Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Dean Winchester was good at two things: killing monsters and eating pie. (Three, if you counted seducing women. Four, if you counted fixing cars.) Dean was not good at offering emotional comfort (well, not to anyone but his father, and John Winchester was dead). What did a man say to his little brother who'd just had to euthanize a woman who might have been the new love of his life? (Might have been, if she wasn't a werewolf.)

Nothing. Nothing real, anyway, not for almost fifteen hundred miles. Asking about tunes on the radio and snacks at the Gas-n-Sip didn't count as comfort (even though Dean had bought Sam organic baked potato chips without making fun of him once.) Sam had spent the drive in broody silence, either sleeping or searching through rag mags for leads on new cases. (He picked up new rag mags at every Gas-n-Sip they stopped at).

Dean was tired of doing nothing, saying nothing, being good at nothing. So he decided to do something he was good at. A billboard up ahead boasted the location of the Bumbleberry Café, home of the best Bumbleberry Pie in the world. Dean wanted some. They were about due for dinner anyway. And Dean - he was good at eating pie.

Apart from that old telekinetic who lived in Salt Lake - Fred Jones, gave Dean his first beer - Dad had always avoided Utah and its special brand of hunters (puritan, polite, military precise). Dad always said a man should never marry a skinny Mormon woman, because it meant she couldn't cook. If there were no fat ladies working the Bumbleberry Café, Dean and Sam could move on. A coffee and stretch would be nice whether or not they got any food.

Sam, who had been dozing against the passenger window, stirred when Dean took the exit for Washington City and the Impala started to show.

"What's going on?" Sam's voice was deep and hoarse with sleep.

"Pie," Dean said. The Bumbleberry Café was a square building with windows on three sides letting warm light spill onto the graveled parking lot. The parking lot was surprisingly full for it being a Tuesday evening, which Dean took for a sign of either really good food or really pretty waitresses.

Sam squinted out the windshield at the cheery yellow awning and sighed, resigned to yet more greasy diner food. He was probably about due for a stop at one of those soup and salad joints he loved so much. How could salad be comfort food?

Dean parked next to a beautiful old Corvette and cut the engine. He stepped out of the car, wincing at the way his knees creaked, and stretched. "Find any hunts?" he asked over the roof of the car.

"Depends. Where are we?"

"Washington City," Dean said. "On the edge of the Nevada border."

"Utah?" Sam sounded skeptical, but he headed for the diner door, rolling his shoulders as he went.

"Yeah."

"There are rumors of a ghost in Cedarville, but it's a college town, and frats love to pull pranks," Sam said. "Could be something, but more likely it's nothing. Something is better than nothing, though."

Dean slanted his brother a sideways look. Sam would know about the ghost pranks by frat boys. Even if he'd never been a frat boy, he'd been to college. After the disaster in Milwaukee, he could never go back. The FBI thought Sam was a bank robber (which wasn't as bad as them thinking Dean was a murderer on top of being a bank robber, but it was enough to end Sam’s college prospects forever).

"Cedarville...I think we passed that on the way down here." Dean tugged open the diner door and stepped into a room full of cozy tables and booths packed with people who were all contributing to a cheerful din of chatter.

The shiny bar along the back formed a counter, behind which a plump woman in an apron was flipping burger patties. An elderly man with grey hair and glasses stood at the till wiping down laminated menus. A tall, thin, pale young man with dark hair was serving drinks at a corner booth.

"Was it so far behind us that it would be cost prohibitive to turn back?" Sam asked.

Dean was so distracted by how delicious the diner smelled that it took him a moment to understand Sam's question. "What? Oh, no. We're okay." We're not not low on money, he meant. Before they found out the FBI was on their tail, Sam had been insistent that they earn money honestly. Now he agreed that the less they interacted with strangers, the better.

The man behind the counter spotted them, and he smiled. "Come on in, gentlemen. You have the fortune of Mercury himself - there is one table left." Something about his accent was strange. Was he Canadian? But he pointed to the only empty booth next to the bar, and Dean waved his thanks before heading toward it. It wasn't the best tactical spot in the joint, but Sam didn't have to fold himself up too much to fit into the booth, so Dean counted it as a win.

The man was at the booth a moment later to hand them menus. "Welcome to the Bumbleberry Café. I've not seen you before. Are you new in town, or just visiting?" Ah. He was British. Dean had seen enough James Bond movies to know.

Sam had been surly with Dean for fifteen hundred miles, but his smile for the old man was genuinely warm and polite. "Just visiting. But maybe new to town. Depends on if we find work."

"Wonderful!" The man looked pleased. "Our Freya always seems to know where there's work to be had. I'll send her over with some drinks. What would you lads like?"

"Coffee, please," Dean said.

"Just water for me, thanks." Sam smiled up at the man once more.

"One coffee, one water, in a jiffy. Feel free to peruse your menu. Ciaran will be here to take your order shortly. As always, I recommend the Boss's Bumbleberry pie."

"Boss?" Dean echoed.

The man - Leo, according to his name tag - nodded in the direction of the cook. "My wife."

Dean grinned. "You can bet I'll save room for at least one slice of pie."

"Excellent. Drinks coming right up."

Leo bustled back to the till to ring up a check the waiter had brought him.

Freya emerged from a room somewhere behind the grill to fetch a glass of ice water and a mug of coffee. Unlike pretty much everyone in the restaurant, she had dark skin and an Asian cast to her features (South-East Asian; Dean's magazines had made him better able to tell them socially-conscious Sam). Freya balanced both drinks on a tray with enviable ease and approached with a lovely sway in her hips.

The entire diner had a 1950's air, from a glowing jukebox in the corner to a framed signed photo of Elvis on the wall near the till. Freya was no exception, with her blue checkered uniform dress and little white apron. She served Dean the coffee and Sam the water.

"Dad says you're looking for work," she said. She also had a British accent, which was downright uncanny. Then Dean glanced past Freya at Leo. He was old enough to be her grandfather.

Freya must have caught the line of Dean's gaze, for she pursed her lips and said, "I'm adopted."

Sam kicked Dean under the table, flashed Feya his best dimpled smile. "We are looking for work."

"What kind are you looking at?"

"Whatever we can get," Sam said.

"The only thing I know of at the moment is a couple of spaces in the tennis unit at the country club," Freya said, and she looked a little skeptical to Dean.

Sam's dimpled smile, however, worked on her like a charm. "Tennis, huh? I played tennis in college."

Dean was about to kick him in the ankle for such a terrible and flirtatious lie, and he paused. What if Sam wasn't lying?

"Oh, really? What were you studying at college?" Freya tucked a strand behind her ear, bashful.

"I was pre-law," Sam said. Only Dean caught his minute flinch. Almost two years since Sam had left Stanford, and he still acted like the mere thought of it hurt. Twenty-two years later, and Dad still flinched at the mere mention of Mom. Maybe Dad and Sam really weren't so different.

Freya's smile at Sam was unfairly bright. Women weren't supposed to smile at broody boys like Sam. "Of course. Tennis. The other white collar sport. I can't stand golf. If you're serious about the job, I can put in a good word for you. A friend of mine works there."

Sam flashed his dimples again.

Dean said, "Thanks. We appreciate it."

At the subtle reminder of Dean's presence, Freya's gaze slid over to him briefly, her smile for him less bright. She turned to go - and crashed into the waiter.

A cry rose up as a tray full of dirty dishes toppled.

The waiter's blue eyes were wide with horror. Then for a split second, his eyes turned gold.

Dean froze.

The waiter moved with supernatural speed, dipping to one side and somehow getting his tray under the stack of dishes.

"Ciaran!" Freya cried.

He smiled at her, expression sheepish. "Sorry, Freya." He had an Irish accent. What kind of diner was this, British Isles Immigrants United? "Leo sent me over to take their orders."

Freya swatted him lightly in the chest with her tray. "Your uncanny reflexes do not mitigate the fact of your clumsiness. I'll take their orders. Get those dishes back to Jamie."

"I'm sorry, Freya, I really am." Ciaran's expression was hangdog.

"I'm sure you are. Leave the new regulars to me, all right?"

Ciaran arched an eyebrow. "New regulars? You're feeling confident." He lifted his chin to peer over the top of Freya's head - she barely reached his shoulder - and grinned when he saw Sam and Dean. "Aye. If I swung that way, I'd be hopeful disguised as confident too."

Freya swatted him with her tray again, hard enough that he winced. "Shut it. Begone, leprechaun."

Ciaran grinned and hurried away. Freya turned back to the table. "Apologies, gentlemen. Ciaran can be terribly clumsy. Have you decided what you'd like?"

Dean caught Sam's eye. Sam nodded; he'd seen it too, the color change in Ciaran's eyes.

Dean turned his most charming smile on Freya. "We'll need a few minutes, sweetheart."

"Excellent. I'll be back in a few." Freya's grin was still only for Sam despite the sweetheart Dean had offered her. She departed with an unfairly hypnotizing sway of her hips.

As soon as she was out of earshot, Dean leaned in. "Yellow eyes! Telekinesis. Are you thinking what I'm thinking?"

"Another kid like me." Sam's expression was grim.

"How will we find out for sure?" Dean asked. "You heard his accent. His birth records won't be easy to get."

"We could always ask," Sam said.

How? Dean wondered. Sam had been too honest with Freya. Neither law enforcement nor a journalism pretext would work. Then he grinned. "Yeah. You should ask Freya, see what she knows. She seems like good friends with him, and she has a thing for you."

Sam looked discomfited at the notion, but he didn't disagree with Dean's assertion about Freya's interest. Maybe Sam's hesitation with the old lady on the ghost shop case hadn't been just because the lady was old.

Dean rolled his eyes. "Come on. You've done the dewy-eyes thing before."

Sam sighed, but he looked like he was thinking about it.

Dean went in for the kill. "He could be the key to finding Andy and Ava."

It was a low blow. Sam felt responsible for Ava and Andy going missing. Maybe Sam wasn't entirely wrong with his guilt, since this Ciaran kid was happily living his life and none of the other kids like Sam who'd met Sam were. Sam thought Andy and Ava were missing.

Dean was pretty sure they were dead.

Sam clenched his jaw and nodded. "Okay. But...can we just eat right now?"

That felt like hypocrisy, coming from the guy who'd brooded for fifteen hundred miles while he looked for hunts, but Dean let it go. For Utah, the coffee was good, and Dean wanted to try some of the Bumbleberry Pie.

"Are bumbleberries a real fruit?" he asked.

Sam blinked at him.

"They have elderberries and gorseberries and huckleberries and other weird berries." Dean knew he was babbling.

"Ah, no. There's no such thing as bumbleberries," Sam said. "A bumbleberry pie has several different kinds of berries in it." He was eyeing Dean warily.

Dean straightened up, defensive. "I was just asking."

Freya reappeared, topped up Dean's mug with a deft dip of her wrist. "So, gentlemen, what'll it be?"

Dean ordered a spicy burger with everything on it. Sam ordered grilled chicken with vegetables. Freya wrote so fast Dean would have thought she was pretending.

She made eye contact with him briefly. "Your burger comes with fries. Do you want ketchup, fry sauce, mayo or vinegar with them?"

Dean stared at her in horror. Why would anyone put mayo or vinegar on fries? What was in fry sauce? "Ketchup," he said.

"Excellent," Feya said. "Mum will have those done in a jiffy." She twitched the menus away from them and headed back to the bar.

Dean leaned back in the booth, ostensibly to stretch out but really to keep an eye on Ciaran. From all impressions, Ciaran was well known and well liked by the locals. They smiled at him and laughed when he spoke. One old lady even tried to grope his behind, which he dodged with a deftness Dean had only otherwise witnessed from waitresses in truck stops and bars. Ciaran certainly didn't look evil, but then neither had Andy or, according to Sam, Ava.

Sam wasn't evil. Dean knew that. Meg possessing Sam hadn't shaken Dean's faith in his brother. Sam was still Sam, goofy and long-limbed and emo like his hair. Emo, like the way he was brooding over his latest newspaper right now.

The door swung open, and a woman stepped into the diner. She was tall, slender, and pale, with long dark hair pulled into a bouncing ponytail. She wore a little white tennis skirt that showed off her long legs, and she had a tennis racket in one hand. Her blue eyes were pale, bright. She was beautiful in a way Dad had always told Dean to not bother with. If this were a singles bar and she were holding a pink fruity cocktail, Dean could've lied to her and said he was a movie producer. But there was something in the gleam of her eyes that was too intelligent and cunning for Dean's comfort.

"Ciaran," she said. "Come on."

"Shift doesn't end for another fifteen minutes," Ciaran said, teeth clenched in a false smile.

"The tournament is in three weeks," the woman sang out. Her accent was similar to Ciaran's. "We have to win."

Freya swept out from behind the bar with two plates of food. "Anna," she said. "Dashed right over from the country club, did you?"

"Girls like to be timely," Anna said. "Something my brother never learned."

Freya ducked around Anna and set Sam and Dean's meals down in front of them. "Here you go, lads. Let me know if you need anything else."

Anna swatted at Ciaran with her tennis racket. Neither Leo nor the other diner patrons seemed to mind the abuse of a staff member even though the dishes on Ciaran's tray rattled dangerously.

Freya actually winked at Sam. "All right. Holler if that changes." And she turned away.

"Actually," Sam said, "about that tennis pro gig -"

Freya turned back to him, face lit up like a Christmas tree. "Yes?"

"We actually would be interested. If you could get us in touch with your friend." Sam ducked his head bashful.

"Well," Freya said. "You're in luck. Anna here is a tennis pro at the club."

At the sound of her name, Anna turned. "What about me?"

Freya waved her over. "I found someone who might be able to fill that open spot at the club."

Anna trotted over. For someone who probably spent all day in the sun, she was remarkably pale. "Really?" She looked Dean up and down. "He's pretty enough for the old biddies. Poor Ciaran can only handle moonlighting for so long, as delicate as he is."

Freya shook her head. "That one." She lifted her chin at Sam.

Dean hated being called pretty. He'd gotten into a lot of fistfights over being called pretty when he was a kid.

Anna's grin was almost predatory. "Do you both play tennis?" she asked. "Because they'd make a great matched set."

Freya grinned. "Like you and Ciaran?"

"My dear twin positively wilts in the sun, but my manager said all hands on deck, and Ciaran has hands." Anna eyed Sam speculatively.

Twins. Like Ansem and Andy. Did they both have psychic powers? Sam didn't quite catch Dean's gaze, keeping engaged with Anna, but he nodded when he felt Dean's gaze on him. He was wondering the same thing.

Anna looked the brothers over one last time, then nodded. "See you two first thing tomorrow, and show me what you've got."

"Thanks," Sam said. He smiled at Freya. "And thank you, too."

"Anything for my new regulars," Freya said. Anna giggled and caught Freya by the elbow, steered her away.

Ciaran, Dean noticed, relaxed as soon as Anna was out of earshot. He stopped by the table to top up Sam's glass of water.

"You might be regretting asking Anna for a job right quickly," he said. "But I'll be there to commiserate."

There was a certain cruel irony to being sent to the high desert on a goodwill tour after closing a case on an arsonist serial killer. From one deadly heat to another, Morgan had joked. Reid had offered various tips for surviving dry desert heat. He was a Las Vegas native, after all.

But Aaron Hotchner wasn't worried about the heat. He was worried about what would happen to his team while he was gone. Director Strauss had never been a field agent, always put politics ahead of justice. Aaron's team had taken a lot of hits in the last year - losing Greenaway, almost losing Reid, Morgan's trauma. Aaron was fully justified in his suspicion that Director Strauss would do something politically favorable to herself and practically disastrous for the team while he was gone. Something like splitting them up and reassigning them to other teams, or forcing Jason to retire and putting another mole in his place because Prentiss hadn't worked out.

Sending Aaron to the high desert of Southern Utah to present at a state bar association conference would seem, to anyone else, a favor: a break after a long case, a chance to relax at a fancy hotel and country club, get a tan, and play some golf. Aaron knew that Strauss, for some reason or another, wanted him out of the way for at least a week. He was sure she had someone watching, making sure he wasn't secretly working a case or otherwise staying in illicit contact with his team.

Aaron wasn't going to stir the hornet's nest, so he sat on the back patio of the hotel resort, wearing a polo shirt and khaki cargo shorts, and pretended he was drinking more than he was. He was filling out a stack of postcards - mostly for Jack, but at least one for Garcia - and he was watching everyone around him.

The conference theme was child protection and preventing child abuse. Conference attendees were mostly lawyers, some law enforcement and social workers, and a handful of medical providers and college students.

The students were crowded around a shaded patio table too small for their number, huddled close for safety and flinching whenever a law enforcement officer with an openly carried sidearm passed. Some were just barely old enough to drink and were approaching cocktails with caution, still used to imbibing on the sly. The conference started tomorrow, and half of them would be too hungover to function before lunch. Aaron was presenting on kidnapping protocols and federal resources for prosecuting Internet crimes against children. Ostensibly he was supposed to spend any time not presenting liaising with local agencies and educating them about the BAU's usefulness. Briefly, Aaron wished he had the freedom to get so drunk tonight that he could skip the opening ceremonies tomorrow.

No, he'd best keep an eye out for Strauss's spy. Haley had always hated it when he'd profile strangers when they were supposed to be out at a nice dinner date. Aaron had never been able to explain to her that he profiled people around him all the time, and it was exhausting, but he couldn't help it. When he wasn't immersed in the search for a monster, the best he could do was make profiling a game.

Take the four tennis pros at the table to Aaron's right. They'd chosen their table because it had the least advantageous view of the rolling green golf course and red desert mountains; actual patrons of the resort would choose that table last, so the four of them could pretend to be part of the crowd of wealthy patrons without getting too close, without getting into trouble.

