Prologue

Growing up on the road is difficult. It's not like in the movies at all. Yes, everyone likes diner food every once and a while, and there isn't anything like a chocolate milkshake after driving for a couple of hours. But the thing that most people don't understand is the lack of everything that matters in life. People.

Me? I used to live with my older brother Dean and my younger brother Sam. We've been on the road since my mom died right after Sam had just been born. Dean was two years older than me, and I'm two years older than Sam. Dean was only 4 when our mom died. That was when the world changed for the worse.

It wasn't how life was supposed to work. Our mom was young. She had so much more ahead of her. We had no warning that this was coming. She wasn't sick, or dying. There was no preparation. It just happened one night. She died of supernatural causes; about as far from normal as you can get nowadays.

Life would have been so much different if it hadn't been for that demon. Dean, Sam and I would have grown up not knowing the monsters that lay under our beds. Our dad, John Winchester wouldn't have become a horrible parent who never spent any time with his kids. We would have been NORMAL.

Or as close to normal as we could get.

At least that's what I chose to believe. I chose to believe that we get to choose our own destinies. That every decision we make, every time we decide to turn right instead of left, every time we talk to somebody, we change our futures.

Some would disagree. Some believe that our destiny is laid out in stone. That the choices we make we would have made no matter what. That Dean and Sam would have become hunters anyways.

If you choose to believe that, then you believe that it is not the Yellow-Eyed Demon's fault that my mother died. It is not the demon's fault that I barely knew my father because he was out hunting so often. It is not the demon's fault that I could not have a normal life because I was constantly afraid of loosing everyone I get close to.

Many psychologists say that people need someone to blame for everything bad that's happened to them. We refuse to believe that maybe it was our own actions that lead us to this point in our lives.

I am no psychologist. But I do believe that everything that has happened in my life up to this point can all be traced back to the demon that decided to kill my mother and ruin our lives.

So what happens when you finally get revenge on the thing that ruined your life? The demon died, now what? Do we continue hunting? Do we continue living a life full of running, hunting, stealing, lying and cheating? How is somebody supposed to move on from that?

All I know is that somehow we did. Somehow we got through that. It's this thought that keeps me going right now. If we made it past that we can make it past anything.

Sam and I are in the car. We're driving to Bobby's. Dean was sent to hell yesterday. He's gone for good now. I'm not sure what will happen, but whatever challenges we face, we will overcome. There has to be a way to move on from here.

I've never been much of a hunter. Dean always wanted to teach me some self-defence but we never got around to it. I'm more of a researcher like Bobby. I only go along with the brothers because their family. Now that Dean's gone though, things might change.

I have a suspicion that Sam is going to leave us, Bobby and I. He will continue to hunt. He will spend the next little while searching endlessly for a way to get Dean back; I know it. But that's not how Dean would want us to move forward. Dean would say that we can't move backwards, and we can't spend time trying to sell our lives for something that was in the past.

No. Dean would say move on.

As hard as that might be, that's what Sam and I will do. Because this time, Dean's dead. He's gone.

And he's not coming back.