A/N: So, this started with the rescue scene from the end popping into my head one day, and I just sort of worked backward from there until there was a story to go with it. I feel like some of my recent stuff has been rough on John, which I never really set out to do. I do love John Winchester, and yet he frustrates me to no end. The man loves his boys so much, he just...he just demonstrates that colossally badly sometimes. Anyway, I thought it felt like time to look at the loving father side of the man who gets typecast as a drill sergeant. This is what happened. Hope you like it.

With an inhuman roar of anger, John Winchester kicked the door for a third time, rattling it on its hinges. It refused to budge, and he kicked again and again. How the hell had this happened? How could he have let things get this royally screwed up? With another roar, he flung himself against the door, and it shook, but held firm. He stepped back to catch his breath, and logic began to trickle in. The door was locked, it was sturdy, and this was getting nowhere. He had an axe in the car. He hated to take the time to get it, but there was no alternative. Sam was on the other side of that door. John wasn't going to fail him again.

Two Days Ago…

"Dad, come on!" Sam begged. "It's one hunt! I'll…I'll do twice the training next week."

John sighed. "Sam…"

"Dad, this thing is like half my grade. Please?"

Given the increasing amount of arguments he and Sam had been having, John appreciated that the tone of this one was staying fairly civil. That, more than anything, checked his gut reaction to tell Sam to stop whining and gear up for the hunt. He took in a breath and thought back over what Sam was saying. "Half your grade, huh?"

"It's really important," Sam added hopefully, sensing that John was caving.

Inwardly, John shook his head. Since when should a father need persuading to let his son do his homework? Since last week, a little voice in his head taunted. Or the one before that. Or… Okay, fine. He apologized for the millionth time to Mary for letting her boys' lives get so screwed up. "Alright. You can stay."

"Really?" Sam asked, brightening.

"Really?" echoed Dean, who'd been cleaning a shotgun and staying out of the argument until it was time for him to step in and break it up.

"On one condition," John added. "You will be at school, at the library, or here. You'll be back in this motel room before dark every night."

"Yes, sir," Sam said quickly.

"Dad," Dean began.

"I'll be fine, Dean," Sam interrupted. "I can take of myself."

"Your brother's sixteen, Dean," John said. "Plenty old enough to handle a weekend alone." In theory, anyway. Truthfully, John hated the idea of leaving Sam alone just as much as Dean. John would feel better if Sam was where he could see him, but Sam had a point. He knew what to do to take care of himself, and maybe if John showed some trust in his youngest son, it would ease some of this tension that was so often between them lately. Besides, they had tracked the shifter to the next town over—Sam should be perfectly fine here.

John could tell Dean wanted to argue, but he didn't. They packed up, and he left Dean to have a quiet conversation with his brother, no doubt detailing every safety measure he should be taking and then some. He smiled a little at the irritated look on Sam's face that told him he was right. "Take care of yourself, Sammy," John said, placing a hand on his shoulder and trying not to look as worried as he felt. "We'll call and check in every few hours, okay?"

"Alright. You guys be careful too," Sam said.

John squeezed his shoulder and joined Dean in the car.

They did call in every couple of hours—at Sam's lunch break, during his study hall and later that afternoon at the library, and he dutifully answered on the second ring, assured them he was fine, and asked them to please not call him at the library anymore because the librarian was giving him the evil eye and threatening to kick him out. John smiled a little at that. At least Sam's homework seemed to be going better than their hunt. They'd picked up the shifter's trail all right, and even found its lair, but it obviously hadn't been lived in for several days. John sighed and Dean grumbled and they got ready to start from scratch again.

"Hey, Sam," John greeted him that evening.

"I'm really fine, Dad," Sam sighed. "You're not going to be calling every three hours after I go to bed, are you?"

Okay, so maybe they were checking in a little too frequently. "No, you can sleep in peace. I need you to help me out with some research first, son."

He heard Sam sigh a little more deeply, but all he said was 'What do you need?"

"Dean and I are hitting the morgue and the police station—I need you to check the papers and see if there's any sign the shifter's moved on from Clarkton."

"It's not there anymore?"

"Doesn't look like it."

"Okay, I'll go to the library and check it out in the morning."

"We really need this now, Sam. The trail's already getting cold."

In the beat of silence that followed, John could practically hear Sam rolling his eyes. "You know what time it is, right? You told me literally twelve hours ago not to go out after dark."

