A Very Small Issue

Chapter 1

Sam wasn't sure what he had been expecting when he arrived at Bobby's after speeding down the highway at a constant speed of 80 miles per hour for the past 40 minutes to discover what the 'small issue' Bobby had texted him about was. It seemed over excessive for a small issue, it would have been for a small issue, but a 'small issue' never meant a small issue; no, a 'small issue' meant a frigging huge problem that's way out of control. Sam had imagined scenarios of Bobby's house being overrun by demons, a fire blazing within the junkyard, the possibility of either his brother or Bobby being severely injured snuck into Sam's imagination before he quickly disbanded the notion, attempting to forget that he had ever thought of it.

Sam pulled up outside of the house, practically leaping out of the car and sprinting towards the front door, eager to discover what was the 'small issue' Bobby had phoned about, the 'small issue' Sam had dropped everything to provide assistance in, the 'small issue' which Sam had broken several laws for in order to get to Bobby's house in the time he had. After rapping at the door with all his might, he was faced with Bobby, a finger to his lips, whispering in the quietest voice Sam had ever heard from the man in the entire time he had known him. "Shut up, you damn idjit." Bobby turned and walked back into the house without greeting Sam or explaining what the 'small issue' was. Sam followed him into the house almost reluctantly, shutting the door silently behind him. For such a 'small issue' Bobby seemed fairly collected.

"Bobby, what's going on? What's the 'small issue'?" Sam whispered in an equally quiet voice to the one Bobby had used, slightly confused by the need for such hushed voices and quiet movements. It wasn't until they were standing in the kitchen that Bobby had truly acknowledged Sam, handing him a beer from the fridge he cleared his throat, preparing to say something although only silence followed his preparation. Bobby was unable to explain, finding it difficult to maintain eye contact for long periods of time. Suddenly something in Sam's head clicked as he looked around the kitchen. Something was missing, someone was missing.

"Bobby, where's Dean?" Sam asked suspiciously as the older hunter swallowed a large gulp of beer, trying to avoid answering for as long as possible.

"Well, we were checking out the old factory where Harold Gunn had worked before he was killed. It was a basic job; that was until that witch we thought we ganked on Tuesday turned up. She was really pissed after our last encounter and, well, she did something to Dean." Bobby said, eyes still not meeting Sam's.

"What?! What did she do? I'm going to-" Sam's voice began to rise, fuelled by anger at the thought of his brother being injured.

"shhh," Bobby interrupted Sam's vow of vegence, signalling for Sam to be quiet with hands as he looked over his shoulder into the living room. "Dean's fine. He's just, you know, different is all." His brow furrowed under the pressure of trying to explain the confusing and slightly unbelievable situation to Sam.

"What do you mean 'different'?" Sam asked, eyes narrowing in curiosity, his hand subconsciously fumbling with the beer cap that was determined not to be detached.

Bobby sighed, "It's hard to explain." With one final cautionary glance over his shoulder, he eventually settled on a solution. "Come on, it's best if I just show you." He started towards the living room, pausing just in front of the doorway, turning to warn Sam. "Just don't freak out, okay? It took me nearly an hour to calm him down before and he wouldn't stop crying." Sam began to worry. Dean had been crying? Things must be bad.Bobby's hushed voice sounded slightly irritated and tired; it was only at that moment that Sam noticed the dark circles around Bobby's eyes, making them look hollow and dark. "And try not to make too much noise, you'll wake him up and then we'll never get him back to sleep." He chugged the rest of his beer before placing the empty bottle on the table. Sam nodded, slightly confused by Bobby's requests.

Nonetheless, Sam obliged to them as he followed Bobby into the dimly lit living room. Bobby stood still in front of the couch, arms crossed as he stared down at the pile of blankets sprawled across the couch. Sam squinted, encouraging his eyes to become accustomed to the new lighting. After a minute or two Sam began to notice the steady rise and fall of the blankets and the soft sounds of breathing. Staring more closely at the blankets he spots a small arm protruding from them, dangling over the edge of the couch, too small to reach the ground. Messy tufts of sandy blonde hair stuck out the top of the blankets that covered the remainder of the tiny figure, no more than fragments of a freckled covered face could be seen.

Sam spoke in such a quiet voice he was barely heard by the older hunter. "Bobby, why do you have a kid asleep on your couch?" Sam suspected what the answer would be, the freckles and the hair were big hints, but he hoped that Bobby would disprove his suspicions.

Bobby rubbed his forehead, struggling to remove his eyes from the boy on the couch. "Because that's not a kid, technically, it's Dean." His voice was somehow even quitter than Sam's, if their voices became any quieter only bats will be able to hear them.

Sam stared from Bobby's sincere expression to the small boy on the couch. How was this kid Dean? His brother was a fully grown, somewhat immature, adult. Looking at Bobby sceptically, Sam protested. "But this kid looks about four years old. I didn't even know a witch could do something like this." Had walked back into the kitchen, he was nervous about waking the small child since he was slowly losing control of the volume of his voice, he was also beginning to feel uncomfortable around the younger version of his older brother.

"Well, neither did I; but I'm not that surprised. Remember that witch that was making people younger and turned me and Dean into old men? They must've found a way to gain control over age." Bobby closed the kitchen door as he said this, cautious of waking Dean.