Two of them - caucasian, male, tall, early to mid-twenties - were long time friends, brothers in spirit if not in blood. They were comfortable in each other's personal space, but the way the tall one shoved the shorter spoke more to traditional masculine affection. Friends, not lovers. Especially given the way the shorter one was unabashedly admiring the legs of the young woman opposite him.

"Dean," the taller one hissed, swatted the shorter one again when the woman crossed her legs and Dean whistled.

The woman threw her head back and laughed. "Sam, no need to defend my virtue. I can handle Dean just fine."

"Anna," Sam said, "I have no doubt you can protect yourself just fine. I've seen your backhand. Dean, however, needs to behave so we don't get fired on our first day."

Anna shook her head. "Not a chance." She nudged the young man beside her. "Ciaran served a ball straight at a student's head on his first day and didn't get fired."

Ciaran ducked his head and scowled at Anna. They were clearly siblings, for they had the same pale skin, fine features, black hair, bright blue eyes, and Irish accents. Both of them were beautiful in an ethereal way, and their pale slenderness was out of place against the desert backdrop. All four wore white tennis uniforms, the men in polo shirts and shorts, the woman in a skirt that showed off her long legs to every advantage. Four tennis rackets were piled carelessly onto the fifth chair at the table.

"Besides," Anna continued, "you're needed for the summer tennis tournament. Can't have a doubles tournament with only one pro double set."

When Aaron was in law school he learned that white collar sports came in three flavors: golf, tennis, and rowing. As he hadn't gone to a law school near a river and he despised golf, tennis had been his only option. Any lawyer worth his salt knew one of those sports for networking purposes. Aaron had been absurdly glad that Haley had been willing to learn to play tennis with him. He hadn't had time for a decent doubles game since joining the BAU.

Dean's shoulders went tense for a moment, but then he sat back in his chair, the picture of nonchalance. Aaron could see Dean using precisely that pose while bluffing at a hand of cards.

"You two probably always clean house at the doubles tournament," Dean said. "What with that twin psychic connection you two are rocking."

Something at the way he said 'psychic' was odd. Was he a believer in such things? Reid had all kinds of statistics about phenomena documented between twins that could be described as a psychic connection.

Sam had gone statue-still in a nonchalant pose that mirrored Dean's; he was watching Ciaran and Anna very closely.

Ciaran and Anna exchanged glances, and for one moment, in the late afternoon sun, their eyes gleamed golden.

Ciaran said, "We could change it up if you like. Sibling swap."

Dean pounced. "Dibs on Anna."

Sam huffed, amused. "Fine. I'll take Ciaran. You'll lose. I've heard all the old ladies talking about Ciaran. They say he's magic on the court." Another odd emphasis on the word magic. Dean watched the twins closely for their reactions.

Anna raised her eyebrows. "Why do you get to call dibs? We were here first. And maybe I want dibs on your not so little brother. I've heard the old ladies talking about you, Sam. They think your backside is magic on the court."

A dull flush crept up Sam's neck and jaw. Dean laughed.

"Sammy's always been a cougar magnet," Dean said, waggling his eyebrows meaningfully. Judging by the way Sam swatted at Dean, Dean was referring to a specific woman.

So Sam and Dean were brothers. Aaron studied them intently, searching for any sign of biological relation. The only feature they had in common was their eyes. At just the right angle, Sam's eyes were the same shade of green as Dean's.

Dean must have sensed Aaron staring, because he caught Aaron's gaze. Aaron smiled politely and returned to his postcards.

Ciaran and Anna had been in America long enough that they'd fallen out of the gerundive pattern of Irish speech. Sam and Dean's accents hailed from the Midwest. Aaron wasn't enough of a philologist to name a specific state, but it was definitely Midwest. Compared to the twins, the brothers were both tanned golden. Farm work? Construction? Or maybe just so much time in the sun playing tennis.

One of the country club patrons, an older, genteel woman with her silver hair in an elegant french twist, wandered away from a group of similar women at a nearby table and stopped beside the tennis pro table. She put a familiar hand on Sam's shoulder.

Ciaran and Anna didn't sit up to attention, but the mirth on their faces was immediately masked by professional politeness. Dean, by contrast, could barely contain his gleeful amusement.

"Samuel," the woman said, "are we still on for this afternoon? I need some help with my swing."

Sam's shoulders went rigid, but the smile he offered he was bright, dimpled, and borderline flirtatious. "Your swing is fine, Ms. Harper. But I probably have some pointers for your serve."

Ms. Harper squeezed Sam's shoulder. "Excellent. See you then." And she walked back to her friends, a distinct swing in her hips.

Sam knocked back enough of his drink in one go that management would have frowned, had they been present.

Ciaran and Anna looked openly amused. Dean coughed into one hand. Flirt.

Sam nudged him in the ribs, hard. "Just doing my job!"

"Tennis lessons do not require flirting," Dean said.

"Liar," Ciaran said. "You flirt too. Your charm is very much rebel without a cause, where your brother is too pretty to be a thug despite my size, but you flirt just as much."

Anna snickered. "I didn't realize you were such a connoisseur in the ways of flirting, little brother."

"Flirting equals tips," Ciaran said wisely.

"Aye. That it does." Anna finished off her drink in one long swallow, head tipped back to show off the line of her throat, and stood up.

Ciaran stood up as well. He said, "Duty calls," and reached for his tennis racket.

What happened after that, Aaron could never quite explain. Ciaran paused, fumbled with his racket. It was tangled with Anna's. She reached out to help her brother. Someone's elbow knocked into someone's drink, and the glass started to tip.

Time sank into slow motion. The emerald green of a midori sour spilled over the edge of the clear glass, droplets spraying toward Sam's pristine white uniform. Dean cried out a warning. Sam flung out a hand to catch the glass, heedless of his uniform. Anna's eyes flashed gold. Ciaran's eyes flashed gold.

That made no sense.

And then the glass was in Ciaran's hand and he was apologizing to Sam and Sam's uniform was spotless, the table was clean, and time was back at normal speed.

It felt like hyper speed.

Aaron was frozen, trying to process what he'd witnessed.

Anna chided her brother for being so graceless when he was supposed to be a pro athlete. Her words were light, teasing, but there was panic in her ice blue eyes. Ciaran's chest rose and fell like a hummingbird's wings; he was liable to pass out any moment.

Dean had a hand at the small of his back. Aaron knew that reflex.

Criminals packing heat and undercover agents in danger both had it. Sam was careful, measured in both voice and gesture. But he assured Ciaran he was okay, and Anna hustled her brother away for a tennis lesson.

As soon as the twins were out of earshot, Sam and Dean turned to each other and had an intense conversation, sotto voce. Aaron heard investigation from Sam and keep digging from Dean and getting suspicious from Sam. Were they undercover agents? From which agency?

Aaron was about to snap a picture of them with his phone, send it to Garcia and ask for a background check and an inter-agency conflict search, but then he thought of Strauss and what she'd do to him - or worse, his team - if he stepped even a toe outside the line of his official purpose at this conference.

Aaron resumed filling out his postcards in earnest. If he were a wise man, he'd leave the patio terrace in search of stamps, and then he'd find the local police chief and suggest a game of chess or backgammon on the lower terrace while they discussed inter-agency liaising. That was what he was supposed to do, if he wanted to protect his job.

What should he do, to protect his team or the public?

It seemed facile, to assume mafia or IRA connections of a pair of Irish twins, especially a pair so far from Boston or Chicago or New York. Las Vegas, as Reid had reminded him, was less than two hours away, but it wasn't known for its Irish mafia connections.

Aaron sighed and gathered up his postcards. If he was going to liaise, he ought to clean up a little bit. The two other tennis pros were gone from their table. The only evidence of their presence was a ring of condensation on the table top. It looked faintly green. Midori sour.

Two shadows fell across Aaron's table. He looked up at a pair of young agents in cheap suits that looked tortuous in the desert heat.

The junior partner was tall, golden haired, blue eyed, built strong but handsome enough to be disarming in a pinch. His expression was blank and he stood respectfully behind his senior partner, just at her right shoulder. The senior partner was short, but her dark eyes held steel, and she met Aaron's gaze unflinchingly. She was too pale for the desert sun where her partner was tanned golden.

"Good afternoon," Aaron said. They were obviously government agents. Obviously armed, too, but he wouldn't make any assumptions about agency affiliations till he saw some badgers.

The senior partner reached into her jacket for her credentials, flipped the leather wallet open with a practiced flick of her wrist. "Supervisory Special Agent Hotchner?"

Aaron nodded.

"I'm Special Agent Gwen Finch. This is my partner, Mark Fletchley. We've come for a consult."

Was this a test from Strauss?

"Special Agent Henricksen sent us," Agent Finch said. She glanced at her partner, who held up a thick brown file with an FBI seal on it.

Aaron knew Victor Henricksen by reputation. He was ruthless but had a good case closure rate. Henricksen tended to view BAU profiles as hocus pocus. Either these agents were lying or Henricksen was desperate.

"Are you looking for a profile?" Aaron asked.

Agent Finch nodded. "Three of them, to be precise."

"How soon?" Aaron asked.

"We know you're busy here, but as soon as possible," Agent Finch said.

Aaron considered calling Garcia to make sure this was really one of Henricksen's cases. But no, he was a profiler and a colleague, and a real profiling job instead of obsessing over country club staff was a better use of his time.

"May I review the file and call you if I have any questions?" he asked.

"Of course. Both of our business cards are in the file." Agent Finch handed it over. "We appreciate your help, sir."

Aaron nodded. "Always glad to be of service." He reached into his pocket for his wallet and forked over his business card. "Let me know if you turn up any new information."

"Thank you." Agent Finch accepted the business card with a deferential nod of her head, the corners of her mouth quirking up in a brief smile.

The file was thick, heavy, and interspersed with newspaper clippings. Agent Finch and Agent Fletchley turned away headed back toward the clubhouse. For all that both of them had looked young, in their mid-twenties at the most, they moved with the smooth synchronization of long time comrades in arms. Perhaps they had come up through the Academy together.

Aaron was good at chess, but he rarely enjoyed playing against anyone but Jason, because Jason didn't feel the need to fill a game with pointless chatter. If Aaron had to choose between a bad game of chess or backgammon and an evening profiling alone, he'd spend the evening alone.

"This is a huge risk, Sammy." Dean followed Sam away from the terrace, tennis racket in hand. So far his tennis instruction had been limited to tips on fixing a backhand swing. All he was doing was repeating the few tips Sam had taught him, but the old biddies he'd been assigned to weren't terribly critical.

"They're like me," Sam said. "You saw their eyes this time. Both of them. This thing is bigger than just America. We have to find out how big."

"We don't even know what the yellow-eyed demon wants with you." Dean scrubbed a hand over his face. At first the tennis outfits had seemed stupid, but in this heat, he was grateful, even if he did look like a tool. Sam kept foisting sunblock on him like a helicopter parent, but since Dean hadn't broken out in freckles he figured he should be grateful.

"We need to check their records to see if their parents died when they were six months old." Sam kept his voice low as he stepped into the employee locker room to check his phone.

"Is that even relevant? Ava's mother is still alive." Dean snagged a towel off a nearby stack and used it to mop off his face and neck. Sam reached into his locker for the bottle of sunblock and shoved it at Dean without looking away from his phone.

"No word from my European contact," Sam said.

Dean slathered sunblock on his face and neck. "Why do you have European contacts?" He moved on to his arms.

"Study abroad in college." Sam put his phone back in his locker.

Dean snorted. "We could always ask a friendly Interpol agent. This place is crawling with law enforcement. We should lay low till they clear out."

Sam grimaced. "Not going to happen. The conference is a week long, and we need money."

"Dammit, Sammy –"

"Hey, it's locals. Lawyers and cops. Not even a whiff of Henricksen," Sam said. "They won't expect us here, so they won't see us here. It's basic psychology."

Dean didn't buy Sam's verbal hocus pocus for one minute. "If they catch us, I'm leaving you behind when I break out. Now, let's go teach some tennis."

The tennis courts were set on the north side of the country club so the golf course served as a backdrop. Luckily, the tennis courts were the coolest outdoor areas. Coolest was a highly relative term in the desert heat, but Dean was grateful.

Their tennis students that afternoon were Ms. Harper, who'd hit on Sam during the lunch break, and her friend Ruth, who was a pretty terrible tennis player and wouldn't notice Dean's lack of tennis finesse. As a hunter and a Winchester, he was naturally athletic, so he was a pretty decent tennis player, but he didn't know the finer points of technique the way Sam did. (Dean hadn't know Sam had done study abroad in college. Sam didn't have to know Dean had taken a crash course in tennis to impress Cassie back in the day.)

Ruth was more than happy to let Dean stand behind her and help her practice hitting tennis balls from a machine. On the other court, Sam was teaching Ms. Harper how to put a spin on her serve.

On the other court, Ciaran and Anna were helping an older couple practice returning serves. A cute teenage girl was acting as ball girl, fetching stray tennis balls and returning them to the bucket Ciaran had between them.

Twins. With golden eyes who had telekinesis, like Max Miller. But neither of them seemed nearly as unhinged. Of course Andy, Sam, and supposedly Ava had been normal. Not so much with Andy's twin.

Ruth missed a ball, and Dean trotted over to the machine to shut it off. He flashed her the smile that had won the Winchesters two weeks rent free in a house in Michigan, then repeated Sam's spiel about what made for a good backhand.

"Make sure your grip is right. Split-step. Turn your shoulders and racket together. Make sure your racket head is below the ball before you start to swing. Stay with the shot – keep the racket going forward even after you've hit the ball."

Ruth twined her fingers with his when he corrected her grip, and she giggled when he put his hands on her shoulders to show her how to turn.

Suddenly he understood Sam's irritation with the old lady in the ghost ship case. Unlike Sam, however, Dean was a professional, and he acted like nothing was out of the ordinary.

But his life had left ordinary the night the yellow eyed demon murdered his mother. Dean's life had departed from even hunter-ordinary when his father warned him he might have to kill his little brother, the brother he'd been charged to protect and defend all his life.

The yellow-eyed demon had done something to Sam and all the kids like him. If Dean had to face the possibility of needing to kill Sam, then he'd be better be ready to kill Andy and Ava and the twins too.

Dean was surrounded by flirty grandmas and kids hand-picked by a powerful demon for who knew what. He missed good old-fashioned ghost hunts when the worst thing he had to worry about was the cops. He and Sam were in the middle of a country club crawling with cops and somehow that was the least of their problems.

Speaking of cops, that pair of suits lingering next to the gate had also been hanging around the tables on the terrace. In fact, they'd approached that other suit, the one who'd been pretending it was casual Friday but had been watching Dean a little too closely for comfort. He'd been watching all four of them. Was he more interested in the twins? Or had he somehow recognized Sam and Dean?

Metal flashed on the edge of Dean's vision. He turned, poised for weapons.

Ms. Harper said, "Teach me how to do that."

Sam spun the racket on the flat of his palm again. "This? Sorry. It's just a silly flourish."

Sam must have played a lot of tennis to learn that trick.

"Can you do that?" Ruth asked, curling a hand around Dean’s forearm.

"Nah. I'm not much of a fancy-pants like Sammy.” Dean glanced back at the gate. The two suits were still there, having a low, intense conversation. Apparently the little lady was wore the pants in the relationship. Dean flashed Ruth a smile. "Would you like to learn that trick?"

She nodded, looking delighted.

Dean called out, "Hey Sammy, teach us how to do that."

Sam looked up caught Dean's eye. Dean tilted his head ever-so-slightly in the direction of the two suits. Sam nodded. He'd noticed them too. He waved Dean and Ruth over. Sam angled himself so Dean could look right at the suits while he faced Sam. The two suits pushed open the gate and skirted the edges of the courts to speak to the twins. Sam, his shoulders stiff with tension, was explaining to the two women how to spin the racket. He was probably using technical terms more suited to physics than to tennis, but Ruth managed a decent spin before the racket toppled off her palm and toward Sam, who caught it midair and handed it back.

Ciaran and Anna didn't seem bothered by whatever the suits were saying to them, but the way Anna kept darting looks Dean's way was unsettling. Something about the suits screamed Feds. Were the twins being asked about Dean and Sam?

Ms. Harper managed a successful racket spin for a couple of seconds, and Sam and Ruth cheered.

"Your turn," Ruth said to Dean.

"It's easy," Sam said. "You can do it."

Dean could flip a gun and spin his favorite knife on his fingertips, but he'd never spun a racket. He met Sam's gaze. Sam shrugged. Dean couldn't believe Sam had almost chosen this white collar crap voluntarily. Dean was only doing it for the good of the hunt, and he hated it. But he managed to spin the racket. Not nearly as well as Sam, but definitely better than both women had. They cheered.

Over Sam's shoulder, the twins had finished with the suits, and the suits were walking away cell phones pressed their ears.

Sam was regretfully telling the women their hour was up when Dean snapped back to attention. The ladies went to fetch their water bottles.

"Have we been made?" Sam asked, voice low.

"Lucky Charm and his sister are on their way over right now." Dean raised his voice. "Is everything all right?"

Anna nodded. "Fine. We've been asked to organize a tennis tournament. For the conference."

Judging by Ciaran's expression, he was not fine with this notion.

"What can we do to help?" Sam asked, ever attuned to damsels in distress.

"They want us to do a mass coaching session as soon as all the participants have signed up," Anna said. Her face was pale, gaze distracted.

"Coaching we can do," Ciaran said faintly.

Sam sighed. "What are we going to do for brackets?"

"Single elimination," Anna said. "Then we face each other, and the winners face whichever of us win."

"They said they wanted to arrange it so it was cops versus lawyers." Ciaran spun his racket idly.

"Rich people," Dean muttered. Louder he said, "Ciaran, you're good at math, right?"

Ciaran raised his eyebrows. "What?"

