Drumming his fingers on the dashboard, John Winchester's eyes flickered back and forth as he watched the train pass by in front of him. The dinging bells and flashing red-lights against the dark night did little to ease his troubled mind. He had been gone far too long and he needed to get back. He needed to get back to his boys.

It hadn't been an easy hunt and it had taken him longer than he had planned. That ghoul and been one slimy son-of-a-bitch that had gone after the living instead of scavenging the long-dead. John had been lucky to take him down solo. However, the last family the monster had been feeding off of hadn't been so lucky. By the time he had gotten there, it was too late for them and John had ended up leaving their bodies for the sheriff's deputies to find.

However, it wasn't the image of the rotting and half-eaten corpses that plagued his thoughts. Instead, it had been a figure of a woman entering a coffee-shop as he drove through a small town less than a week prior. A slender pretty blonde, with soft waves in her hair, had caught his eye and for half a moment he had thought it had been her: Mary.

Mary.

How his heart ached whenever he thought of her. The intense way she would look at him and the soft brush of her lips against his own, now fading remembrances. But other memories of her would not fade: the scream that had torn from her lips, the piter-pater of blood dripping down from where she had been suspended against the ceiling, and the putrid smell of burning flesh. These were the memories that would tear him from sleep night after night, year after year.

It was all-encompassing, the rage. It filled his soul whenever he thought of the thing responsible for Mary's death, Yellow Eyes, that hell-spawned demon. All that mattered was finding a way to kill that bastard and make the world safe from the likes of that devil. That's what Mary would've wanted, isn't it?

The train now departed, the arms of the railroad guard raised and John revved the Impala engine to a purr as he sped along the gravel road towards the small motel where he had left Sam and Dean. Another 40 miles and he'd be there.

Mary would've wanted you to take better care of your boys, a voice in the back of his head nagged at him.

Shaking his head, John pushed back against the vulnerability he felt tugging against the corners of his eyes.

"I'm just hungry," he growled to himself, attributing his lapse to having gone without much to eat the last three days.

John glanced over his shoulder at the sack of food in the back seat. It had not been his proudest moment, ransacking that dead family's cupboards for food before he high-tailed it out of town. However, having spent what little money he had on that motel and a few provisions for the boys, there had barely been enough left over to fill his tank with gas, let alone food for him.

His stomach gurgling unpleasantly, John re-focused his gaze on the road. He wasn't about to pull over and root through what he had knabbed, at least not before he had made it back; not before he had made it back to his boys. He needed to be strong for them.

You need to get a real job and provide for them, that same voice returned. You need to stop moving them around from place to place. They need a roof over their heads and food in their bellies. No more getting by hustling the odd pool game here and there and skipping out on overdrawn accounts.

"No," John said out loud to no one in particular. Whatever doubts he had, he was no longer the naïve man that had stood by while his wife burned. He knew now that the world was filled with terrifying monsters and demons. As their father, it was his duty to prepare Sam and Dean for the horrors of the reality in which they lived.

Pretending that the supernatural didn't exist would've been the easy choice. But John was a never one to shy away from making the hard choices. He did what he had to do. He had to be strong.

Pulling up to the motel, under a flickering neon sign, John breathed a sigh of exhaustion as he cut the Impala's engine. Stepping out of the vehicle, he groaned and stretched before grabbing his leather-bound journal off the dashboard and the plastic sack from the back seat.

The keys jingling in his hand, John approached the door with it flaking paint and askew number plaque. Gruff sounds of a key entering a lock preluded the hasty rustle of movement that caught the hunter's eye as he pushed the door open.

"SAM! DEAN!" John barked upon entering the room and surveilling the disaster before him.

Papers had been taped to the walls, blankets strewn about the room, and empty food wrappers littered the floor. And in the midst of all of this chaos was his two young sons peering wide-eyed up at him. Sammy looked like he was about to cry but Dean, his little soldier, stood resolute.

