Cosmically next door to Neal's loft.

"We didn't leave your loft," Henry insisted.

Neal nodded. He agreed they hadn't moved after that flash of light accompanying Mozzie's disappearance, but the fact remained that they were now standing in an unfamiliar living room.

"Oh, they're here already."

Neal sighed a breath of relief. That was Elizabeth's voice, which meant Peter was probably around, too. In fact, he walked into the room a moment later carrying a plate of brownies. "Welcome! It's a cold night. Care for a warm brownie?"

Henry automatically reached for the plate, but Neal grabbed his arm. "This all started with drinking Mozzie's strange wine. Do you really want to eat the first thing offered to you in this dreamscape?"

"You think it's like Alice in Wonderland, and the food is going to make us grow or shrink?"

"Who knows?" Neal turned to Peter and Elizabeth. El was wearing a white doctor's jacket over a tight blue sweater and bellbottom jeans, and Peter's hair was inexplicably bushier.

Well, there was an explanation, if he was willing to believe these weren't the Burkes, but were instead Professor Peter Gilman and his wife, Doctor Elizabeth Wayland.

A moan caught Neal's attention. Henry was eating one of the brownies and was in chocolate bliss. "You're missing out, man. They taste as good as they smell," he said before popping the rest of the brownie in his mouth. When Neal glared at him, he shrugged and swallowed. "You said it yourself, it's just a dream. All of the taste, none of the calories. Might was well enjoy the food."

"If this is all a dream, which one of you is dreaming it?" Elizabeth asked.

"I am," Neal and Henry said at the same time.

"What do you think are the chances that you're both having the same dream?" she continued.

Neal looked at Henry, "You're the one with the degrees in psychology."

That comment caused El to look at Henry speculatively, as if this were news to her.

Henry picked out another brownie. "The exact same dream, it's almost unheard of."

"What's going on here?" Neal asked.

Peter shook his head and said to his wife, "I knew Dante would botch the explanations. He assumes everyone is already on his wavelength."

Neal crossed his arms. "How about filling in the gaps? I get that you're supposed to be the 1970s Arkham version of the Peter and El we know, but why bring us here? And if this isn't a dream, how did we get here?"

Peter looked perplexed a moment. Then he gestured for them to sit down, but he remained standing like a professor used to speaking in front of a lecture hall. "I have to keep reminding myself you aren't the Neal I know. You look so much alike, it's throwing me off my game a little, to be honest."

"Are we so different?" Neal asked.

Henry snorted. "Neal Carter is a softened version of you, meant to gain a specific reader's sympathy. He's younger, nerdier, and less sure of himself."

"I thought you hadn't been reading Diana's stories," Neal said.

"I'm a fast learner." Turning to Peter he recommended, "Focus on me instead of Neal if it helps move this along."

Peter nodded and said, "You're familiar with Newton's laws of motion? Specifically, that every action provokes an equal and opposite reaction?"

Neal and Henry both nodded.

###

"If you think of universes as existing on a continuum, where what we know as normal is near the center, then Azathoth is entering our universe from the far edges of the continuum. This causes a stress on our reality. You might think of it as pressure building up, and the reaction is the opening of connections to the universes nearby ours to relieve that pressure."

Peter and Elizabeth were standing in a loft that was similar to Neal's, but different enough to feel wrong. And they had been greeted by a version of Neal who was four years younger than their friend, with longer hair. He wore a navy blue oxford shirt and dark blue jeans. He'd been extremely polite and was responding to Peter's demands for explanations by launching into a lecture like he was the Professor Neal Carter of Diana's stories.

He continued, "Professor Atwood theorized that he could find these connections and use them to travel to parallel universes. He found that the universes most readily open to him were those where a version of himself existed, and on each visit he was drawn to a time and place where he had a presence. Often he encountered versions of the three of us, and of those versions, you were his favorites. He felt a need to bring you out of your reality for a set of visits. There's something he wants you to see, and he thought modeling his approach on the visits by the ghosts of Christmas past, present, and yet-to-come would give you a framework that wouldn't... well, wouldn't blow your minds."

"He couldn't just tell us?" Peter said on a huff of frustration.

"Seeing is believing," Neal countered. "Besides, he loves drama. He hasn't even told me what we're going to see. He simply left me the codes to take us there. I wish I could tell you more, but our time is limited. If you'll follow me." He opened the door to the terrace, and held out his hand. El clasped it, and she was already holding Peter's hand.

"Are you sure about this?" Peter asked her.

She nodded. "It's Neal. Not exactly our Neal, but we know Diana based him on someone we love. I trust him."