Oh sure, now the kid decided to obey. John exhaled, rubbing the bridge of his nose. "Sam, this is important. Take the bus, stay in well-lit streets, you'll be fine. The clock is ticking on this one."

"Okay, fine," Sam groaned. "I'll go back. I'll call you when I find something."

"Good. Thanks."

"Yeah, whatever." Click.

"Kid's a freakin' ray of sunshine," John muttered.

"Dad, maybe he should just go in the morning," Dean said, not looking away from adjusting his tie in the mirror. "It's his first time on his own—he should just stay in at night."

"He'll be fine," John argued. "Time he learned to take care of himself without you hanging over him all the time," he snapped, more harshly than he meant to.

"Yes sir," Dean answered coldly.

Great, John. Piss off both your kids in one night. This hunt was going just great.

Dean turned up nothing at the morgue, and John had equally as little luck with the cops. They'd only had time to tell each other as much when the phone rang.

"So, it looks like since the first two kills, the shifter hasn't been in Clarkton at all," Sam reported.

"What?"

"It moved on. The weird thing is, I can't tell where. Two similar kills popped up in Fitchburg and in Red Valley at pretty much the same time."

John took in a slow breath, trying to gather his patience. "There's just one shifter, Sam. From here, those towns are in completely opposite directions."

"Yeah. I know. I'm just telling you what I found," Sam huffed.

"Right. Great. You salt the doors and windows and put up the wards?"

"I'm still on the bus. I'll do it when I get home," Sam replied, just short of snapping. He sounded tired and exasperated, and John took another breath to stop himself replying in kind. He was supposed to be showing Sam that he trusted him. He could back off.

"Right. Well, be careful. We'll call you in the morning," he said, softening his tone.

"Sure. 'Night." Click.

Dean was in better spirits by the time they got back from the bar, having cleaned up nicely at the pool table. "We checking in on Sam before we turn in?" he asked, tossing his cash down on the counter top.

"It's two in the morning," John replied, stifling a yawn. He was really getting too old for this late-night bar business.

"So, we'll wake him up."

"Dean," John sighed. "Sam needs to know we trust him on his own."

"Yeah, well, I don't trust him on his own."

John raised an eyebrow at that.

"I mean, yeah, he can take care of himself, but c'mon, Dad, he's still just a kid. I'd just feel better if we were looking out for him." Dean paused in taking off his boots. "Besides, something feels weird about this one. I just wanna make sure he's okay."

Dean had taken the words right out of John's mouth. He'd been feeling uneasy since they got off the phone with Sam, and he'd been telling himself it was just because he was over-protective. If Dean was feeling it too…Then again, the only person who could possibly be more protective of the kid than John was his big brother. "He'll be fine," he said firmly, to himself and to his son. "We'll call him in the morning."

"Dad."

"Nnh," John grunted into his pillow.

"Dad, get up. Sam's not answering the phone."

That got him up. "What?"

Dean was sitting up on the bed across from him, worry creasing his forehead as he stared at the phone in his hand. "I've called him twice now and it just rings until it goes to voicemail."

A sickening weight settled into John's stomach. There was a myriad of legitimate reasons Sam wouldn't be answering the phone—maybe he was asleep, or in the bathroom, or forgot his phone on the bus—and Sam knew better than each and every one of them. This was bad. "Pack it up," John said, reaching for his boots. "We're heading back."

Dean didn't argue. He offered a few suggestions for what could be wrong with Sam's phone in an attempt to make them both feel better, but it didn't work. The drive that took two hours yesterday took one and fifteen today.

John pulled up outside their room, and for the moment, everything looked fine. He had a moment of uncertainty where he thought maybe they were both majorly overreacting to a dead battery or a deeply sleeping teenager, but he shook it off. He was a father and a hunter, and his instincts were telling him he was right.

He knocked more out of habit than anything, and turned the handle without waiting for an answer. It wasn't locked.

"Oh no," Dean breathed beside him. The room was in shambles. One of the curtains was ripped half-off the window, the table was overturned, a chair was broken, and broken dishes, torn papers and odds and ends littered the floor.

"Outside," he barked at Dean. "See what you can find."

He moved forward as Dean rushed back out. The room key was on the floor by the door. There was no salt. It looked like Sam had been jumped on his way back into the room—he wouldn't have had time to get the wards set up, and John cursed himself for telling Sam to go back out after dark. He found Sam's cell phone on the floor under his bed, along with a blood-stained silver knife.

