No baseball, no burgers, just a whole day of me complaining."

Dean winked over at the kid before responding to his wife, unable to resist teasing her a little. "I thought that was you everyday," he said as he made his way to the table with a plate stacked high with pancakes.

"Oh, honey, you haven't heard complaining yet," Jo warned him with a chuckle, pouring out a glass of juice for the littlest Dean in the world before moving to join them at the table with all their drinks in hand. "Just you wait ....when this sucker comes out, I'm going to stretch the limits of my creativity to insult you in ways you have never even considered before." She grinned at little Dean as she sat down. "Because that's what ladies do."

"You mean S-" Dean started, almost forgetting himself and blurting the name of their son. "Our son?" he said, quickly correcting himself before the kid caught on. "I'm not sure he'd like it if he knew you were calling him a sucker," he teased further.

"Why would you insult him?" the boy asked innocently as he set the table.

"You want me to think of something else to call him?" Jo asked her husband sweetly, serving out a couple of pancakes to the little boy who was setting the table around them. His question made her smile gently. "I won't mean most of what I say," she promised the little man. "But giving birth hurts, and it takes a long time, and I'm probably going to blame the princess here for all of it while it's happening. Doesn't mean I won't want him right there with me, or that I'm not happy to be a mom. Just means I'm not good with pain."

The boy still looked pretty confused, despite Jo's explanation. He remembered when his mother had been pregnant with Sam, but he hadn't been there when she'd given birth. "My parents used to fight sometimes, too, but they always made up," he said, thinking it was something like that.

Dean frowned at the mention of his parents, not really wanting to think about them just now, but knowing everything the kid knew.

"Everybody fights sometimes," Jo told the little boy. "Most of the time, they don't mean it. It's easy to lash out at the people you love, the people who love you, because you know where to hit the hardest. And when you live with someone all the time, sometimes you annoy each other. Sweetie, I'll bet you love your brother and your daddy, but I'll also bet that there are times when you don't like them very much. It's like that with everyone. I might call Dean a dick sometimes, but that doesn't mean I don't love him. Just means he's annoying me."

Dean harrumphed at Jo's explanation. "Mostly she calls me Princess, but I haven't figured out why," he explained before taking a sip of his coffee. He waited until Jo and the kid were finished with the butter and syrup before he tended to his own pancakes. "But she's right. Everyone argues sometimes. Doesn't mean you don't still love each other. Just ..." He paused a moment before continuing. "Never say something you can't take back, and never go to sleep mad at someone."

"Well, this got all kinds of deep for breakfast talk," Jo said with a low laugh, cutting into her pancakes with a smile for little Dean. "So what do you want to do today, little man' We were thinking of inviting Ellen and Bobby over, playing some baseball maybe. What do you think?"

The boy studied Dean carefully for a moment, as if there was some question poking at his brain, but then Jo was talking about baseball and his attention turned that way. "I like baseball. I used to play t-ball before ..." He frowned a little, not bothering to fill in the blank there that went without saying.

"Yeah, well ....We aren't playing t-ball," Dean broke in, hoping to distract the boy from his thoughts. "Not softball either. Softball is for girls and sissies."

Just as keen to keep the little boy from his darker thoughts, Jo laughed, reaching over to slap Dean's arm. "Excuse me?" she demanded in amusement. "You wanna rephrase that so it doesn't imply that all girls are sissies, or do I gotta call Ellen and rat on you again?"

"You're not a girl. You're a woman," Dean corrected himself with a grin. And as had been well-established already, Jo was definitely not a sissy, just as bad ass as her spouse. "Point is, if we're playing baseball, we're playing baseball." It was going to be a challenge with just the five of them, but they'd figure it out somehow. Dean smirked as an idea came to mind. "Think we could trust Apollo to play without cheating?" he asked, and Sam had to be around somewhere.

"Well, we could call Sammy," she suggested with a chuckle. "And Becky's gotta be back by now, maybe she'd come too. If we need more, I'll bet Ayden's already bugging Ares for a ride home." She looked down at little Dean. "How many do you need for a game of baseball, anyway?"

"Nine," the boy replied, without hesitation, but it sounded like they just barely had nine people all together.

"We don't need nine," Dean broke in, as he cut into his pancakes. "Don't forget Rufus and Gabriel," he said. That would give a new meaning to Angel in the Outfield. Brian was too far away to ask, unless Gabriel or one of the Olympians picked him up on the way, so to speak.

