A/N: Sam is 9 and Dean is 13 and they are not my children.

Safe Kids Laughing

"But what if …"

He trails off mid-sentence, and I get mad all at once.

"What if what, Sam?" I'm sick of Sammy and his what-ifs. Contrary to what he seems to believe, I do not have the answer to every question.

He must hear the mad in my voice, because he takes a minute to finish. "What if this time's different, Dean?"

Aww, dammit.

I could have predicted the question. That's not the problem. It's that his voice sounds so sad. Ticked, I was prepared for. Bratty, yeah. Bitchy, sure. But sad … I can't stand how sad sounds on my brother.

I sigh, short and huffy, but it's all for show. The mad's gone as quick as it appeared. "This time ain't different," I reassure him. My voice shoots high, then cuts low. The wacky crap my voice has been pulling lately usually at least gets a giggle out of Sam. But he's watching the sky, and the little wooden planes flying there.

Man, I want one of those planes.

It's stupid, I know. I'm thirteen and I'm a hunter. It's stupid to want a stupid wooden plane that isn't even remote control, that's just flimsy wood and streaks of red paint. Plus, I don't even like planes. Couldn't pay me enough to get on a real one. But these little wooden ones, I don't know. They just look so …

I bet Sam wants one, too. He's watching them, but he hasn't said a word about it, which is rare for Sam.

"How do you know?" he asks.

And okay, I guess I don't know. I mean, kid's got a fair point. Dad's been gone way longer than he ever has before. And he's stopped calling. Been days since he called. I've been telling Sam over and over that Dad'll come back, that Dad always comes back. But he's right. How do I know this time's not different?

I watch Sam watch a wooden airplane glide against too-blue sky and too-fluffy clouds. I wait, because it's clear to me what's going to happen. The plane catches a gust of wind and its nose flips up, and all at once the whole thing crashes backward to the grass. The child who threw it, a kid maybe seven, goes running down the steep hill, a barely-controlled plummet, and drops to his knees amongst the pieces of his shattered plane. It's clear even before he begins to wail, even from here, that the toy has taken its final flight.

I remember that I haven't answered the question. "I just know," I tell Sam.

But he keeps picking at his fingernails, keeps chewing on his lip. For growing up in a family that knows that there are psychics and portents and magic in the world, Sam doesn't put a lot of stock in "I just know."

A dad comes down the hill after the kid with the broken plane. Picks him up and dusts him off. Points up the hill and says something to him, and the kid stops wailing but his shoulders keep hitching and he's still got tears coming down his face. I look at my brother but Sam's not watching the little drama unfold. His gaze is unfocused, aimed in the general direction of an empty patch of sky. Occasionally he'll move his head a little, to avoid a plane rather than to track one. I study him a long minute, sitting there looking all lost, with his backpack still slung over one shoulder like he doesn't realize we've been sitting here half an hour.

"What if you're wrong?" Sam says, in that super-serious voice he's got that drives me crazy, because it means he's going to ask me something I don't have an answer to, and Sam's never heard of rhetorical questions.

It's just a street fair we're sitting at. No rides or nothing, but this town isn't very big and there isn't much to do. I figure the gaggle of children eating caramel apples and tossing wooden planes off the hilltop represent pretty much the entire 13-and-under population of Mountain Lake. I thought it would be fun to bring Sam, get the kid out of the room a while. Get him some air, some sun. Don't know what the heck I was thinking. Plopping him, hungry and empty-handed, on top of a hill where he can watch all the other kids, who've got food and toys and dads who aren't missing.

"I ever been wrong?" I ask Sam flippantly, nudging him till he almost topples off the hill. I grin and toss my chin into the air, glad my voice has held steady this time.

Sam rolls his eyes, but I catch a tiny hint of smile. "No, Dean," he says sarcastically. "You've never been wrong. Unless you count the time with the 'angry spirit' that turned out to be a rabid raccoon. Or the time you forgot your teacher's name and you called her Miss Gray for a week and her name was Mrs. Brown. Or the time with the diner and the –"

"All right!" I laugh and wave him down. "Enough already." Proud of myself for distracting him.

He goes back to staring at the sky. I stare with him for a minute. Then a new little plane swoops across my field of vision and I turn to see who threw it, and there's that kid again, the one that broke his first plane. He and his dad stand together on the hillside, tossing the new plane above the remnants of the old.

What if I'm wrong?

