A fallen tree branch cracked beneath Dean's foot and he swore. Loudly.

Sam swung his flashlight around and stared at his brother for a moment.

"We're supposed to be hunting a Black Dog," he reminded his brother needlessly, "Not the other way around."

Dean scoffed, "As though you're such a twinkle-toes, you big Sasquatch."

Sam sighed and continued through the dark forest. He was tired and on edge and wanted nothing more than to kill this monster and get back to their motel room.

Sleep was out of the question. With Lucifer hanging around, Sam barely got more than ten minutes rest before he was jolted awake by the devilish hallucination.

Dean had offered to go on this hunt alone but Sam had refused. He was not going to let a little thing like Hell stop him from doing his job. At least, that's what he told himself.

The sounds of rapid footsteps from ahead put both brothers on alert and they froze.

"Did you hear that?" Sam asked Dean and his sibling nodded.

"Maybe this will end sooner than we expected," Dean breathed, smiling.

Sam squinted, trying to catch sight of the Black Dog through the dense trees.

"I don't think-"

BANG!

A single gunshot rang out and Sam stopped midsentence.

"Shit!" Dean swore, "Sam!"

"Sam?" his brother didn't reply.

A second gunshot sounded and Sam twisted to the side, blood spraying.

An unfamiliar voice shouted through the woods, "I think we got it!"

"SAM!" Dean shouted as his brother fell to his knees, dropping his gun and flashlight, hands frantically reaching for his throat.

Dean charged forward, his own flashlight shining into his brother's face. Sam's eyes were wide and panicked, blood seeping from between his fingers as he clutched at his neck.

"Jesus Christ," Dean pulled off his jacket and bundled it up, pressing it against his brother's neck.

Footsteps rushed forward eagerly to reveal two young people, a boy and a girl, whose gleeful expressions vanished instantly the moment they saw the Winchesters.

"What-" the girl began but the boy interrupted, "Did… Did we do that?"

Dean ignored the duo and helped his brother to lay down on his back.

"It's okay Sammy, it's okay," he murmured fearfully, "Stay with me."

"Do either of you have a phone?" Dean asked, not even looking at the two teens. He had a phone but he couldn't get it. He was too focused on stopping his brother bleeding out.

"I- I do," the girl stammered.

"Call an ambulance," Dean instructed.

"What can I do to help?" the boy asked.

"Stay away from us," the elder Winchester growled, pressing his jacket hard onto his brother's neck as the colour drained from Sam's face.

"C'mon Sammy, c'mon Sammy," he spoke, "You stay with me."

He could hear the girl, almost sobbing, talking to a 911 operator but he ignored her.

Sam's eyes were closing.

"Hey!" Dean snapped, "Look at me!"

Slowly his brother lifted his eyelids again.

Glancing down, Dean saw blood flowing from a wound on the right side of his sibling's chest.

"You!" Dean barked at the boy, "Get your ass over here."

The teen obeyed, his eyes wide with fright.

"Put your hands on his chest and press down," Dean told him.

"H-Here?" the boy asked, pointing at the oozing wound.

"Yes!" Dean snarled and although the teen looked as though he were going to vomit, did as he was asked.

"The ambulance is on their way," the girl told them.

Thinking quickly, Dean told her to hide their weapons, "Yours and ours."

The girl nodded and grabbed all the guns and a flashlight, jogging through the woods.

"Is he… Is he going to die?" the boy asked Dean.

"Not if I can help it," the hunter growled.

A minute or so later, the girl returned, panting, "I put them in a big oak tree with a hole in its trunk."

Dean ignored her, focusing all his attention on his brother.

It seemed Sam couldn't keep his eyes open. They kept sliding closed, staying shut longer and longer no matter how much Dean yelled at his brother to look at him.

"Go to the road and flag down the ambulance," Dean told the girl who was watching them with horrified fascination.

"What?" she asked, blinking owlishly.

"The road!" Dean snapped, "The paramedics won't know where we are!"

"Oh! Right!" the girl nodded and jogged off again.

Dean gritted his teeth in frustration. Sam's eyes refused to open, his breathing becoming slower and shallower with every rise and fall of his chest.

"Sam!" Dean, his face inches from his brother's, shouted, "SAM!"

His sibling didn't respond.

Dean, his hands wet with blood, pressed down even harder on his brother's neck.

W

Shouting and the crunching of branches alerted Dean to the approach of the paramedics. From between the trees, they arrived, carrying a stretcher between them.

"What happened?" the older one, with a grey buzz cut asked, lowering the stretcher and positioning it beside Sam.

"My brother's been shot," Dean kept pressure on the wound, unwilling to ease up until he knew one of the medics was ready to take over.

