You know perfectly well that I don't own any of them!

AN: Takes place after "Crystal Ship", cause I couldn't get the opening scene out of my head. I don't know a thing about mining, so please excuse the mistakes... All titles taken from Led Zeppelin's "no Quarter", cause it's just perfect for our boys.

Little brothers are, without a doubt, the most dangerous creatures to walk the earth. And you can actually say this with some authority, cause you've been injured by most of the other contenders for the position at one time or another.

"How did that happen?" Sam says rather blankly from beside you.

You sit up, feeling rather dizzy, and wipe dirt and grime and snow off your face. "You started a snowball fight, and then we fell through a… well, that."

That seems, from the bottom, to be the mouldy planks covering a mineshaft. At least, it should be a mineshaft, but it's only about seven feet deep, so you're not sure you can really call it that.

"This falling through things is becoming a very bad habit of yours," Sam observes, referring to the time you fell through the ceiling of a haunted house in Maine a couple months ago.

"I was dropped!" you exclaim indignantly. "And this time was all your fault, Boy Wonder!"

"My fault!"

"Who started the snowball fight in the first place?"

Hah! Stumped him. You scramble rather awkwardly to your feet, grateful that there are no injuries from this fall, and look around.

It seems to be a crossroads of sorts, which gives you the heebie-jeebies right from the start. An intersection of two passageways too low and narrow to be those of a mine of any kind. An eerie wind whistles through them and tugs at your jacket. The snow drifts down to you in little eddies and whirls from the opening above you.

"Bring a flashlight?" Sam asks.

"Too busy puttin' a snowball down the back of your neck," you reply, and grin when he rolls his eyes. You both move towards the edges of the light, studying your surroundings. Jagged, uneven walls, the floor slippery and covered in little pits and boulders designed solely to trip you up. Sam's crouching down, peering along the north passage, but you'd be surprised if he can see anything more than you can.

Wait a minute…

"What's that?"

Sam looks round sharply at the tone of your voice; then he moves over to your side. A light! A little flickering light moving towards you along the passage, close to the ground, bobbing and jerking unsteadily. As it comes closer, you let your gun fall with a hiss of relief, and Sam lets out a little chuckle.

It's a cigarette lighter, clutched in the hand of a boy of about fifteen, crawling towards the intersection on hands and knees. When he sees you, he jumps, and curls in on himself protectively.

"Hey," you call out softly. "We're not gonna hurt you, kid. What're you doin' down here?"

The boy swallows hard. His face is filthy, streaked with tear-tracks, and his too-long hair hangs in lank clumps over his forehead. His eyes are bloodshot, and in the dim glow of the lighter you can't make out the colour. Still, despite his obvious fear, his voice is pretty steady when he speaks.

"What're you?"

"Fell through the covering," Sam says, jerking his head over his shoulder. The boy's eyes widen. "There's a way out?"

Where else does he think the light is coming from? you wonder, but you don't say anything. You're only allowed to be acerbic with Sammy in situations like these. The kid's afraid, and alone, and judging by the surprise and hope in his voice, he's been down here a long time.

"Yeah, right over here," Sam's saying. "It's not even far up. We just fell through it."

"Fell?" the boy repeats, staring. "Doing what?"

The two of you exchange a slightly embarrassed look. If Dad had seen that little display earlier!

"Snowball fight," you explain at last. The kid frowns at you, disbelieving. "Snowball fight?"

"You want out or not?" you enquire, and he nods at last.

"What's your name?" Sam asks as he reaches you. "Richard," the kid says. "Rick, if you don't mind. Not the other one."

"There's another one?" you ask in fake surprise, and are rewarded by the flash of a grateful smile. Cleaned up, he'd be pretty good-looking, this kid. If a little scrawny. Kinda like Sam once was.

"What about you?" Rick says as he straightens up with a groan, and the sound of joints popping.

"Sam. This is my older brother Dean," he says. Substitute 'older' for 'big' and there's that eight-year-old in the principal's office again, clinging to your hand as Dad enrolls you in a new school.

"So that's why you had the snowball fight?" Rick says, understanding. "You've got a brother?" you ask, grinning slightly. Rick nods. "But Mike's staying with his Dad this weekend. Or this wouldn't have happened," he adds, gesturing at your surroundings.