"Rufus, maybe," Jo said thoughtfully. "We don't want Gabriel in the same place as Ares right now. They rub each other the wrong way. Maybe Apollo ....or Artemis ....could make an appearance, depending on which one is doing what."

"Yeah, because I wasn't nervous enough. Thanks for that," Bobby replied with a straight face. "Look, we got a situation here, and it ain't about baseball." Big surprise. When didn't they have a situation' He moved over to the kitchen window to look out on the garden when Little Dean was tossing a baseball back and forth with Big Dean. Bobby nodded his head toward that sight. "That's the situation."

Rufus glanced out through the door briefly, and then his head swung back to the scene outside as though pulled by string. "Huh," was his succinct response. "That who I think it is?"

"If you think it's Dean Winchester, then, yep, sure is. I'll fill you in later. For now, all you gotta know is he's here temporarily. Sending him back to his own place in time tomorrow. Ellen and Jo wanna give him a good send off, not that he'll remember it. Least we can do, I guess, all things considered." Bobby didn't have to explain Dean's history to Rufus or get into details about what awaited him in the years to come.

Rufus stared a while longer before offering up the sum of his opinion on the matter. "Bobby Singer, you got one weird-ass family. C'mon, time I kicked your ass in the fine game. You got beer?"

"Is the Pope Catholic" 'Course I got beer. Just make sure you let the kid get a few runs in. This is all about him," Bobby said as he led the way toward the door. He'd been the one to teach Dean to play baseball in the first place, ignoring John's request to teach him to shoot in favor of hitting a baseball.

"Hey, I said I was gonna kick your ass, not his," Rufus protested, following Bobby out through the door and into the garden. "Well, if it isn't the prettiest Winchester," he announced, laughing as Jo slapped his arm.

"If it isn't the biggest liar in all the world," she countered, letting Rufus stroke her bump. For some reason, every hunter they knew was absolutely fascinated with her pregnancy, and she didn't mind at all.

Chuckling, he chucked her cheek, turning to offer his hand to Sam. He may not have known the young man very well himself, but he had it on good authority that he'd helped to raise this version.

Bobby meandered away, allowing Rufus to say hello to Jo and Sam before the game got underway. It was a little strange for Sam to have a mom who was not much older than he was, but he had made the decision to remain in this point in time, and he had no regrets. He knew he was needed here, in more ways than one. "Hey, Rufus," Sam said, greeting the older man with a firm handshake before introducing the young lady beside him with whom he'd just been holding hands. "Becky, this is Rufus, an old friend of the family."

The older hunter's eyes turned to the girl standing next to Sam, and a wide grin touched his face. "Rebecca, huh' Good old name, that one - you been teaching our boy here a thing or two?"

Becky blushed to the roots of her hair, but laughed, shaking Rufus' hand as he chuckled himself. "Uh, yeah, I guess so," she admitted, adding as brazenly as she dared, "You want details?"

"Maybe it was the other way around," Sam pointed out. If the question had come from anyone else, he might have gotten angry or even defensive, but from Rufus - a man he'd known all his life and who was like family - it was just all in good fun. "Kinda weird knowing I'm in two places at once, isn't it?" he asked, with a glance at Jo, and then another at the two Deans. Two Sams, two Deans. Double trouble.

Shaking his head at the bold response from Sam's girl, Rufus grinned. "I like her," he informed the young man with a certain amount of enthusiasm, turning to follow his gaze toward first Jo, and then the two versions of Dean. "That ain't you, boy. Might walk, talk, and act like you, but you're you. He ain't getting a girl like this one ....unless she's into that kind of thing." He looked sideways at Becky, who was attempting to ignore the conversation going on, and laughed again. "You getting your ball on, kid?"

"Then that's not my dad either," Sam remarked quietly, so that his voice didn't carry toward the two Deans who had stopped playing catch to chat with Bobby, probably to discuss how this baseball game was going to work. He was, of course, referring to the younger Dean, whose fate seemed already set in stone. "Huh?" Sam said distractedly, looking back at Rufus with a puzzled expression.

"In a sense," Rufus conceded, shrugging. "Baseball, kid. You pitchin' or what?" He nudged the younger man's shoulder a little roughly, but then, Rufus didn't really know how to be gentle these days.