###

Professor Peter Gilman had lectured for about ten minutes when his wife interrupted. "I wish we could take an hour or so to answer all of your questions, but Professor Atwood said we don't have much time before the effects of the wine wear off," Elizabeth said. "And in all honesty, you probably won't believe it until you experience it, so it's time to take a leap of faith and just follow us."

As Elizabeth led them to the front entryway, Peter grabbed El's hand and Neal's. "It's less disorienting if you hold on," he advised.

Henry wiped his hands on his pajama pants to brush off the brownie crumbs and then took Neal's free hand.

El was holding a list and read a code from it. It sounded like a formula of some sort. Moments later a flash light was followed by another change of scenery, this time placing them in a bedroom that looked vaguely familiar, but Neal couldn't quite place it. A small, dark-haired child was sleeping in a crib.

"Um," said Henry.

Before Neal could ask what was bugging him, the bedroom door opened and a woman walked in with a four-year-old boy on her hip. "Dressa?" Neal asked, taking a step toward her.

"She can't see or hear us," Peter said, and indeed she showed no sign of noticing the four adults hovering along the edge of the room.

"Is this one of her movies?" Neal asked. He'd never seen his grandmother looking so young outside of the films she'd starred in.

Henry shook his head, still speechless.

"You remember Neal, don't you?" Dressa asked as she carried the little boy over to the crib. "He's your cousin."

"What's a cousin?" the boy asked.

"Well, it means his mommy is your mommy's sister."

The boy looked confused. "Is he my brother?"

"It's a lot like a brother. I call him Baby Bear, because of the way he growls when he's cranky." Irene suddenly tickled the little boy, who shrieked with laughter. The baby chuckled along but didn't wake up. "And you're my Tickle Bug."

The boy frowned. "But bugs are littler than bears."

Dressa kissed the boy. "Baby Bears are tiny. A Tickle Bug can still be bigger. We'd better let this bear finish his nap." She carried him out again.

"This is their house," Neal said. The room had been redecorated over the years, but he recognized it now as one of the bedrooms in their grandparents' home. "Are we watching a home movie turned into a 3-D holographic experience?"

Rather than answer, El read another code. They were in the house's living room now, where a Christmas tree was decorated in red, with white and gold stockings hanging from the fireplace mantle. Henry was six years old now, and he ran into the room followed by his parents. He hugged his grandparents, looked around the room and then took Dressa's hand and tugged urgently. "Is he upstairs? Where is he?"

"Who?" she asked.

"The bear! He's always here at Christmas. We're gonna play."

"Henry, stop it!" his father ordered. "You've made enough fuss about this imaginary Christmas bear."

"Oh," said Henry's mother. "After all these months, I thought he'd forgotten."

"Baby Bear," whispered Irene. "I'm sorry, Henry. He isn't here anymore."

"But he's my brother! At Christmas time when I come here I get a brother to play with!" The little boy started sobbing until his father admonished him to be quiet.

Neal turned to Henry. "It's the first Christmas after I moved to St. Louis. You still remembered me?"

Henry nodded. "I'd forgotten about that crying jag, but yeah, the plans for our usual Christmas in D.C. triggered my memories of playing with you. I was certain you'd be there. Dad kept insisting you were an imaginary friend until I finally believed him, especially since I had the whole bear and brother concepts confused and was old enough to realize that didn't entirely make sense."

Little Henry sat down beside the Christmas tree and pretended to be interested in the presents, but he was using that as an excuse to keep his back to the adults and wipe away the tears that his father had sneered at.

In an instinctive move, Neal walked over to sit beside the boy. He put a hand on the kid's shoulder, and to his surprise the boy looked up at him. He stopped sniffling and asked, "Who're you?"

The boy's family seemed frozen. "I thought you said we couldn't interact with them," adult Henry said.

"I didn't expect you to try touching them," El said. "He's aware of Neal, but will only remember this as a dream."

Meeting the eyes of the child, Neal uttered words he'd thought he'd never say. "I'm Baby Bear, the grown up version. I'm real, and someday you'll find me again. We'll always be best friends."

"When?"

"A long time from now," Neal admitted. "When you're really old. You'll be twenty."

"Okay." The boy studied Neal a moment and added, "Can I have a cookie? They're in the kitchen. I can smell 'em."

"Ask Dressa," Neal advised. Then he stood up and it seemed like time started again for the others who belonged here. The child blinked and rushed over to his grandmother, whispering his wish for a cookie. She surreptitiously wiped away the tracks of the boy's tears before his father could notice, and then led him to the kitchen with a suspicious brightness of tears in her own eyes.