"Never mind. Sam's good at math. He'll help you come up with some kind of algorithm thing to make a bracket. Leave the coaching to Anna and me. We can scope out the teams and figure out how to seed them." Dean met Anna's gaze questioning.

She nodded. "Fine. But we're not doing a sibling swap for the actual tournament."

"Fine," Dean said.

Sam asked Ciaran about the bracket software used for previous tournaments. Ciaran looked confused.

"It's single elimination," Sam said. "All we have to do is seed the first round. More important is spectator seating, scorekeepers, refs and ball kids."

"Usually the pros ref," Ciaran said.

Sam headed for the staff locker room. "We need to round up more volunteers. Who can we poach?"

Dean didn't like the grin the twins shared.

The hotel room was spacious, comfortable. Aaron wasn't one for bringing his work to bed, so he was glad the room came with a sizable desk, which allowed him to spread out the file's contents so he could try to make sense of it. It made little sense.

Agent Henricksen had what looked like two cases combined into one file. First was a string of arsons from the early 1980's. Victims were from every state, but age, gender, race, and socioeconomic class had no discernible pattern.

Someone - Aaron guessed Agent Finch by the handwriting - had included newspaper clippings from all of the fires and underlined the names of all of the survivors. In the margins, she had also scribbled the survivors' ages.

A pattern emerged. Every single one of the arson victim families had a baby who was exactly six months old at the time of the fire.

Aaron sucked in a sharp breath. There had been fires every month in 1983. Whoever had started all the fires must have been planning meticulously, and for months in advance. The organization required to know when each baby's six month birthday was, to know where the babies slept in each house (fire marshal reports were that every fire originated in the rooms where the babies had been sleeping, regardless of whether that room was where the babies usually slept) and to make it to every house was beyond one person. It had to be a team, at least three - two to case the house and set the fire, one to be the advance scout at the site of the next fire given some of the short intervals between fires.

The newspaper clippings, fire marshal reports, and police reports were arranged in chronological order. Someone had included a map of the lower forty-eight states with every fire marked, numbered, and dated. Either someone had racked up a lot of frequent flier miles or there had been a large team spread out across the country. No one could have driven from each fire. It wasn't humanly possible.

Why would Henricksen care about fires that had happened two decades ago?

And what did those fires have to do with the crime spree of one Dean John Winchester?

His crime spree made even less sense than the fires. What kind of man started off with credit card fraud, then jumped to serial torture and murder, and after police in St. Louis declared him dead, impersonated a police officer? His most recent crime was a bank robbery in which no money was taken.

Henricksen had dug up a surprising amount about Dean Winchester. His father, John Eric, had served in Vietnam. His mother, Mary Campbell, had died when Dean was four. John's steady work history as a mechanic in Kansas ended at his wife's death and turned into a string of mechanic jobs, freelance repair jobs, and credit card fraud, which he'd no doubt taught to Dean. John had dragged his family all over the country. Once Dean hit sixteen, he had started on the same career path as his father - small-time mechanic, freelance repair, odd jobs, and after he turned eighteen and dropped out of high school, credit card fraud.

Where Dean had squeaked by with his GED, his younger brother Samuel Henry had earned a full ride scholarship to Stanford and majored in pre-law. He had no hint of suspicion on his record till November 2, 2005, when his live-in girlfriend was killed in a fire at the apartment they shared.

He'd dropped out of school and vanished.

When he'd resurfaced, it was in connection with Dean’s murder spree in St. Louis. Rebecca Warren, the kidnap victim who had survived Dean's vicious spree, was one of Samuel's friends from Stanford.

Samuel had been reported missing in Minnesota several months later, right before local police solved a decades old mystery of a cannibalistic family, and right around the time Dean had been charged with impersonating an officer. He'd been attempting to impersonate (an older, heavier, black) state police officer and sought a small-town deputy's help in finding Samuel.

Samuel and Dean had popped up on the radar again as suspects in a Baltimore double homicide, but they'd escaped during a firefight between the two investigating detectives, one of whom was the real murderer. Samuel had been present during the bank hostage situation in Milwaukee. Witnesses had described him as patient, polite, and efficient, and definitely working with Dean. Based on his prior involvement with law enforcement, Samuel didn't seem like a violent criminal. However, he and Dean had managed to subdue two SWAT officers, take their gear, and escape from the bank undetected.

The preliminary profile Henricksen had built for the family was sensible enough:

John Winchester, distraught by the death of his wife, had turned to paranoia and gone mostly off grid, his lifestyle choice made successful due to his military training as a Marine in Vietnam. He'd hung onto the edges of society long enough to get his boys some education, teach them credit card fraud, and commit a string of baffling grave desecrations. Dean had learned fraud and grave desecration from his father. Samuel must have learned it too, but he'd never been caught, and he'd abandoned the family business to attempt normalcy - college, girlfriend, stable residence. It all came crashing down around his ears with his girlfriend's death. Like father, like son.

Was there a suspect in the girlfriend's death?

Handwritten notes that Aaron suspected belonged to Henricksen hinted that Dean had set the fire to bring Samuel back into the fold. Henricksen suspected John was a paranoid survivalist, had murdered his own wife to sever all ties to the rational world. John had taught Dean the same callous disregard for human life, specifically women, which explained the victimology in the Missouri crime spree.

How had Mary Campbell Winchester died?

Aaron rifled through the Dean section of the file.

She'd died in a fire. A house fire that began in Samuel's nursery.

Aaron frowned and turned back to the Arsonist section of the file.

There. On November 2, 1983, Mary Winchester had died in Lawrence, Kansas. Jessica Lee Moore, Samuel's almost-fiancée, had died on the exact same day twenty-two years later.

It couldn't be a coincidence.

Notes in the scrawling, masculine hand Aaron was now sure was Henricksen's detailed suspicions about how John had been the 1983 arsonist, and now Dean was on similar a crime spree leading up to the same.

Tucked at the very back of the Arson section of the file were several newspaper articles. Ansen Weems, dead. Scott Carey, dead. Max Miller dead. All of them were the same age as Samuel Winchester. All of their mothers had died the same way as Mary Campbell Winchester.

Rose Holt's mother had, on Rose's six month birthday last year, almost died in a house fire that originated in Rose's nursery in Salvation, Iowa. Two young men matching the descriptions of Dean and his younger brother had been seen talking to the Holt family several hours before the fire.

The notes on the 1983 arson survivors and the Holts were in Agent Finch's handwriting.

Aaron trawled back through the file, trying to piece together what he knew of the brothers themselves. Samuel must have been fiercely intelligent and determined. Studies showed that foster kids fell behind six months' worth of schooling every time they changed placements, and Samuel had maintained perfect grades despite moving around more than twice as often as the average foster kid. He must also have had enough social savvy that no one at Stanford seemed to know anything about his family or his past, that he could blend right in with peers who'd grown up with mostly stable families and homes. By all reports, Samuel Winchester was a quiet, respectful, hardworking student. From his earliest teachers to his college professors, no one had suspected a thing about his past, except for a couple of teachers who'd thought his father had been neglectful and impoverished.

Dean, by sharp contrast, was a rebel, a class clown, a charmer. He'd gotten into plenty of fights at school. Teachers classified him as a trouble-maker, and the label must have followed him from school to school, but the trouble he got into revealed an aptitude for mechanics, chemistry, and improvised explosives that was impressive, if not disturbing. What eyewitness accounts existed of interactions with Dean once he was a full-fledged adult criminal painted a picture of a charming, flirtatious sociopath who was superficially socially savvy enough to talk his way into police precincts, homes, and morgues with barely a blink. Someone - Agent Fletchley, maybe? The handwriting was unfamiliar - had made a list of Dean's known aliases. Aaron didn't recognize all of them, but he recognized enough of them to know Dean had a penchant for classic rock. A couple of Dean's teachers had suspected he was being physically abused, and the family always moved soon after CPS investigations were initiated. He was probably a sociopath. Samuel must have been one as well, if to a lesser degree, or perhaps he simply redirected his energies away from grave desecration identity fraud.

Aaron sighed and sat back, rolled his shoulders against the ache of having sat hunched over for hours on end. He glanced at his watch. A rumble in his stomach confirmed what his watch had told him: it was time for supper. It would be best to take a break, get some food, and let all the information he'd just absorbed settle. While he relaxed and socialized, his subconscious would find more patterns and connections. Aaron showered and changed into full-length khakis and a button-down shirt. He made sure he had his wallet, key, and credentials before he toed on a pair of worn brown loafers and headed out the door.

He took the stairs down to the lobby and headed for the restaurant. A copy of the menu had been included in his conference materials, so he already knew what he wanted to order.

Aaron waited patiently next to the hostess stand and scanned the restaurant. The patrons were a mix of conference attendees and regular country club members. Aaron scanned the crowd for Chief Seegmiller, because he knew he ought to liaise at least a little.

Instead, he spotted Agent Finch and her partner tucked into a corner huddled over a cellphone. Both had cups of coffee and their dinnerware looked unused.

Aaron stepped around the hostess stand and headed for their table. "Do you mind if I join you? I have some questions about the file you gave me to review."

Agent Finch looked up. Agent Fletchley closed the cellphone and pocketed it.

"Of course, SSA Hotchner," she said.

Aaron eased himself into one of the remaining seats at the table.

"What have you learned so far?" Agent Finch asked

"You have good instincts for detecting behavior patterns," Aaron said.

Agent Finch blushed faintly, pleased. Her partner remained impassive. After a moment, he turned his attention to his cup of coffee.

"The connections you've made across two decades show meticulous attention to detail," Aaron continued. "You have an excellent grasp of geographical profiles and meta-system analysis. However, you have either deliberately omitted some important data points or are so focused on proving a pet theory that you're ignoring basic principles of criminal profiling." Aaron signaled for the server to bring him a glass of water.

Agent Fletchley's eyes narrowed.

Agent Finch frowned. "You weren't supposed to profile me."

"An unfortunate habit," Aaron said. He thanked the server for the ice water, ordered the grilled chicken and vegetables over a rice pilaf. "What are you looking for out of this profile?"

Finch and Fletchley exchanged looks.

"Possible future targets," Agent Finch said. "Pressure points. What do we have to do to them so they make a mistake?"

Aaron nodded. That would help him focus his analysis. "What am I missing?"

Agent Finch blinked. "What do you mean?"

"Dean Winchester's profile is erratic. He devolves to murder, evolves back to a bank robbery. The jump from petty crime to violent crime is significant, but it's hard to tell if there was a stressor, and perpetrators don't typically jump back. The information on Samuel is sparse. Is he a stressor or a stabilizer? Dean is clearly the dominant personality in the partnership."

Again with the exchange of looks between partners. How long had they been together, that they were so good at nonverbal communication?

"We have a theory," Agent Finch said finally. "But we have no reliable evidence to back it up. And before we took it to Henricksen, we wanted to be sure we weren't barking up the wrong tree."

"What's your theory?" Aaron asked.

Another wordless exchange of glances. Agent Fletchley reached under the table and dug around, then came up with a manila folder. It was full of newspaper clippings, handwritten notes, and a folded map.

"Our theory," Agent Finch said, "begins with John Winchester."

Aaron nodded and settled in to listen.

What followed was an outlandish but logical tale of fantasy and delusions. Agents Finch and Fletchley described a subculture of "hunters" who traveled the country, tracking down "monsters" and eliminating them for the greater good. Agent Finch was well versed in hunter "lore" and had a series of newspaper articles from around the country that coincided with sightings of John Winchester and his sons and described phenomena that could, to the paranoid mind, be connected to various supernatural creatures.

While Agent Finch detailed a very thorough narrative of the crimes, Agent Fletchley handed her newspaper articles and other exhibits to show to Aaron.

Aaron glanced at the young man.

"You don't say much, do you?"

Agent Fletchley shrugged. "Enough."

Aaron didn't press him further. He turned back to Agent Finch. "You have a lot of information - detailed information. And you have a theory that unifies the evidence that explains in otherwise nonsensical criminal history on Dean's part. You should be able to take this to Henricksen. If you present it to him like you just did to me, he should listen to you."

Agent Finch nodded. "Thank you, sir."

"I'm just making an observation about your investigative skills," Aaron said.

Agent Finch's expression remained professionally neutral, but a faint blush crept up on her cheeks. "Yes, sir."

"So, you want to catch Dean Winchester? What about John or Samuel?"

"John's dead," Fletchley said. He pushed another newspaper article across the table. "Car crash. Three caucasian males. Matched descriptions of the Winchesters and their car. Father-aged one died. Body vanished from the morgue. Fake names. Fraudulent insurance."

Aaron scanned the article. If the mangled car in the photo was anything to go by, it was a miracle anyone had survived that crash.

"John's dead. Dean's boss," Fletchley said.

It made sense. "Samuel is key then," Aaron said. "If your and Henricksen's initial profiles are accurate, Dean is highly possessive of his younger brother, going so far as to kill Samuel's fiancée to bring Samuel back into the family business. Samuel was out of the game for three years while he was in college. He's more likely to screw up. If you catch Samuel, Dean will come for him."

Agent Finch nodded thoughtfully. "But they've escaped custody before. And Gordon Walker tried that trick already."

"Walker was one man," Aaron said, "and unlike Baltimore's finest, you know how the two of them think.

Finch and Fletchley cast each other approving glances. "How would you recommend we catch Samuel?" Agent Finch asked.

Aaron pushed the stack of newspaper articles back to her. "Convince him he has something to hunt." Strauss would kill him if she found out what he was doing, but he wanted to see for himself who the Winchesters were and if they could help the FBI uncover their network of other "hunters". He wondered who Agent Finch's source for hunting lore was, but judging by her concern about the reliability of the information, he suspected it was one of the hunters.

Agent Finch rifled through the articles, her expression thoughtful. "How?"

"My unit has a media liaison and a top notch cyber tech. If your lore consultant can fabricate a hunt, my team could disseminate it," Aaron said.

Finch selected an article from the stack. "Ansen Weems. His mother died in the same circumstance as Mary Winchester. We invent another half orphan just like Sam."

"Mary," Fletchley murmured, the name oddly reverent on his lips.

"Thank you so much, Agent Hotchner," Finch said.

Aaron recognized the fervent flight in her eyes. Was she a little too invested in the case?

Before Aaron could ask more, a hand came down on his shoulder.

"Hotch!" It was Chief Seegmiller. "I've been looking for you everywhere."

Aaron excused himself from the younger agents and rose up shook the chief's hand. "Apologies. Last minute profiling consult. You still looking for that game of backgammon?"

"Tennis! The conference is hosting a doubles tournament, cops versus lawyers. Be my partner? I've heard you have a wicked backhand." The chief was a large man, thick in the torso and shoulders. In a suit he looked like any desk bound bureaucrat, but Aaron had seen the swagger in his step and the controlled combat grace in his limbs. In his youth, the chief must have been a formidable athlete.

"I'd be honored," Aaron said.

"Great. Suit up and meet me at the tennis courts." The chief sauntered away.

Aaron turned back to the younger agents. "Let me know if you need my help." And then he forced himself to walk away with his chin up. Strauss wouldn't be able to fault his interactions with the Chief, but he couldn't help the niggling suspicion in the back of his mind that Finch and her partner were some of Strauss's spies.

As he changed into some tennis-appropriate clothes, he realized something very, very strange about the file Finch had given him. It didn't have pictures of any of the suspects.

Chapter Text

Sam and Ciaran were at a long table set up just beyond the tennis court, in the shade of the country club awning near the doors that led to the patron locker rooms. They had forms for conference participants to sign up for the doubles tournament, and between them they had a rickety old laptop that, by Sam's estimation, was more better suited to use as paperweight. Ciaran was pale, expression pinched as he prodded at the trackpad and tried to get the thing to work. That left Dean and Anna to hold court on the tennis courts. Anna was holding court. She was like some kind of medieval queen, holding her tennis racket like it was a sword and waiting for the (mostly men) to notice her and worship appropriately. Dean hung back a little, since he was a new employee and also because he couldn't shake the lifelong suspicion he had that cops could sense the criminal in him. Luckily for him, Anna had fantastic legs, and most of these men had left their wives at home.

Dean was less than pleased when that suit who'd been watching him earlier was there, wearing tennis shorts and a polo shirt and carrying a racket. He was even less pleased when the two young suits who'd been lingering around the tennis court were wearing tennis-type clothes and hovering at the edges of the crowd. They looked a little uncomfortable, at least. They were younger than everyone else in the crowd, which might have been the main reason for their discomfort. Maybe those three suits were responsible for this entire tennis fiasco. Perhaps that's why the old suit had been staring.

But Dean didn't think so. There was something penetrating, assessing about the older suit's gaze. If Dean didn't know better, he'd think the man was reading his mind.

He turned his attention to Anna. Her plan was to do a mini tennis boot camp and see how each player fared at basic tennis skills, then pass evaluations on to Ciaran and Sam so they could seed the bracket. Tennis boot camp. Dean knew he was no help on that score. Pretty much all of these white collar law enforcement types were better at tennis than him. They all probably played at their own country clubs back home. Cops and lawyers. Worst combination ever.

Anna cleared her throat, and the tennis participants fell silent.

"Good evening. I am Anna, your tennis instructor for the duration of this tournament. Participants are allowed to consult any one of the club's instructors at any time during the tournament, except in the middle of gameplay. This is Dean, my fellow instructor. Ciaran and Sam are at the table behind you. If you have not registered, please do so before retiring to your rooms at the end of the night. We will be here until ten PM."