"Rick…" Sam says slowly, in the calm, quiet, reassuring voice he uses on victims, their family, and the people you need information from, "What did happen?"

The kid bites his grimy lip before answering. "The guys, uh… from the football team. It was just a dare, only the flashlight they gave me didn't have batteries, and I kinda got lost in the dark."

Silence. You feel a quiver of rage run through you; there's no doubt in your mind that the batteries were removed, not forgotten.

"How long?" Sam says, and even he, with his usual calm, can't keep the anger out of his voice. Rick shrugs. "A few hours. I don't really know. Haven't got a watch."

He moves past you both, unsteady, trembling. A testament to how long he's been crawling through these tunnels. He looks up at the hole you fell through, and seems to be drinking in the daylight for a second. Then he looks round, embarrassed. "Could you…" he gestures at the opening, and you realise that while you and Sam can climb out with relative ease, he's not tall enough.

You go first, climbing quickly up and out, cursing as your knees scrape against harsh rock and jagged wood. Then you turn and wait, ready to help Rick if he needs it. Sam boosts him up, and he scrambles at the edge for a minute before finding his balance and hoisting himself over the edge. You pull him onto firm ground, steadying him, as Sam follows you out.

"Thanks," Rick says, looking up at you. "You, ah… you know where we are, exactly?"

You feel yourself grin. Seems he's too proud, too independent, to ask for a ride.

"We'll drive you back to town," you promise.

"Just don't get dirt on his upholstery," Sam says dryly, and Rick actually smiles, grateful.

"Where d'you live?" you ask as the Impala turns off the main road into a residential area, but the question's obsolete as soon as it's asked, because Nr. 1311 Oak Street is just full of cop cars. Rick gulps audibly in the back seat.

Everyone turns to stare as the Impala pulls over next to the curb, and Rick scrambles for the door. His mother, a dark-haired woman in a long brown coat, currently looking rather haggard, runs past the detectives she's talking to and flings her arms around him.

"Rick, Rick, where have you been? What's happened?" she demands breathlessly, hands roaming all over his filthy face and shoulders, checking for injuries the same way Dad used to when you where kids.

"Mom. I'm OK, really. I'm OK. I just… I got kinda lost…"

"Lost where?" she cries, still clutching at him as if afraid he'll disappear any second now. Then she seems to notice you and Sammy for the first time. Her expression goes from confused relief to suspicion in a matter of nanoseconds.

"Who are you?" she snaps, and something clenches in your chest at the anger in her voice. You shake your head slightly, and mean to say something along the lines of "No one" and leave, but Rick's faster.

"Mom! They found me."

She nods in apology. "Oh, thank you. Thank you so much."

Then the cops wander over. "You won't need us then, Mrs. Heston?"

"Doesn't look like it, Officer," she answers, still holding on to Rick's shoulders.

"I'm sorry, Mom, Officer Johnson," Rick apologises. The young officer smiles and shakes his head at him. "Not a problem, Rick. Gentlemen," he nods at you and Sam, who has trouble hiding his grin at hearing you addressed thus. Then he and his partner are gone.

"That's Dean and Sam," Rick continues, looking up at his Mom as if this were a chance meeting in the high street. "Can they stay for breakfast?"

"Look, I'm sure your Mom doesn't want us around right now, kid," you tell him, but she shakes her head. "No, he's right, it's the least I can do, really."

You glance at Sammy, slightly panicked, but he just smirks at you. The cheek!

No escaping this one, not when the kid looks at you so earnestly.

"Thank you," you say. "We'd love to join you."

"Call me Anna," she says, finally managing a smile, holding out a hand to shake. "Come on in. I'll cook while Rick's in the shower."

"He might need a few Band-Aids," Sam says dryly. She laughs softly. "So where did you find him?"

You look around for Rick before answering, and he looks for a moment as if he wants to run away, but then straightens his shoulders and takes a deep breath.

"The caves," he says. "Out in the woods? I fell down one of the pits, or whatever you call them, but it was dark, so I couldn't see to get out. They heard me calling."

"You fell in.. oh, Rick! I've told you a thousand times not to use that shortcut – you know perfectly well that those shafts are all over the woods!"

"I'm sorry, Mom. I just wanted to get home."

