It was no secret to most, and to Dean and Sam least of all that John Winchester would never be "father of the year". Too many times he came home from a hunt and drowned himself in alcohol; too many times he lashed out in his anger, sometimes scaring Sam enough to send him running into the bathroom of whatever underbelly motel they were camped out in, locking himself away for hours until the maelstrom blew over. He never hit them—he knew better. But the cold, cursory silences were sometimes worse. Sometimes Sam thought his dad blamed him for what had happened the night his nursery burned. Sometimes Dean thought his dad only kept him around so someone could keep an eye on Sam.
It was never easy.
But sometimes, it was all right.
Because there were glimmers in the treacherous life of a hunter that made the Winchesters a family again. Five in particular that made John Winchester an excellent father.
This is how he'll be remembered.
This is how he lives on.
1-South Dakota, 1987.
Sammy was four, and fierce, and adventurous. He was also quiet and observant, copying Dean's every move. And slowly, beginning to understand how the world worked. He began to notice when John would come home from a hunt, broken, battered, staining everything with blood and grim regret.
So he would follow John around whenever he got home, gripping his father's pantleg, talking nonstop. Bobby always said Sam could've talked John out of a hunt. And if it was possible, Sam might've willed himself to do it, because the day John was set to go after a Poltergeist in Anaheim, Sam came down with a violent stomach bug that had him throwing up constantly for three hours straight. Dean stayed with him, never once budging from Sammy's side, until he was delirious himself with exhaustion and Bobby bundled him up in a blanket and carried him upstairs.
Restless and feverish and unable to sleep was how John found Sam curled on the bathroom floor when he returned from a run for Sprite and saltine crackers. He didn't even bother to check his watch, knowing he should've left for the hunt hours ago. John dumped the groceries on the counter, turned off his cell phone, and scooped Sam into his arms. When Sam's hands locked in an embrace around his neck, John carried him out into the middle of Bobby's salvage yard and showed him all of the stars.
They sat out there in the flatbed of a pickup truck all night, Sam never running out of questions, John never failing to give answers. He stroked Sam's sweaty bangs off of his forehead and for a few hours they were just normal.
Bobby found them there hours after dawn, John propped up with his back against the cab of the truck, his arms tight around Sammy. Sammy's head was tilted back on his father's shoulder, both of his small legs wrapped around one of John's. It was a smell of open air and treated leather that wrapped around them, and as Bobby watched John rocked his chin down to rest on Sam's shoulder, breathings softly against his neck. Bobby let them be.
2-Maine, 1990.
They were supposed to be hunting a Black Dog that had been terrorizing a local town; they had everything settled, even a babysitter for Sam for the weekend so he would be out of harm's way. But when they woke up the morning after rolling into town, the ground outside their cabin high in the woods was blanketed with snow, too deep for the low-slung Impala to ford through. Sam and Dean braced themselves for the fallout of their father's frustration, and scampered to obey when John told them to go outside and unload their duffle bags from the car.
They were stunned when, not five minutes later, a snowball pelted Dean in the back of the head.
It was full-on Winchester warfare, tall, stocky Dean and small, gangly Sam against their well-seasoned father. For two hours they rained merciless barrages of snowballs against one another, and laughed for the first time since nobody-knew-when. Up in the hills with just the trees around them, no one would ever really know that John Winchester still had it in him to smile that way. He didn't berate them for dripping puddles on the cabin floor when they finally went back inside. And when he magically produced three packets of hot chocolate from his jacket pocket, even Dean, eleven years old and already a man, let out a whoop of glee.
They drank hot chocolate huddled around the fireplace at the back of the cabin, and when the boys fell asleep, Sam curled up with his head on Dean's leg and Dean's arm protective around his little brother's shoulders, John draped the only blanket off the bed around both of them, and sat guard all night, watching them with that same soft smile on his face growing sadder by the hour.
3-Iowa, 1996.
John went away for a hunt on his own for the first time in months, leaving Dean and Sam alone with the Impala and instructions to stay inside and keep the doors locked. John had the struggling, sneaking suspicion that something was after his sons, and he didn't want them getting caught with their armor off when he couldn't be there to protect them.
