"I raised my boys hard. Dirty. Full of rage that was only dimmed by every evil bastard that I sent to hell. Shut down and broken, my heart couldn't take being a father, so I became the drill sergeant.
Dean, hell, my little four-year-old soldier, knew right from the start that his old daddy had snapped like a dry twig. And it had to be fate, because he just picked up the slack. But Sammy, my little brown-eyed baby boy, he needed more. And, well, I...I just didn't have it in me.
When I saw my sweet darling Mary on that ceiling...there was just no other way for me to handle it 'cept to be hard. My obsession kept me from dealing with that pain. Kept me from putting a bullet in my brain.
What I couldn't give to Sam he took from Dean.
And I let them."
John Winchester
"The Fire Rages"
He woke up, blurry-eyed and fat-tongued, after effects of a hard nights drinking, at the sound of a baby cry. He closed his eyes and gave a groan as he levered himself out of the reclining chair he'd fallen asleep in. He didn't sleep much these days.
John Winchester stumbled towards the whimpering cries of his youngest baby. Sam cried more then he ever did before. Some part of him, little babe though he was, knew that his momma was gone and couldn't understand why she wasn't here anymore.
Coming, he flipped on the lamp light, only to find his oldest, doing his best to climb the railings of the crib and get in to calm his baby brother. Dean turned his head momentarily to acknowledge John's presence, but then just continued his unspoken duty.
Not for the first time, John wondered what went on in that blonde head. Dean hadn't spoken much since the night of the fire and john couldn't even remember if the boy had wept at Mary's funeral or not. He'd been too self-possessed, wondering what had caused his wife to burst into flames on Sammy's nursery ceiling.
People, so many damn people, had told him that he must have imagined it. But he'd been in Nam, he'd seen enough blood shed and carnage in war, not to go all cross-eyed when things were rough. He knew what he saw. Just now one was willing to accept that.
Still, something niggled at the back of his head, a self-deprecating voice that whispered he was crazy. What else could it be? And maybe, just maybe, it was more comfortin' to think that the delusion was true then really face the fact that fate had just taken her due.
"What you doing up so late?" he muttered to his boy, not bothering to help Dean into Sam's crib.
The boy nearly belly flopped into the crib, but was extra careful not to fall on the still whimpering Sammy. Dean sat up and shrugged his shoulders, rubbing a child-chubby hand along Sam's belly, doing what he must have watched Mary do a thousand times. Sammy wasn't fooled, no matter how gentle and loving his older brother's touch was.
It should have been a heart warming sight, instead it was a poignant reminder that things had changed and they wouldn't be right for a long time, if ever again. Dean's lower lip trembled but like always the boy kept a steely resolve over his emotions. Damned if he wasn't glad his little soldier didn't cry. John could barely manage to convince himself that Sammy's tears were nothing but that of a baby's inability to communicate intelligibly.
Still, the scene of a desolate Dean and inconsolable Sammy, chinked further at his shattered heard. Tripping over his own feet, he scooped both his boys into his arms and hugged them tightly.
He hadn't been much help to either of them, allowing Mike and Kate Guenther, the couple they were staying with and part owner's of the garage he and Mike ran together, to take care of the boys, while he buried himself in finding how exactly Mary had died.
Dean wrapped his tiny arms around his neck and returned the hug with equal vehemence. This was real. Dean. Sam. They were flesh and blood. Not nightmares and unanswered questions.
When he closed his eyes and hid his face against his sons' he saw only fire against the darkness.
He went to the library the next morning, taking the boys with him. He sat Dean down with a stack of picture books, in which the boy immediately began to show to Sammy who sat in a the car seat on the table. That was Dean in a nut shell these days. He never spoke to John or to Kate or Mike, only to Sammy, whispering quietly.
Again, John realized how much Dean had silently taken up the space that Mary had filled in Sammy's life.
Deftly, he began picking out books and magazines about fires. John hadn't been much of a bookworm, he hadn't even finished high school. The last few weeks he'd become accustomed to the Lawrence Library as he poured his grief into researching fires, looking for anything that slightly resembled what had happened to Mary.