"It was the shifter," Dean growled, appearing in the door again. In one hand, he held Sam's backpack. "Found this out in the parking lot. Next to a bloody pile of goo and an ear."

"Silver knife," John said, picking it up out of a glob of slimy skin. "Sammy got a few hits in, anyway."

"What the hell, Dad!? What was it doing back here?" Dean demanded.

John shook his head, turning toward the bathroom. The light was on. He swallowed hard at what greeted him there. One corner of the sink was caked with dried blood, as was an uncomfortably large spot on the floor beneath it. There was a bloody smudge of fingerprints on the mirror, next to a photograph and a note. John grabbed them as Dean entered behind him.

"Sammy," Dean gasped.

John looked down at the note in his hand. You took my son, it read. So I took yours. John stared at the photograph for a long minute before he recognized a shifter he'd killed months ago in San Antonio.

"Dad, what—" Dean's voice sounded tight. John thrust the papers at him. "Son of a—! This is some revenge crap for that shifter in Texas?" His fist tightened around the papers, crumpling them. "This is your fault," he said coldly. "You should never have let him stay here alone!"

"I know," John said. Dean deflated when he didn't get an argument. "I know," he said again, shaking his head. He cleared his throat. "You can yell at me after we get him back. Because we are getting him back."

Dean nodded grimly. He hesitated. "You don't think he's…"

"No," John said firmly. "He wouldn't have taken him if he killed him. He's going to keep him alive for a while, make him suffer."

"Why?"

"Because he wants to make me suffer." That much, as a father, John could understand, though it wouldn't stop him from killing this thing slowly and painfully when he found it. "Let's get to work."

The shifter hadn't been too worried with covering its tracks on the way out—to a point, anyway. That it had been there and taken Sam was obvious. It had left in a car and hadn't even tried to hide the plates from the motel security camera. It obviously wanted them to find Sam…just not any time soon. They tracked the car to a crossroads outside of town where they found it abandoned on the side of the road with signs of two cars leaving the scene, going in opposite directions.

"Maybe Sam was right. There are two of them," Dean said.

It made sense. That explained the identical killings in two places at once, and how the shifter moved faster than they'd been able to follow. They'd been following two of them pretending to be one. John suspected that the entire thing had been a setup. As to why two shifters would be working together…well, if the one he'd killed had a father, it probably had a mother too. "We'll track 'em both," John decided. "Split up if we have to." He hated splitting up with his boys on a hunt, but time was precious. Just because they wanted him to find Sam didn't mean they wanted him to find him alive, and if they both took off investigating one way while Sam was dying in the other…

It wasn't too much work to find footage from the traffic camera. An hour later John was headed south toward the Gulf and Dean was going west.

It was late afternoon by the time John pulled into town. His first stop was the local P.D.—claiming to be tracking a suspect from the county over, he soon found evidence that the shifter had been here. A series of murders that stopped six days ago—no doubt when it had moved on to jump around closer to them before taking Sam. None since then, but enough before to make the possibility that this was home base a good one. Question was, if this was home, were they both here? A quick check-in with Dean revealed the same thing on his end. The shifters were trying hard to keep them guessing.

He decided to focus his search around the port. Most of the murders had been in the area, and a system of old shipping tunnels and sewers made it a good candidate. Trouble with shapeshifters though was the whole shape-shifting part. He had no idea what the thing looked like that he was hunting. He'd have to wait until dark to do his investigating—most of the shipping district was still active, and the explanations needed to get into every building would take too long. He found a motel, considered and discarded the idea of sleep, and set to studying the blueprints for the tunnels instead.

By the time John began his search, he'd narrowed the field of likely locations from the entire neighborhood to a single block. There were still a lot of buildings to search—only a few of them were obviously active enough to keep a monster from setting up shop downstairs.

It was almost three in the morning when John began his search of the last row of buildings. Sam had been missing for two nights now, and John was keeping up a steady stream of curses in his head for being so stupid and leaving his baby boy alone with a monster on the loose. What if he was too late? What if Sam wasn't even here? This could be another trap like all those other crime scenes had been—hell, Sam could be in another state while they had him nosing around in dusty old warehouses. Losing Mary had nearly killed him—he had no doubt whatsoever that he wouldn't survive having one of his boys taken from him too.