As he did this, Ellen's voice rose above the murmur around them. "All right, who's up first' Deans are pickin' teams!"

"The kid can have first pick," Dean volunteered. Had it been anyone else, he would have insisted on flipping a coin, but this was the kid's day, and he'd promised to make it a good one. The boy looked up at Dean with wide eyes, not even knowing half the people who were standing there waiting to be picked.

"Okay, let's see here ..." Ellen waved her hands, lining everyone up whether they wanted to be lined up or not. "Not you, sit down," she told Jo, bulldozing over the protests to push the heavily pregnant hunter into a seat where she pouted outrageously enough to make even Rufus crack a smirk. "For the benefit of those who have not met," Ellen announced as she walked along the line, "we have ....hunter, student, God of War, psychic, old hunter one, old hunter two. And me." She winked at the little Dean with a grin. "Pick 'em, boys, four each."

Thankfully, Ayden had given Ares a quick lesson in baseball while they were waiting for the game to start, and he seemed to get the gist of it. He nodded a greeting toward the boy, as he was introduced, but said nothing.

"Um ..." the boy murmured, looking around at all the eager faces. He might have picked Dean or Jo first, if he'd been able, but Dean was captain of the opposing team, and it seemed Jo was sitting it out. They all looked more than able, but there was one person who looked possibly more able than the rest. He pointed to Sam, though he wasn't quite sure who he was exactly. He'd been told the young man's name was Sam, but it wasn't his Sam.

"Good choice," Sam said as he stepped forward to take his place behind his captain, reaching out to rub the boy's shoulders.

"Show off," Becky teased Sam as he took his place with the little boy who could have been his father, in another lifetime. She was laughing as she said it, knowing full well that of everyone there, she looked the least able. Everyone there had faced at least a demon and come out fighting; she'd faced several large piles of books, and the skirt probably wasn't helping that impression.

Sam stuck his tongue out at Becky, taunting her playfully, and laughed. Before long, teams were sorted and somehow Big Dean had ended up with all the girls on his side, with everyone else on Little Dean's side, but whether that had happened on purpose or by accident was uncertain. A coin was flipped, and Little Dean's team was up to bat first.

"But I can't help it!" Ares argued. "Which is why you were catcher!" Dean pointed out.

"Time out, time out!" Bobby called as he joined them. "Would it please you ladies if an old fart takes his place" Probably won't get past third base without pulling a muscle, anyway," he grumbled. It had been his turn, after all.

"I do not understand how I cheated!" Ares broke in, though there didn't seem much point in arguing. Back at home base, the smallest Winchester was giggling like mad at the shenanigans, which made the other Dean smile with pleasure.

It wasn't just Dean who was pleased with the obvious delight radiating from the little version of him; there were indulgent smiles all round at the little boy's pleasure in the wrangling going on around him. Ayden laughed, moving to touch Ares' arm gently. "I'll explain later," she promised him, leaning up to kiss him affectionately, knowing that this particular mortal ritual must be confusing him appallingly.

The boy was confused at first and worried they might have been angry with each other because of him, but Sam quickly stepped in to explain that it was all in good fun and that it was all just good-natured ribbing. Once he understand this was a sort of comedy of errors, he let himself relax and have fun watching the show.

After a moment though, he turned to Sam, who was the closest thing he had in this place to a big brother, and frowned up at him. "I wish I could stay, but I miss my dad and my brother," he told the young man who he seemed to understand was his brother's namesake. "Why aren't the here" They're family, too."

Sam frowned back, baseball all but forgotten for the moment, and glanced over at Jo with a look on his face that said, "Help me."

Jo hadn't heard the question, raising a brow as Sam looked over at her. She could recognize that look a mile off, though, easing to the edge of her seat to see if she could help out. "What's up, little man' Someone ask you something?"

"Sam! You're up!" Dean called from what was serving as the pitcher's mound now that Bobby and Ares had worked out their grievances. "No kissing on the field!" he added with a smirk at his sister, before Ares returned to his place behind home base.

"Go on," Sam said, giving the boy's shoulder an encouraging squeeze. "I've got this covered," he said, jerking a thumb in the general direction of the ball game.

