Sins of a Father.
X
John sighed tiredly. His body was a mass of bruises from the fight, and the long wounds on his arms from the ghouls' lucky hits, hurt like hell.
He had been gone for nearly two weeks, leaving his sons alone in the motel.
While he was caught up in a hunt, he tended to forget about his children, all his energies taken up with the tactical battle to take out the monster and he always did, for when John was in hunting mode he was every bit as dangerous as his prey, if not more so. In fact he could count on one hand the number of those who had gotten away; the only one which came to mind was the shtriga who had fed on little Sammy.
Once the adrenaline rush was gone however, the images of Sam and Dean would flash into his mind and the feelings of guilt and uncertainty for the life he had condemned them to, would begin to creep up on him.
John did what he always did; he cursed and then pushed the regrets down, unrepentant.
Once he had known nothing about the obscure supernatural world that existed in the shadows, and he would have been more than happy to have remained in ignorance of it, but when Mary had burned on the ceiling of their home everything had changed, including himself and the doting husband and father he had been until then had been totally suppressed by the need for vengeance.
Although that need was still uppermost in his mind, he was well aware that even when, and there was no if about it, he had taken out the son of a bitch that had killed Mary, he would still keep on hunting, for contemplating going back to a suburban life with its boring barbeques and inconsequential chatter had no allure for him now.
X
He alternated his hands on the wheel, resting first one arm then the other.
Uncharacteristically for him, he had gone to the local ER to get his wounds attended to, as he had never been good at putting in stitches with his left hand and he was too tired and hurting too badly to even bother to try.
John was a devastatingly attractive man with powerful passions that he had rare occasions to satisfy, and when the cute nurse who had stitched him up had offered to buy him dinner he had let himself go, and they had passed a frenzied few days together. He sensed that she would have been up for something more but John did as he always did after any interaction with the female sex; he packed his duffel and took off.
Little did he realise however that during the days spent in Windom Minnesota he had left a part of himself buried deep in the nurse, a part that would one day come back and influence the life of his older boys, namely one Adam, but he was blissfully unaware of that as he pushed the Impala towards his boys, the urge to get to them overwhelming now that he was back in father mode with the adrenaline of the hunt left far behind.
X
X
Dean was only ten years old but he had practically raised six-year old Sammy single-handedly.
John knew that if he hadn't had Dean's help he would have had to make a painful choice, one which had often crossed his mind, of putting the boys into foster homes but Dean adored his little brother and would do anything for him, even although he was only a child himself. He had been lucky, for not all kids would have bothered themselves with the demanding care of a baby brother from their own tender age of four.
He sometimes wondered what kind of life he had condemned them to.
They had no friends, only the casual school-acquaintances they met as he dragged them along from town to town; they really only had each other.
He sighed again. They had become very close, closer than any brothers should be, but that was the price they would be forced to pay to keep each other safe from all the supernatural crap that was out there.
He had spent hours analyzing Mary's death and he had come to the conclusion that there must be a bigger picture to it all, otherwise why Mary?
He was convinced that it was no coincidence that she had been targeted and there was every reason to think that whatever had done that to her wasn't finished with the Winchester family. He needed the boys to be there for each other, to watch each other's back even if the result would be a relationship of total co-dependence.
X
X
It was night when he arrived at the motel. He turned the key quietly in the lock and threw an anxious glance over at the boys. The pale moonlight that filtered through the barely curtained window allowed him to see the two children curled up against each other. One of Dean's arms was thrown protectively over his baby brother, the other under the pillow where John knew that a wicked sharp knife would be hidden, ready to be brandished if anyone entered the room and threatened Sammy.
He had put so much responsibility onto Dean's slim shoulders and as he went to sit down on the other bed, he flinched in guilt as his eyes encountered the wide-open ones of his oldest,; the accusing stare in them transfixing his heart like a spear.
Dean had always been the most obedient of sons but he wondered if one day the six-year old child that was curled up asleep in the shelter of the boy's arm, would one day be the catalyst that would turn his oldest away from him in furious anger.
If that was so, John understood that he would fully deserve it.
X
XXX The enD XXX