Yeah, I know, another fic when I have so many on the go. This is written for spn_teamfic over at livejournal, the prompt being 'Son when you grow up, will you be, the savior of the broken, the beaten and damned' Welcome to the black parade, My Chemical Romance.

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Title- The Lost Winchester.

Disclaimer- I own nothing. A phrase which, whenever I see Dean Winchester, causes me great sadness.

A/N- This is the prologue and first chapter of hopefully a much longer fic I have planned. I'll post as much as I can in these two weeks, and hopefully you'll keep reading after the challenge is finished. Starts pre series, this chapter covers the 20 or so years between 1983 and Sam at Stanford. Also, points for people who can tell me who Joseph Grantham is, without googling him.

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As long as there has been language, there have been stories. Tales of heroes from old, fighting monsters. St George killed the dragon, Beowulf slew Grendel, David stoned Goliath. Children were transfixed in bed, listening to fables and fairy tales, bible stories in the guise of an action filled setting. The most loved and revered story is one of an almighty battle between purest good and darkest evil, Lucifer himself rising up from the bowels of hell. This story takes its place in the bible, well deserved of the honour. It is known to children as the Winchester Chronicles, but to everyone else, it is simply the book of the apocalypse.

The names of Sam and Dean Winchester, and their angel Castiel are known the world over, as is their father, John, who died for a valiant cause, ensuring we would all be saved from damnation when the time came. Mary was the first to die, setting a chain of events in motion that would play out over decades, rocking the family to their core and stretching the bonds of brotherhood further than should be possible. But who here knows of the lost Winchester, the one not mentioned in any history books, religious or otherwise? Even of those who were there, few can say they knew him, even fewer met him, and less than a dozen knew he actually existed.

The lost Winchester was the lit match that refused to die out; the person that kept them together when bonds stronger than family threatened to break them apart. He was there during the darkest hours, watching them, caring when no one else did. He was, in essence, the father they never had.

In short, Alex Winchester was the proverbial Joseph Grantham of his time. Who remembers him? No one told his story, so it is in his honour that we recall the other unsung hero, so that he isn't forgotten, and nor is what he did.

This is his story.

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When he first heard about the fire at John's place, he was the first there. He even beat the emergency services. He didn't go forward though. Instead he watched from the shadows, knowing his presence wouldn't be welcome here, and hadn't been for ten years. Since 1973, his world had been turned upside down, by talk of demons, ghosts, ghouls and a fucking A-Z of preternatural shit.

He hadn't always been a hunter, he had once been a mechanic, owning a chain of garages all over the Deep South, until one night, he had witnessed something. He had been stumbling home from the local bar when he had come across a disturbing scene. His brother lay dead on the path, Mary, his girlfriend cradling his head. Some way away, a man stood, a familiar stranger somehow. His jade eyes belonged to Mary, but his face was more like Alex's brothers. He didn't understand. He claimed to be John and Mary's son, but how?

Alex followed him, as he walked away; suddenly as sober as he had been that morning. He followed him to an out of the way clearing in the woods, where he was joined by another man, with black hair and azure eyes. They glanced around furtively, before the black haired man placed his palm flat against the other's forehead and they vanished, apparently into thin air.

Alex spent the next few weeks searching for this mysterious pair, ending up with only dead ends and fairy stories. However, in his search he discovered many things. Humans were not alone in this world. There were things out there, things that went bump in the night. The monsters from books and films, preying on people, innocent people. One night, he came across an old bar, the Roadhouse, met a guy called Bill and his wife Ellen, and never looked back. For the next ten years he travelled across the continental US, killing creatures and learning more each time. Every so often he swung by Lawrence, Kansas, watching his brother, magically alive again- the work of a demon, he now knew- and his wife live their lives, a normal life, one he should have been living. One day he was caught watching them by Mary, now three months pregnant, and she told him everything.

She told him of her life as a hunter, before she met John, and the deal she had made to bring him back to life. She urged him to keep this from John; she had turned her back on her old life, for the sake of her new family.

Alex left with her blessing, and a promise to keep his brother safe from the darkness.

On the evening of November 2nd 1983, he was passing through when he saw the blaze up ahead. Intending to help, he raced towards it, coming to a sudden halt as he saw the origin of the fire. A small boy, no more than four or five, a bundle in his arms scrambled to safety out of the house, gathered up in strong arms and carried out of reach of the spiraling flames and then, ultimately, the explosion that claimed the entire house. He also saw what no one else did. He saw his brother fall to his knees and cry. The small boy patted his father on the shoulder, and Alex saw, in the light from the fire, the very same jade eyes he'd seen ten years ago. 'Well I'll be damned…' he muttered. He was watching the kid so intently he didn't notice the approach of John, rapping on the window, his face twisted by anger and underlying grief. In the background the boy held up the bundle, his lips moving as he talked to it, and Alex realised it was a baby, wide eyed and innocent. Alex rolled the window of his truck down resignedly. 'Hello John,' he said simply.

'What do you think you're doing here?' he growled. Alex was the older brother, but John's large frame and fierce temper were things he'd feared while growing up, and still did.

'I saw the flames, came to help. I didn't know it was you guys. Is Mary…' he trailed off, half-knowing the answer.

'She was in the nursery with Sammy, I couldn't get her.' He choked the words out, his face contorting with the emotions running across it.

'Sammy,' sighed Alex. The nephew he would never know.

'I don't want you here.' Alex had been expecting those words, but they still cut him deep.