"Do you remember that?" Neal asked as he walked back over to Henry, El, and Peter. "As a dream?"

Henry shook his head.

"Oh," said Elizabeth. "I thought you understood. These children we're seeing, they aren't you."

"Of course they're us," said Henry. "I remember all of this, except the part about Neal talking to me just now."

As Elizabeth read the next formula Peter explained, "This is a universe very similar to yours. The point is for you to see these younger versions of you having the exact experiences you remember, so that when you see them in the present and future, you'll understand how close you came to their fate."

"What fate?" Neal asked, but Elizabeth shushed him as a room materialized around them. Neal's boyhood living room looked small and paltry compared to his grandparents'. The Christmas tree was barely his mother's height, and she was wrapping Christmas lights around it. A radio played carols and she hummed along, although it turned into a groan when the lights tangled.

Four-year-old Neal was draping tinsel on the branches with the solemnity of someone entrusted with a vital task. Suddenly he said, "Susan has grandparents. That's where she's going for Christmas."

Meredith didn't look away from the knot she was unraveling. "Mm-hmm."

"I want grandparents."

Meredith looked longingly at a can of beer on the kitchen counter, but her hands were full with the lights. "You had grandparents. They're gone now."

Little Neal reached up on tiptoe to put tinsel on a higher branch. "I dreamed I had grandparents. They had a big tree, with lots of red, and a fireplace, and the stockings were white and gold, and there was snow, and a sled, and a big brother to play with, and —"

"Enough," Meredith snapped.

Henry said, "You remembered us, too."

"Yeah," Neal said, "but that was dangerous, in WITSEC. She had to tell me to stop talking about it and forget that dream."

"You were in Witness Protection?" El asked, her eyes wide in shock.

Neal nodded as he walked across the room. He was pleased that he could pick up the beer, and when Meredith's back was turned he emptied it and tossed the can in the trash.

Meanwhile Henry put a hand gingerly on the little boy's. Meredith seemed frozen in place as the boy looked at him. "Need help reaching the high spots?" Henry asked, and with the boy's acquiescence, Henry lifted him up and they decorated the top of the tree.

"Are you Santa?" the boy asked.

"Nah, I'm just an elf. Santa heard you want grandparents. He's more into delivering toys, you know?"

"I know," the boy said sadly. "Mom already told me he can't bring Dad back, either."

Henry placed the boy back down on the floor, and put his hand under a small, trembling chin. "When I'm sad, cookies make me feel better. How about you?"

The boy nodded.

"I've heard your mom is really good at baking cookies. Has she made any recently?"

"No."

"Have you asked her to?"

"No."

Henry patted him on the back. "Give it a try. I'll keep watch and suggest something else if that doesn't work."

When he removed his hand and stepped back, the boy blinked in confusion, then looked up and saw tinsel much higher than he could have reached on his own. "Mom! I wanna make Christmas cookies."

Meredith tucked the last light into place and said, "You're right, we haven't done that yet. That was always one of my favorite parts of Christmas. Let's see if we have enough flour."

The pair scrounged through the kitchen and found the ingredients for shortbread cookies and icing. Soon Meredith was smiling and Neal was joyfully rushing around the kitchen as she assigned him tasks. Since he couldn't reach the counter, she had him pulling supplies out of the lower cabinets, and adding "magic" by hopping on one foot, spinning in circles, and then singing a verse of a Christmas carol in French.

"I remember the Christmas I was five," Henry said. "The last Christmas before you left, she had us both hopping around the kitchen while she cooked. I hoped she was still enough of that person to do it again with you."

"You gave that version of me a new set of happy memories," adult Neal told Henry. "Thanks."

###

"It's like walking through the wardrobe into Narnia," said Elizabeth Burke as they found themselves outside her in-laws' mountain cabin.

"You have those stories, too?" Neal Carter asked. "Dante usually prefers science fiction and time travel metaphors, but I agree with you. These visits do have a fantasy element to them."

"It feels more like Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy to me," Peter said. "Traveling in our pajamas like Arthur Dent." Seeing Neal's blank look he said, "You've got to wait a few years before you can read those stories, assuming they'll be published in your universe."

El gave Peter a sympathetic look. She knew that without his normal clothes, not to mention his badge and gun, he felt too exposed. Even in this familiar setting, he would want to be better prepared to protect El and Neal.