He jumped at a creak of footsteps and cursed at himself for getting too caught up in his thoughts. There'd be time for what-ifs later. He ducked into a nearby bathroom, letting out a tense breath when he saw it was just a janitor. Although…Given what he'd seen of the building so far, it didn't look like the man had put the mop he was carrying to much use. John stepped back into the hallway.

"Hey!" he barked.

The janitor spun around. Half-expecting an order to get out or a threat to call the cops, any doubts John had vanished when the man smiled. "Didn't take you as long as I thought it would," the shifter smirked.

"Where's my son?" John demanded.

"Not anywhere you're going to find him. Well," the shifter amended. "Not in time, anyway." With a snarl, John raised his gun. "Silver bullets, right? Go ahead. 'Cause it'll be so much easier to get me to tell you where he is after you kill me."

"Never said I was going to kill you," John said. "Not yet, anyway." Without another word he lowered the gun and fired, catching the shifter in the leg and enjoying the cry of pain. "Where is my son?" he growled.

"What makes you think he's even here?" the shifter grunted, picking himself up off the floor. "Just because I am? I'm not the only one whose son you killed, you know."

"Good thing I'm packing a lot of silver, then," John said coolly. He raised the gun again. "Where is he?"

The shifter smiled coldly. "If you're hell-bent on destroying my family, it's only fair that some of yours goes down with me. Little Sammy's running out of time." The shifter rose up with a roar, catching John in the side the head with the mop handle with a surprising amount of force and sending him staggering into the wall. By the time John got his feet again, a door was slamming on the other side of the room, the shifter having disappeared with an impressive amount of speed for a man who'd just been shot in the leg.

John crashed through the door and down the stairs after him, just noticing the pile of bloody goop at the bottom in time to jump over it. A silver bullet shone up out of the muck. Did shifters heal when they changed shape? Apparently not all the way—the shifter was ducking out of the other end of the room, looking completely different and making good time, but still limping.

"Kill the boy!" he heard the shifter yell. "The hunter's here! Do it now!"

With a growl, John put on a burst of speed. The shifter came into sight around a corner and John wasted no time. He raised the gun and caught the shifter in the back of the head, slowing his pace just enough to put a second shot into the corpse for good measure as he passed. He burst through the next door into a warehouse, surprised to find it seemingly empty, then hit the ground hard as something collided with his back. A fist pounded into the side of his head and black spots danced across his vision.

Pushing to his feet before his vision cleared all the way, John half-stumbled, half-ran at the fleeing shape in front of him. His eyes un-blurred just enough to see the woman—must be Mommy Shifter—before he plowed into her and took them both to the ground. She shrieked and squirmed underneath him, catching him in the ribs with one elbow and in the side of his already pounding head with the other. She rolled out from underneath him and sprang to her feet. John mirrored the move, blocking her path to the door. A long minute of silence passed, broken only by sharp breathing and the sound of the ocean outside as they sized each other up. John's head still throbbed, but his vision was clear. One side of the shifter's face oozed blood and peeling bits of skin from where he'd driven her into the ground.

"Where's my son?" John demanded.

She sneered and spat a glob of blood and what might have been a tooth onto the ground. "Not far," she allowed. "Not much longer left to live, but not far."

John snarled. Over the shifter's shoulder, he spotted a door on the other side of the warehouse, a large bar across the front. That had to be where she'd been heading—it was the only other door in the room. "If you hurt him…"

She laughed. "Oh, honey, of course we did. You really think you can just gut my son in some back alley and expect us to leave yours alone?"

With a growl, John lunged forward and took her to the ground again. Somewhere between her tackling him and him taking her down, he'd lost his gun. It lay on the floor about eight feet away, but he didn't need it—his rage and his fists would do just fine. The shifter struggled beneath him, screaming as John felt her cheek shift and snap beneath his fist. He let out a howl as she grabbed his arm and bit down hard, pulling a chunk of flesh away with her teeth.

She managed to find her feet again, but instead of escaping towards the door, she made for the nearest window. With a theatrical flourish, she pulled a key from her pocket and sent it flying out the window. She flashed a bloody smile at the sound of a small splash. It wasn't until she glanced at the door across the room that John understood the significance of the gesture—that had been the key to wherever they were keeping Sam. "What do you think?" she asked, breathing hard. "Want to take a bet on whether the cold or the water gets him first? Or maybe the blood loss," she continued, ducking as John swung at her again. "Although, the cold usually slows that kind of thing down, doesn't it?" She kicked out at his legs and he moved, catching her leg mid-kick with his own and sending her to floor again.

