Henry's breathing was shallow as Sam held him. The blood was seeping out the side of his mouth at a dangerous rate, but he was fighting to hold Dean's eyes.

"We did it," he sputtered out. Dean looked at him sadly.

"No, you did it," he said, "For a bookworm, that wasn't bad, Henry." Henry smiled slightly and coughed a bit more, groaning.

"I'm sorry I judged you two so harshly for being hunters," he said, "I should have known better." Sam looked curiously down at him.

"About?"

"You're also Winchesters. As long as we're alive, there's always hope. I didn't know my son as a man, but having met you two," Henry reached out and grasped Dean's hand firmly. The grip was tight enough to cut off some circulation, but Dean didn't pull away. "I know I would have been proud of him."

Henry's eyes fell closed and Dean sucked in a sharp breath. Someone else gone. Another member of the family dead. Just another Winchester grave to dig. He fell back from his crouched position to the floor, sitting roughly. He looked utterly lost. Sam still held Henry's body firmly.

"Dean," came Sam's voice suddenly, "Dean, he's still breathing."

Dean was up in a flash and had his hand to Henry's throat for a pulse before Sam could blink. There. It was weak, but still there. Not dead yet.

"Hospital." Dean said, without looking at Sam. He ripped off his shirt and pushed it against the deep wound in Henry's stomach. He gestured to Sam to let Henry's body down to the ground. With his bleeding grandfather (that was never going to not sound weird) out of his arms, Sam ran to the Impala out front and returned quickly with a roll of duct tape. The sharp sound of the tape being pulled off of its spool filled the warehouse for seconds while Sam got a strip long enough to wrap around Henry's body a couple of times to keep Dean's shirt in place over the bloody stomach.

The boys didn't have to say anything to each other as they went to either side of Henry and lifted him as gingerly as possible. At the car, Dean dropped the arm he was holding to rip open one of the back doors and then help his brother into backseat with Henry. He checked his weak pulse again before he ran around to get into the driver's seat and pulled quickly onto the road.

"How is he?" Dean asked, keeping his eyes on the rearview mirror more than the empty road in front of him.

"Alive." Sam replied tersely. "Sort of." Sam had enough experience with injuries to know this wound was bad. Really bad.

"The hospital is five minutes away," Dean said, pushing down the gas pedal even harder. They were now pushing 90 MPH, but Dean wasn't worried about cops. He wasn't even thinking of getting pulled over as a possibility.

They got to the hospital, normally a fifteen minute drive, in just over four minutes. The nurses in the ER heard the loud motor pull up outside and then a loud, deep voice shouting, "we need some help out here!"

Henry was alive. That was all that mattered, currently. Dean had gone back to the warehouse as soon as Henry and Sam were inside the hospital to finish cutting up Abaddon. No way would she be bothering them again.

When he got back to the hospital, Sam was pacing in the waiting room. Henry was in surgery. Dean took a day to create enough fake documentation to prove that Henry was their brother so that they would actually be allowed into his hospital room. Dean had started laughing in the middle of creating the documents when he thought about what would happen if he tried to tell the hospital how Henry was actually related to them.

Now, though, Sam and Dean were at the bunker. Halfway through the first week of Henry's recovery, the brothers had finally decided to go and see if it was even still standing. The bunker had much more to offer, though, than just its continued existence.

Dean loved his own room and his own space, and Sam's face (Dean wished he could have taken a picture) had lit up like Christmas morning upon seeing the frankly ridiculous number of books the place had. Their second day at the bunker, Dean had walked in on Sam just lovingly stroking a finger along the spines of all the books. That Dean had gotten a picture of.

Henry continued to not die, which was nice. Dean had been the one in the hospital room the first time he woke up. He was on Sam's computer looking for a hunt nearby when he heard the hospital bed shift and saw Henry open his eyes.

"Henry?" Dean asked, standing up and moving towards the bed. Henry blinked a few times and started looking around in wonder and confusion until his eyes landed on Dean, now standing a couple feet away from the bed.

"Dean," he looked around again, "what happened?"

"Well," Dean put one of his hands in his pocket, "Abaddon did her best to kill you. But, like I said, you're tough for a book worm. You're in the hospital. You've been out for five days." Dean clamped his mouth shut before he really started yammering. Henry went to sit up and Dean moved forward quickly, putting his hand on his grandfather's shoulder.