He'd referenced a science-fiction story, but El still felt they were experiencing something from the fantasy genre. Although the ground, trees, and roof of the cabin were draped in snow, she didn't feel the cold. That in itself was fantastical, and looking through the windows, the interior looked magical. A Christmas tree was decorated with homemade ornaments, from the snowflakes Peter's grandmother crocheted, to painted wooden ornaments Peter and his brother made with their father's supervision. Currently Luke was guiding Peter and Joe in constructing two family gifts. An eight-year-old Peter was building a slightly lopsided birdhouse that El recognized from her in-laws' backyard. Ten years older than Peter, big brother Joe was attaching runners to a sled.

Neal's wistful look as he gazed at the scene had El squeezing his hand. He looked at her questioningly and she said, "They seem like a Norman Rockwell painting come to life, don't they?"

"We always did projects like that after opening the other gifts," Peter said, and El noticed that Betty was picking up the discarded wrapping paper and bows while the boys worked.

Betty winked at Luke, who brought their sons' attention to himself while she reached under a sofa and pulled out a long, skinny present that hadn't been unwrapped yet. She stood with it in her hands and said something that had everyone looking in her direction.

Little Peter ran over to his mother and El giggled. "Footy pajamas. I wish I'd brought a camera. Why haven't I seen any pictures of you in pajamas with..." she moved closer to the window. "Dinosaurs on them?"

By now the boy had unwrapped a set of child-sized skis. "I remember this," said adult Peter. "This is the Christmas Mom and Dad took me cross-country skiing for the first time."

Betty hugged her youngest and then pointed to the stairs. He almost flew up them.

"What's he — you —" El corrected, "doing now?"

"Changing into something appropriate for trying out those skis," Peter said.

Inside, Joe was shaking his head, gesturing toward the sled.

"Joe doesn't go with you?" El asked.

"No, he had something else up his sleeve." Peter looked away from the cabin, in the direction they'd arrived from. "Okay, you've proven you can take us to the past. Can we move on?"

El wanted to linger and keep watching, and she glanced at her husband in surprise.

Peter mumbled something about Bigfoot.

"Oh." El grinned. "That was this Christmas?"

"What's Bigfoot?" Neal Carter asked.

"You haven't heard of him?" Peter asked. When Neal shook his head, Peter said, "What about Sasquatch?" When it became clear Neal had never heard of the creature, Peter described it.

Neal pulled a pen and small pad of paper out of his shirt pocket and started jotting notes. "You have monsters in your world, too? Do others see them, or only you?"

"This isn't like your experiences," El explained. "Bigfoot is widely believed to be a hoax. While Peter's out skiing with his family, Joe will run off to a nearby cave to make it look like the creature is living there, complete with massive footprints he'll make with foam cut into the shape he wants. For his little brother, it will seem like a grand adventure to follow the clues. It's like... Like seeing the Loch Ness monster," she said, hoping that would ring a chord, but again Neal shook his head. It seemed he hadn't heard of Nessie, either.

"You have myths of monsters, but not the real thing?" Neal asked, trying to understand.

"Well..." Peter paused. Interactions with the Winchester brothers this year had changed some of his assumptions on that score. "There are people who believe demons and vampires and so forth are real. I've even met people who hunt that kind of monster for a living. But we don't have ghasts and the other types of creatures you've encountered. All of the monsters I've heard of are from our own world, not visiting from other universes."

Neal was about to ask another question when Luke, Betty, and little Peter rushed out of the cabin, carrying their skis and laughing. A Siberian Husky ran after them.

"Is that Ada?" El asked. She'd heard stories about Peter's boyhood dog.

"That's right. Named for Ada Lovelace." Peter looked at Neal and explained, "My mother was a science teacher, and she insisted that pets have names with historical significance."

"I've heard of Ms. Lovelace," Neal said.

Peter walked up to one of the big windows and looked inside. Joe was about to stand up when a Siamese cat sauntered over and rubbed against his legs. "Ming, that traitor!" Peter said. "I knew she liked Joe better, but he always denied it."

El joined him at the window and noticed a holiday cardigan hanging on a hook by the front door. "I didn't realize your mother had two of that sweater with the reindeer on it."

"No, just the one. It's lasted forever because she only wears it on Christmas Day."

"Are you sure? The one I've seen her wear is royal blue, but this one looks black. Or maybe navy blue. But it's definitely not the bright blue I remember."

Peter followed her gaze to the cardigan. "I've never seen that. Neal, what's going on here? Has something changed the past?"

"This isn't your past. It's another universe, very similar to yours but different in a few significant ways." Neal checked his watch. "I know you have questions, and I promise you'll get answers by the time we're done. We need to get going or we'll be late."

"You remind me of the White Rabbit from Alice in Wonderland," said El as she took his hand again.

"What's next?" asked Peter. "And how long until we get those answers?"