Dean smiled, polite and professional. At the end of summer in southern Utah, it got dark late, though not as late as in Kansas, where it was flat and the sky went on forever. He wasn't looking forward to staying out here under the floodlights that late. Afterward, he and Sam would have to go back to their motel and puzzle over Ciaran and Anna some more. Maybe by then Sam would have heard back from his European connection. (Years later, when they'd have to make an emergency trip to Scotland, Dean would be damn glad for Sam's European connections.) So far they had only exhibited signs of telekinesis, but did they have any other powers? For all that Sam had only had psychic visions so far, there was that one moment at the Millers' house when he'd done telekinesis. Was it a proximity thing? Did being around each other give the kids like Sam the ability to borrow each other's powers? Ansem had said he'd had nightmares about the Yellow-Eyed Demon. Sam's only nightmares had been about Jess's death and his psychic visions. Did Anna or Ciaran have nightmares? They were both so pale as it was, it was hard to tell if they were tired or if they just looked like that.

"Also, I have been informed that the tournament participants want to sweeten the deal a little," Anna continued. "The winners of this tournament will not only be able to claim pride of superior tennis skills, but pride of superior profession. Since we will be seeding the brackets with the two teams facing off amongst themselves before facing each other in the final match, we will need you two separate into two groups, because this tournament is...cops versus lawyers."

A cheer rose up.

Dean fought back a shudder. So many cops. So little time to make a good escape. And lawyers, the kind of people Sam had always wanted to be. They couldn't tempt Sam to run away now.

Someone called out, "Hey, Mister Profiler, who's a cop and who's a lawyer?"

Laughter sparked in the crowd, but heads turned, and Dean saw people were looking at the suit who'd been watching him earlier. The suit was in his forties, tall, lean, with black hair and serious dark eyes.

"He's both a cop and a lawyer - I think him separating us would be cheating," a woman called out, and there was more laughter.

"Do feds count as cops?" another man asked, and the suit shook his head, the faintest hints of a smile on his face.

But then he reached out to the man next to him, tapped his shoulder, and said, "Cop." He prodded the man to his right and said, "Lawyer." Both men looked startled, but they nodded and stepped apart, and the invisible battle lines were drawn.

A profiler. Damn. Maybe he really could read Dean's mind. Dean forced himself to keep his chin up. He took a step toward the group of lawyers, because they were less likely to sense the criminal in him, less likely to have any profiling training.

Hoots rose up when the sorting was finished and the suit had placed himself in the camp with the rest of the cops, but then an old, fat cop slung an arm around the suit's shoulders and said, "I already called dibs on Agent Hotchner."

"No fair," one of the lawyers called out. "We went to law school together. Guy's a demon on the court."

Dean tensed at the word demon. He fixed his gaze on Hotchner and murmured under his breath, Christo. No response. Dean didn't relax.

Anna clapped her hands. "Excellent! Let's start with serving and receiving serves. Cops stay on this side. Lawyers on the other side. Line up!"

For all that Anna’s job was basically to be a floozy with a tennis racket, the men and women obeyed her without question. Dean thought Sam ought to be helping Anna with assessing tennis players since Sam was an actual tennis player, but Anna put Dean in charge of setting up the pairs - cops serving to lawyers this time around, switching on the next round - and she stepped back and watched the players with critical eyes. It was nine o'clock by the time Anna determined assessments were finished, and the two teams had devolved into good-natured ribbing and name-calling. Dean had never seen cops so okay with being called pigs before. He'd never had occasion to call a lawyer a bloodsucker to his face, and he was faintly disturbed at how the lawyers grinned whenever the cops called them sharks.

Dean headed over to the table where Ciaran and Sam had abandoned the laptop and were huddled over several sheets of paper with pens, rulers, and the registration lists.

"We should probably re-seed after the first round," Ciaran said. "So we get the really good match-ups at the end."

"The formula is pretty simple," Sam said. "Add one to the highest number. Make sure all the other pairings add up to that same number. For the subsequent rounds, assuming there are no upsets, the pairings should add up to the total of the previous round divided by two and added up, and so on down to the final round."

Ciaran blinked at Sam. "What?"

"Look." Sam scribbled on the piece of paper between them. "Assume sixteen pairs. One plus sixteen is seventeen. So your other pairs will be five and twelve - that adds up to seventeen. Eight and nine. See?"

Ciaran nodded.

"Seventeen divided by two and rounded up is -"

Ciaran's eyes lit up. "Nine. So seven would play two and five would play four!"

"Exactly." Sam was grinning the way he had when he was a kid and had broken open a case with a brilliant maneuver of mental gymnastics or research prowess.

Ciaran clapped Sam on the shoulder. "You're a genius." Then he stared down at the lists in dismay. "Bloody hell. This'll take ages."

"I can stay and help," Sam said.

Ciaran shook his head. "No. This is terribly overwhelming for your first day. I'll stay here to make sure everyone gets registered, and then I'll work out the bracket tonight. They plan on doing the prelim games during breakout sessions and the final rounds when the conference has convened for the day."

Dean was impressed that these cops and lawyers would want to run around in this heat after sitting in boring lectures all day, but the ways of the white collars were a mystery to him. Sam glanced up, noticing Dean's presence. He passed Dean's water bottle across the table. "How are they looking?"

Dean shrugged. "I'm just the grunt. Anna's doing the groundwork."

Anna joined him a moment later, flipping through a notebook Dean hadn't even realized she'd been using. She began speaking rapidly to Ciaran.

"Man with the floppy toupée - seed him and his partner at twenty-seven."

Ciaran made a mark on one of the sheets.

"Man who was clearly a blue-collar marine - seed him and his partner at seventeen."

Ciaran pawed through the sheets, made another mark.

Anna had strange descriptions for every single one of the tennis participants, and somehow Ciaran knew which ones she was referring to, because he put numbers next to each name. How could he possibly know who she was talking about? Dean suspected a psychic connection, one that ran even deeper than twins.

But Sam simply looked amused. "What names do you have for me and Dean?"

"Moose and squirrel," Ciaran said absently.

Sam snickered.

Dean frowned. "Wait, who's the squirrel?"

"The short one, obviously." Ciaran was rewriting the list of names in numerical order. Anna leaned over to point out which individuals were in pre-arranged doubles. Only a handful of the participants were in firm pairs. Everyone else was willing to be doubled up based on their rankings. The one suit, Agent Hotchner, was with that one fat cop, and that other pair of suits were stuck together was well. Gwen Finch and Mark Fletchley. Dean committed their names to memory.

"I'm not that short," Dean protested.

"Compared to him, everyone's short," Anna pointed out. She eyed Sam up and down and grinned.

Dean cast Sam a betrayed look. "But Sam's so - so skinny."

That was a lie. Being back in The Life, away from the cushy comforts of college, had helped Sam pack on the muscle he needed for the rigours of hunting. And he was still growing, the little bastard. Growing taller and broader. It was really unfair. Dad hadn't stopped growing till he was in his mid-twenties, and neither had Dean, so Sam had a couple of years' growing left in him.

Would Sam get even bigger and stronger because the demon had given him powers?

Dean eyed Ciaran, who was skinny and had knife-sharp cheekbones and looked like a sneeze would knock him flat. Nope, demon powers did not confer physical strength. (Later he would learn that this was false.) Andy had been a squirrelly little guy, too. And Max.

"Keep telling yourself that," Anna said airily.

Sam shrugged his unfairly massive shoulders and stood up, stretched. "Are you sure you don't want me to stick around, Ciaran?"

"I've got this," Ciaran said. "When I learned about the tournament I asked Leo to give me a few days off from the restaurant, which is fine, since he's training a new server to take over when Freya goes back to the midwest for her 2L year."

Anna's eyes lit up. "We should ask Freya to moonlight with us for the tournament. If two of us are out there being refs, we'll need a couple of extra hands doing the scorekeeping, tabulating, and re-seeding. For a girl headed into law, Freya's actually quite good at maths."

"Sam's quite good at maths," Ciaran said. "She could help him tab."

Anna shook her head. "Sam's better at tennis than you and Dean - I'll need him as a ref."

"Dean's actually pretty good at math," Sam said, and he sounded defensive, which was both flattering and a little annoying.

"I'm not bad at maths," Ciaran protested.

"I'll want you manning the medic stall," Anna said. "Because you've medic training."

Sam raised his eyebrows. "Really? And you're waiting tables and playing golf pro in the back forty?"

Ciaran cast Anna a look, and she winced.

"We emigrated here hoping for better job prospects, but apparently certification over there doesn't equate to certification over here, and the process is monstrous," Ciaran said. "No matter. We'll make do. We always do. So go."

"You must have been good at math," Sam said. "To train as a -"

"He is, but I need him to man the medical stall," Anna said. "He's the obvious choice."

Sam bit his lip. "Are you sure you don't want me to stay?"

"Go." Anna shoved at his shoulder. "Before your brother drags you back to your place by the hair like a cave-man. See you at the café for breakfast."

Dean scowled at Anna. She smirked at him. Sam nodded and headed for the staff locker room.

"What's the big deal about Ciaran being a medic?" Dean asked. He squirmed out of the stupid tennis uniform and into his jeans and a t-shirt. The uniform went into one of the laundry hampers. It was like being back in high school after gym class.

"In the UK, a medic is a doctor," Sam said. "Back home, Ciaran's a doctor."

Dean sucked in a breath. "Really?"

Sam nodded.

"But he's so young."

"School works different over there. Anyway, that means I'll have to keep an eye on Anna while we ref. And you'll be stuck with Freya."

"Too bad Freya has such lousy taste in men," Dean said. "Else I'd get her to spill the beans."

"Let's see what my European contact has first," Sam said. "And maybe we should expand our search for other kids like me. Check overseas."

"Overseas means other languages," Dean said flatly.

"I have serviceable Spanish. You can check other English-speaking countries." Sam put his uniform in the hamper and closed his locker, spun the dial on the combination with a practiced flick of his wrist. "Now, what about those Feds?"

"I thought they were onto us, but it might just be that they have an unnatural enjoyment of tennis," Dean said.

Sam bit his lip. "I hope so. Let's go."

They'd found a motel about halfway between the café and the country club, on Freya's oh-so-hopeful recommendation. Ciaran and Anna ate at the café every morning, and sometimes even dinner as well, because Ciaran got an employee discount on food and Freya usually gave up her employee discount for Anna. Once Anna had approved Sam and Dean for jobs at the country club, they'd both been given standing invitations to join them for breakfast at the café.

The motel wasn't as bad as some they stayed at. Because it wasn't in the best location to pick up tourists, it had reasonable prices. The desert them - cactus-patterned wallpaper, ox skull mounted on the wall - was a little kitschy, but Sam and Dean had definitely stayed in dirtier and uglier, and since the beds were comfy and there was free HBO, Dean wasn't going to complain. Sam had his laptop open on the table and was hunched over it. In the bright glow of the screen, he looked pale, washed-out. Tired.

"Anything?" Dean sat down on his bed and tugged his duffel bag closer with one foot. Some of the knives still needed sharpening.

"Nothing," Sam said. "I gave her their first names and the additional info that Ciaran went to medical school over there. She hasn't turned up a single thing, which is strange. There can't be that many Irish twins running around. She hit up school databases, college databases, and somehow even managed to worm her way into the immigration databases, and she's got nothing. Something's weird."

"They're twins whose eyes turn yellow when they work their demon-psychic mojo," Dean said. "It doesn't get much weirder than that." He laid out the knives in a row, fished a whetstone out of the bag.

Sam arched an eyebrow at him.

"I don't mean you're weird," Dean amended. "Well, you are, but not because of that. And your eyes don't turn yellow. Did Ava's?"

"No. Neither did Max's or Andy's." Sam sighed and sat back, rubbed his eyes. "People don't have no paper trail. There has to be something - medical records, school records."

"What if you have her just search for a pair of Irish twins about their age, matching their descriptions? But with different names," Dean said. He focused on the rhythm of a blade on a whetstone, making sure he did the same number of passes on each side of the blade.

Sam nodded and set about typing rapidly. "Do you think either of them have nightmares?"

Dean lifted his head sharply. "Like psychic visions like you?"

"No. The nightmares Ansem said he had, about seeing the yellow-eyed demon."

"Have you ever dreamed of him?"

"No," Sam said. "But I don't have to. I've seen him in real life." He finished typing and hit send, then sat back and closed his eyes. "What does it all mean, Dean? Did Dad give you any hint about what the demon wanted with kids like me?"

"No," Dean said. But Dad had hinted enough. Whatever the demon wanted, it had to be bad, so bad that John had ordered Dean to execute his own brother.

"Dammit." Sam closed his laptop and went to collapse on his bed. "Make sure we have some anti-demon supplies for when we're on shift tomorrow."

"You could get it yourself," Dean said, but Sam was already asleep.

As Aaron wasn't in the particular business of child welfare, he didn't feel all that obligated to attend any of the breakout sessions of the conference. Presenting alone would earn him about half his required CLE credits for the year so he could keep his law license, so he figured his spare time was best spent liaising with Chief Seegmiller and other local law enforcement leaders. They sat together during breakfast and the keynote address, and Aaron noted that the students at the table beside his were looking hungover and unhappy, but a couple of them were gamely attempting to take notes. Aaron scanned the room, and he didn't see Agent Finch or her partner, which was strange. Given their participation in the tennis tournament, he was assuming they were conference attendees as well. Maybe he was wrong. Or maybe they had something more pressing to do than attend the breakfast keynote address. Or perhaps they were presenting and had to get their presentations set up? Most of the presenters were marked with blue ribbons attached to their nametags. Aaron was only presenting at the first two breakout sessions today, and then the rest of the conference was for networking. Out of an abundance of politeness he planned on attending Chief Seegmiller's presentation. He suspected he'd be spending a lot of time on the tennis courts, though. Maybe he ought to go into town and pick up some additional tennis gear. He'd only brought along one set in faint hopes of picking up a casual game, but it looked like the games this time around were going to be anything but casual.

The morning presentations went well. Whoever Strauss had sent along to keep an eye on him would only be able to report back the best from SSA Hotchner. Morgan and Jason had both warned him against trying to start his presentation with any jokes, but Aaron wasn't a complete automaton, and he'd done well in trial practice in law school. He could handle an oral presentation just fine.

Chief Seegmiller, he noticed, was present for his first presentation. When he wasn't waxing enthusiastic about tennis, he had a very serious set to his jaw, gray gaze steely, hands clasped in front of him like he was resisting the urge to strangle the nearest cop in a polo shirt and cheesy sunglasses. He had, perhaps, failed to recover a child on a kidnapping case before. The missing child protocol was nothing groundbreaking, but it bore reviewing nonetheless.

Agents Finch and Fletchley were present at the second breakout session. Agent Finch took copious notes. Agent Fletchley stared at Aaron, gaze unwavering, with a focus that was disturbing. For the most part, the session attendees were professional, asked questions that remained on topic, but one or two always gave in to their curiosity about profiling.

"How did you know who was a cop and who was a lawyer yesterday at the tennis thing?" one of the cops asked.

Aaron smiled faintly. "It wasn't magic. Profiling is mostly about observation, noticing behavior and speech patterns. A good profiler notices the people around him. I arrived at the resort early yesterday, and by the time the tennis boot camp rolled around, I'd seen or been introduced to almost everyone there, and most people were kind enough to include their professions in their introductions or by wearing their badges. I remembered."

"So you can't read minds?" The young cop sounded disappointed.

"No one can do that," Aaron said. Agent Fletchley huffed, amused, like Aaron was saying something stupid. It was a rare display of emotion. Agent Finch kicked him in the ankle. After the session, Aaron had expected one or both of them to come talk to them, but neither of them did.

After the second breakout session there was lunch and then the afternoon keynote address by a teen hacker that Garcia would have thoroughly enjoyed. Since Aaron had no obligations for the afternoon breakout sessions, he decided to run into town to pick up some more tennis gear - shorts, shirts, clean socks, and a racket of his own. He'd arranged to meet up with Chief Seegmiller for some tennis practice during the final break-out session, and then they'd have dinner and drinks together.

When Aaron got back, he changed into shorts and a shirt, tied on his sneakers, and grabbed his racket. The tennis courts were, thankfully, shaded partially by the clubhouse and partially by trees even in the heavy afternoon heat, and one of the courts was unoccupied. On the other court, the twins were helping an older couple practice serving to each other.

Aaron stayed under the shade of the awning beside the long tables where sign-ups had occurred the night before and stretched out. It had been too long since he'd played any doubles tennis, and he wanted to warm up on his own before the Chief arrived. Aaron was about halfway done with his stretching when a shadow fell across him. He looked up - and up and up. It was the taller tennis pro. Aaron hadn't realized quite how tall last night; he'd been too busy concentrating on hitting serves from cocky cops.

"Good afternoon, sir," the young man said. Sam, his name was. "Are you looking for some time on the court?"

"Yes, please." Aaron stood up.

Sam turned away and ducked back into the building, then re-emerged with a clipboard and pen. "From when to when?"

Aaron rattled off the times.

Sam scribbled down on the clipboard, nodding deferentially. "Are you interested in any instruction or use of any of the equipment?"

Aaron looked Sam up and down. "I could use someone to serve and return service against," he said. "When my doubles partner arrives, I wouldn't mind a refresher game, if that works for you."

Sam studied the clipboard for a moment, nodded. "Of course. Would you prefer to practice against me or Dean? Both of us will be available if you need doubles opponents." He was polite, respectful without being obsequious. Aaron appreciated that.

"Which of you is better at tennis?"

"Me," Sam said automatically, then ducked his head, blushed like he'd said something rude.

"I appreciate your honesty," Aaron said. "Let me finish stretching out and I'll join you on the court." He offered a hand. "I'm Aaron."

"Sam." His handshake was firm, confident, brief. "Let me fetch a racket and some balls, and I'll meet you out there." And he ducked back inside.

Aaron was on the court and giving his racket a few test swings when Sam reappeared with a pail full of tennis balls and his racket.

"Would you prefer to serve first or second?" Sam asked, hefting the aluminum pail.

"First," Aaron said, and Sam trotted around the net to give Aaron the pail. Then he returned to the other side of the court and waited for Aaron.