"But why? Why would a witch want to turn Dean into a four year old? What would she gain from it?" Sam stumbled over his words, still half convinced this wasn't happening.

"Revenge, I guess." Bobby said with a shrug. "Do you not remember what happened the last time we saw her? Dean shot her, twice." Sam sighed at the recollection of his brother's actions. "What more of an excuse do you want?" Bobby opened the fridge once again to pull out two more beers now that Sam had drunk his previous bottle in one fluent gulp.

Sam accepted the beer but didn't open it, just held it in his hands and stared into the dimly lit living room with a blank expression.

"Why not just kill him then? I don't understand why she would do this when she could've killed him, that's what most people do for revenge." Sam suspected that there was a larger plan which involved dean being so young, that was the only thing that seemed logical.

"Maybe she thinks it's funny. Just be thankful she didn't do something worse, at least this way dean's safe and we can try to keep it that way." Sam remained apprehensive, if this witch was plotting something that included a child version of dean it was most likely something horrific, possibly worse than death.

"Is there any way to cure him? To turn him back to his older self?" Sam didn't look at Bobby when he asked this, just continued to stare blankly into the living room, silently praying that the answer would be yes; Sam could bare to think what he would do if the answer was no.

"I'm not sure yet. There's not much about age regression in any of the books I have, it's not a very common occurrence; but I'll go to the library tomorrow, see if I can't find any information about it there." Bobby's eyes were also fixed on the living room as he explained his strategy to discover a cure for Dean to Sam. Bobby also wondered what the future would hold if he couldn't find a way to turn Dean back to his usual self.

Sam nodded slowly, processing everything that had happened in the past 20 minutes. "So, what do we do in the meantime?" after a questioning look from Bobby, Sam decided to elaborate his query. "I mean he's what, 4 years old?"

Bobby nodded, looking solemnly at the bundle of blankets through the glass panels of the kitchen door. "I think so. I didn't really know you two or your father when he was that age," he gestured towards the sleeping figure that was Dean. "But I don't remember him looking that young when we did meet for the first time. He was 6 then, so, yeah, I reckon he's about 4." Sam concentrated, trying to recall what Dean had looked like at the age of 4; of course Sam didn't know first-hand, he would have only been a couple months old at the time, but he tried to picture the photographs of his brother he had seen in his head. Bobby must have read his mind as all of a sudden he voiced Sam's idea. "I have a box full of things from your old house that your dad kept here, things from when you were younger. I think it's somewhere upstairs, maybe out back. It's got old photographs in it; I think most of them have dates on them. We could try to find one of Dean, the way he looks at the moment, and find the date on it; that could help us tell what age he is."

Sam was slightly overwhelmed by his new found discovery, he hadn't realised Bobby was so sentimental, nor his dad.

"Have you tried asking him his age? It would save a lot of time, and maths." Sam considered this a fairly obvious solution and was surprised he hadn't thought of it earlier.

"He doesn't know." Bobby said with a small shrug, "he's just as confused about this as we are, probably more."

"So he remembers everything?" Sam asked shocked and disturbed by the idea that a 4 year has memories of forties years spent in hell.

"Looks like it." Bobby said, his voice also sounded resentful towards the weight a now very young Dean was forced to bare. Sam shook his head sorrowfully, the weight Dean carried was more than any man should ever have to carry, never mind a small child. Sam was astonished that Dean was actually sleeping and not having a mental breakdown right now.

"So it's just Dean, in a child's body?" Sam asked, eyes squinting as he tried to catch another glimpse of his brother through the dark room. He thought that if he kept looking, confirming it was really happening, his mind would slowly come to terms with the strange situation.

Bobby put down his half empty beer and released a small sigh. "Not exactly. He remembers, but, eh, well he behaves, well," Bobby paused for a moment searching his vocabulary for the appropriate words, "he behaves like a kid."

"What do you mean 'like a kid'?" Sam asked, his eyes now firmly on Bobby.

"Well, he acts like a 4 year old would act; like when he first found out he was transformed, he cried for nearly 2 hours." Bobby shared a similar expression of worry that Sam wore. "Then he didn't talk for a while, clung to that blanket until he fell asleep." Sam nodded, he understood. Those actions did not sound like his brother, it sounded like the actions of a scared 4 year old.

After looking at the clock, Bobby drank the remainder of his beer before saying, "C'mon, it's pretty late and you look exhausted."

Sam shook his head in disagreement. "We need to-"

"There isn't much we can do now; it's too late to do anything that would help. I think it's time to hit the hay, we can try to fix this in the morning." Sam still didn't look convinced. "You have to sleep Sam; you can't survive on caffeine alone." Sam reluctantly nodded, placing his un-opened beer bottle on the table and grabbing his back-pack he had brought in from the car. Why hadn't he gone with Bobby and Dean instead of interviewing those useless witnesses about Gunn; he could have prevented all of this from happening. But, like Bobby said, there wasn't anything they could do at half one in the morning so he went upstairs, collapsing onto the bed only to lie awake, staring at the bedroom ceiling, for nearly an hour before falling into much needed sleep. One sentence repeated itself in his mind, tomorrow was not going to be fun.