John knelt down, one knee on her chest, and pulled the silver knife from his boot. "Go ahead," she coughed. "I already won."

"Not yet, sweetheart," John replied. He stabbed the knife down into her shoulder just to hear her scream. Just imagining what they had done to his boy, he was more than willing to take the time to make this hurt, but everything was screaming at him that he didn't have that kind of time. "What I would give for the time to do this slowly," he told her, before pulling the knife out of her arm and plunging it into her chest.

He left the knife there, pinning her to floor, as he pushed himself to his feet. He groaned and headed for the barred door, scooping up his gun on the way. The bar came off without much difficulty, but the door behind it was locked. "Sam!" he yelled. "Sammy, can you hear me?" No response, but when he pressed his ear to the door he could hear the gentle lap of water. It must be some kind of dock for the building, and it was just the right time of night for the tide to be coming in. Oh, no…

Without any further thought, John kicked at the door. He raged and kicked, flinging himself against the wood, and though it rattled on its hinges, it stayed firm. He stood back and gasped for air, the pounding in his head picking up tempo. Okay, John, be smart about this. He took off at a dead run, resolutely not picturing Sammy drowning in that room and keeping his thoughts firmly on the ax in the trunk of the car.

He was back in two and half minutes and barely stopped for breath before he began hacking at the wood around the lock. He made quick work of it and kicked to dislodge the mechanism from the door. It fell into the room beyond with a clatter and John dropped the ax and pushed the door open.

It took his eyes some time to adjust to the darkness of the room as he scanned for his son. It was a docking area, mostly dry floor above water, but one side of the room was open to Gulf, with a large opening big enough for a good-sized boat and a ramp leading down into the sea. The water lapped up nearly to the top of the ramp, splashing around a dark shape about half-way down. It was a cage.

"Sam!" John rushed forward, splashing into the chilly water. Sam was curled up uncomfortably inside the metal bars that were too tight for his lanky frame. His wrists were lashed together and tied to the top of the cage, and his head hung down between his arms, about an inch above the slowly rising water. He was unconscious.

"Sammy," John breathed, reaching through the bars to cup the side of his face. His skin was pale and cold, but he was breathing. John felt the crackle of dried blood as his fingers brushed Sam's hair, and he reached for the back of his head. The hair there was sticky and matted with mostly-dried blood, and a sizeable lump rose beneath his fingers. He swallowed at the memory of blood on the bathroom sink and floor and wondered how much he had lost between here and there. Maybe the shifter was right about the cold water—he was bordering on hypothermic, but it might have saved his life.

John quickly withdrew his hand and felt around the edges of the cage until he found the lock. It wasn't a particularly impressive one—this was probably some kind of veterinary cage or something—and two whacks with the head of the ax had it snapping off into the water. He reached one arm inside the cage, supporting Sam as best he could in the small space, and sawed carefully at the ropes with his pocket knife. The rope snapped and Sam fell forward and hit the water. John pulled him out of the cage and up against his chest as Sam sputtered and coughed weakly.

"That's it, Sam, that's it," he encouraged, pulling him in closer and carrying him up out of the water. "Wake up for me, come on." He sat down on the dry floor and hugged the boy tightly to his chest. "Come on, son."

Sam coughed again and jerked and his eyes snapped open. They darted around the room in a panicked stare and he struggled weakly against the arms John wrapped around him. "No," he moaned. "No, stop it, please."

"Sam, it's okay, it's me," John said, throat tightening at the fear in his little boy's voice. He put a hand to the side of Sam's face, tilting it up gently to look at him. "I'm here, son. It's okay."

Sam's confused, frightened gaze locked onto John's, and his breath caught in his throat. "D—" Sam choked on a ragged breath. "Daddy?" he whispered, sounding hopeful and fearful and all of four years old.

John smiled and felt the first coil of tension unwinding from around his heart. "Hey, Sammy," he said warmly.

Sam tried to smile back and failed miserably. "Dad," he choked, and burst into tears.