Jo rolled her eyes, spotting Sam's immediate flee-the-scene behavior with a chuckle. She held an arm out to little Dean, figuring this must be a difficult question to answer, whoever had asked it. Why did all the difficult questions come to her when there was a little boy involved" Just being pregnant didn't make her omniscient.

"No, I ..." the boy started, frowning worriedly. One could almost see the wheels turning in his head as he started putting together the pieces of the puzzle. While he might only be seven years old, he was still Dean Winchester, and the more he thought about things, the more he could only come to one horrific conclusion. "I was just wondering why Sam and my dad aren't here," he admitted, a little timidly.

Jo bit her lip, reaching out to pull him close against her side. It wasn't a happy thing to talk about. "Do you really want to know?" she asked him softly, aware that, for the moment, they had privacy while all other eyes were on the game. "I can tell you where they are, but I won't tell you how they got there."

He realized, too, that if he was a man in this place than it figured his brother was, as well, but he had no way of knowing where he might be or what he might be doing here, and the same went for his father. Everyone else seemed to be accounted for and then some. This place - this time - was full of family, except for the two people who meant the most to him in all the world. "They're gone, aren't they?" he asked, trying to hold back the tears. "Like Mom."

"Hey, now ..." Jo drew him up onto her lap, stroking her fingers through his hair. "There's no need to be sad. I know it hurts, sweetie, but we know for certain that your Mom and Dad are together in Heaven, and your Sam's with them, too. For a fact, we know that. So yeah, it's sad they're not here, but they're not sad. They're happy, and they'd want you to be happy." And please god let him forget this conversation ever happened.

And there he was drawing his arms around her neck and trying to hold back the tears. He was Dean Winchester, the son of the greatest hunter who had ever lived - at least, in his opinion - and he wasn't going to cry like a baby in front of his whole family, was he" One sob broke free as he clung to her, tears sliding down his face, but he nodded his head in understanding. He didn't bother to ask how it had happened - none of that mattered. They had left him alone in the world, and yet, he wasn't really alone, and if he went back to his own time, maybe he could save them and stop it from happening. Maybe that was why someone wanted him dead - so he couldn't do what he was supposed to do in his own time and place. "Am I - am I really gonna grow up to be like ....like him?" he asked, turning his tear-stained face to Dean, who had noticed what was going on. They had all noticed, but Dean had silently gestured for them to keep going, if only to save the boy from embarrassment.

Wrapping the little boy up in her arms, Jo rocked him gently, giving him the time he needed to either let it all out or to suppress it - it was his choice, whatever happened. She caught her Dean's gaze with a reassuring smile; she had this, however much she hadn't wanted to have to do it. "Like him?" she asked quietly, looking down at the child in her arms. "Sweetie, you don't have to be like him, if you don't want to be. The man he is was forged by the choices he's made through his life. They might not be the choices that you'll make, but that doesn't mean that you won't be a little like him. He was a lot like you when he was little, after all."

That was just it - he wanted to be like the older Dean, but he didn't want to do it without his brother. "I'm not gonna let anything happen to him. I promised I wouldn't let anything happen to him," he said, more to himself than to her. The news that his father was dead was upsetting, but not really surprising. Even at seven, Dean knew his father wouldn't rest until he found out who'd killed Mary. He knew he couldn't save his father if he didn't want to be saved, but Sam was another story. Sam had been left in his care; Sam was his responsibility.

For a moment, Jo wished she'd told the little boy that his brother was miles away, working a case himself, but somehow she knew he wouldn't have believed her. She didn't want to give him any reason not to trust her, not now. "Then we'll get you back to him so you can do just that," she promised him quietly. "Artemis found what we need to get you home, but I wanted to keep you for another day. We'll get you home tomorrow morning, okay' I promise, not even a minute after you left."

The boy nodded up at Jo, trusting her to keep her word. She, at least, had been honest with him - more honest than anyone else here had been, even himself, all grown up. "I'll miss you," he admitted quietly. Though he'd only known her a day, he had felt some kind of connection between them, or maybe, she just reminded him a lot of his mom - he wasn't quite sure.

She smiled. "I'll be waiting for you," she told him quietly, and for all she knew, it was the truth. Maybe her unborn soul from this world was in Heaven watching over everyone as they spoke. She didn't know, and she didn't want to probe into that. What mattered right now was cheering up a little boy who could have wavered straight into floods of tears just moments before. "You want a hot dog before you're up to bat again?"