'You gonna call the cops on me again, John?'Alex asked softly.

'No. Not this time. They'll be here soon anyway, so get your ass out of here.'

Alex sighed and rolled up the window, John going back to his sons, scooping baby Sammy up in one arm and the boy in the other. 'Goodbye, John' he thought, somehow knowing that this would be the last time he spoke with his brother. He drove off, watching the fire engines and panda cars arrive, surrounding the house and its occupants, grieving quietly and alone, for his fellow fallen hunter, remembering the year it all went wrong between him and John.

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1975

Austin, Texas

He'd come home, a rare visit, a break from hunting the scum of the earth. His mother and father had been pleased to see him, showering him with hugs and handshakes as he told them about his business. That was his lie. He told them he was working in Louisiana at a new garage, trying to get it off the ground. They believed him, and no questions were asked. His brother had been absent, with his fiancée Mary. Alex liked Mary, she was good for John. She had saved his life two years ago, and he would always be grateful for that.

Eventually he came home, and the Winchesters were together again, if only for a short while. Until their father, Adam Winchester, went missing. Alex used his new skills to track him and his kidnappers to a barn just outside of Austin. It had been abandoned years ago, and more research provided Alex with an answer. Vampires. If they didn't kill his father, they would turn him. He needed dead man's blood and a machete. He gathered his material with little trouble and went to the nest, intending to kill every last bloodsucker in there.

What he didn't know was that John had followed him, curious about his brother's middle of the day disappearances. What did he know that everyone else didn't?

The vampire nest was smaller than Alex had anticipated, and he killed most of them with ease. Until he heard heavy footsteps behind him, and turned to see his brother standing there, mouth open in shock.

'Alex?' he asked finally, when he had overcome to the shock.

'It's not what it looks like, I promise.'

'Really? Cos what it looks like is you decapitating innocent people, and-' He was cut off by a shriek from upstairs, where hay had been kept. 'What was that?'

'You don't wanna know,' said Alex, cautiously moving towards the rotten looking ladder, drawing his machete. 'Alex, tell me what's going on, or I'm calling the cops.'

'On your own brother? You would do that?'

John hesitated, the sunlight creeping in through the slats in the wood illuminating his struggle. 'Yes,' he said finally, but he didn't look or sound very committed to his decision. Alex took the chance and ascended the ladder gingerly. Suddenly, something flipped out from the croft, landing on the floor with a thud. Alex twisted, jumping from the ladder awkwardly, but landing on his feet between the vampire and his brother. He swung the machete, pulling the strike at the last minute as he realised who stood in front of him. It was his father, or it used to be. New vampires were messy feeders, and blood had dried on his face, fleck sticking to his beard, along with sinews from the neck of his last meal, and his eyes were wild, feral, like a cat. Alex took a breath. This thing wasn't his father. It wasn't. He chanted this over and over again, swinging the machete. It connected, slicing through flesh like wire through cheese. The body fell to its knees, the head falling to the ground, animal eyes now sightless, misting over. He turned to John, breathing heavily with exertion. He tested his ankle, a jolt of pain shooting through it when he landed it. It wasn't broken, just sprained maybe. He limped out to his truck, dragging John with him gently. 'That was Dad,' his brother growled, fisting his hands in Alex's jacket and lifting him three inches off the ground.

'No,' he gasped, struggling to breathe. 'Not anymore.'

'You're a murderer,' he snapped, pulling his brother in close, so their noses were inches apart. 'You killed Dad, and all those people.'

'They weren't people,' Alex was turning red from frustration and lack of oxygen. 'None of them were.'

'Then what, Alex? How are you justifying killing all those people?'

'Trust me kid. You wouldn't believe me.'

John dropped him suddenly, and he landed on his bad ankle, more than likely damaging it more than it was already. 'Get out of here,' he snarled. 'I don't want to see you ever again. You have half an hour to get out of town, then I'm calling the cops.'

Alex coughed, gulping in lungfuls of air. 'You don't need to do this.'

'Yes. I do,' he said, turning and walking away.' You won't get another free pass. Go.'

Alex rummaged in his truck for lighter fluid and his matches, dousing the barn and setting it alight. As the barn burned, Alex watched his brother, trudging down the dirt road, staring at his feet. 'Goodbye, baby brother,' he muttered, climbing in his truck and getting out of town. If nothing else, John was a man of his word.

The next time he would face his brother would be eight years later, and there would be nothing he could do to save him, or his family.

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Over the next two decades, Alex Winchester was there, but not there. He watched John discover the truth at Missouri's, and learn that his wife had been killed by a demon. He watched him go on his first hunt, emerging battered and bloody but victorious. And more than anything, he watch John's two sons grow up like soldiers. The boy- Dean, he found out- could take a gun apart and put it back to together by the age of eight and when Sam complained of monsters in the closet at the age of nine, he was given not a reassuring hug and a cursory search of the aforementioned cupboard, but a shotgun. As they grew older he watched Dean turn into his father, taking over the role that should have been John's looking after Sam, keeping him safe. He watched Sam distance himself from his life more and more, eventually running away to California, his father's threat ringing in his ears. 'If you walk out that door, don't bother coming back!'

It shocked him that John could be so callous to his own child, but losing Mary had changed him, and twenty years of hunting demons had hardened him, until he wasn't Alex's brother anymore. He was just John, the Hunter.

And Alex missed his baby brother more than he missed his own father.