John Winchester was a man with undeniable determination. He had it in Vietnam as he kept his mind on the mission and off the fact that his friends lay dying around him. He had it when he met Mary, knowing that she could be the best thing to ever happen to him. He had it with his job at the garage when they first where married, needing to save up for the house and the family he always wanted.
Yes, John Winchester determination was something that could never be argued with. The problem was that with so much determination, sometimes other important things feel into the shadows of his mind as his final goal shined so bright it was all he could see. Such was how John Winchester went from devoted husband and father one night, to a man on a mission of vengeance the next.
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The thing you have to realize is that 1979 was the best year of his life. It was the year that all his dreams came true. Because on January 24, 1979 he got the greatest gift he ever received, becoming a father. It was in those moments he new he was the luckiest man alive, because as amazing of a day as it was that him and Marry exchanged their vows and became man and wife, seeing her holding their son, a little piece of the two of them was so perfect it was indescribable. He made a vow that day, one that haunted the Hunter years later as he sat in motel rooms alone with nothing but basic cable and his thoughts for company, that he would be the best father he could possibly be. He would later rationalize this protecting his kids from the evil he fought every day he was living out that promise, but he knew in his heart of hearts, that his good intentions where clouded by anger and grief.
To of seen John in early 1982 you would not recognize the man. He was that one of the kindest men you would ever meet. He loved to rush home after work so he might catch Dean still awake and get to take him outside in attempt to throw around the small football he had gotten him for his third birthday. When he had told Mary's of the gift she had laughed and stated that no three year old has the coordination to walk in a straight line let alone throw a ball. But Dean had proved this wrong, being able to throw the ball almost a good five feet looking pretty coordinated. John had been so proud of him that he had taken him out for ice cream, even though Mary said that he was going to spoil him. John had laughed and said that there was nothing wrong with a father treating the next NFL quarterback every now and again.
The next year was one of unequaled bliss for John. Every thing seemed to be going his way. He had a wife he loved more then life it self, a son he who he loved and loved him as he began to see him grow into a sweet loving little boy who reminded him so much of his wife. He had a job he loved, having just being promoted at the garage and a beautiful home just waiting to be filled with happy memories. And in early October of that year he thought that fate had swung his way again when Mary told him that she was a pregnant again. Yes, John had thought he was the luckiest man alive that year, not knowing the cruel twist fate had in store for him
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After Mary's death, a shield of armor was placed around John's heart. It was something he had learned to do in the war as a way to survive without losing his mind at the horrors he was facing so that he could focus on his task so he could get home. It had started small, leaving the boys with his father saying he needed to get out and think, and in reality going to the library to research the way Mary had died. it got larger as he started to look at the occult for solutions as to what was going on. By the time he meet Missouri, the wall was almost at full height, as he spent nights away, leaving for his father to think he was on day long benders hoping his son wasn't passed out in some gutter in grief. It was after John had meet up with other hunters and found out that what he saw was not only real, but a tangible thing he could hunt and kill, the wall was at full mass. It was around this time that John's father had started to look through John's things when he came home offering no explanation as to where he had been and ignoring his sons. One of them especially tended to show up on the back burners, a little boy who spent most of his days at the window looking for his daddy car to pull in, so that he could maybe play catch.
John's father had tried to confront John when he found the books of strange horrible things and his journal he had started about them. He begged him to get help, see someone about the grief. But John had only been angry, telling his old man to stay out of his business and that he didn't know what he was talking about. His father had begged him to think about his sons, the fact that they needed their father especially now. John still refused to lesson to reason. It was then that he told John that unless he got help that he would refuse to let him see his kids. It was then that John was quite. No matter how much his focus may be else where, John loved his kids, he may be preoccupied, but he still loved them.
That day John's father told him that he would keep his son's away from him until he sought help, and that any court would agree with him after the things he had found. John realized he was right and promised to forget his crazy thoughts and go back to being the father he was before Mary died. That night John took both his sons and quietly placed them in the car. He left his father's house that night leaving all he new before behind and starting out on his new journey as a Hunter. He never talked to his father again. Not even when he got word years later he was sick. His father died alone in 1989 as John hunts evil in Wisconsin, that same night he gets word of his father's death he almost loses his youngest son to the same evil he hunts. And he wonders for the first time in six years if he should have left his sons in Kansas.
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As the years wore on John became more and more entrapped by the world of hunting. He reverted back to his military training, using the things Uncle Sam had taught his to kill Charlie in the deep black forest to now kill the things that go bump in the night. It was by these teachings he brought up his kids.
You see John didn't quite know what to do with them. He loved them. And originally a huge part of what he was doing was for them, to avenge their mothers death and all because they where now forced to live with out her. But as time wore on he saw he needed more soldiers in his war against evil and his boys where the only candidates available at the time. What he forgot about was the fact that they where still children, or maybe he didn't forget, maybe he didn't want them to be. Or maybe he just didn't want one of them to be in all honesty. You see to John, Dean stopped being a child that night he had loaded them into the car.
The night John ran, Dean never said a word. He never asked a question as to where they where going, cried at the confusion at to what was going on, or even went to sleep like his brother did after initial tears in his car seat. He just sat there. He sat in the back, just looking a John in the review mirror. He stared for what seemed like a solid 12 hours they drove to Pastor Jim's. For almost the next year John wouldn't hear Dean speak, it was like the boy had just turned off. Dean just did as he was told and spent most of his time just staring at Sam making sure that he was okay. John left on and off again for hunts, but with Sam being so young he tried to stay local. But in 1985, by the time Dean was six he packed up and left with the boys, it was then that John really turned it to high gear and within a month Dean was his little soldier.
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It feels like every day John gets a reminder of what he lost. Ever day he wakes up and has to see Dean. He has her eyes, just like Mary's. So clear and bright that it feels like they can look right into your soul when they stare at you. His coloring doesn't help either, the fact that it's the same as her. The way his hair falls when it's long, it's one of the reason John always told Dean to keep it short. He looks so much like her that he can't stand it sometime. He used to wish every time he saw his face that he didn't see Mary, that Dean could one day magically be like Sam and look more like him then her, but he never did.
John wishes that was where the similarities stopped but it didn't. Dean has the same kindness to him, they way he wants to help others, the way that above everything his family is the most important thing to him. The way he plays mediator between himself and Sam, just as Mary had when John would get into it with his dad. It's the similarities that John tried to mask by making him a soldier, tried to change him into something robotic, more and more unlike her. And sometimes he'll see it, in the eyes, a vague stare of emptiness. But this makes it worse. It makes him feel like he lost her all over again and that she would hate him for twisting her baby boy into this.
It was this look of vacancy that made John let Dean go on his first solo hunt. He had said that it was because he was 22 and able to make his own decisions. Yet, in all honesty it was the fact that without Sam to butt heads with to take his mind off Dean being the damaged version of his late wife, John just could stand looking at him anymore. Because when Sammy left so did a big part of Dean. To Dean his family was the only thing that mattered, the only thing that got him through the night and caused him to wake up in the morning. Dean would never tell anyone this but some days when he was on his own on a hunt he would think about what would happen if he just never woke up, if he just slept and disappeared into the night with all the other dark damaged things he's killed. But then a memory would strike him or he's go to check his phone and the thought was passed, other time he thought the only reason he didn't is because what happened if he was more alone afterward.
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