Anna shakes her head at him and presses a hand against his jaw in a gesture that reminds you of Mom. "Just go clean up, honey."

Once he's gone, and you're all in the spacious, gleaming kitchen, Anna offers coffee – which you both accept – and then apologises. "I'm sorry I was so unfriendly just now. These days it feels like there're people lurking behind every corner, wanting to hurt your kids."

"Don't worry about it. We understand," you tell her.

"You have kids?" she asks.

You can't help but laugh. Neither can Sammy, but he's about to regret it. Payback time, for getting you into this. "No, I don't. But I've been looking after Sammy here since forever."

"Dean! Seriously."

"Oh, you're brothers!" Anna says. "Let me guess. Road-tripping, and you got lost?"

"What makes you say that?" Sam wants to know, laughing.

"That's the only reason strangers usually come here for," Anna replies, sounding ironic, and a bit… bitter. "You may have noticed that Marsden isn't much of a town."

"Good place for kids, though," you say. "I mean, what with the woods… must be fun for them."

"Would be fun if we were allowed in them," Rick interjects, coming into the kitchen with a box of Band-Aids, which he starts applying to the scratches on his arms.

"Why aren't you?" Sam wants to know. Damn, he's interested. You'll never get out of this town.

"The pits, the one you rescued Rick from?" Anna explains. "They're all over the woods. There's an abandoned silver mine out there, and the shafts mostly run into it – or out of it. People say there are close to a hundred of them. Mr. Foyle, who owns the store in town, claims there are passageways that run between some of the pits and the mine proper – apparently so that the miners could smuggle silver out without the owner of the mine noticing. But that might be just a story, I don't know."

At this, Rick shoots you both a slightly desperate look. So the passageways are a secret?

You put the brakes on in your brain with a god-awful screech. Getting involved again! Never a good idea – especially not now. Have breakfast, then leave. You're meant to be heading up to Bobby's, not hanging around here.

Then the phone rings; Anna leaves the kitchen to answer it, and Sam takes the opportunity to do exactly what you've just told yourself you wouldn't do.

"You gonna tell us what's goin' on with those caves?" he asks. Rick hesitates, looking from you to Sam with a frown creasing his forehead.

"That a no?" you say dryly, wishing you felt relieved, cause that would've been so much easier.

He shrugs, uncomfortable. "It's just-"

"If you tell, you're out," Sam says quietly. Rick looks up at him and nods, sharp and brief, twisting his hands in his lap awkwardly.

"Why would you want to be 'in' in the first place?" you want to know. Rick gives you an incredulous look, and you think maybe you should leave this conversation to Sam.

He takes over without even looking at you. "Just ignore him, Rick. Dean doesn't do fitting in. I've never known him give a damn about what other people think."

"Coming from anybody else, that would be a compliment," you toss in, suddenly stung by the memory of all those teenage conversations about being 'normal'.

Sam looks across at you sharply, and the look that crosses his face would, if the two of you were alone in the Impala, cruising down the highway to the familiar beats of Zeppelin II, signal one of those infamous 'serious conversations'. But you're not, you're in a surgically clean kitchen in Suburbia trying to help a teenage boy you fished out of a cave in the snowbound woods earlier this morning, so you take a gulp of coffee to drown the words hovering on the tip of your tongue, and Sam turns back to Rick.

"Look," he says, "no matter what the advantages of fitting in, if you, or anyone else, get hurt, they don't really matter anymore, you know."

There's advantages to being a colourless sheep?

Rick must think so, or he wouldn't look so agonised. Finally he blurts it all out, talking quickly and quietly, so Anna won't hear.

"We've just moved here, see. I'm the weird new kid no one knows, and Dad's the new principal, which really doesn't help, and they have this tradition that when you turn fifteen everyone's supposed to go into the passageways for a couple hours at midnight and see if you can see him."

Like punctuation had never even been invented. And what's with the italics?

Wait a minute.

Him who?

"Him who?" you say sharply, an awful suspicion forming, heavy and uncomfortable, in your stomach.

"The miner. The one who smuggled all the silver out of the mines."

Sam mutters something that sounds like "I don't believe it."

"That's… kind of a long time to be down there," you say slowly.

Rick huffs. "His ghost, idiot," he says, and before you can answer, Anna's back.

"Who wants bacon?" she asks, smiling.