"Yeah, let's take that slow," Dean said, meeting Henry's eyes. "You only barely made it. It's going to take you some time to heal up." Henry clenched his jaw and nodded, then his eyes widened like he just realized something. The heart monitor near the bed started beeping faster.

"Where is Sam?" He looked around frantically. Dean put his hand against Henry's shoulder more firmly.

"Sam is fine. He's at the bunker, doing some research." Henry's agitation went down and he relaxed his muscles. Dean removed his hand and held both in the air as if to ask 'we ok now?' before Henry processed what Dean had said.

"The bunker?" he asked, "it is still standing?"

"Yeah!" Dean said, face breaking into what Sam would call a wide smile, but what Henry only recognized as a slight lift at either side of Dean's mouth, "You've seen it?"

"No, I hadn't been fully initiated yet." Henry said. Dean nodded.

"Well, it's awesome. You're gonna love it." Henry's eye twitched in confusion at Dean's use of the word 'awesome' but he didn't say anything. He jumped a bit when a guitar riff seemed to blast out of Dean's pocket. Dean help up a finger and pulled out what Henry now recognized as his phone.

"Yeah, Sammy?" Dean answered. He turned away from Henry. "Where at? Yeah, yeah. We should check it out. Hmm? Oh, he's awake! Doc's saying he'll do fine. Lucky, yeah. See you then. Yeah, bye." He pulled the phone away from his ear and put it back into his pocket.

"So I'm lucky, then?" Henry asked. He didn't sound like he felt lucky. Dean looked at him with a distinctive 'suck it up' face.

"Yeah, you're lucky; you're still sucking in air." Dean said, and then looked at the oxygen tubes going into Henry's nose. "Kinda." Henry felt a muscle in his jaw twitch but he didn't argue.

"Sam found a job for us," Dean said, finally. "We have to go take care of it. Will you be cool with us being gone for a couple of days?" Henry screwed up his jaw even more in annoyance.

"Dean, I am not a child. I can be left alone, thank you." Dean smiled a bit.

"Oh, by the way, they, uh, think you are mine and Sam's brother here." Dean said, moving towards the door. "Didn't think they'd buy the 'he's my time-traveling grandpa' story." Henry took the information in with a nod of his head.

"Oh!" Dean said again, and moved back towards Henry. "Almost forgot, I got you a phone." He handed Henry a cheap, disposable phone which Henry just looked slightly confused by. Dean quickly showed him how to find and call either him or Sam and, just in case, a hunter named Garth who Dean said would help if anything happened. Dean didn't elaborate.

And then he was gone and Henry was alone in the pristine room. Nurses bustled along the hallways outside quickly, some coming in every now and then to check on him. Henry just focused on trying to get better and waiting for his grandsons to come back.

A couple of weeks later, Henry got out of the hospital and drove back to the bunker with Dean and Sam. He sat silently and listened to the brothers talk.

"Are you honestly telling me you weren't super-obviously checking that doctor out?" Sam said, smiling. Dean scowled.

"Dude, what the hell? No, I wasn't." He didn't look at Sam. "Why the hell would I have been checking him out?"

"Well," Sam said, and Henry noticed the sly smile that slunk its way across his lips, "I thought maybe his was another one of your 'gay things'". Dean swerved the car in surprise. Henry could understand the shock. Unless this was a normal topic of conversation?

"I told you that wasn't what it sounded like." Dean said, through gritted teeth.

"I don't know," Sam said, "I just thought you belonged to someone else." Dean grumbled but didn't dispute Sam's claim.

"Bitch."

"Jerk," Sam responded easily.

Henry stayed quiet. He got the feeling that this was how the brothers almost always interacted. Light bickering and teasing. And then, he assumed, huge emotional blowouts.

"So, Henry," Dean said, glancing at his in the rearview mirror, "how about I introduce you to some music a bit ahead of your time?" Now Sam rolled his eyes and turned to look out the window.