He flipped through the pages, thumbing through them with an eye for certain key words. Ceiling. Blood. Nursery. They were all on his list that he'd written in the Journal that he'd picked up at a garage sale on one of his aimless walks.
It was leather bound with a tie to keep it closed when he was writing in it. He hadn't written much else in it, save the list and the empty summarization of each day since his wife died.
But each blank page mocked him, spurred him to fill them with his erratic thoughts and something, anything, that would lead to the questions in Mary's death and the emptiness in his heart.
Most of what the books contained were cut and dry, electrical fires, like the ones the investigation teams believed had killed Mary. Other cases, involved arson. John kept falling to that one. That fire had burned too quickly and too hot, incinerating everything in its path.
He shut the book with a definitive clap when it turned to pictures of the victims. He pushed it away and turned his dark eyes to see Dean with his head on the side cushion of Sammy's carseat, eyes closed, fast asleep. And Sammy was asleep too. His two boys, finally at some kind of rest together.
At night, when he'd stroll around Guenther's house, he would pull Dean from Sammy's crib and make him sleep on the bed. He did it out of some sort of need for normalcy. Except, they didn't have normal any more. Normal would have meant their mother safe, whipping at Dean's dirt smudged face, feeding Sammy a bottle. No, his boys couldn't have normal and so he decided right then and there to give them what they needed; the tools for survival.
He cracked the book open again, tearing through the pages until he came back to the pictures of the victims. Most of them were in black and white, sparring the casual reader from the horror of 3rd degree burns and charcoaled flesh. Those that weren't, showed the structural damage of homes, offices buildings, even a bridge. Unsatisfied, he was about to close the book again and head back...not home, but to the facsimile that had been thrusted upon him, when a one of the pictures sparked something.
The caption above the picture read: Below. Picture of an unexplained fire in 1923. He quickly skimmed through the surrounding paragraphs. Spontaneous human combustion, was one of the begrudging theories, something the author found clearly laughable, but had given himself a good chortle by adding it. All John needed to know was that it had burned hot, hotter than any normal house fire and it had been localized.
He studied the picture, took in every detail with the part of his mind that had been dormant since Nam. Instinct told him he was in a race for survival and his training kicked in to high gear.
Rising from the table, he hurried to the card catalog, with his Journal in hand, pulling the 'S' drawer open, and wrote down titles and locations to several more books, all while keeping one eye peeled on his boys.
It was insane, impossible, but it was a start.
The door to the psychic's house opened before John could even knock.
He gave a nervous half-smile and said, "What? You stare out your window? Waiting for me?"
Dark skinned, with eyes that were both piercing as a spear but as tranquil as a pool of water, the psychic looked to be only a year or two older then John. She wore a scowl that delved a line down her forehead and wasn't to abashed as to measure him with a jaundice eye.
"I thought a man like yourself, John Winchester, would have learned some manners," she said.
His eyebrows beetled together as he frowned at her. He'd walked up and down this street for days now, but hadn't, until now, been resolved enough to knock on her door until now. How in the hell had she known his name?
"How?" he said on a guttural breath, fear and awe mingling together.
"I know a lot of things, John Winchester," she repeated, her voice was high, breathy, like the wind whistling in the trees. Something softened in her countenance as she gazed upon him. She came down a step on her porch and took a stunned John's hand. "I know there's great pain in you." She tsked tsked like a school teacher, shaking her head one way then the other. "And no one can answer your questions."
"No," he said, and felt his heart start a triple beat.
"No one but me," she continued.
She tugged on his hand and brought him into the cool, dim house. He was dazed, caught off guard by her bold and benign attack. John hadn't spoken one crazy word, but already he felt as though she understood him better then any since he'd started his quest. Not one of his friends had believed him, had all but pressed him into the arms of a shrink.
He glanced at the sign in the window and then back at the woman.
Missouri Moseley.