Aaron preferred to serve out of deuce court because usually Haley was in ad court, and sometimes he just liked to be contrary. While he practiced serving against Sam, he learned a couple of things about himself he wasn't sure he liked - he wasn't as young as he used to be, and he hadn't factored elevation into his stamina. He was going to run out of steam faster than any of the local conference attendees. He also learned a couple of things about Sam. Sam was a naturally gifted athlete with quick reflexes and graceful movement, but he wasn't nearly good enough a tennis player to be working as a pro at a country club. His technique was good but not great, and he survived against Aaron by sheer dint of youthfulness and natural skill. Against a true tennis pro, he probably wouldn't survive a game. Aaron might have been more suspicious about why someone like Sam was working at a country club, but he'd seen the tension in Anna's shoulders last night during the tournament assessments, and he figured she needed all the help she could get for this conference. Maybe Sam was just a temp to help get Anna and Ciaran through the tournament. Or maybe this was a retirement town, and most of the seniors who frequented the club were less serious about tennis and more serious about feeling youthful and vigorous again, and a little eye candy helped that along. In fact, the entire staff at the country club saving senior management was young and attractive. Aaron was willing to bet none of the staff were over twenty-five.

Sam, observant in his own right, recommended a break after Aaron was done serving, and he handed Aaron a bottle of water before drinking from one of his own. There were benches beyond the tramlines on either side of the court where the ball kids sat, and Sam sank down on the one in the shade, taking another deep pull from his water bottle. He was sweating profusely, and he used a small towel to wipe himself off. He offered a clean towel to Aaron, who accepted it gratefully.

"So, how long have you been playing tennis?" Aaron asked.

"About six years," Sam said.

"What got you started?"

"College. Friends played." Sam was almost as laconic as Agent Fletchley, which wasn't surprising, given that Aaron was essentially a customer. He shouldn't have expected the familiarity he'd overheard on the terrace yesterday. Was it only yesterday?

"And do you enjoy any other sports?"

"Running," Sam said. "It helps me relax."

Aaron nodded. "I understand. I'm the same way. So, are you looking to compete professionally, or is this as pro as it gets for you?"

Sam was eyeing Aaron a little warily, but he was new to this job, and also most patrons - especially male ones - probably didn't bother to talk to him like this.

"Competing professionally isn't really an option," Sam said. "But I'll enjoy this while it lasts." He took a final pull from his bottle, emptying it, and then stood up, shook out his limbs. "So, my serve?"

Aaron nodded and stood up, set his bottle and towel on the bench to stay as cool as they could in the shade. "Please."

Sam was ten times more vicious at serving than he was at receiving service, and he kept Aaron scrambling all over the court trying to return service. Aaron had the sneaking suspicion that Sam was even going a little easy on him. He wasn't sure if he was relieved or embarrassed.

They took another break, during which both Dean and Chief Seegmiller arrived.

"Aaron!" the Chief said, jovial. He wore a pale pink polo shirt and white shorts and was twirling his racket with casual expertise. "You overachiever. That's why you have your own jet and I'm just a small-town police chief."

"It's not such a small town these days," Aaron said, smiling. "And you have achieved plenty on your own. So, are you ready?"

"To smack down a couple of teenagers? Hell yes." The Chief looked Sam up and down and smirked.

Dean and Sam were engrossed in a brief, intense conversation, which involved Dean darting several glances over his shoulder at Aaron. Then Dean trotted over to the fence separating the two courts and beckoned the twins over. There was another brief, intense conversation, and then Ciaran stepped through the gate. Dean went to join Anna, and Ciaran trotted up to Sam.

"So, doubles game?" he asked.

"Lemme stretch real quick," the Chief said. "And then you're on, Limey."

Ciaran's eyes widened at the epithet, but he bit his lip, said nothing. Sam cast him a glance, sympathetic, but they stood back and waited for the Chief to warm up.

The game began with Aaron's team serving. Ciaran wasn't nearly as good a player as Sam, and Sam ended up doing most of the leg work, dashing back and forth across the court to return volleys. The rhythmic thock, thock of the ball as it bounced back and forth was familiar, soothing. But Aaron was right - he became winded too early, and Ciaran, who had been hanging back to let Sam do most of the work, came alive.

Dean and Anna ended up keeping score halfway through the match. Anna cheered vociferously for her brother. Dean called out useless advice that mostly amounted to him comparing Sam to a girl. Anna looked ready to slap him. And Sam - Sam turned his game up another notch. The game ended with Sam and Ciaran just barely edging out Aaron and the Chief. Sam had been going easy on Aaron earlier.

Aaron reached across the net to shake hands with his opponents. "Good game," he said.

"Thank you." Ciaran's tone was brusque but not quite rude.

Sam smiled tiredly, sweat dripping into his eyes. "You too, sir."

The Chief's handshake was perfunctory. "Good game for a couple of skinny emo kids."

Ciaran nodded briefly. Sam met the Chief's gaze for a brief, bold moment, and then he was herding Ciaran to the sidelines where their siblings were waiting.

"Kids these days," the Chief said. "Were we ever like that when we were their age?"

Aaron said nothing.

"Nah. At least they're here doing something constructive instead of hanging around nightclubs having sex and smoking dope." The Chief sighed. "I wonder about that little skinny one, though. Seem a little...off, to you?"

"Off how?" Aaron asked. "He seemed a competent enough tennis player."

"Something about the way he was watching the other guy. A little too interested, if you know what I mean."

"I'm not sure I do," Aaron said. The Chief wasn't speaking very quietly. Over by the tramlines, Ciaran had his back to them, but his shoulders were taut like piano wire.

Anna started forward, but Ciaran caught her wrist. She hissed something indecipherable and tried to pull away. Ciaran stepped toward her, hissing back, and Dean put a hand on her shoulder, but she shook him off. She lifted her head glaring right at the Chief, and for one instant in the fading sunlight, her eyes blazed gold.

There was a yelp, and Chief Seegmiller toppled backward like a felled tree.

Anna froze, eyes wide. Ciaran shoved her aside and dashed across the court. Aaron dropped to his knees beside the Chief.

"What happened?"

The Chief was holding very still, eyes wide, breath coming in rapid pants. "My back. I felt something give in my back. There was this popping sound and --"

Ciaran was there on the Chief's other side. He took over, speaking rapidly. "Where does it hurt?"

"My back." Pain drained the color from the Chief's face.

"Upper or lower?"

"Lower."

"Wiggle your toes for me."

The Chief nodded. Ciaran was staring at the man's sneakers. Aaron followed his gaze.

"Did you do it?" Ciaran asked.

"I just did."

"Do it again."

There was no movement in the man's sneakers. Ciaran cursed under his breath. "Spinal injury." Then he lifted his head. "Dean, call 911. Sam, take Anna and go find someone in management." He turned back to the Chief. "Who is your next of kin?"

"What? What's wrong?" The Chief's gaze darted wildly, but he wasn't moving his head.

Ciaran's tone was professional, calm. "It seems like you pulled something in your back. Don't move. We'll call an ambulance so you can get seen at the hospital, all right? Nothing to worry about. Better safe than sorry."

Aaron raised his eyebrows. Ciaran sounded like he'd done this before.

"My wife," the Chief said.

Ciaran met Aaron's gaze. "Will you ride along with him? I'll make sure the others put a bye in for you on the tennis tournament. A familiar face till his wife arrives at the hospital will help."

"The tennis tournament doesn't matter," Aaron said, because it didn't, but Ciaran kept on speaking.

"We'll find you another partner as well, just in case." Ciaran hollered over his shoulder at Sam, demanding he run and fetch the first aid kit from the locker room. Sam nodded and dashed away. Dean took Anna by the arm and hauled her toward the locker room. She was staring at the Chief, ashen-faced, horrified.

Guilty.

Why?

Sam returned with the first aid kit in a blink, and Ciaran set about administering to the Chief with all the efficiency and skill of a trained EMT. Either he had real EMT training, or the country club had gone above and beyond with the first aid training required of its staff. Given the average age of the club's patrons, additional medical training was probably wise.

Sam responded to Ciaran's orders with calm. His hands were steady as he handed over whatever medical supplies Ciaran asked for, and he was unflinching when the Chief writhed at Ciaran's hand at the back of his neck.

"That's pretty bad," Sam said.

Ciaran flicked Sam a look, nodded. "You'd know, then?"

"Enough." Sam handed Ciaran an ice pack.

"What can I do to help?" Aaron asked.

"Go out to the front gate," Ciaran said. "Guide the ambulance here."

Aaron nodded, hoisted himself to his feet. He couldn't remember the last time he'd run so fast, so hard. Ambulance sirens wailed in the distance, growing louder and louder. Aaron paced back and forth along the driveway at the open gates, breathing hard. He couldn't believe what he'd seen. Twice, now. A flash of gold in one of the twins' eyes, followed by something impossible, like time slowing down, a glass righting itself, a man being thrown off his feet by an invisible force.

No. It must have been the heat. He must have been hallucinating, or imagining. His mind was in overdrive. Strain in his relationship with Haley, stress at work with Strauss, and this desert heat - it was enough to make a man mad.

Aaron closed his eyes, swallowed hard. He couldn't think like that. He was a profiler, an investigator. He had to be able to trust his senses, his perceptions. If those were untrustworthy, he was finished.

The ambulance klaxon grew louder and louder, and when Aaron opened his eyes, the ambulance was barreling straight at the gates. He waved his arms, and the ambulance screeched to a halt a hair's breadth from him.

"Which way?" the driver asked.

"Tennis courts. This way." Aaron turned and dashed back to the tennis courts, the ambulance on his heels. Heads turned, but few people actually followed or stopped what they were doing.

Sam and Ciaran had rigged the Chief onto an improvised backboard and brought him outside the fence around the tennis court. The ambulance halted just beside them, and the EMTs spilled out the back.

"What's the status?" the female EMT asked.

Ciaran rattled off a string of medical terms that left Aaron's head spinning. The EMTs looked surprised, but Sam did not. He stepped back obligingly when the EMTs swarmed the Chief.

"You did well," the female EMT said to Ciaran. "Would you like to ride along?"

Ciaran shook his head, lifted his chin at Aaron. "He's a friend of the patient. Familiar face might help."

The female EMT nodded. "Of course." To Aaron she said, "Climb in, sir. What can you tell me about the patient?"

"He's the chief of police," Aaron said, hoisting himself into the back of the ambulance and scrambling to get out of the way of the EMTs and the stretcher. "I have his wife's phone number. Which hospital are we going to? I'll have her meet us there."

The EMT told him the information, and Aaron nodded, committing it to memory. Just before the ambulance doors closed, he saw Dean and Anna, standing in the doorway of the staff locker room, watching grimly. Neither of them seemed to have noticed that Agents Finch and Fletchley were behind them.

Chapter Text

"Don't the four of you make a lovely matching set," a woman said.

Dean spun around, reaching for the weapon that wasn't there. Damn these shorts and stupid polo shirts. No room to hide anything useful. It was the suits, the man looming, the woman gazing at him with laser-focus.

"Have no fear," Anna said, drawing herself up, lifting her chin. "The tennis tournament will proceed as requested. We will rearrange the pairings and partners as necessary."

"That's not why we're here," the woman said. Agent Finch was her name. "Dean, isn't it?" She looked him up and down. "You have such delicate features."

That was a fancy way of calling him pretty. Dean curled his hands into fists but said nothing.

"Sam's bigger," Agent Fletchley said.

Agent Finch smirked outright. "That he is. We'd like a word with you, Dean. And with your brother."

Anna raised her eyebrows. "The FBI wants to speak to you? What did you do?"

"Robbed a bank," Agent Fletchley said.

Anna looked alarmed.

Dean matched Agent Finch's smirk with a grin of his own. "Or maybe they're terrified we're going to kick their asses at tennis."

"Indeed." Agent Finch lifted her chin at Dean, nodding in the direction of a boring old Crown Victoria parked where the ambulance had been. "Let's go, Squirrel. Bring your Moose along."

Dean cast Anna a betrayed look, but she threw her hands up in a gesture of surrender. She hadn't shared her pet names around.

"Everything all right?" Ciaran asked, casting a look between Anna and Dean.

"Just fine," Dean said.

Sam, standing just behind Ciaran's shoulder, raised his eyebrows.

Dean shook his head minutely. Now was not the time to fight.

"Just some private tennis lessons. C'mon, Sammy. Let's show the law what for." Dean turned and followed the two agents to their obviously government-owned POS car.

"Don't worry," Agent Finch said. "We're not going to cuff you in front of your friends. We just want to have a quick chat down at the station."

"Are we under arrest?" Sam asked.

"Not yet," Agent Fletchley said.

"So we won't have the right to an attorney." Sam shook his head. "You two are smart, for Feds."

"Agents Finch and Fletchley," Dean said. "Real tops of their class."

Something crossed Sam's face, too quickly for Dean to read, but then he said, "Sure. We'll answer questions." He went so far as to pull open the driver's side door for Agent Finch and, with a sweeping gesture worthy of a knight in shining armor, smiled at her. "After you."

For one second, she looked like she was ready to clean his clock with a single punch, but then she slid into the driver's seat and yanked the door shut behind her.

"Shotgun," Agent Fletchley said.

His lack of facial expression was creepy. Serial-killer creepy. Dean let Sam sit behind Agent Finch so he'd have more leg room. If they needed it, they'd have the element of surprise.

The police station was abuzz with activity, uniforms and plainclothes detectives alike clustered around desks, shoulders tense, talking in low voices. Dean scanned their faces, waiting for one of them to recognize him, but they were all distracted by a different spectacle, a woman. Standing in the doorway of the chief's office. She was pale, shaking. A female uniformed officer stood beside her, patting her shoulder and offering a box of tissue.

"This way," Agent Finch said, leading them toward the interrogation rooms.

Dean wondered what the FBI had done in this town, that no one blinked when a pair of federal agents made themselves at home at a local police station. Unless the local police were in on what was happening? Had Henricksen caught up with them after all? Dammit.

The interrogation room wasn't as stark as the ones on television. The table looked sturdy, and there was no one-way mirror, but there was a camera in the corner. The red light on it wasn't on, but Dean wasn't taking any chances that this wasn't going to get him and Sam sent to freakin' Gitmo.

"Dean John and Samuel Henry Winchester," Agent Finch said. She glanced at her partner, and he placed a thick file on the table, one with an FBI logo on the front.

Sam flinched at his middle name. He always did. Dad had hated his old man for walking out on the family; apparently Mom had insisted on using Grandpa's name for Sam's middle name. Dad only ever broke out the middle name when Sam was about to be flayed within an inch of his life for screwing up a hunt.

"You boys have really been around the block." Agent Finch flipped open the file. "Credit card fraud. Impersonating officers. Grave desecration." She raised her eyebrows at Dean. "Murder."

"Don't forget the bank robbery," he said. "They always add that to the list."

"Even though nothing at the bank was actually stolen," Sam said. He raised his eyebrows at Agent Finch. "But then you already know all that. So, what is it you really want to know?"

Agent Fletchley said, "About John Winchester."

Sam pressed his lips into a thin line. He hated talking about Dad to even Dean. Chances were he'd told his Stanford friends next to nothing about him. If the Feds thought they could get anything about Dad out of Sam, Dean'd give them a stone and a knife and tell them to try to draw blood.

"He's dead," Dean said, and curled his hands into fists, waited for a jab like the kind Henricksen had delivered, one suggesting John was a monster or child abuser or worse.

"Humor us," Agent Finch said.

Sam snorted. "Because you're so funny."

"If he's dead, he can't get into trouble." Agent Finch perched on the edge of the table, posture relaxed. Was she supposed to be the good cop?

Dean studied Agent Fletchley's impassive expression and wondered if he was supposed to be Robocop. "Well, he was born in Normal, Illinois on -"

"Tell us about the night your mother died," Agent Finch said.

The sudden change of subject was jarring. Did they think Dad was a good warm-up topic for Mom? Henricksen had been an ass on the phone, but he hadn't been incompetent. Dean wouldn't have bothered laying low if he'd thought Henricksen was stupid. Were these agents playing stupid or actually stupid?

Agent Finch reached into her jacket and drew out a pen and little flip-up notebook, like the kind Sam used to take notes when he was pretexting as an FBI agent.

"I was four," Dean said flatly. "And Sam was a baby. He doesn't remember a thing."

"What do you remember?" Agent Finch fixed her gaze on Dean. "Was your mother acting oddly that day? Your father?"

"I remember there was a fire and Dad told me to take Sam outside and then Dad came outside after me but without Mom, and there were sirens, and my childhood was over." Dean leaned in. "What is this really about? Because Dad never robbed any banks, and he never committed any murder." Killing monsters - enemy combatants - wasn't murder. It was war.

Agent Finch flipped through her notebook. "Tell us about Max Miller."

Dean didn't even blink. "Who's that?"

A shadow crossed Agent Fletchley's face. "You mean who was that?"

"Nice try," Agent Finch said, "but some of the Millers' neighbors remember your boyband faces, hanging around the house in priest collars and looking more like strippers than clergymen. You were there right before he died. You were in the house when he died. No way his mother shot him."

Dean shrugged. "No clue what you're talking about. Haven't heard any charges about us impersonating the clergy. Is that something we'd do, Sam?"

Sam shrugged as well, with the same nonchalance that used to send Dad from annoyed to furious in an instant. "Winchesters never were really religious. Seems kinda crass anyway, right? I mean, more crass than usual for you, I guess."

Dean elbowed him. He didn't dodge.

Agent Finch glanced at Agent Fletchley, and unspoken agreement passed between them. Agent Finch flipped through her notebook some more. "What can you tell me about your grandfather, Henry Winchester?"

"He was a deadbeat who walked out on Dad and Grandma when Dad was a kid." Dean didn't bother to hide the bitterness in his voice.

Agent Finch flipped her notebook around to show the brothers some kind of six-pointed star made of two arrowheads, one inverted and overlaying the other, inside a circle. "Recognize this?"