"Where?" the younger one, sporting a handlebar mustache and looking very much like a hipster, even in his uniform, asked as he started up the portable heart monitor.

"His neck," Dean told them, his mouth suddenly as dry as sandpaper, "And the right side of his chest."

Both paramedics moved towards the injured hunter, one at his head and the other at his feet. Together, they carefully lifted Sam and placed him onto the stretcher before beginning their ministrations.

Buzz Cut began taking large wads of gauze from a medical bag and placed them over Sam's wounds, securing them with tape.

Hipster Mustache unzipped Sam's jacket, unbuttoned his shirt and started attaching the sensors for the heart monitor to his chest.

There was a loud beeping as the machine warmed up; searching for a pulse and then a green line appeared on the screen.

"Pulse weak," Hipster Mustache told his partner, "Bradycardia as a result of blood loss."

Buzz Cut fitted an oxygen mask over Sam's mouth and nose, watched for a moment, and seemed happy when the hunter's breath fogged against the plastic.

The paramedics raised the stretcher and turned to Dean.

"We'll take him to the General Hospital," Buzz Cut told the older Winchester.

Dean watched the men take his brother away, clutching his blood-soaked jacket in his fist, hoping against hope that this wasn't the last time he'd see his sibling.

Slowly, suddenly overcome with terrible exhaustion, Dean followed the path the paramedics had made, moving through the trees with no concern of the Black Dog still on the loose. He didn't even notice the two teenagers following behind him at a distance, their expressions grim.

Once he reached the Impala, he looked up to watch the rear lights of the ambulance fade into the distance down the road, its siren wailing, and only then realized the boy and girl hadn't left him.

"What do you want now?" he asked tiredly.

"It's our fault your brother was hurt," the boy told him, "We feel responsible."

"We're coming with you!" the girl demanded.

Dean said nothing but simply climbed into the driver's side and waited a moment for the duo to clamber into the back.

W

At the Emergency department of the General Hospital, Dean filled out all the necessary paperwork, poured himself a Styrofoam cup of coffee from the pot in the corner and settled himself in one of the uncomfortable plastic chairs to wait. The boy and girl sat across from him, silent.

"What's your name?"

Dean looked up, for a moment, not sure who had spoken, and then his gaze fell upon the girl.

"Dean," he muttered.

"I'm Monica," she told him as though he cared, "And this is Evan."

The hunter didn't reply. He drained his cup of coffee and went to get himself another one.

"What's your brother's name?" Monica asked.

For a long time Dean didn't answer. He didn't really want to talk; didn't even know why he'd allowed them to come with him in the first place.

"His name is Sam."

Dean took a sip of his coffee, cleared his throat.

"What the hell were you two doing out in the woods anyway?"

Monica and Evan looked at each other and it was then that Dean realized how alike they were; they had the same blue eyes, the same light brown hair, their faces the same shape. They were siblings.

"We were hunting," Monica, who seemed the more verbal of the two, answered, "Just like you."

"You, hunters? You're, what? Fourteen?" Dean asked, knowing he was being a hypocrite- he had learned to hunt as soon as he was big enough to hold a gun- but he had had a good teacher and these two had been stumbling through the trees like babes in the woods.

"We're sixteen," Evan told him quietly. He was staring at his hands, red with Sam's blood.

"We were trying to kill the Black Dog," Monica told him. "Then… we heard you and your brother…"

"We didn't think anyone else would be in the woods at night," Evan muttered, "We thought it must be the monster."

"So you just decided to shoot without warning?" Dean asked, "Who the hell taught you to hunt like that?"

"No one," Monica snapped.

"Don't you have parents?" Dean asked.

Evan shook his head, "They're dead."

Dean took a sip of his coffee.

"We taught ourselves," Monica told him, "Our Dad was a big hunter- deer, bear, cougars- and sometimes he would take us with him."

Dean stood up and motioned to the boy. Evan stared up at him, wide-eyed.

"You've got blood on your hands," Dean told him, "You should wash it off."

Evan stood and followed Dean into the Men's Room.

"What happened to your parents?" Dean asked as he turned the tap as far as it would go and let the hot water rush over his hands.

"We were on a camping trip," Evan followed Dean's lead and stuck his hands underneath the nearly scalding water at his own sink, wincing a bit, "We did it every year in the fall."

Dean waited as the boy continued.

"The Park Rangers warned us that there had been animal attacks in the area but Dad didn't care," Evan told him, "He wasn't afraid."

Turning the tap off, Dean grabbed a wad of paper towels and began drying his hands.

"He should have been, thought," Evan muttered, continuing to let the water run over his hands.