"I would be interested in that, yes." Henry answered carefully. He had always enjoyed music. He did have an interest in how music had evolved since his time. Dean grinned at Sam as he shoved a black tape into the dashboard of the car. Henry jumped at the sound of loud guitars pumping through the speakers. Sam winced at him in the mirror sympathetically. The music was loud and… hard, Henry decided. He shifted uncomfortably, but looked at Dean in the front seat, who was smiling and hitting the steering wheel in time. He sang loudly and off-key at the chorus.

"You shook me aallll niiight long," Dean belted.

Henry noticed Sam looking annoyed, but he could see by the twitch in Sam's mouth that he really did enjoy it. Henry decided he liked this side of Dean too. He tried to let himself enjoy the music and found, after about an hour, that he really did. He liked the rough tones, and the way it brought out a gentler side of Dean. He did finally find his voice.

"What was the job you went on while I was still at the hospital?" Dean turned down the music, but he didn't look annoyed at the interruption.

"Oh, we didn't tell you?" He asked, sounding surprised, "it was a Golem!" Henry's eyes widened.

"Really? A Golem?" He had only read about them a couple of times. He shifted a bit when he remembered what exactly his grandsons did for a living. "Did you kill it?"

"What?" Dean asked, looking hurt for a split second before hiding it. "No, we didn't kill it. We don't just kill everything."

"Well," Sam started. He was silenced by a particularly nasty look from Dean.

"We just helped the guy he belonged to get control of him," Dean said, "and, well, killed a couple of the guys who were trying to use him for less than awesome reasons." Sam had never heard Dean being uncomfortable admitting he killed someone. Henry looked at Dean and then looked back down nodding.

"I'm sorry I assumed," he said. Dean waved his hand.

"Don't worry about it." The car was silent for a while. Finally, they began pulling up the dirt road that led to the bunker, when a question that had been bothering Henry finally couldn't be held in any longer.

"Do you mind if I ask," he began, swallowing thickly, "how John died?" Sam's eyes widened and he glanced at Dean, who stopped the car sharply in front of the door to the bunker and got out quickly without saying anything. Henry's gut turned over but he didn't retract his question.

"Dean… doesn't talk about it." Sam said.

"I gathered."

"It has been years, but he hasn't ever really dealt with it." Sam didn't look back at Henry. "Dad sold his soul for Dean after we got in a crash a few years ago. His life for Dean's. We didn't find out until later. I was… Dean woke up. Dad took his place." Sam looked back at Henry when he didn't say anything.

"Look," Sam said, "I may not have gotten along with my dad. You probably already know that from reading his journal, but he cared about us. He cared about Dean. And Dean doesn't like to deal with that kind of thing."

"Thank you for telling me," Henry said, quietly. "I think I understand now." Sam nodded.

"Now, you probably shouldn't even be out of the hospital to begin with, but you especially shouldn't be sitting in an ancient, uh, I mean,any car for this long." Sam said, opening his passenger door and then going back to open Henry's. "Let's get you inside and I'll get you all set up in your room."

Time went by slowly for Henry at the bunker. Dean and Sam didn't let him do much of anything, and they never let him leave. It was as if they were somehow concerned that if people saw him they would somehow immediately know he was a time traveler or something, which made absolutely no sense. But there was still plenty to keep him entertained while he was stuck, stuff from his time. All of the records of the Men of Letters were fascinating, and there never seemed to be an end to them. Henry shared his excitement to learn with Sam, and they could often be found reading the books in the bunker late into the night together.

Now that Sam had taken on the duties of the Men of Letters, he was particularly interested in learning from Henry. They were at the table one evening when Dean walked in, carrying three plates precariously on his arms. He set two of the plates down in front of Sam and Henry and then retreated back to his own seat. Sam looked up from the book he was flipping through.

"You made these?" He asked incredulously, indicating the cheeseburgers.

"We have a real kitchen now," Dean said. Henry picked up his burger without saying anything and looked at it once before he put it into his mouth.

"Yeah, I just didn't think you knew what a kitchen was," Henry heard Sam respond, but he didn't hear what was said after that. He made a noise he would completely deny later as the flavors of the burger swirled around in his mouth. Dean looked at him and smiled, then turned to Sam expectantly. Finally Sam picked up the thing and took a bite.