Dean studied it for a long moment, then glanced at Sam, who shrugged and shook his head.

The two agents exchanged looks again. Then Agent Finch rifled through her notebook some more and pinned her gaze on Sam.

"Let's talk about the death of Jessica Lee Moore."

Sam froze.

Agent Finch grinned and leaned in. She snapped her fingers at Agent Fletchley, who flipped through the file and produced a grainy photo, which Agent Finch pushed across the table.

"Did you know," Agent Finch said, "that there was a man outside your apartment right before the fire started? Caucasian, early to mid-twenties, dark blond hair, leather jacket."

Dean frowned, because he'd been in the Impala on the way to Jericho when he'd noticed his watch had stopped, had noticed the smell of sulfur bursting over everything. He hadn't been outside the apartment right before the fire started. He had parked halfway on the sidewalk and left the engine running before he dashed up the stairs to Sam's apartment when he realized something was wrong.

But Sam was leaning over the photo, studying it intently. Then he sat back and closed his eyes, took a deep breath.

Panic jackrabbited down Dean's spine. "Sammy -"

"Don't worry, Dean. Looks like the good agents didn't do their research as thoroughly as they thought. I know you didn't set that fire." Sam opened his eyes and looked first at Agent Finch, then her partner. "What is it you really want to know?"

Of course Dean hadn't set the fire. The yellow-eyed demon had done it. Perhaps the Feds had found security cam footage of old Yellow-Eyes' meatsuit at the time.

"Tell us about your grandparents." Agent Finch pocketed her notebook and stood up, drew herself up to her full height, which wasn't much after Dean had spent almost 24/7 around Sam for two years.

Dean scrubbed a hand through his hair. "You really haven't been listening, have you? Henry Winchester was a deadbeat and a dick. Grandma Winchester moved back in with her father, who was a mechanic. She made good pie. She died when I was two."

Sam looked startled at this additional information. Had he not known about Grandma Winchester or Great-Grandpa Walters? Dean wondered if he'd ever told Sam about that, or if Dad had ever mentioned it.

Agent Finch shook her head. "No. Your other grandparents. The Campbells."

Dean frowned. "Mom's maiden name was Campbell?" He glanced at Sam, who shook his head. He hadn't know that either. Dean shrugged. "They died before we were born. Before Mom and Dad got married. They never liked Dad. Who cares about them? They weren't criminals. They were normal. Boring."

Agent Finch looked genuinely surprised at this. She beckoned to her partner, and they stepped out of the interrogation room. The click of the lock behind them was ominous.

"Should we make a break for it?" Dean asked softly.

Sam shook his head. "I want to know what they're after."

"And if they're calling Henricksen?" Dean asked.

"They're not. So let's just cool our heels and see what they come back with next."

Dean reached out, snagged the grainy photo, studied it. There was definitely someone lingering on the sidewalk beneath Sam's old apartment building, but he obviously wasn't Dean - different build, different face.

"You think that was Yellow-Eyes?" he asked.

Sam shook his head. "No. But I think it was one of his minions, maybe. A regular black-eyed demon who was in on the plan all along."

"What makes you say that?"

"Because that's Tyson Brady. He was a nice kid from the Midwest, pre-med, and halfway through our first year he went off the rails, became a crazy party boy, switched majors. And he introduced me to Jess." Sam closed his eyes again and took a deep breath. Then he looked at Dean. "I'm guessing the personality switch was when the demon started its ride."

"Damn. Sammy, I'm -"

"Jess was doomed the day she met me." Sam sank forward, buried his face in his hands.

"No, Sammy-"

"Mom was too. We're Winchesters. We're cursed. Maybe Dad and I weren't so different after all." Sam peeked through his fingers at Dean. "Maybe you should just kill me and go."

Dean's jaw tightened. He leaned in, spoke low and fast and furious. "We've talked about this before. I'm not going to kill you. I'm going to save you. Which I can't do if we're in federal prison. Now come on, let's go."

"No. We need to figure out what angle they're playing," Sam said.

"Their angle is getting us put away for life," Dean hissed.

"I don't think so," Sam said.

"Why the hell not?"

"Because they're not real FBI agents."

Chapter Text

Back at the motel, Sam took the first shower. While he was in there, Dean dug into the food he'd picked up from the Bumbleberry Café. They'd fixed a time to meet up with Gwen, Mark, Anna, and Ciaran to discuss the tennis tournament after the café closed so Freya could be present. That Gwen and Mark needed time to arrange for supplies went unspoken.

Dean pushed open the bathroom door, assumed an insouciant slouch against the door frame. "Hey Sammy, do you think they are who they say they are?"

"How would I know? You and Dad always shut me down whenever I mentioned Mom. I didn't know anything about Dad's family. I knew less about Mom's."

Dean winced at the bitterness in Sam's words clear even through the shower curtain. "I didn't know her maiden name was Campbell. Or that we were named after her parents."

Sam snorted, then made a choking noise. He must have swallowed some shower water. Dean couldn't help it. He laughed.

"Shut up, Deanna," Sam called out hoarsely. Dean laughed some more.

"Why don't you see what Ash can dig up about Mom?" Sam asked. "And see if my European contact has turned up anything further about the twins."

Dean straightened up, surprised. "You mean you'll let me touch your laptop?"

"As long as you don't get it stuck on Busty Asian Beauties again."

"That wasn't me," Dean protested.

"That wasn’t you that time," Sam corrected.

Dean shrugged. Sam wasn't wrong. Dean pulled the bathroom door shut and retreated to the table where Sam's laptop was closed but humming. A much scribbled-upon tennis bracket was folded on top of the laptop; Dean set it aside carefully. He opened the laptop and typed in Sam's password. Sam changed it every few weeks, and Dean would never admit it, but he never would have been able to guess them if Sam hadn't told him. All those books Sam had read were finally paying off.

Once in a blue moon, Sam received emails from his old college friends. Mostly Rebecca, from St. Louis. A few others, but those were few and far between. Dean didn't mean to pry, but the inbox displayed the first few lines of each email, and it was easy to tell the old college friends. Miss you. Been a long time. Hope you're okay. Saw x and it reminded me of you (or Jess, and then I thought of you).

The first thing Dean did was fire off an email to Ash, asking about Mary Campbell of Lawrence, Kansas and her parents Samuel and Deanna Campbell. He wanted to make sure Gwen and Mark really were his cousins. And he wanted to know if the Campbells really were long-running hunters. And he wanted to know what Ash knew about the so-called Men of Letters. Ash was a genius, and not just because he'd been smart enough to gain admission to MIT (and get thrown out, because college was no place for a hunter). He'd turn up everything there was to know about the Campbell clan. To be nice, Dean addressed the email to Dr. Badass, and at the end, he added a hasty note for Ellen and Jo. So Ellen would know they were alive and safe.

As safe as they could be, with an FBI agent breathing down their necks.

As the email went out with a theatrical whoosh, another email cycled in.

It was from Sam's European contact Emma of the Isles, which might have been pretentious or hippie-tacular, except didn't British people have names like that all the time? Dean clicked on it eagerly.

Photos were much more useful than your terribly inaccurate information. Anna is Anna Morgan Kensington. Wealthy family. Mother died when she was a baby. Father died when she was seven. Taken in by her father's best friend, Uther Pennington, and raised alongside his son, Arthur. (I know. So pretentious. Feel free to laugh.) Ciaran is Ciaran Emerson O'Bannon. Father unknown. Raised by his mother. Did his medic training at St. Bart's. Probably ran into Anna at Cambridge, where she, Arthur, and Ciaran all attended. Ciaran's mother is still alive, best as I can tell. Anna, Ciaran, and Arthur were thick as thieves - at least according to tabloids - before there was a falling out. Anna and Ciaran have been silent ever since, no media presence. I'm guessing they fled to America where you found them. They are not siblings. Anna's mother died in childbirth. Ciaran's mother was a bit of a hippie so no suspicion of his father having suffered a supernatural death. No suspicious house fires on either side. No relation between the two of them. I can see why you think they're twins, though. Good luck with that hunt.

Dean sat back, confused. They weren't twins? Were they even the same age as Sam? There was so much they'd been dishonest about.

"Well?" Sam stood in the doorway of the bathroom wearing jeans, toweling off his hair.

"Well, I'm not sure what the hell happened here." Dean gestured to the laptop. "But your European contact came through."

Sam laid his towel over the back of the other chair and leaned down to read the email. Dean stood up and went to his duffel bag to fish out some clean clothes to wear after his shower. That first night he'd sneaked into Sam's apartment in Palo Alto, Sam had been wearing pajama bottoms and a weird t-shirt. John had broken Sam of pajamas as soon as he was competent enough with a firearm to take a watch shift at night. A true hunter never slept in pajamas because he never knew when he'd have to get out of bed and fight. When Sam had packed for the road trip to Jericho, he'd packed those ridiculous pajama pants. After the fire, on the road to Colorado, he'd abandoned them at the first motel they'd crashed out. Now, like Dean, he slept fully dressed.

"That makes no sense." Sam straightened up, frowning.

"Well, no, but hey, rich people, right?" Where had Dean's favorite AC/DC shirt gone? "Running off to another country and pretending to be twin tennis players makes perfect sense if you were going to a fancy school like they were going to. But none of that matches the pattern for one of Yellow-Eyes' kids."

"Then we need to talk to Ciaran and Anna some more," Sam said. "They could still be like me. That could be why they ran away. Maybe they're afraid of what they might to do their family. Or maybe Yellow-Eyes has been telling them their families will hate them."

"We can poke around a little tonight," Dean said. "Lemme shower, and we can go meet the tennis tournament team at the café."

Sam sighed and closed his laptop. "What am I supposed to say? Hey Anna, do you have visions of the future too?"

"She's telekinetic," Dean said.

"What if she's just a telekinetic? Like Fred Jones." Sam went and poked through his duffel for a clean shirt. He came up with an AC/DC shirt. Dean's AC/DC shirt. He shrugged it on absently, then fished one of his flannel shirts out of his duffel to throw on over it. And then he went back to the table to stare at the tennis bracket.

Just because he could, Dean reached into Sam's duffel for a t-shirt. Then he booked it for the bathroom before Sam could see.

Twenty minutes later, they pulled into the parking lot of the Bumbleberry Café. The closed sign was illuminated, but there were two other cars in the parking lot, and the lights in the café were on. Ciaran, Anna, Gwen, and Mark were huddled around a table, plates of food between them. Freya was just bustling out of the back kitchen with another plate of food when Dean rapped on the window.

Gwen was out of her chair in an instant, heading over to unlock the door. "So good of you to finally arrive."

"Sorry," Dean said. "Sam's a little precious. His long hair takes so much time to style."

Gwen arched an eyebrow. "Like you're not precious, Trouty Mouth."

"He prefers duck lips," Sam said without missing a beat.

Dean kicked him in the ankle. "What's the plan?" He spotted tall glasses of soda pop on the table. "Why can't we dose them right now with that dream root stuff? Slip 'em a little mickey?"

"We need to be the ones to drink the stuff," Gwen said. "What we need is some of their - hair. Or something."

"What's the plan? You swap spit with Ciaran, Mark swaps spit with Anna, you both spit into some cups?"

"We'll grab some of their hair when they're unconscious," Gwen said. "Now hurry up. Us whispering over here is bound to look weird." She stepped back and let Sam and Dean into the diner.

Freya, who'd just set the food down, straightened up, twisted the hem of her apron nervously. "Would you two like anything?"

"We ate earlier, thanks," Sam said. "We'll be okay. But I wouldn't say no to a glass of water."

"Coke for me," Dean said.

Freya nodded and ducked back into the kitchen.

"What did we miss?" Sam sat beside Gwen, leaving Dean to squeeze in between Mark and Ciaran.

"Not much." Ciaran smiled. "Just last-minute issues, like do we have enough coolers, ice, and bottles of water for competitors? Where will all the spectators watch from? And do we have enough sunscreen for everyone?"

"Unlike some of you, who freckle or tan, some of us burn," Anna said. "We need protection from the sun."

"Vampire," Freya said fondly. She set a glass of water in front of Sam and a glass of Coke in front of Dean.

"I'm not undead, just delicate." Anna sniffed.

Freya squeezed in between Sam and Ciaran. "Are you all right, Sam? You look tired."

He blinked, startled. "I do?"

Dean glanced at Sam. Sam looked the same as he always did. Which, admittedly, did look tired. The shadows around his eyes, the pallor of his skin. It was par for the course. Dad had always looked that way, exhausted in the hunt for Mom's killer. Sam had looked that way ever since Jess died, first plagued by nightmares of her death, then plagued by nightmarish psychic visions. Most hunters didn't manage more than four hours a night. Dean wondered if he looked as bad. He had his own share of nightmares. Of course, Freya only had eyes for Sam.

Dean said, "Sammy has nightmare sometimes, is all."

"I'm sorry," Freya said. She patted Sam's hand. "I know how troubling nightmares can be."

Dean managed a light chuckle. "Poor kid's kinda paranoid. He swears black and blue some of his nightmares come true. I think he's mostly talking about what he sees when he looks in the mirror every morning."

The look Sam shot him was wide-eyed and alarmed, not nearly as insulted as Dean needed it to be.

Gwen raised her eyebrows. Mark said nothing, digging into his food.

"Everyone has dream deja vu," Freya said. "At night when we're dreaming, our brains are processing things that went on before - and sometimes make accurate predictions about what will happen later. Some people experience more dream deja vu than others, I think." She shrugged.

Dean didn't miss the look that passed between Ciaran and Anna. Anna cleared her throat and spoke with deliberate casualness.

"What are your dreams like, Sam? Full movies, or flashes of images, like an oracular zoetrope?"

"Movies," Sam said slowly, warily. "But never long ones."

"I've had dreams like that before." Anna sipped her lemon water. "They can be very upsetting."

"You don't look so tired," Sam said.

Anna shrugged one delicate shoulder. "Makeup does wonders for a girl's complexion."

Sam winced. "Sorry. I didn't mean to --"

"I'm hardly offended. My makeup is doing its job, after all." She rested her chin in her hand, idly prodding at her food with her fork. She caught Sam's gaze and held it. "Do you ever dream about having past lives?"

"No," Sam said, and Dean winced. Sam should have said yes, led Anna on, got her to confess more about her dreams.

"Oh." Anna's brow furrowed, and she straightened up. "What are your dreams like?"

"Are they ever recurring?" Freya asked. "Those can be the worst - or the best, depending."

Dean caught Mark's gaze. Mark nodded, sat back. No one would notice that he was easing his hand toward his gun.

"I have had recurring dreams." Sam's tone was as carefully casual as Anna's had been. "About a man with yellow eyes telling me I have a grand destiny."

Ciaran raised his eyebrows. "Is the man terribly old?"

"Not...terribly," Sam said.

"Is the man sometimes a dragon?" Ciaran pressed.

What? A dragon? Dean was startled out of his contemplation of his own firearm.

Sam blinked. "Um, no."

Anna took a deep breath, then leaned in. "Does the man ever look like...Ciaran?"

"No. Why would he? I've had these dreams since I turned twenty-two. I've only known Ciaran a few months," Sam said.

Something was wrong here. Dean reached for his own gun. Was it possible? Was Ciaran the meatsuit for old Yellow Eyes now?

"You said sometimes your dreams come true," Freya pointed out.

"I did," Sam said, "but I'd have remembered if I'd dreamt of Ciaran before. You have a distinctive face."

"By distinctive do you mean ugly?" Ciaran sat back, looking non-plussed.

Sam's eyes went wide. "No! No. Just...distinctive. Memorable. I think the word an author would use is, um, arresting?" He darted a pleading look at Dean.

Dean shrugged helplessly. He wasn't a writer. Anna looked torn between amusement and disappointment.

"Of course you're not ugly." Freya patted Ciaran's hand sympathetically. "Besides, you don't have yellow eyes, do you?"

"As much as this foray into Freud and Jung has been entertaining," Anna said, "we ought to talk about the tennis tournament. Mark, you'll be partnering with Agent Hotchner?"

Mark nodded.

"And Agent Finch, you'll help Freya with tabulating?"

"Yes," she said, "and please, call me Gwen. It's shorter."

Anna went very still. "Gwen?"

Gwen nodded. "Yes."

"Is that short for anything?" Anna asked.

"Gwyneth, actually." Gwen, too, was reaching for her gun. At this point, Sam was the only one who hadn't reached for his piece, other than the not-twins who, as far as Dean knew, didn't carry guns. "Why?"

Anna turned to Sam. "Your middle name isn't Lance, is it? Freya's is Elaine."

Sam darted a look at Dean, but Dean could only offer a minute, helpless shrug.

"No," Sam said, "that's not my middle name." He flashed Freya a tight smile. "Elaine's a pretty name, though."

Freya ducked her head. "Thanks."

Anna sat back, arms crossed tightly over her chest. A muscle in her jaw twitched. What was she going to do? Dean darted a glance at Sam, who was finally reaching for his piece.

"Is everything all right?" Gwen asked. She was a great pretexter. She sounded confused, not suspicious, even though this conversation had taken some turns Dean didn't understand.

"What about you?" Anna asked Dean. "What's your middle name?"

"Not Lance. I'm no marathon runner."

"It's cycling, actually," Sam corrected absently.

Mark said, "Tennis, anyone?"

Ciaran nodded sharply. "Of course. Thank you for volunteering to help us, all of you. We need to divvy up the last-minute chores. I reckon we ought to take a jaunt to Wal-Mart to purchase any extraneous supplies, like the bottled water." He held up a list. "Six tasks, three pairs. Should be easy to divide the tasks, right?"

"I call dibs on Anna," Dean said.

"Dibs on Ciaran," Gwen added.

Ciaran rolled his eyes and huffed. "For the last time, no calling dibs on people --"

"Freeze. This is the FBI."