"Dean," John demanded setting the items he was carrying down on the table, "what is the meaning of this? I left you in charge. How could you do this son?"

"We were just—" Sam began but Dean cut him off.

"It's my fault. I shouldn't have let it get this bad. I'm sorry."

"Hmmpft," John grunted, too tired to chastise them any further. "Then see to it that it gets cleaned up quickly. There's food for the two of you when you're done. I'm going to hit the head."

Wading across the mess, John made his way over to the bathroom and shut the door. The last thing he had wanted to do tonight was yell at his kids. He probably should've expected that the boys would have gone a little stir-crazy, cooped up in this little room. But expecting something and then being faced with the reality of it was, in a word, disappointing.

Peeling the clothes from off his back, John hoped that a shower would wash away the near-constant tension that plagued him. Getting a chance to wipe off the grime of the hunt and the strain from a long car ride would improve his spirits. With the turn of a nozzle, the shower head came to life in a sputtering spray of water.

"Too much lime build up in the pipes," John thought to himself. "Someone needs to come in and rinse out the shower head with vinegar. Probably change out the salt pellets in the water softener as well."

Maybe that's something he could do in exchange for some cash, maintenance work. John would head over and talk to the desk clerk in the morning but for now, he'd just soak up what little relief the water could provide.

By the time he had exited the shower, the water had run cold. John hadn't meant to take so long but he had gotten light-headed and it felt as though his mind was in a fog and had just gone numb. Having lost track of time, his fingers were pruny and he fumbled grabbing for a towel.

Making his way back into the room, a cloud of steam drifting out of the bathroom behind him, John found it still and silent. Quickly crossing over to his duffle, he pulled out a pair of clean clothes and got dressed from behind the flimsy privacy of the terrycloth covering. Now decent, John glanced around to see that some sort of semblance had been made in the meantime.

Papers still hung from the walls and now John could see that they were drawings done in crayon, most likely Sammy's handiwork. The food wrappers had been picked up and thrown away and the blankets were no longer draped over the furniture.

They had been making forts, John. That voice chided him once again. What's the harm in that?

This time, he could not find fault with the voice's reason. Instead, he meandered over to the small table where his journal and the food he brought lay. Looking over the pickings, it was mostly just cans and a packet of half-eaten crackers. Picking up a few, John popped the stale squares into his mouth and munched on them.

Had the boys at least eaten?

Leaning down, John took a glimpse into the trashcan. There, at the top, were two empty cans with plastic spoons inside, one of beef stew and another of green beans. A frown colored his face as he realized that rather than bothering to pour out the food into a bowl and put it in the microwave, the boys had instead eaten their dinner cold.

The crackers he had so recently consumed felt like lead in his stomach.

Turning around, he finally cast his eyes upon the sleeping forms of his sons. The room they occupied only had two twin beds and, since his arrive meant one of the beds belonged to him, Sam and Dean had bunked up together on the same mattress. Their eyes shut and the slow rise and fall of their chests were clear indications that they were fast asleep.

Shuffling over to the beds, John found himself gazing fondly at his boys. Dean's arm was laying across Sam, almost protectively. And Sammy's face was buried against his brother's chest, his shaggy mane a tousled halo around his head.

John stood there, watching them sleep for a moment, before leaning down and arranging the blankets around them. Tucking Sam's hair back and straightening the amulet Dean wore around his neck, John wished he hadn't been so stern with them when he had gotten back to the room.

It was times like these that he missed Mary the most. If she could just see them now… Damn! There it was again, vulnerability tickling the corners of his eyes. Brushing the back of his hand against his face, John pushed back the tears before they could fall.

A soft kiss on the head was imparted to each of his sons before John moved over and pulled back the coarse blanket and the stiff sheets of his own bed and crawled underneath the layers. Turning on his side so he could still see Sam and Dean, he let his eyes linger on the sleeping boys until his own eyelids drooped and sleep claimed him.