"Wow," Sam practically whistled. The burger was perfection. The meat was cooked exactly right, and he didn't think he'd ever tasted a cheese like this, but it went along with the flavor of the burger exactly. Dean preened like a peacock and went to take his own bite when his phone went off in his pocket. Sam didn't even notice, but Henry looked up to watch Dean on the phone.

"Kevin?" Dean asked, talking loudly into the phone. Sam looked up in recognition of the name, but Henry didn't recognize it. Dean hung up with a click of a button, looking annoyed, but Henry could also see the worry.

"Is something wrong?" Sam asked, not putting his burger down.

"Guess," Dean stood up from the table, grabbing his burger. No way was he leaving that behind. They both started to move towards the bunker doors when Henry cleared his throat.

"I suppose I am staying here?" He asked, setting up his face to look as annoyed as he felt at being forgotten. Sam turned around apologetically.

"Oh, yeah, sorry Henry," he said, "with you still healing up and all…"

"We have to go check on a friend," Dean said, leaving the room. Sam looked after him with the beginnings of a particularly impressive bitchface. Henry shifted in his seat.

"I only wish I could be useful." Henry said, not looking away from Sam.

"You are useful," Sam said, "Dean just doesn't know that yet. He is really slow to trust but don't worry. He'll get there. We do have to go check on a friend, though. But we'll, uh, be back in about a day. There's plenty of food in the fridge, so you should be fine, right?" Henry knew that not taking him along was due to his injury, and not the fact that the brothers didn't want him around, but he still wasn't pleased. He eventually nodded and listened as the brothers made their way up and outside, finally hearing the slam of the bunker door.

Ever since that job that had started with a phone call from Kevin, Henry had known something was off with Sam. They had come back to the bunker later that night, and then left for a week before returning, covered in some kind of black ooze. Sam told him about the trials and exactly how Dean felt about them. Henry couldn't even be mad at Dean for letting Sam do the trials because he knew, if he had had his way, neither one of the boys would have been attempting them. And now Sam was trying to cover up the fact that he was coughing up blood. The first time Henry had noticed, Dean was in the room, and based on the way Sam was being so secretive, Henry didn't say anything until Dean left.

"Sam," Henry turned to him as soon as the older Winchester was gone, "why aren't you telling Dean?" Sam tried to blow it off.

"Tell him what?" He sniffed and tried so look confused but instead he ended up coughing. A lot. More blood went into a nearby tissue. Henry looked at it pointedly and then back at Sam.

"Sam, if you can tell me why you won't include Dean and I agree, I won't tell him." Henry said, "But he deserves to know. You should not keep this from him." Sam bit his lip and looked at the doorway Dean had just passed through before answering.

"Look, Dean can't know because he thinks he should be the one who is going through this. He is already pissed enough at me for taking over, and that's before he finds out. I'll tell him just… not yet." He looked at Henry pleadingly.

"Hey, you girls want some dinner?" Dean called from the other room.

"Of course," Henry called back, not taking his eyes off of Sam. He stood up eventually, and started moving towards the kitchen. As he passed the table, he picked up Sam's bloody tissue and tossed it in a nearby garbage can. He looked at Sam while he did it. Then he walked through the same door Dean had walked through a few minutes earlier without saying another word.

A week later, Henry was interrupted from his cataloging by the loud noise of the Impala pulling up outside. The boys had been gone for a long time. Before long, he heard their voices echoing through the bunker.

"So, what really happened with Cas?" Sam's voice said. Henry scrunched his eyebrows together. He had heard the name Cas before, but never more than a mention, and really only by Sam.

"I don't know," Dean sounded tired, beaten, and overall completely destroyed. Henry had never heard him sound like this. "Naomi… she's had control since we got out of purgatory. Mind control."

"Angel mind control? Really?" Sam sounded incredulous, Henry just focused on the words 'angel' and 'purgatory'. He had known that Dean had been gone for a year, but had never known where. Had he been in purgatory? And did angels actually exist?

"All I know is I can't take any more lies. From anyone." Henry heard the voices getting closer, but he didn't move. He swallowed as he realized what Dean meant. Based on the silence, Sam had figured it out too. Before Sam could respond, they entered the room Henry was in. He hadn't moved yet and was looking at Dean warily. He looked just as wrecked as his voice sounded. Henry's eyes widened in shock. What could have happened that would leave him looking like that?