Dean froze. Then he turned ever so slightly and saw the older Suit in the doorway, wearing an FBI-issue bulletproof vest over his polo shirt and khakis. Agent Hotchner, his name was.

"Samuel and Dean Winchester," Agent Hotchner said, "you're under arrest for bank robbery, credit card fraud, and grave desecration."

"Hands up!" someone behind Agent Hotchner yelled.

Dean raised his hands, cursing inwardly. Sam obeyed as well.

"Gwen and Mark Campbell, you're under arrest for impersonating federal agents, credit card fraud, and grave desecration." Agent Hotchner stepped further into the restaurant.

Gwen and Mark raised their hands.

"I told you," Ciaran hissed at Anna. "They're not --"

"Okay, fine. You were right, I was wrong." Anna's hands were raised as well. "But they're hunters."

Dean flinched. Mark and Gwen cast wide-eyed looks at Anna.

"Credit card fraud and grave desecration," Anna said. "That's you lot every time."

"Are you going to kill us?" Gwen asked in a low voice.

Agent Hotchner ordered some of the black-clad, heavily-armed police officers to search the rest of the café for any accomplices, ordered the rest to keep the suspects surrounded.

"What? No!" Ciaran said. He looked offended. "Unless you're trying to kill us?"

"We're not," Sam said. "We just had some questions about the Yellow-Eyed Demon."

"You have the right to remain silent," Agent Hotchner said. "Anything you say can and will be used against you in a court of law." He stepped up behind Mark, wielding a pair of handcuffs.

"Demon?" Anna echoed, looking puzzled.

"Maybe," Ciaran said, "we ought to talk about this later. In the meantime --" His eyes flashed golden, and Dean's world went white.

Aaron closed his eyes and rubbed them, wincing against the glare of the computer.

Garcia said, "Pretty much everything they had in the file is what Agent Henricksen has. But they had other stuff in there - about hunting, obviously. And they'd withheld the mug shots Henricksen had scanned into the file. Poor, tragic Sam. Creepy, charming Dean. Creepy, overbearing John."

"Thank you." Aaron opened his eyes. "And the Campbells?"

"Genuinely related to the Winchesters. Other than that, not a lot. Birth records. Unexceptional high school records. Not nearly as transient, but if part of their delusion is that their hunter calling is family-based, more stability isn't strange, right?"

Garcia was becoming more insightful into profiling every day. It was both a blessing and a tragedy. Aaron thanked her for her insight. "And their history?"

"Once they reach adulthood, pretty clean. Some dubious driving, suspects in credit card fraud and impersonating LEO's in various states, but never arrested or convicted."

Definitely not FBI agents, then. "And what of the twins, Anna and Ciaran O'Malley?"

"That's where things get kinda weird, sir." Garcia's face was washed out in the glow of her monitor. Her red-tipped fingers flew across the keys in a flurry of clacking. "A preliminary search turns up this: they're not twins. BFFs from their Cambridge days, apparently. He was going to be a doctor. She was going to be a lawyer. He was a brilliant scholarship kid. She was orphaned and raised by her dad's BFF, the frighteningly wealthy Uther Pennington."

Aaron raised his eyebrows. "Who?"

"You know, lots of money, lots of political influence, really dreamy golden-blond son Arthur?" Garcia blinked at him, disappointed in his knowledge of socialite gossip but unsurprised. "Nevermind. Arthur and Anna were practically siblings, and he went to Cambridge too, but there was some kind of falling out, and Anna and Ciaran fled to America, changed their names and pretended to be siblings."

That Ciaran had been training to be a doctor certainly explained his competence during the chaotic aftermath of the Chief's fall. What kind of falling out would lead to a change in identity? And why would Anna and Ciaran pretend to be twins? Having observed them together, they had all the hallmarks of siblings. Perhaps they had simply been very, very close friends at university.

"But I dug a little deeper, and...Ciaran's story doesn't hold up. Either he or a good friend is almost as skilled as myself, because all of his records before he started at Cambridge are - false. Fake birth records, fake school records, fake medical records. Someone went so far as to photoshop him into the yearbook photos of the schools he claims to have attended in his childhood and adolescence, but it's not him. His mother doesn't exist either. And here's the weird thing - the photos he used to do the whole photoshop thing? Are just one photo."

Garcia hit a button, and an old sepia-tone photo popped up on Aaron's screen. In it, a young man who looked remarkably like Ciaran was standing in the doorway of an Old West saloon. He wore jeans and boots and a dusty button-down shirt and had a cowboy hat in one hand.

"He used the same photo over and over again, but for some of the school pictures he must have run it through de-aging software," Garcia said.

"So we have no clue who he really is?" Aaron asked.

"According to the caption I found for this photo, it was taken in Sunrise, Wyoming in 1861." Garcia pressed another button and leaned in, squinting. She pushed her glasses higher up her nose. "The main subject of the photo was a young Welsh miner named Myrddin Emrys, on his way out to Utah to work the mines in a town called - conveniently - Wales."

Aaron pinched the bridge of his nose and forced himself to take a deep breath. Ever since he'd laid eyes on the Winchester brothers, his life had gone from weird to worse. "Okay."

"It gets weirder."

Aaron raised his eyebrows. "Can it get weirder?"

"Well, when I was doing a search on the Winchester brothers, this same photo popped up too. See those two guys in the background?"

Garcia reached for her mouse, and on Aaron's screen, a red circle appeared around two cowboys behind Emrys. Both of them - besides Emrys - were taller and lankier than everyone else in the saloon. They were leaning over the bar, chatting with the barkeep. Their faces weren't quite distinct, but Garcia clicked her mouse, and another photo appeared, this one a crop and zoom-in of the area inside the red circle. It had been cleaned up so it wasn't so blurry. The two young men looked startlingly like Sam and Dean.

"According to the same article about our little Welsh immigrant, an execution had occurred earlier that day, and the judge who'd ordered it had spontaneously combusted hours afterward, and a local fancy lady claimed she'd seen the ghost of the man who'd been hanged when it happened. Those two fellows had rolled into town and told local law enforcements their names were - get this - Marshall Clint Eastwood and Walker, a Texas Ranger."

Pop culture references, like Dean liked to pick for aliases when impersonating law enforcement.

"See, I'm thinking someone who knows the Winchesters and is also a hacker added this information to troll the FBI, give them something to think about if they ever came looking for Sam and Dean," Garcia said, "but I haven't managed to turn up any evidence of photo-manipulation or hacking yet."

"What does any of this even mean?" Aaron asked. "Other than I'm probably losing my mind."

"It looks to me like this Ciaran character is secretly immortal and, in the last couple of decades, has seen fit to resurface and build an identity for himself. As for Sam and Dean - obviously they're time travelers," Garcia said. She grinned.

"Please don't let Strauss hear you say that." Aaron sighed.

"If you're losing your mind, sir, then I'm losing it right along with you," Garcia said. "Really, my best guess is that the Winchesters are working separate from Ciaran and Anna. What are the chances that three sets of conmen - and women - would meet up in one town?"

"About as good as the odds of two serial killers operating in the same city." Aaron sat up straighter and desperately wished for some coffee. "Where can I find them? They say they're on a hunt, and based on what Gwen Campbell explained to me about hunter lore, once they find their monster quarry, they destroy it. A lot of the time, the monsters they hunt have human forms, which could result in them killing innocent victims. Anna and Ciaran may be lying about who they are, but they haven't committed any crimes. At least not, major ones, a little of identity fraud aside."

"Luckily for you, Freya, Anna and Ciaran's BFF from the café, keeps an online blog. She says whenever they are planning a party or other event, they have dinner at the café after hours. That's your best bet of finding them."

"Thank you," Aaron said. "Sorry to keep you up so late, Garcia."

"Not to worry. I'm a night owl, sir. Anything for the Knights of the Round Table. Good night." Garcia signed off.

Aaron reached for his cell phone. Officer Begay was the officer on duty who answered his call. She was quick to patch him through to the Chief, who hospital staff had reluctantly discharged from the hospital with strict instructions not to do anything strenuous for at least a couple of weeks.

"Chief Seegmiller," Aaron said, "I need your help."

An hour later, Aaron was leading the local SWAT unit to the Bumbleberry Café. Sam and Dean's legendary car, the 1967 Chevy Impala, was parked alongside the Campbells' nondescript sedan, a little Mini Cooper, and a sleek old Jaguar that probably belonged to the twins. He ordered the local units to stay back and form a perimeter in the darkness outside the glow coming from the café windows. Then he led the black-clad SWAT units just to the edges of the light, and he waited.

Freya had brought drinks for Sam and Dean, and they were all leaning in, talking, expressions intense. If Aaron hadn't known better, he'd have thought he was watching a group of young working professionals getting together for some socializing to let off steam. They were TV sitcom fodder, all young and tall and attractive. But two-thirds of them were armed and dangerous, and the other third was an unknown quantity with potentially vast resources to fend off the arm of the law.

For the most part, the dynamics were friendly, grins traded back and forth. Freya clearly was interested in Sam. She was an unknown quantity in the whole mix. Garcia hadn't turned up anything suspicious about Freya in her search. She was innocent. Would the Winchesters take her hostage? They'd taken a whole bank hostage, if Henricksen was to be believed. If the Campbell cousins were to be believed, Sam and Dean had been pursuing a "monster" in the bank, and a civilian had interfered with their hunt. Someone had still died, an innocent bank teller. Aaron had to get Freya out of there first.

There was a break in the rhythm of conversation. Everyone was shooting looks at everyone else, a flurry of non-verbal communication that left poor Freya fidgeting nervously in her chair and occasionally trying to interject comfort, first for Sam, then for Ciaran. After the stumble, Ciaran held up a piece of paper, and the others leaned in to take a look at it. They were all distracted.

Aaron gave the signal, then made the dash for the door.

"Freeze. This is the FBI."

Dean froze. Then he turned ever so slightly, and Aaron could see his profile. Sam was wide-eyed, startled. Anna and Ciaran looked grim. Gwen bit her lip, glanced at Mark. Mark's expression was oh-so-faintly amused. Freya looked terrified.

"Samuel and Dean Winchester," Aaron said, "you're under arrest for bank robbery, credit card fraud, and grave desecration."

Dean rolled his eyes, cast Gwen a look. She shrugged minutely. Aaron noticed that, of the hunters, all of them had one hand out of sight. They were reaching for weapons.

"Hands up!" the SWAT captain yelled.

Dean raised his hands straight away. Sam obeyed a second later. Both of them looked resigned. Aaron remembered the resigned expression on Sam's face in his Baltimore PD booking photo and saw it here again. His initial profile had been correct - Dean was the dominant personality, and Sam got dragged along on his crazy schemes.

"Gwen and Mark Campbell, you're under arrest for impersonating federal agents, credit card fraud, and grave desecration." Aaron kept his gun trained on Mark and stepped further into the restaurant.

Gwen and Mark raised their hands.

Aaron kept his focus on the suspects still seated at the table. "Captain, clear the kitchens and the restrooms, then escort Freya to safety."

Freya also had her hands up, and she looked terrified. She flinched when Ciaran hissed at Anna. Aaron couldn't quite hear what they were saying. Were they plotting an escape? Aaron edged closer, ready to yank Freya away from them if things went sideways.

"We're not," Sam said, though to whom Aaron couldn't tell. "We just had some questions about the Yellow-Eyed Demon."

That kind of delusional talk could trigger violence in the others. Aaron intervened. "You have the right to remain silent. Anything you say can and will be used against you in a court of law." He stepped up behind Mark; best to cuff the quiet one first. He was an unknown quantity, and a dangerous one.

"Demon?" Anna echoed, looking puzzled.

Aaron noted her puzzlement; so she and Ciaran weren't part of this hunter culture. Aaron secured Mark's wrists together and hauled him to his feet.

"Maybe," Ciaran said, "we ought to talk about this later. In the meantime --"

This time Aaron saw it, clear as day, when Ciaran's eyes flashed golden.

Everything after that was a blur.

Aaron awoke when the telephone on the nightstand shrilled. A cheerful woman informed him that this was his wake-up call, and she hoped he was enjoying his stay at the resort. Aaron blinked muzzily. His head was pounding. Had he got drunk last night? No, his mouth didn't taste like old whiskey and not enough sleep. Aaron staggered for the shower, trying to remember what had happened the night before. He'd missed supper because he'd hung around the police station after Chief Seegmiller's fall. He'd called Garcia, he remembered that - her red-tipped nails and pink-streaked hair were fresh in his mind. But he couldn't remember anything else.

By the time Aaron was showered and dressed, he felt better, but his memory was no clearer. Had he been drugged?

Downstairs at breakfast, Chief Seegmiller was smiling even though he was on crutches. He was lingering near the hostess station waiting for Aaron, it seemed.

"Great job last night," the Chief said. He wheeled around and clanked toward a table in the corner with unsteady gait. "We're pretty lucky you're an FBI agent who has SWAT experience. My captain reports his boys and girls learned some pretty good stuff in that drill last night. We really appreciate the way you were willing to be flexible about an unconventional training exercise."

Agents Finch and Fletchley were waiting at the table in the corner.

Agent Fletchley rose to his feet and moved to another seat, allowing the Chief to take the seat most convenient for his crutches. Agent Finch helped the Chief rest his crutches against the wall.

The Chief thanked Agent Fletchley and clapped him on the shoulder. "You've got some fine young up-and-comers in yours ranks, Hotchner. They put on a pretty good show for my boys. I guess if I can't be your partner for the tennis tournament, I'm okay with Fletchley filling my shoes."

Aaron glanced at Agent Fletchley, who inclined his head respectfully.

"My wife and I will be in the stands cheering for you," the Chief said. "So, good luck today."

Something in Aaron's head buzzed every time he looked at the two young agents, and for one second he went light-headed at the mention of the tennis tournament, but then he nodded and smiled at the Chief. "Thank you. Maybe next time I'm in town and you've healed up, we can try for being a team."

Chapter Text

"Where are we?" Dean drew his gun, cocked it, settled into a fighting stance. He felt Sam at his back. They were in a house, one he didn't recognize.

"Easy there," Ciaran said. "This is our home. We're safe here."

Sam's eyes were huge. "Did you just teleport us?"

Dean still wasn't sure if he should add that to the list of psychic powers. He'd seen Ciaran's eyes turn - well, darker than yellow. But gold sounded a little too poetic and pretentious for his comfort.

Gwen and Mark were back to back as well, each with a gun and a knife drawn. Freya was nowhere to be seen.

Sam spun, forcing Dean to turn with him. "Freya!"

"She's safe," Anna said. "Ciaran sent her home. Bloody hell - you're all hunters? The lot of you?"

"Who are you?" Dean demanded.

"Not hunters," Anna said, "and not penny psychics either."

"Why did you care about our names?" Gwen asked.

Ciaran raised a hand. Dean trained a gun on him.

"Whoa!" Ciaran protested. "Look, if we'd wanted to kill you, we could have done that ages ago. If we'd wished you harm, we could have left you for the FBI to take. So can we put all the weapons away? I could disarm you if I needed to, but if you break the tension yourselves, I think the peace will hold, don't you?"

Dean glanced at Gwen. She nodded, and she lowered her gun, so Dean did the same, and Sam followed. Mark was the last to obey, and though his gun was holstered, he kept a hand on it.

Ciaran waved a hand, and a tray of drinks appeared on the coffee table. "Now, we need to have a chat. Please, sit."

Dean was tempted to stay standing just to be contrary, but the casual display of immense power was disconcerting, so he sat. Were they witches? Sam sat beside him on the loveseat. It was a little crowded. Mark and Gwen sat on the sofa, and Ciaran and Anna seated themselves in the two overstuffed armchairs. Ciaran waived a again, and a drink floated first to Gwen, then to Anna. Anna plucked hers out of the air as casually as could be, so Gwen did the same.

"It's just water," Ciaran said. "So, you lot are hunters, and you're after a yellow-eyed demon."

"It killed our mother," Sam said quietly. "It killed the woman I would have made my wife."

"Their mother was our cousin," Gwen said.

Ciaran nodded, expression pensive. "I see. And you thought Anna and I were - what, spawn of this demon?"

Sam shook his head and explained his theory about the demon's chosen psychic kids.

Understanding crossed Anna's face. "And you thought, because of the fire in our eyes when we cast magic, that we would be like you?"

"I was hoping," Sam began. He scrubbed a hand over his face. "I need to know what the demon's planning for me. And the others like me. I'm afraid -"

Ciaran and Anna exchanged looks. Ciaran gnawed on his bottom lip for a moment. "Here's the thing about fate. People can plan things for you, fate things for you. Sometimes in your attempts to avoid something you've glimpsed, something you think is fated, you just make it come true."

Anna reached out and squeezed his hand, smiling gently.

"But you need to ignore it. Make plans for yourself and go for them. Sometimes what you want is what someone else has fated for you. Sometimes you disrupt what someone has fated for you. However it turns out, fate isn't set in stone. It's all a probability game, what is most likely to happen given the efforts others have put forth over time, the schemes they've deployed and the machinations they've engaged." Ciaran smiled at Sam. "So forget what others have planned for you. Make a plan for yourself, and stick to it."

"You sound like you've been fated before," Gwen said.

"Have been, will be." Ciaran shrugged. "If I'm fated for something I like, then I roll with it. If they say I'm fated for something I don't like, well, I keep fighting for what I like."

Mark eyed Ciaran for a long moment. "What are you fighting for?"

"Old friends," Ciaran said.

"Who are you?" Dean demanded.

Ciaran's grin turned sly. "Given the aliases you two chose, I thought you might have figured it out. I never really had much taste for a beard except in disguises, and now I keep hearing people refer to my beard like it's some kind of epithet."

Mark looked confused. Dean felt confused. Gwen looked like she was on the cusp of understanding the allusion Ciaran was hinting at. Sam's jaw dropped.

