I Believe the Children Are Our Future coda. I wanted Jesse and Sam to talk to each other, even after Jesse disappears.

Sam finds the first note on the mirror the next morning. His eyes are bleary, so it takes him a few seconds to figure out what he's seeing; "I'm really sorry," it says, only the s is kind of wobbly, like someone didn't know whether it should face to the right or the left. He finishes brushing his teeth and pulls it off, spits into the sink as he re-reads it.

Then he flips it over and goes to find a pen.

"You made the right choice for you," he writes on the back, and tapes it back up on the mirror.

It's gone by the time Dean gets up. Sam debates not telling him about it, but there were secrets on top of secrets last year, so he ends up saying, "I think Jesse left me a note this morning," over his coffee.

"Huh," Dean says. "Nothing for me?"

"I don't think so."

"Dude, that's not right."

"Well, you did lie to him."

"So did you!"

"I also told him the truth."

Just before the antukai's teeth can close over his shoulder, Sam feels the world shift. One minute he's directly under the monster, the next he's two feet away. It looks just as surprised as he feels, right before Dean puts three sanctified bullets into its head.

His brother comes splashing from the shore, swearing loud and uncoordinated as his hands grope under the water.

Sam watches for a few seconds before it dawns on him that Dean's looking for him and he says, "Over here," except it comes out barely a whisper. He's getting sick of supernatural shit choking him.

Dean doesn't ask how he got out from under the antukai.

Sam sits back on his hands and tries to breathe; the water's murky and deeper than it looks, brackish black under the moonlight, and he's a little too appreciative of being able to draw in a lungful of air to question it for the rest of the night.

"Stroke of luck," Dean jokes. He's whitefaced and his hands are shaking a little around the butt of his gun; Sam drags his eyes away from them and tries not to wheeze. "You're so rank, dude, that even the monsters don't want a piece of you."

There's a note on his bed when they get to the motel room. Dean picks it up since Sam's trying to figure out whether his arms are actually attached. He thinks so. Maybe. The concussion's making everything wobble sort of alarmingly.

"'Be more careful,'" Dean reads incredulously. "'I don't want you to die.' Really? Really?"

"Hi, Sam," Jesse says. He's drumming his heels against the Impala's bumper and chewing on his lip like he hadn't disappeared into thin air the last time Sam saw him.

Sam drops his backpack on the asphalt and goes to lean next to him. "Hey," he says. "Your parents doing alright?"

"Yeah. We're all okay."

"That's good," says Sam.

"I guess so."

The kid looks tired and lonely. He doesn't really remind Sam of himself at that age, but if he looks just right he can see Dean, world-weary and cautious, big eyes and big circles to go under them.

Jesse turns his face up into the sun and says, "Nobody's found us. But I wanted to come find you." He leans hesitantly up against Sam's side; he's so small that it takes Sam a few moments to realize that he's done it.

Sam looks down at the top of his head. He doesn't know what to do with him; he'd never really been big on kids. They didn't like him. "What's wrong?"

"Nothing," Jesse says again. "I said we're okay. Stop asking me that!"

"Okay."

They sit in companionable silence. There's a million things he should be saying to Jesse, about training and helping to kill Lucifer and always, always, always making sure to stay good, stay human, but they all choke in his throat. Sam stares out over the flat land and thinks he's the last person in the world who can give advice on anything to do with demons.

"You said you understood," Jesse says suddenly. He's picking at a stray thread on his jacket that never gets any longer. "Are you like me? Half-demon?"

Sam sighs and cautiously reaches up to ruffle the kid's hair. Sam'd always liked it when Dean did it to him when he was a kid, even if he protested. "Not exactly like you," Sam says truthfully. "My parents were both human."

"So you lied again." Jesse's hands clench. The Impala rattles on her wheels; Sam doesn't even jump. Before, with Ruby, his power had responded to his moods and sent stuff flying all the time. It's not all that surprising.

"No," he says. "I am a freak. Just a different kind than you." Jesse dislodges his hand to look up, squinting against the sun's glare, and Sam finds he can smile a little when he says, "A demon came into my room when I was a baby and bled into my mouth."