"I'm sorry, Dean," Sam finally said, looking down.

"I was going to make him tell you," Henry said. Sam looked up at him in fear, shaking his head, but apparently the worst was already done.

"Wait, you knew?" Dean asked, eyes flaring up angrily as he took a few steps closer to Henry, who suddenly figured out just what exactly he had done wrong.

"Honestly, it was hard not to notice," Henry said, standing up. He was done taking so much abuse from Dean. "If you spend more than a few minutes with him he is coughing up blood, but you are so determined to stay away from me that you seem to be oblivious to it!" Dean was seething and Sam looked terrified as his eyes flicked back and forth between his brother and his grandfather.

"Are you telling me I don't care about Sam?" Dean asked, practically growling.

"Of course not!" Henry shouted, rolling his eyes, which just puffed Dean up even more. "You care about him more than is likely healthy, but you can't get over your hatred of me."

"Maybe I would trust you if you actually told me the truth!" came Dean's response, but Henry had had enough. He took the last few steps forward until he was right in Dean's face, both of them breathing hard.

"No, no you wouldn't. You refuse to trust me because you still hold resentment for me leaving John, even though you know as well as I that I can't change what I did. You blame me. You blame me for losing your mother, for living the way you do, and you blame me for your father's death too." Dean looked taken aback by the sudden speech, and couldn't find his own tongue before Henry continued. "But here's the thing, Dean. I already blame myself for John's death. I blame myself every day. It is crushing me down because I know that I am the reason my son died the way he did, and yet I can't find it in myself to be angry, because I am proud of him. I am proud of him for dying, because it meant saving you, and I know from experience that saving a son is much better than losing one." With that, Henry turned on his heel and marched out the door and down the hallway to his room.

Dean and Sam heard his door slam and they stood there in shocked silence for a while. Dean's eyes, already broken from the encounter with Cas, now looked like smashed shards of green glass. Sam made a mental note to find the majority of the alcohol in the bunker and hide it tonight.

Still silent, Dean clenched his fists tight and the unclenched them before turning and walking down the hallway to his room. Sam was left alone in the silent room. He was about to walk to his bedroom when he started coughing. Hard. He stumbled a couple of steps to the table where he grabbed a tissue to put to his mouth. He put his whole weight against the table as the coughs wracked his body. When he finally stopped, the tissue was full of blood. He exhaled heavily, head falling down.

"Here," Henry's voice shocked him so much he nearly whacked the cup of water out of his grandfather's hand. Henry smiled slightly. "Sorry to startle you." Sam took the cup gratefully and took a drink.

"Thanks," he said. "And sorry. About Dean." Henry pushed his hands into the dark jeans he was wearing. They had taken him shopping shortly after he arrived at the bunker, but Henry still felt uncomfortable in some of the clothes. He never really dressed as casually as Sam and Dean did. He never wore T-shirts, especially the screen-printed band shirts that Dean had a huge number of. For the most part he wore dark wash jeans and button down shirts, though he left them untucked. Currently he was wearing a baby blue shirt that looked wrinkled, like he had possibly slept on it the night before.

It seemed unusual for Henry to sleep in his clothes. He never did, as far as Sam had observed. He was always very serious about looking nice each day, despite the fact that he saw no one besides the brothers. Sam took notice of the wrinkled thing.

"Henry, did you sleep in that?" He asked, indicating the shirt. Henry looked embarrassed as he looked down and fingered the hem.

"I, uh, couldn't sleep last night," Henry said, not looking up. He reached up and scratched his chin, which Sam now noticed had not been shaved that day. "I was worried." He said it so quietly that Sam almost didn't hear him. Sam looked at him curiously.

"You were worried? About us?" He asked. Henry nodded.

"Of course I was worried. You are my grandsons, after all." Sam made a noise in the back of his throat that sounded like surprise.

"I'm sorry that we worried you." Sam said, honestly. He hadn't even thought of Henry being concerned about them. At this point, he wasn't used to anyone possibly worrying about them. It had been just him and Dean for so long now. The room was quiet for a while. Dean never came back out of his room. Sam had a pretty good idea why but he wondered if perhaps he should let Henry in on why his mood was as foul as it was.

