Authors Note: Hello everyone! This is my first FanFic, so please help me out and leave reviews, suggestions, or comments. If I get something wrong please feel free to point it out, I can't get better without help.
DISCLAIMER: I don't own any rights to the Story of Supernatural or it's characters, that right belongs to Eric Kripke and the WB. I am just barrowing it for a bit to write a story for fun and not for profit. So, enjoy.
Prologue:
Most children put a lot of effort into deciding what they will be when they grow up. They day-dream and fantasize, and role play; changing their mind a hundred and fifty times before they even enter high school. Not Dean though. He was but a child when he learned how his life was to be spent; only four when tragedy shattered through a calm Kansas night and forever made him a kissing-cousin to death.
That night smoke rolled, windows exploded, and flames shrieked-shouted-roared. Along the block, lights appeared as neighbors tumbled from their beds and houses to gather and gawk.
Blazing tongues of heat snaked through the house, diving in and out of windows as deep red shadows spilled out into the night, gyrating obscenely on the lawn and sidewalk.
It seemed as if hell itself had invaded the quiet suburb.
Amidst the inferno a door opened and a dark form raced out, flames biting at its heels. A small silhouette made its way through the smoke and chaos to the edge of the yard; it was Dean Winchester, John and Mary's boy, and he wasn't alone. The gasps and murmuring of the gathered crowd slowly died as the child stopped and turned. Silence muzzled the night as the young boy stood straight and expressionless, smoke-reddened eyes boring into the flames that were devouring his home.
Dean paid no attention to his neighbors, he simply stared at the red monster that had already killed his mother and probably his father too. It wasn't the only monster that he had seen this night. The yellowed-eyed man that had pinned his mother to the ceiling and made her stomach bleed; fire was just a by-product of the demon, a farewell token if you would.
The flames ate voraciously at the house he had grown up in, destroying everything he had ever known and reducing his family to ashes. But not his entire family, not all of them. The young boy stood straighter as his arms tightened around the baby in his arms. Without taking his gaze from the hellish spectacle before him, Dean placed a small kiss upon his brother's forehead.
"It's okay Sammy. I'll protect you"
That promise grew to become both Dean's damnation and his salvation. Although his father, John, didn't die in the fire that night, he might as well have. The man that survived the blaze and swooped up Dean and Sam off the yard, the man that sat with them in his arms and watched as firefighters removed his wife's body from the rubble; that man was not Dean's father, at least not the father he had always known. Before that night his father had been funny and loving and patient; after that night he was hard in a way most people couldn't imagine.
John became consumed with the need to Hunt; relentlessly tracking down and killing all things evil. The more monsters he killed though, the more his fear for his children grew. He became obsessed with teaching his boys to protect themselves, teaching them to use guns, knives, spells, and exorcisms. He constantly trained them, drilled them, and tested them. The boys' entire lives revolved around the need to be vigilant and ready to fight. School was a hit and miss; a few days here, a few weeks there. Home was an endless string of hotel rooms or nights spent camping in the car.
As the oldest, it was Dean's responsibility to hold down the fort and look after Sam whenever his father was out hunting, which was all the time. Every time his dad would leave he would run through a checklist with Dean; lock all the doors and windows, stay out of sight, keep all guns loaded, and most important of all….watch out for Sammy. John was adamant about that; Sam was Dean's responsibility, period. Dean had made a promise to his younger brother the night of the fire and he had better keep it. Anytime that John thought Dean was failing in his duty he would yell at him, mock him, and call him a failure. John relentlessly used that promise to tear Dean down and shred his ego, until Dean had no sense of self-worth, no focus other that his brother.
He learned to cook so that Sammy could eat, to sew so Sammy could have jeans without holes in them, and to hustle pool, so Sammy could have medicine, books, and toys. He walked around with a pistol in his waistband, a knife in his boot, and holy water in his pocket. He showered with a gun on the sink, ate with a gun on the table, and slept with a pistol under his pillow and a shotgun next to the bed. By the time Dean was twelve he was a dutiful warrior; a highly trained soldier whose only mission in life was to protect his brother.