"We'd only been camping for a day or two when we were attacked. We heard sounds around our tent and Dad went out with a gun he'd brought. I guess he tried to shoot the Black Dog but of course, regular bullets didn't work. It killed him. Mom went out next, telling Monica and I to stay in the tent and it got her.

We were scared. We were just kids. We ran. I don't know why the thing didn't come after us; maybe it had enough of killing after our parents. We got to a Rangers' station and told them what had happened," Evan continued, now turning the tap to the cold water.

"Long story short," he went on, "The official report is that a cougar killed our parents. But Monica and I had seen what it really was. We knew it wasn't a cougar. We were sent to live with our aunt and uncle. We researched until we found out it was a Black Dog and how to kill it."

"So now you kill every one you can find," Dean supplied.

Evan nodded and turned the water off.

"We don't want what happened to us to happen to any other kids."

Dean had to admit that the boy had good intentions. He and his sister weren't just traipsing through the woods in the middle of the night for shits and giggles. But, they were going about this hunting thing all wrong.

"When we're done here I want you and your sister to go to Sioux Falls, South Dakota and see a man named Bobby Singer," Dean told the boy, not really sure why he was doing this. Maybe he didn't want to hear that Evan and Monica had ended up dead because they didn't know what they were doing.

"He'll help teach you to be real hunters," Dean threw his paper towels in the trash and left the bathroom.

W

"Family of Samuel Winchester?" a nurse called out into the waiting room just as the sun was beginning to rise.

Dean stood, "I'm his brother."

The nurse, a petite, pretty Chinese woman, in pink scrubs nodded and offered an encouraging smile.

"Is Sam okay?" Dean asked.

"Your brother made it through surgery and is recovering right now," she told him, "He'll have to remain here for a few days but the doctor thinks he'll be all right."

Dean sagged with relief.

"Can I see him?" he asked hopefully.

"Of course," the nurse told him, "Follow me."

Dean didn't even look at the siblings as he walked beside the nurse through a set of double doors and down the winding hallways of the hospital until they reached the room where his brother was.

Sam lay in bed with his eyes closed, an IV line running from his hand, an oxygen mask over his mouth and nose. Clean, white bandages covered his neck.

"The bullet in your brother's chest collapsed his right lung," the nurse explained, "The bullet to his throat didn't hit any major artery, miraculously, but he did lose a lot of blood. He will definitely be sore and he'd have some scars as souvenirs but the doctor is confident he'll make a full recovery."

"Thanks," Dean murmured and pulled a chair up to the bed.

"Hey, Sammy," he whispered, "You awake?"

Slowly, two hazel eyes opened halfway. Unfocused and glazed, they searched for the source of the voice, before pausing on Dean's face.

The older brother smiled and reached out, putting his hand over his brother's.

From behind the mask, Sam smiled. Dean grinned back at him, as though everyyhing was okay.

"You scared the crap out of me, you know that?" Dean told his brother.

Sam chuckled slightly than grimaced in pain. His gaze wavered for a moment, focusing on something over Dean's shoulder before quickly returning to his brother's face.

The older brother squeezed his sibling's hand.

"It's okay, Sammy," Dean whispered, as though sharing a secret, "I'll keep you safe."

SPN

Sam leaned back against the Impala's passenger seat and sighed. For just a moment, he felt relaxed, even ignoring Lucifer in the back seat.

"Ready to hit the road, Sammy?" Dean climbed into the driver's seat and started the engine.

"Let's get out of here," Sam agreed, his voice still raspy as he continued to heal.

Dean gladly pulled out of the hospital's parking lot and started through town.

Once he'd assured his brother was out of danger, he had returned to the woods, found their guns and hunted down the Black Dog with a vengeance.

Reaching for the dial to turn on the radio, Dean paused when his cell phone rang. Fishing it out of his pocket, Dean handed it to Sam.

"It's Bobby," his brother told him.

"Put it on Speaker," Dean told him, one corner of his mouth lifting.

"Hey Bobby," Sam answered the phone.

"What the hell are you two doing to me?!" the grizzled hunter shouted, "I own a salvage yard, not a daycare!"

Dean couldn't help it and snorted laughter.

"Dean Winchester! I'm gonna kick your ass when I see you!" Bobby threatened, "I mean it, you're dead!"

"Oh come on, Bobby," Dean snickered, "Just think about it, you're preparing the next generation of hunters."

"Oh, I'm preparing something," Bobby replied mutinously.

"You all right, Sam?" the old hunter asked, "These two idjits told me what happened."

"I'm still in one piece," the younger hunter replied.

"Good," Bobby said sincerely, "You stay that way."

Sam smiled, glancing at his brother from the corner of his eye.

"Dean will make sure I do."

Author's Note:

Please leave a review, ladies and gents!