When Dean was 12, he killed his first Wendigo.

When he was 14, he salted and burned the bones of one Peter Write, lying to rest his first ghoul.

When he was 16, he went to his first prom. Not as someone's date, he had more important things to do than pander to some uptight banshee (not literally, but in that sense he killed his first one of those at 17. Busted his left eardrum and left him dealing with Sam's mocking for weeks). No, at this prom he was gathering intel for a hunt. This instance was only memorable because it was the first time Sam ran away.

Dean has hunted for almost his entire life, banshees, succubae, Bloody freaking Mary, you name it, he's killed it. But after a while, it all blurs together in a tangle of blood, gore, and nightmares. He doesn't really remember the hunts in and of themselves, but rather what they were doing at the time.

At 12, he fucked up and clued Sam in to the fact that there really were monsters in their closets. It was a night of holding Sam close, whispering in his ear that they were safe, Dad would protect them, see Sam I told you Dad was a hero. He would do anything to make the haunted look leaves Sam's eyes nowadays.

At 14, he let Sam get injured on a hunt. He left the room to play in the arcade and stupid, stupid, stupid him, nearly didn't come back in time to save him from the wraith. It took Dad busting into the room to scare it away, but they didn't kill it. Didn't catch it or kill it and to this day however many children it's killed, the number is entirely on Dean's shoulders.

When he was 16, he went to the prom with Rhonda Hurley. She wasn't so bad, but he had to spend the entire time cruising around, eavesdropping on snippets of conversations, trying to find answers for the mysterious occurrences in whatever nameless town they were in for the week. It was a bust, and the only reason he didn't go home in a bad mood was because he and Sam had the entire weekend to themselves to watch bad TV and eat junk food. That is, they would have, if Sam had been there when he'd gotten home.

But he walked in through the front door calling out to Sam and got no reply. Okay, that's fine, Sam's a big boy, doesn't need to answer to his brother for every little thing. But he walked through the living room, opened up their bedroom door, and saw both beds neatly made, (Sam, you're such a freak), exactly Sam's half of the closet empty, and a note sitting atop the dresser.

His hands were shaking as he picked it up, like they haven't since he picked up his first sawed off, and read. There was a roaring in his ears, a sense of disbelief because Sam wouldn't do this to them, to Dean. After looking at every place Sam went in town, asking every neighbor, checking with the school again and again to make sure that are you sure that there were no field trips, he had to conclude that yes, Sam would do this to them.

When John got home it was to see one son collapsed on the sofa, head in his hands, and the other, missing.

It took two weeks and a near cross country trip to find Sam. Dad hasn't looked at either of them the same way since.