"It's okay, Sammy," John whispered, blinking back tears of his own. "I've gotcha." He hugged Sam tighter and cradled a hand protectively around the back of his injured head, rocking him gently the way he hadn't in so many years. Sam sobbed into his shoulder, his hands fumbling at the folds in his jacket, seeking something to hold on to and latching on above his heart. "I gotcha."

They sat that way for several long minutes, and now that the immediate danger had passed, John savored the feel of his son alive in his arms. Sam's sobs quieted down and John started to shiver in his wet clothes, his concern ratcheting up again when he noticed Sam still wasn't. "Alright, Sammy," he said. "Let's get you to a hospital." Had it been just himself, John would have just taken care of it at the motel, but he wasn't going to take any chances this time. He'd already risked Sam enough this weekend.

Adjusting his grip, he stood, cradling Sam to his chest. Holding on to him carefully and ignoring the way his head continued to throb, he made his way out to the car. Driving Sam to the hospital at least eliminated the question about the dead bodies—he was going to have to think of something good to explain his condition on the way there.

He settled Sam down to lay across the front seat, flinching when he had to tug his hands gently off the front of his jacket. He went around the car to pull some warm, dry blankets from the trunk, wrapping them tightly around Sam and sliding behind the wheel. He propped Sam's head on his thigh and started to drive.

"'m sorry, Dad," Sam mumbled from his lap.

"For what?"

Sam clenched a fist in his father's wet jeans. "I let it get me. Should've…shoulda been more careful."

"It's not your fault, Sam," John replied, resting one hand carefully in his hair. Sam cracked an eye open at that, and John grimaced inwardly. If his son felt like he had to apologize for getting kidnapped, maybe it was time to reevaluate some of his training techniques. He brushed the hair from his face until he could meet the eye looking up at him. "This thing was a setup from the start, and they fooled all three of us. You did the best you could. You fought hard at that motel and you hung on until I could get to you." He ruffled the hair gently, mindful of the lump on the back of his head. "I'm proud of you, kiddo."

Sam stared up at him, gaze not quite as focused as it should be, but lucid enough that John could tell he was thinking over what he just heard. He blinked and almost smiled as his eyes drifted closed again. "Thanks, Dad," he whispered, tightening his grip on his jeans. The rest of the ride to the hospital was silent as Sam drifted back out again, and probably faster than was legal.

If you asked him what story he'd come up with to explain the state Sam was in (and his own bleeding head), John wouldn't have been able to say. All that clicked was that it worked and Sam was being taken care of. His nervous pacing had been interrupted at one point by a calm but insistent nurse who checked his head, declared him concussion-free, and gave him some pain pills that he pocketed for their first aid box. Sam's doctor came out not too much later to let him know they'd gotten his falling temperature stabilized.

"We're going to have to put in some stitches on the back of his head," she added.

John nodded. "Try not to cut too much of his hair off, would you?" he asked with a small smile. For all that he was always after Sam to cut that ridiculous mop of hair down to something more manageable, he knew the kid loved it.

The doctor smiled and nodded and went back to Sam.

Dean arrived just as the doctor returned with permission for him to go in and see Sam, which was just as well. If Dean had shown up any earlier, John didn't know if he'd be able to handle big brother's nerves on top of his own. "How is he?" Dean demanded.

"My other son," John replied to the doctor's questioning eyebrow. "Is Sam alright?"

"Sam's going to be fine," she assured them. "If you'll follow me." She led them through a pair of swinging doors towards Sam's room. "Between the blood loss and the concussion, he's not going to be feeling very well for the next couple of days. The concussion itself turned out to be less serious than we thought at first, but don't be alarmed if you're seeing some short-term memory loss, confusion and dizziness for another day or so. We should be able to let him go this evening, and I'll give you some instructions for keeping the concussion in check then. The abrasions on his wrists are going to be leaving some bruising, but they should heal up just fine, and we're getting him warmed back up now." They stopped outside of his room. "He's resting now, but you can come in and sit with him if you'd like."

John held out an arm to keep Dean from barreling into the room. "Is there anything else…?"

She smiled kindly, the understanding of one parent to another. "We checked him over very carefully, and aside from some minor bruising that's to be expected from being restrained, nothing else happened to him," she assured him.

"Thank you," John said sincerely.

She nodded. "Why don't you go on in? I'll come back and check on him later."

