Title: Verification

Author: Edith Curtis

Author's Note: After noting that I have twenty unfinished stories sitting on my hard drive from various genres and varying in age from 8mths to over five years. I figured I had better finish something and hopefully get the writing juices flowing.

This is just a short, unoriginal fic that was written while I was stuck in an office for two days. Hopefully it is entertaining enough.

This is technically a WIP as most of my stories start off in a script format before being converted into prose.

By the way, no Beta on this, so I take responsibility for all errors be they grammatical or logical

Summary: Pre Series fic (For the sake of argument, Dean 18 and Sam 14).

While on a hunt for an unidentified creature, John Winchester is faced with a choice; the hunt or his sons.

Disclaimer: I own nothing, CW has that honour…well okay I own some Canopic jar replicas, but I don't think that is particularly relevant here.

Prologue

John Winchester walked along the upper level of the abandoned mansion, listening out for the creature that he and his boys were hunting. He had been hesitant to go after the thing so soon, as they were still not a hundred percent sure of what they were actually hunting. His apprehension was only overridden by the fact that another person had gone missing in the vicinity of the mansion two days prior and history showed that this creature was getting close to disappearing again.

He and a few other hunters had been tracking this thing for a couple of years, though the history went back to at least the 18th century. People would start disappearing from surrounding counties for a few weeks, before the disappearances stopped; only to start up in another part of the continent months, sometimes years later.

The disappearances were only traceable to this thing, by the state of the people that returned. Majority of the people who disappeared had never returned. The few that did were usually out of their minds and incoherent. Over the years only five people had returned coherent, but what they spoke about was generally never recorded, it was merely said they were crazy.

John could hear the boys moving around on the floor below him. The boys had, had a run in with the thing an hour before and while he was hesitant to leave them alone, he had to trust in their abilities and focus on the hunt.

"Dad!" The shout ripped out from below and John instantly recognised it as being from his youngest.

John quickly moved to the banister which barricaded people on the upper level from the three storey drop to the slate floor below. He peered over hoping that maybe the boy would have had the foresight to gain visual communication given his enthusiasm to give his position away so blatantly.

"Sam, what's wrong?" With no answer forth coming he tried again, making the query more of an order, "Sam, report."

"He's not breathing." The answer from his youngest was barely audible, fear and worry present in the tone.

"Who's not breathing?" While the answer seemed perfectly obvious to him, John refused to believe the words that his youngest had just ushered.

"Dean. He just stopped…he collapsed and he's not breathing." The meek tone was gone and despite the obvious terror in the words, Sam replied confidently to the question.

As soon as he heard his son's name, John headed for the stairwell, which separated him from his family.

John was extra careful of the situation, weary of a trap, surveying the area cautiously as he announced his intention, "I'm coming down Sam. Does he have a pulse?"

There was a pause before Sam replied to his latest query, obviously checking the situation, "No…Dad?" The last was a question and plea in one.

"Start CPR." John commanded, thundering down the first flight of stairs and quickly moving to the second, all the while on the look out for the mysterious creature.

"Dad?"

"Just like I taught you Sam." John replied in the most encouraging tone he could, while racing down the stairs, hoping against hope, that maybe Sam was wrong

John's hopes were for naught when Sam started to shout out to his father again. "He's…there's blood, there's blood in his mouth and throat…I think it's coming from internally."

"Just keep trying." John shouted back, coming to the last of the stairs that separated him from the floor with his boys.

"I can't…every time I compress…" Sam sounded like he was reaching a near panic again, and John could only hope that the boy was continuing regardless.

"Just do it, or else your brother is dead." John had finally spotted his sons in the dim light of the hallway. Approaching his sons, he questioned, "Did you get any response?"

Sam looked up at his father's approach, the relief evident on his face as he shook his head to his father's query. Though his relief turned to brief confusion as his Father thrust a shotgun into his hands, before registering that his father wanted him to look out for the creature they had been hunting.

