Um ... this is my first Supernatural Fic, so pardon any out of character bits :P Sam is nine, Dean is thirteen.

"No, you're stupid," Sam shouted over the chain-link fence on the way to school.

Dean, on the other side of the fence, grinned wickedly. Sam knew he was planning something bad, something illegal, and he also knew he couldn't do a thing. He glared at Dean through the fence, and twined his fingers through the diamond-shaped holes and stared through the neatly trimmed grass of a suburban backyard.

Dean tore off his shirt, tossed it onto the burning hot, gray concrete beside the pool, and kicked off his tennis shoes and socks.

Sweat dripped down the side of Sam's head, dropping onto his dusty shirt. They'd had to walk two miles to the school each day for the time their father was hunting a werewolf in the desert outside of the small Arizona town.

"Dean!" Sam hissed, warily watching a car glide down the street. The car was nearly as blue as the shimmering surface of the pool Dean was about to leap into, and Sam's mouth went dry as he watched the car slowly inch down the street.

Dean turned back, wearing his boxers and a wide, sneaky smile. "What?" he asked, playing innocent.

"They could come home any second, Dean! They could be home!" Anger had turned to worry in Sam's head, and images of Dean being picked up by the cops for trespassing were parading through his head in a number of varying scenes.

"So? It's hot," Dean explained, "Who can blame me?" He lazily bounced the diving board, his feet never leaving the bumpy surface. Turning from Sam's terrified face, he neatly leaped from the board and cannon-balled into the cool, welcoming pool.

Sam winced at the echoing clap of Dean hitting the water, searching around the neighborhood for the inevitable neighbor that would burst from one of the cookie-cutter, perfect little houses waving a cane and screaming bloody murder.

"Dean, this is so dumb," Sam whined.

"Is something wrong, sweetheart?" came a tinkling, beautiful voice behind him.

Sam turned from the sight of Dean lazily doing laps in the pool.

"N-nothing," Sam said, mesmerized by the sight of the woman before him. She wore a dress of light pink cotton, which was loose and waving softly in the still air of the neighborhood.

She smiled gently at him. "You look so thirsty, honey!" she laughed sweetly.

Sam laughed with her. He could barely resist. He stared at her long, golden hair, wisps of which blew alluringly in the air.

"Do you want a glass of water?" she asked, pointing to one of the houses down the street, "We could run into my place and I'll bring one out for you."

Sam glanced quickly back at the pool, where Dean was practicing his butterfly stroke.

"Wait –" the woman said, tapping her pink lips with a delicate finger, "I know what you want. How about a nice, tall glass of lemonade? That sound good?"

Sam smiled at her, and took her hand. She squeezed his gently and turned. They began to cross the street, Sam's hand clutched in hers.

Though it was a shallow feeling, Sam felt warm. He'd spent his life with a cold father who showed love by teaching his sons self-sufficiency, and a brother who often chose the hottest girl at school over spending time with his little brother. Sam, in that moment, would have loved nothing more than to snuggle up with this soft, gentle woman. Looking at her, he knew she would hug him softly, cuddle his body to her side, and stroke his hair.

She looked down at him and rested her arm on his opposite shoulder, pulling him into her body in a loose embrace.

"Just down the road," she said comfortingly as they walked down the center of the street.

Dean heard the car before he saw his brother. A low gunning motor. His first instinct was to check out the car, see the make and model.

However, when his head broke the surface and he shook water from his hair, clutching the side of the pool, he saw Sam, standing alone in the middle of the road, staring up at something with a dreamy, loving gaze on his face.

Then Dean saw the car, the driver asleep, barreling down the long road.

Dean pulled himself out of the pool in a swift, sucking move, and was at the fence in seconds. He grabbed a handhold high on the fence and leaped over it like a pole vaulter.

The second his feet hit the hot asphalt, he broke into a run. Speeding across the street, he wrapped an arm around his baby brother in a half-hug.

He felt the brush of air from the speeding car on his bare back.

He shoved Sam to the ground and felt the asphalt bite into his skin immediately.

The car continued down the street, then slammed into a car crossing a perpendicular street in a screaming collision of metal.

"Sammy – Sammy –" Dean said breathlessly, shaking his brother. The nine-year-old was bleeding from a thick scrape on his forehead.

Dean looked around at the two smoking cars twisted at the intersection, the still-trembling pool, and the hideous woman standing at the corner, glaring at the two bleeding boys on the side of the street.

With a flicker, the woman disappeared, her gray, ratty hair swaying in the breeze.

Sam groaned softly, and Dean breathed in relief.

Later that night, as Sam lay sleeping with a thick bandage slapped on his head, Dean poured over the books he'd checked out from the local library. He'd matched the woman to a picture of a Hag, and was trying to work out how to kill it.

"Dean?" Sam mumbled from the bed.

"What?" Dean snapped. He hated being interrupted from reading. He'd been mid-sentence, for crying out loud.

"Never mind," Sam sighed, curling back into the sheets. He itched absently at the edge of his bandage.

"What?" Dean asked, his voice softer.

"What … what was mom like?" he asked timidly. He curled up in his sheets and glanced over at Dean.

Dean winced. "I told you a thousand times already." He tugged at his loose shirt and scooted his chair into the beat-up motel desk.

"No you didn't," Sam said, "You just said she was nice." What he wanted to know, more than anything, is what she'd do right then and there. Would his head really feel better if she kissed it, like he'd seen mothers at the park promise? Was she warm when she hugged Dean? What did her hair smell like? Was it as soft as the woman he'd seen that day?

Sam looked expectantly at his brother. "Dean?" He asked softly, "What was –"

"I heard you the first time," Dean said grumpily.

Dean was quiet for a long time, working with the books. Sam knew he wasn't reading, for he couldn't hear the scratchy sound of Dean turning the pages. It seemed Dean was just staring at the books in front of him.

Dean cleared his throat. "She was really good at soccer," he said quietly, "She used to play with me. When Dad was at work."

"Were you with her a lot?" Sam asked.

Dean nodded slowly. "Dad used to work and she didn't. Not when she was pregnant with you." Dean could remember her clearly. He'd been so young, but he could see her clear as day, tossing him the checkered soccer ball, her blonde hair bobbing in a bun. He remembered reaching up to her, his chubby arms in the air, her hands on her round stomach.

"What else?" Sam asked in the silence that followed Dean's statement.

"What do you mean, what else?" Dean said quickly, hoping the lump in his throat would go away if he talked fast enough. "I gotta work, Sammy," he said angrily as a tear threatened at the corner of his eye. It tickled the side of his nose so he angrily rubbed at the area.

As Dean crawled into his bed, sometime later that night, Sam spoke up.

"Dean?" he asked, so slurred that Dean was sure he was close to sleep.

"Yeah?" Dean sighed.

"Did she love us?" Sam asked quietly.

"Yeah, she did," Dean assured him. He knew it was only his word, and that Sam had nothing more than words to paint his mother. Dean could hold onto his mother when times got tough. He could close his eyes and be in her lap, her hair tickling his nose.

Dean crept out of bed and walked to his then-sleeping brother's bed. He pulled the sheets up to Sam's chin and tucked them to the little boy's sides. He bent down then, and kissed Sam's temple, like his mother had done to him countless times.

"Night, Sammy," he whispered, and crawled back into bed.