"No way," Sam said. "So when you were asking about Lance and Elaine and Gwen --"

"Some of us were in the old country," Anna said. "But some of us ended up here. This time around, we don't want it to end so badly."

Dammit. Ciaran, Anna, and Sam were talking some kind of code.

"You know what?" Dean shook his head. "Cryptic chats later. You two aren't really twins."

Sam looked ready to protest the interruption, but Anna was nodding.

"Correct."

"And Yellow-Eyes didn't kill your parents."

"Correct."

"And you don't prey on humans."

"Also correct."

"And you don't want to hurt us."

"Goodness gracious no," Anna said. "We'd have been up a creek without a paddle over this tennis tournament without the two of you. Four of you," she amended, when Mark bristled.

"Then you know what? Let's finish this tennis tournament and get out of here." Dean reached out and grabbed one of the glasses of water, downed it in a single go.

"What are we going to do about Agent Hotchner?" Gwen asked.

Ciaran smiled. "Leave that to us."

Mark raised his eyebrows.

Ciaran lifted a hand to forestall comment. "We won't hurt him. Don't worry. He won't remember anything you don't want him to remember. As far as he'll know, you two are FBI agents, and you two are tennis pros, just like us."

Dean set down the glass and took a deep breath. "Dammit, Sammy. That was a real long climb for a real short slide."

Sammy was gazing at Ciaran with cautious awe. "I, uh, I don't know what to say. When I was kid, Dean used to read me comics about - about --"

Ciaran slapped his list down on the coffee table. "Enough about us. More about tennis. Who's calling dibs on who?"

"I thought we couldn't call dibs on people," Dean said.

Anna shrugged one shoulder, smiling. "Maybe just this once."

The majority of the conference-goers had turned out for the tennis tournament. Aaron was surprised and impressed, and he wondered how much of the enthusiasm had come from the Chief himself, who was seated on the front row of the bleachers set up just beyond the tennis court fences. His wife sat beside him, beaming at Aaron.

Anna and Sam were perched on high seats parallel with the nets on each court, to act as judges, and Dean and a promoted ball-girl were manning the scoreboards for the audience to see. Aaron glanced over his shoulder and saw Agent Finch and Freya at the tabulation table, signing in players and handing out bottles of water. Beside them, Ciaran had a medic booth, complete with towels, more bottles of water, and a first aid kit.

"Ready, Agent Hotchner?" asked Agent Fletchley.

"I am. Please, call me Hotch. More economical on the court."

"Okay. I'm Mark," he said.

Aaron shook his hand. "Thank you. Now, let's do the best we can."

Mark was silent during any bouts that weren't theirs, studying their opponents with a ferocity that was a little unnerving for a friendly competition, but then he was young and ambitious, and he seemed to have a tendency to want to prove himself in everything, not just in investigative work. He and his partner had been very willing to help with the SWAT drills, posing as dangerous criminals who had potential hostages in their midst.

When it was Aaron and Mark's turn, Aaron stepped onto the court. He'd spent the previous match limbering up, but he shook out his limbs one last time just in case.

Sam was judging their game. Aaron and Mark had the first serve. Aaron let Mark take the serve and settled in, ready to return fire. Gideon wasn't much one for anything more strenuous than swing dancing, and he didn't much think of the comparison when Aaron said tennis was like speed chess, but it was. The question of to whom and when and where to return a ball had to be calculated in an instant, played against the skill and speed of the other team.

Maybe Aaron had been watching his opponents more closely than he thought.

Sam called the game, and Mark slammed his serve into the opposing team's ad court. Adrenaline sparked in Aaron's nerves, and then he was in the zone, darting back and forth, firing the ball back over the net. It took a bit, but then he and Mark were on the same wavelength. All they needed were their names and mine and then they were all over the ball. Mark was fast, had excellent reflexes, but Aaron had better technique, could get his racket into places Mark couldn't.

Aaron wasn't keeping track of the score, he was just keeping track of the ball.

And then Sam was saying, "Match goes to the Feds!" and the audience was cheering. Chief Seegmiller and his life were the loudest.

Aaron heard a, "That's my boy!" from the Chief. No one had called him a boy in years. Unless the Chief was referring to Mark?

Agent Finch emerged from behind the tabulation table to ply Aaron and Mark with drinks and towels to wipe themselves down as much as possible.

"You looked great out there," she said. "Definitely through to the next round. Keep it up."

For all that there was a conference going on, the tournament had consistently good attendance. Some of the club's regular patrons were in the audience as well. They were excited to see their new tennis pros really let loose and compete. Aaron didn't envy Sam and Anna, perched high up in the hot sun for hours on end. He wondered how well they would fare in the final round.

After a long day of tennis, Aaron was invited out to dinner at a fine restaurant in town to eat with the Chief, his wife, and the other local LEO leaders and their spouses. He did his best to represent the Bureau well. He was tired, but he'd earned it, and he'd missed, so much, the fierce energy of competitive tennis. When he got home, he'd make time to play with Haley on his team again, come hell or high water.

"Hear that, Sammy?" Dean asked.

The final round between the cops and the lawyers had just finished, and the cops, led by the formidable FBI duo, had won. The stands were ringing with cheers and adulation, the boos and hisses of the lawyers completely drowned out.

"That's what you'd have to look forward to you if you'd stayed at Stanford," Dean said.

Sam didn't flinch at the reference to his old life. "We need to get out of here, and fast. Move on. Find a real hunt."

"Are you asking me to throw the game?" Dean demanded. "What kind of a man do you think I am?"

"The kind of man who hits on a married woman, gets her drink thrown in his face, and then gives my name to her husband," Sam said without missing a beat.

"But I'm not dishonorable."

Sam arched an eyebrow.

"Sammy..."

"It's Sam," he said. "Come on. There are other hunts out there. Other leads. But we need to keep moving." If we stand still, he meant, fate will catch up to us.

"Fine," Dean said, "but at least give it your all against Anna and Ciaran."

Sam snorted. "If we win, don't think for a second it wasn't because they didn't let us."

"Who are they, anyway?" Dean asked.

"No one dangerous to us. Let them be."

"Fine. I will. Except on the tennis court." Dean spun his racket on his palm and was inordinately pleased when it didn't fall after half a second. "Ha! See? I got this. We got this."

Sam gazed across the tennis courts at where Agent Hotchner and Mark were talking to Gwen and Freya. "I hope so."

Dean grinned. "Let's go get us some marshmallow hearts from those Lucky Charms."

Anna and Ciaran were fast, fierce tennis players. They moved like a well-oiled machine and it was almost like they could read each other's minds. Maybe when he got back to HQ, Aaron would ask Reid what he knew about twins and their quasi-psychic connections. Sam and Dean were fast, strong, and feral, almost desperate on every ball they managed to return, but best as Aaron could tell, they were giving the game their all. If they won, they'd desperately need the dinner break to recover and get their strength back.

Sam and Dean prevailed by the skin of their teeth. Anna and Ciaran put up a good fight, and when they shook hands with their opponents over the net, it was with genuine friendship.

"Think you can take them?" Agent Finch asked.

"Hell yes," Mark said.

Aaron fought down an amused smile. "I think so."

Agent Finch grinned at her partner and nudged him. "Good luck, Markie Mark."

That earned her a scowl.

Dinner was a light affair, because Aaron didn't want to get too full to run around, but he made sure to take down enough carbs so he'd have energy to burn. Mark, on the other hand, ate like there was no tomorrow. After the meal, Aaron hurried upstairs to change into fresh clothes. There were several text messages from Garcia and the rest of the team wishing him luck in the final round. He smiled and fired off his thanks, and then he headed to the tennis court. Surely Strauss wouldn’t fault him for telling Garcia about the tennis tournament last night.

The bleachers were overcrowded, and the club staff had set out folding chairs as additional seating. The audience was divided between the conference participants cheering for Mark and Aaron and the country club patrons cheering for their tennis pros. Sam and Dean looked fresh-faced and eager. Dean was shadow-boxing to warm up; Sam was stretching and limbering up one last time.

Mark and Aaron went to meet their opponents at the net. Anna climbed up to the perch to judge, and Ciaran took over manning the scoreboard.

"Good luck," Sam said, utterly sincere as he shook hands with Mark.

Dean's grin was fierce. "Bring your A-game."

"You're on," Mark said. His grip on Dean's hand was white-knuckled, but Dean didn't even flinch.

Aaron met Sam's gaze and was startled by the intensity in Sam's gaze. "Good luck," Aaron said.

"Thank you. And to you." For one second, Sam's eyes were the same brilliant green as Dean's. Then he was peeling back and heading for his end of the court, spinning his racket and flourishing for the audience crowded up close to the fence.

Anna had a bullhorn to be heard over the din of the audience. "Players, take your marks!"

Aaron trotted to his end of the court and settled onto his half.

Chief Seegmiller was given the responsibility to handle the coin toss.

"Heads or tails?" he asked Aaron.

"Heads," he said.

The Chief tossed the coin, caught it, paused. Then he peeked at it. "Heads!"

The conference side of the audience cheered. A shy, blushing teenage girl handed Mark a tennis ball. He bounced it a few times, testing it. Anna called the game.

Mark bounced the ball one more time, tossed it up, and slammed it across the net.

Sam and Dean rarely called to each other. They tended to divide coverage of their half of the court evenly, and they had an excellent sense of when the ball belonged to one or the other. What Aaron and Mark needed to do was send the ball right into where their coverage mingled, get them confused, in each other's space.

For the first game, Aaron and Mark kept feeding the ball right down the middle. Dean was the dominant personality, so Aaron wasn't surprised when Dean muscled his way into Sam's space to make sure the ball didn't make it past them. Sam had a wicked backhand, but Dean's hits had more raw power, and more than once Mark had dodged the ball rather than take it on, which cost them the first game.

For the second game, Mark and Aaron started setting the brothers up by firing a ball down the middle for Dean to scramble after, then returning the ball onto Dean's undefended side. After a while Dean caught on to the strategy, but Sam, who was used to Dean covering the middle, let several balls in the middle go, and Mark and Aaron took the game.

For the third and final game, Mark and Aaron did their best to keep Sam and Dean on their feet, but Sam and Dean had caught on to their tricks. They started talking to each other, calling the balls down the middle, and they'd dart back to cover their halves of the court once the ball down the middle was called. They'd started firing balls over to Mark in ad court, and Aaron quickly realized why. Mark tended to favor his right shoulder ever so slightly, but as the tennis games had worn on, he must have been favoring it more, and the brothers had noticed.

The final serve was Sam's. He bounced the ball a couple of times, murmured something to Dean. Dean nodded, twirled his racket, then settled himself into a stance that left him ready to spring in any direction.

"Ready?" Mark asked.

"Ready," Aaron said.

Sam tossed the ball up. Aaron felt like time had slowed down. The ball hovered in midair. Sam leaped, higher than any human ought to be able to leap, arced his racket toward the ball.

Thock.

There was a heartbeat. Another heartbeat. The ball sped toward Mark's bad side. Mark lunged.

A cry rose up from the audience. Mark hit the ground with a grunt.

Aaron dashed toward him.

Sam looked horrified.

On the other side of the court, Dean was diving for the ball, racket outstretched.

Thock.

Dean tumbled to the ground.

The ball was coming toward right where Aaron had been standing.

Another cry rose up from the audience. Anna was calling the end of the game. Mark heaved himself up to his feet, wincing and clutching his shoulder, racket forgotten.

"Are you okay?" Aaron asked.

Mark nodded, expression tight, face pale. Ciaran abandoned the scoreboard and trotted over to see what was going on. On the other side of the court, Sam was helping Dean to his feet.

They met at the net again, Dean grumbling but allowing Sam to support his weight, Mark radiating waves of don't touch me. But they all shook hands and murmured platitudes of good game.

"Really," Sam said, smiling at Aaron. "Good game."

Mark shoved Dean in the shoulder. "I want a rematch."

"Later, Timberlake," Dean said, and smirked.

Mark swatted at him, but the gesture was without malice. In fact, it was almost brotherly. "Later," he agreed.

Gwen stepped up, and Mark allowed her to support his weight even though she was a full head shorter than him. "Let Ciaran check you over, and then we'll get you cleaned up and maybe a little drunk." She grinned at Aaron. "You should drink with us."

Aaron thought of those hungover students during the first keynote speech of the conference and considered. But something about Gwen's smile reminded him of Greenaway, of his first days in the BAU with Gideon, and he nodded before he could think about it further.

Aaron remembered going to a local bar where the crowd was considerably younger than him but the agents and tennis pros blended in. They fed him a steady stream of drinks, and then Dean and Gwen fleeced him at cards. He managed to take Sam and Ciaran in a game of pool, but then Mark and Anna ruined him in a game of darts. Where Aaron managed to take them all, however, was on the bar's trivia quiz machine.

"See, Dean," Sam said, "if I'd gone to law school, that coulda been me."

"If you'd gone to law school," Dean replied, "you could bail me out when I do stupid stuff."

Sam clapped him on the shoulder. "I'm here to make sure you don't do stupid stuff. You do that, right Hotch? You make sure your team doesn't do stupid stuff."

"I try," Aaron said.

"Try not," Gwen intoned. "Do or do not. There is no try."

"Star Wars!" Sam cried. "You really are my people."

Aaron couldn't help but laugh. He wondered if Sam and Reid would be friends if they ever met.

After the trivia quiz machine game, Aaron's night was a bit of a haze, but when he woke up the next morning he didn't feel particularly hung over, he wasn't missing any clothes, and he didn't have any extraneous tattoos, piercings, or other body modifications, so he figured the others had sent him home safe. He'd passed Strauss's test, he was sure of it.

The end of the conference was nothing to write home about. When Aaron returned to FBI headquarters, Strauss congratulated him on his tennis win. The next year, when he heard on the news about Agent Henricksen being killed in an explosion at a Colorado police station, he mourned for the loss of a colleague, but he didn't closely at the details of the story. If he had, he might have recognized Henricksen's deceased quarries as a pair of tennis pros he'd competed against at a tennis tournament the prior year.

Dean put down his fork after his last slice of pie at the Bumbleberry Café and sat back, rubbing his belly appreciatively.

"That really is the best bumbleberry pie I've ever had," he said.

Freya beamed at him. Then she looked at Sam. "How was yours?"

"Delicious." He rarely indulged in pie, and his smile was sincere. Freya had no clue that her gigantor crush had almost been taken down by the FBI.

"Too bad you have to go," Anna said. "You play a good game." Her gaze sparkled with amusement. Sam was right. Dean was under no illusions that Anna hadn't done anything but let them win. He suspected she was entertained by dangling them in front of a real FBI agent. Sam insisted that Ciaran was just making sure his spellwork had held.

"Well, our awesome tennis skills are needed elsewhere," Dean said. He'd found a hunt in Hollywood. He was so jazzed. Wannabe actresses as far as the eye could see. It would be awesome times. "Sammy and I hate to eat and run, but..."

"But you helped us, and we appreciate it," Ciaran said. "We couldn't have survived this tennis tournament without you."

"No problem." Sam smiled at Ciaran. "Good luck with your search. And if I ever run into the right people, I'll let you know."

"Thanks," Anna said.

Dean threw down enough cash to cover the meal and leave a decent tip for Freya, pushed himself to his feet. "We gotta go, Sammy. Daylight's burning."

"Thanks for everything." Sam actually hugged Freya, and then he followed Dean out to the car.

Where Gwen and Mark were waiting, dressed in regular hunter gear.

Gwen shoved a business card at Sam. "We'll keep an eye out for other psychic kids like you, all right?"

"Thanks." He pocketed the card. "It was good to meet you. We, uh, never knew much about our family growing up."

"Speaking of family," Dean said, "don't be strangers, all right? We got your back on a hunt if you need it."

"Speaking of family," Gwen said, "our family is pretty big. We'll call you about a reunion sometime. And Sam - I'll send you everything we've got on the Men of Letters. So you can learn something about your father, too."

Mom came from a family of hunters. Dad came from a family of hunter-haters. Dean was sure Dad hadn't known Mom was a hunter, that Dad hadn't even known what hunting was till after Mom died. Maybe Bobby knew something about these Men of Letters. Dean would have to find out.

But first, they had to take care of old Yellow Eyes.

Mark didn't say anything, but he did give Dean two things: a leatherbound journal, and a knife.

"Thanks," Dean said, accepting them warily.

"Your mother's," Mark said.

Dean's eyes went wide.

Mark grinned. "Call us." And then he straightened up and headed for Gwen's car.

Dean watched him go. "You know, Sammy, maybe this tennis thing wasn't so terrible after all."

"Maybe," Sam agreed. He and Dean watched their cousins pull out of the parking lot. Sam turned to Dean. "Did you know any of this? About Mom and Dad?"

Dean hated the hitch in Sam's voice. It was the same hitch in Sam's voice when he'd insisted there might be another way to save Madison.

"No."

Sam bit his lip.

"I promise, Sammy." Dean sighed. "I know me - and Dad - really clam up when it comes to, to Mom. But I swear. Now you know everything I know."

Sam nodded. "Okay."

"Hey, uh..." Dean held out the journal. "I'll drive. Why don't you read to me?"

"Okay," Sam said. "But maybe we should check out that vengeful spirit in Cedarville first."

"Nah. I already called it in to our cousins." Dean grinned. "Hollywood, here we come!" He gunned the engine and peeled out of the parking lot. There was so much to think about with all the new information about his family. There were so many questions left unanswered about the plans old Yellow Eyes had for Sam and the other kids. There were so many things Dean ought to say, because those shadows from Madison's death were still lingering in Sam's eyes. But Dean wasn't very good at offering comfort.

Dean Winchester was good at three things now, though: killing monsters, eating pie, and playing tennis (four if you counted seducing women; five if you counted fixing cars).