"Dean?" Sam says after a minute. I turn and catch him watching me. He's seen me brooding, staring at that broken plane. He's got his Big-Important-Question face on, and I steel myself for What will we do if Dad doesn't come back, or, worse, the question he asked once that I made damn sure he knew not to ask again – Do you ever wish Dad wouldn't come back? Don't know who the kid's fooling. Don't know what he thinks we'd do if Dad didn't return. What, does he think we'd just stay here, grow up in Mountain Lake, fly planes and eat apples and be normal kids? Does he think we'd be able to make it, with rent running out three days from now and no food in the room and no money in our pockets?

But all he says is, "I'm hungry." And the way he says it, it doesn't even annoy me. He says it small. Like he doesn't want to bring it up but he absolutely can't wait any longer. My stomach twists, not with hunger.

"Yeah," I say, nudging his shoulder so he almost falls over the hill again. "Sit tight." And I'm up and gone, losing myself in the crowd.

It is possible to steal food in a place like a street fair, but it takes a lot of time and a fair amount of skill. By the time I work my way back to Sammy, balancing half a funnel cake and a bag of cotton candy, the sun is sinking behind the street fair and the lights are springing on. Most of the kids have stopped flying their planes, afraid of losing them in the dark. But there's my brother, still on the hillside, still staring at the sky.

"Dinner is served," I announce, holding out the plate with a flourish. I plop onto the ground next to Sam, feeling the bounce of the amulet he gave me last year, a heavy, warm weight against my chest.

He looks at the food, then at me, and smiles. Not the sad, distant smile he's been giving me more and more lately. But a real Sammy-smile, like he just thought of a joke and he's about to tell it.

"Thanks, Dean."

"Yup." I steal a pinch of his cotton candy and sit on my hands not to take the funnel cake. I'm surprised when he doesn't start eating right away.

"Aren't you still hungry?" I ask, feeling that now-familiar anger surge up again quick. After all the trouble I've gone through to get him dinner, he's gonna –

But Sam's reached into his backpack, and now he's holding something out to me.

It's a wooden plane.

"Sam –" Because I'm fine with stealing food, but I don't want my little brother stealing anything.

"Take it," he says. "Have a go."

"Where'd you - where'd you get this, dude?"

"See if it flies," Sam insists.

I'm all set to tear him a new one for stealing, which is dangerous unless I'm there to have his back, and for not answering my questions, and then he thrusts the plane into my hands and I feel rough tape at odd intervals. My eyes sweep from the plane to my brother to his ever-stocked backpack to the darkening hillside, which is empty of broken-plane debris.

Oh.

Sam's grinning that Sam-grin again, so rare these days. It borders on desperate – I know he wants a distraction as much as I do – but part of him is geniunely happy to have surprised me by fixing the plane.

"Dean, come on," he says. "Before it's too dark to see it fly."

Carefully, I set the cotton candy down on the grass next to the funnel cake. Then I turn to face the valley, and I lift the plane high, and I gulp back my emotions, and I grin at my brother.

"Ten …" I say, as if I'm launching a rocket, not setting loose a broken toy airplane. Behind me I can hear the sounds of safe kids laughing with their brothers and their fathers.

"Nine …" Sam says beside me. My voice is going crazy, but Sam's the one sounding so grown up these days. Imagine, him noticing I was watching the damn toy planes, that I wanted one so bad I couldn't stand it. I figure he even realized that part of me felt like if I could just fly a plane up above the tree line, some part of me could fly with it and escape the worry that's been crushing me since the first night Dad didn't call.

"Eight …" I say. I want to look at Sam, but I can't take my eyes off the plane, and everything that it represents.

"Seven …" Sam says, and then we start counting together. "Six … Five … Four … Three … Two …"

I draw back my hand.

"One …"

And with a wince, because I can't stand the thought of the plane falling to pieces again on the grass, I fling my arm forward and turn loose of the little object.

So Sam's taping job is a little rough, maybe. He taped the wings kind of crooked, so the plane flies in a circle instead of a straight line. Swooping out above the valley and then returning to us. Landing between us on the grass, knocking into the funnel cake like a sugar-seeking missle.

"It worked!" Sam starts shouting, like it's the coolest thing that ever happened. "It came back, Dean! It came back! Did you see?"

"'Course it did," I laugh. "It's a Winchester model! That kind always comes back!"

"Do it again, Dean! Fly it again!" He's stuffing his face now with slightly-dented funnel cake, powdered sugar visible around his mouth in a ring.

I'm glad it's getting dark and he can't see my eyes.

I skip the countdown this time. Draw back my arm. And wince again – because each time I let it go, there's a chance it won't land safe. Then I launch the plane into the night sky to the sound of my brother's laughter.

Over and over, we wait together in the darkness to see whether it will come back.