They pushed open the door, and John let Dean push in from of him with a muttered, "Sammy'. He hung back a step as Dean sank into a chair, taking it all in. Sam was still pale and layered in blankets, though more of his color had returned from when John last saw him. His wrists were bandaged and an IV needle poked out of each hand—one with warm saline and one topping off the lost blood. They'd cleaned his hair and the side of his face, and from what John could see, damage to the hairstyle was minimal. "Let him sleep, Dean," he said softly as Dean reached out a hand for his brother.

"What'd they do to him, Dad?" Dean asked hoarsely. John went over what he'd found and how he'd gotten Sam out. Dean's hand reached for Sam's automatically when he told him about the cage. "I should've been there," Dean said, rubbing Sam's hand with his thumb and probably not realizing he was doing it.

"There was no way to know, Dean," John told him. "We had to check them both."

"Yeah," Dean sighed, and John could hear the unspoken remorse.

"The important thing now is that he's home," John said, resting a hand on Dean's shoulder. He knew how seriously Dean took his role as protector, and tried to cut off any misplaced guilt before it started. This mess was his own fault and his alone. "And you can take care of him plenty when we get him back to the motel. You heard the doc—he's going to be pretty out of it for the next few days. You'll be sick of him by the time he's on his feet again," he teased, knowing there was a better chance of curing a werewolf.

"He does get pretty whiny when he's sick, doesn't he?" Dean said with a soft, fond laugh.

John took the seat next to him, and they sat and watched their boy.

John dozed off a couple of times in the chair, but he was awake when Sam started shifting in his sleep. "Sam?" he asked hopefully.

"Hey, Sammy, come on," Dean encouraged, rubbing his shoulder as he showed signs of waking. "Come back, buddy."

Sam wrinkled his nose and blinked blearily, taking several tries before he focused on his dad and brother. "Hey, Sammy," John said, smiling warmly.

"Welcome back, kiddo," Dean added. "How you feeling?"

Sam grunted.

"Sounds about right," John chuckled.

Sam turned his head, wincing at the motion. "Where are we?"

"In a hospital," Dean said. "You remember what happened?" he asked, a little more worriedly than he probably intended.

Sam's face scrunched up as he thought. "It was wet," he said at last. "Why does my head hurt?"

"You've got a concussion, son," John told him, resting a hand softly on his head. "Do you remember the shifter? He banged you up pretty good."

"The shifter wasn't in Clarkton," Sam said. His eyes went wide suddenly and he sat up, grabbing at John's arm. "Dad! He was in the motel! He…ah!" He lay back down quickly, wincing and shutting his eyes against the sudden change in volume and altitude.

Dean moved quickly behind John and then his arm shot out with an emesis basin just as Sam turned and vomited over the side of the bed. "Ssh, take it easy, Sammy," Dean soothed, stepping closer to rub circles on Sam's back. "Don't worry about the shifter—it's all okay now. Just breathe, kiddo," he continued.

Sam heaved a little longer then flopped back down onto his pillow, exhausted. John pulled a bandana out of his pocket and handed it to Dean, who carefully wiped the stray flecks of vomit from the sides of Sam's mouth and set the basin aside. "Y'alright?" Dean asked. "You want a drink?" Sam nodded miserably. Dean glanced around the room, then carded a gentle hand through Sam's hair. "Be right back," he said.

John sat down again, back on eye-level with Sam. Sam blinked tiredly at him. "Y'okay, Dad?" he asked, eyes flicking up to the bandage on the side of John's head.

"Shifter got in a good hit before it went down, but I'm fine," John assured him. "Right now, I'm more worried about you. You scared me, kiddo," he admitted.

Sam sniffed. "Scared me too," he mumbled, eyes drifting shut again. He wrinkled his forehead. "Why's my head hurt?"

John smiled sadly. "Don't worry about it, son." He reached out and brushed Sam's hair out of his face. His hand lingered, then kept stroking the blood-free locks. "Just get some rest. You'll feel better after you sleep."

Sam hummed a little and shifted back into his pillow. John kept stroking his hair as his breathing evened out. "Hey, Dad?" Sam said softly, when John thought he'd fallen asleep. He shifted his head to lean into John's hand. "Thanks for finding me in time," he whispered.

John swallowed down a lump in his throat. Sam's memory had already proven itself a little shaky right now, and John didn't know how much of the whole incident he would end up remembering, but he was glad beyond words that Sam had remembered that. "I always will, Sammy," he promised. "I always will."