"Henry," Sam started, "he isn't just mad at you and me tonight." He started, unsure of how much to tell Henry at this point. He had started wondering a few days ago just when they would approach the subject of Cas. Apparently the time was now.

"Why else is he upset? Something about someone named Cas, from what I heard." Sam nodded in affirmation.

"Castiel is his real name. He's, um, an angel." Sam looked to Henry to see his reaction. His eyebrows were pulled together.

"An angel?" He asked, but not in a disbelieving tone, just one of clarification.

"Yeah, an angel." Sam was glad he wasn't going to have to try and prove to Henry that angels did, in fact, exist. "He and Dean are close. Really close. And we sort of lost Cas today. In a way." Sam said. He wasn't explaining this correctly at all. Then again, he thought he was doing a better job than Dean would have. Or Cas, for that matter.

"Close? As in, they were friends? But are you not friends with him?" Henry asked. He looked like he was trying to understand, but Sam knew he was missing pieces of the story. He sighed and finally decided that Henry was going to need the whole deal.

"Close as in… romantically." Sam shuddered using the word. It wasn't the right thing to describe Dean and Cas. They weren't some lovey-dovey couple. They made each other better and stronger. He could play at being grossed out by their extended relationship, but he knew they were happy. Happier than Dean had been in as long as he could remember. Henry's eyes widened more than Sam thought was physically possible and Sam suddenly recalled the fact that Henry was from a very, very different time.

"Romantically?" Henry choked on the word a bit.

"It's actually pretty common now," Sam said, trying to figure out how to explain fifty years of evolved social norms in a way that Henry could understand. "Men and men. I mean, there are debates and stuff. But, I mean, the thing is, Cas isn't even technically a man. I mean, he looks like a man, but angels are genderless!" If anything Henry looked more confused and Sam made a frustrated noise. He looked down.

"I have never seen Dean happier than when he is with Cas," Sam said, as a last resort. It was all he could do to explain now. Henry hadn't seen them together. He had never been exposed to that lighter side of Dean, that side that only came out when Cas was around.

"Dean is romantically involved with an angel?" Henry asked. He sat down halfway through his question in a chair nearby. At least he didn't comment on the fact that the angel was a man, Sam thought.

"It happened while Dean and Cas were stuck in Purgatory," Sam said, then thought back. "Did you know that Dean was in purgatory?" Henry shook his head. He looked overwhelmed, which Sam thought was to be expected. He told Henry about the rest of the events with Cas that day in terms as simple as possible, and at the end, Henry actually looked like he was grateful to understand a bit more.

"So, he is angry at me, but not all at me," Henry said. It wasn't a question. "He lost someone close to him. Was hurt by someone he cared about deeply." Sam's coughing cut off any further conversation. His body shook as he coughed and coughed into a tissue and before too long, Henry had tentatively walked forward and put a hand on Sam's shoulder. The strength there was reassuring and Sam found himself unduly grateful for it.

"You should rest," Henry said once Sam had stopped and another tissue was thrown in the trash. Henry's hand still rested on Sam's shoulder but he reached the other hand out to Sam to help pull him back up to a full standing position. Henry helped Sam out of the room and down the hallway, almost falling over at the huge weight Sam put on him with his body. He was nowhere near Sam's size and was struggling. He eventually got his youngest grandson into bed and he wiped his forehead in exhaustion.

He looked at Sam's sleeping form with tenderness. He really did love both of the brothers. They were his grandchildren, his blood, and he found he couldn't help but worry about them when they were hunting, though he knew they could take care of themselves. Sam's sickness was worrying him even more, and now he had Dean to worry about. Dean and Cas. He couldn't quite process the whole idea of it, but the way Sam spoke about them, he found he didn't find it disturbing. He was just upset that Dean had been hurt so badly. He knew what it felt like to be ripped away from someone you cared about.

"Sleep well, Sam," Henry said, looking at him once more before leaving the room and closing the door behind him. He walked down the hall silently into his own room and fell asleep instantly. He didn't even notice Dean, standing just outside where Henry and Sam had been talking, still looking broken, but maybe a little better than before.