"Oh."

"Yeah," Sam sighs. "Oh. I made the wrong choice, though, and I ended up doing something really bad with my powers. What're you gonna do with yours?"

Jesse's head nestles against his ribs as the kid shrugs. "Protect my parents," he says. "What did you do?"

Sam swallows hard, but it's... easier to talk to a kid then it is to Dean. It's easier to admit what he did wrong and the reasons he did it. "I tried to protect my brother," he says, "And when that didn't work, I tried to get revenge."

"My Dad says an eye for an eye leaves everyone blind."

And somewhere in the world, someone's going to go blind after getting vengeance. Sam really hopes it's not him. "Yeah? My Dad used to say 'don't get mad, get even.'"

"No offense," Jesse mumbles, "But your dad was kind of a douche, then. Everybody knows you have to forgive and forget to really beat someone."

And somewhere else, terrorists shake hands with their victims and everyone wins. Jesus. Sam laughs. He has to. "We never really got that memo in my family," he says. "We started hunting monsters because a demon killed my Mom."

Jesse whispers, "I'm sorry," and then he swallows and says, faintly, "I... I could probably bring her back. If I tried really hard. I brought the babysitter back. The one who scratched through her brain."

All the hair goes up on the back of Sam's neck. If he were the same person he was last year, with demon blood swirling through his veins and demon rage in his skull, he would have killed this boy by now. Jesse's neck is small and fragile under his palm; there wouldn't be time for him to react.

Sometimes, he wishes Dad had just done it to him, back then, before all of this shit went down.

The person he is now is just vaguely touched by the offer. "She's been gone a long time," he says gently. "And you shouldn't use your powers like that."

"I thought superheros were supposed to do good things with their powers?"

"Yeah, but you remember the Spiderman speech? 'With great power--'"

"'Comes great responsibility.'"

"That's the one," Sam says. Jesse's a warm, sweaty weight against his side when he shifts, one of the kid's heels digging into his shin; it feels... normal. Good. Like sitting with Dean had, when he'd been fifteen and still small enough to fit under his brother's arm.

Jesse's nose wrinkles. "So I shouldn't save people?" he asks. "Peter Parker does!"

Sam wants to say, 'you're just a kid.' He doesn't. "Peter Parker didn't have people trying to kill him just for being alive," Sam points out. "You want to keep your parents safe, Jesse. You can't do that and save the rest of the world at the same time. The demons will find you."

Or the hunters. Or the angels. Sam doesn't want to poke a hole in that particular belief, though, not unless he has to. He hadn't known that the angels wanted him dead until he was twenty six and it still devastated him. He's not going to tell an eleven year old that angels were out to kill him.

"I saved you," Jesse says.

"Thanks for that."

Jesse peers up at him through his hair. "Freaks should look out for each other," he says shyly. "Like in the X-Men. We could make a school and everything."

"You think?"

"Yeah."

Another, smaller silence, then the kid scuffs the heel of one sneaker against the Impala's bumper and wiggles away from Sam. "I should go," he says, "Before your brother's friend comes back. I don't like him." He pushes himself off the hood of the Impala, lands with both feet on the asphalt and a cloud of South Dakota dust rising around him; he looks like any other kid you could pass on the street, except Sam can almost feel something moving in him now that he knows to look.

It's not demon, but it's not really human either.

Sam rises to his feet and dusts off his ass print so Dean can't bitch him out. "I don't like him most of the time either," he confides. He smiles over at the kid and Jesse breaks into a delighted grin. "He's kind of a bitc--well. You get the idea."

Jesse's laughter lingers long after the kid's disappeared.

There's another note on the mirror in the morning. Sam slides it off and studies it; it's a picture this time instead of a letter. A big, black car and two people with brown mops for hair, blue sky and fat, smiling yellow sun. "Cute," he tells the air, and smiles.

Dean draws a stick figure Jesse in a superhero costume and Sam pins it to the wall before they leave.