John took over the role of administering the CPR, and then asked the question that had been racing through his head for the last minute, "What happened?"

Sam moved away to give John access to Dean, but he kneeled nearby, not taking his eyes off of his brother. "He was just stood there and then he started having trouble breathing, but…"

"Before that?" Something bad had obviously happened that he was not aware of for his son to be in this condition.

"Well, the creature earlier…" Sam started, not eager to finish the thought.

John tilted back Dean's head to administer a breath before returning to the compressions and the questioning. "The creature what?" John pressed his youngest; what exactly had he missed earlier?

"It threw him into the mantle and…" Sam looked down at his brother, not wanting to finish the comment, an almost guilty expression on his face.

"And?" John's temper was growing short in the midst of the crisis.

"And I thought I heard something break." Sam looked up at his father; tears in his eyes at the implication of the admission, before looking back to his brother.

"Why didn't he say anything when I came in?" John questioned half to himself, half to the unresponsive son before him.

The comment made Sam's head shoot up, a glare gracing his features as he rebuked, "Maybe because you started into him about how careless he was."

"Does not mean he should not tell me if he was injured…" John stated, looking up at his son, ignoring the angry stare that was directed at him as he continued. "Or you for that matter, if you thought something were wrong." He almost felt guilty at the devastated look that swept his youngest' face and did not realise he had been distracted from his cause.

Despite the verbal punch from his father's words, Sam realised that his father had made a more grievous mistake in that he was no longer trying to resuscitate Dean, causing Sam to cry out. "Dad, Dean!"

"Dammit!" John admonished himself, unable to believe he had become distracted at such a critical time, unable to believe the situation in general. His son was not going to die.

John quickly administered a breath, before restarting compressions, more determined then before. "Come on Dean, breath."

"Dad, I don't think…" Watching his father working on his brother, who was still bringing up blood with every pump on the chest, Sam could slowly feel the cold realisation start to settle at the bottom of his stomach.

"No!" John replied, the comment directed to his youngest, his eldest and anything that was willing to listen. "Dean, you come back, that is an order." John had heard the tone of resignation in his youngest, but he was not about to give up.

"Dad…There's too much blood." Sam consoled, trying to stop his father's fruitless endeavour, yet at the same time hoping that his father would somehow be able to prove him wrong and make everything alright again.

"Sam?" John looked to his youngest, looking for an explanation as to his interruption.

"Dad please…Don't make it worse." Sam pleaded before looking down at his older brother, lying ashen and cold on the floor with a line of blood slowly congealing around his mouth.

"How can it be worse?" John asked dejectedly, stopping his attempts at resuscitation.

"Dad?" Sam was starting to shake from the initial stages of shock, the weight of the situation starting to set in.

"All I had to do was ask the question." John directed the question no one in particular, before standing up and moving to collect his weapon from Sam.

"Dad…What are we going to do?" Sam queried, shakily rising to his feet, holding out the shotgun and ready to follow his father.

"We…we're going to kill this thing…then…then we'll go home son." John replied, taking the gun before starting to move down the hallway, away from his two sons and towards the staircase.

"Dad…Dad, wait up." Sam called after his father, casting a look at his brother before running to catch up with his father.

"I screwed this up, I screwed it all up." John mumbled; everything but the burning need to kill the creature now purged from his mind.

Sam had nearly caught up with his father when he heard his father mumble. Sam had seen his father many things, but lost was never one of them.

Sam stopped in his tracks, no longer able to keep up with the turn of events around him. "Dad what are you…" The question was cut off.

There was no sound, no flash of light, nothing to indicate that John was no longer walking down a corridor and away from his sons. Just one minute his mind was filled with despair, confusion and the overriding need to find the creature; the next he was stood in a different corridor in silence. It was a momentary glitch in his task, before he continued walking down the corridor, searching for the creature and wondering where his boys were.

TBC…