The job was a simple salt-and-burn two states over and was finished much quicker than John had expected. He drove back to Iowa, stumbled wearily into the motel room and realized that both boys were missing, and the Impala as well. He searched for them furiously, tearing apart every corner of the town and beyond.
And that was how he found them; he pulled up outside a flattened cornfield lined with trees and saw the unmistakable burst of artificial light that could only be associated with fireworks. John pulled the keys from the truck's ignition and had his hand on the door, the anger brewing inside of him like a fire all its own, when he saw Sam run beneath the blast of a firework and throw up his arms in a display of so much childlike innocence and happiness that it seemed to freeze time.
John wasn't really aware of the tears carving silently down his creased, sun-worn cheeks. He sat back against the seat and watched as Sam turned to meet Dean's eyes, and Dean's smile was visible even from this much of a distance. Then he darted forward, grabbed Sam by the shoulder and gave him a playful shove. They dissolved into a wrestling match over Dean's lighter, it seemed, and John eventually started the truck again, and pulled away quietly onto the road.
It wasn't until the next fourth of July, when Dean woke up to find a note from his father telling him to watch himself and not burn down any trees, that Dean even had an inkling this John had ever known what they'd been up to that night.
4-Oregon, 2003.
John knew it was a bad idea to follow Sam when he went on a skiing trip with a group of his classmates from Stanford. It was the middle of Sophomore year and Sam was trying to impress a cute girl, blonde, blue-eyed, button nose. When John first saw her from a distance, he thought of Mary. It was pure dedication and vigilance that had him following a caravan of teenagers all the way from California to the ski slopes in Oregon.
He wandered the woods at the base of the hills for hours, hands in his pockets, blowing out breaths of vaporous steam into the frigid air. The delighted laughter and playful jeers of young adults enjoying a weekend off curled John's lips with a morose smile. That Sam was one of those laughing the loudest—and he knew that laugh like he knew his own breathing, the easy-going sound that came not from Sam's throat but from his heart and his soul and his gut—made the day seem somehow brighter.
The snow crunched beneath his boots; it was perfect. It was still and cold. It made John think of a winter day in Maine and brought a profound ache to his gut. He wanted to find Sam, to catch him alone and apologize for everything. Not just for harsh words but for hiding, and maybe even for following him. He wandered between the trees until nearly sunset, thinking it all through, and that was when he heard the screams.
Half a lifetime as a hunter didn't afford John the luxury of wondering if he'd misheard that pure, piercing note of fear. He was already running when he heard another scream, this one fluting and broken and horrified, "Sam!"
John feet nearly kicked out from under him as he flew down a rolling slope, tearing past a group of kids who were also running; following a wild, zig-zagged pattern of ski-marks toward the lake off the bottom of the hill. A plastic orange netting around it had been ripped through and a yawning black hole in the ice seemed to melt itself into John's chest.
John didn't pause to think, shucking off his coat as he went. He saw that jagged hole in the ice and went straight for it, diving into water so cold it was like holding a torch against his skin. Holding his breath until his cheeks hurt, John peeled his eyes open in murky semidarkness and saw blood filling the water.
He pulled his head up just as the first kid reached the shore. "Call nine-one-one!" He sucked in a breath and dove again.
It was hard to see, harder to think with the cold gnawing into his limbs, crushing his chest. John peered through the water, swirling in frantic circles, and finally saw a dark lump bumping against the underside of the ice feet away.
He kicked out for it, following a stream of blood until he could grab his youngest son's arm and roll him over in the water. Sam's eyes were closed, face far too pale, a gash of impressive size above his eyebrow spilling more blood into the water. John half-pushed, half-dragged Sam back toward the hole their bodies had created in the ice; he broke the surface with an almighty gasp, turning back for Sam, pulling his head clear of the water and gripping the sides of Sam's neck. His head rolled dazedly, lips a ghastly cyanic blue, eyes closed.
"No, no, no, Sammy." John wrapped an arm around Sam's chest and used the other to pull himself onto the ice. Spreading out his weight, he dragged himself back toward shore foot by foot, pulling Sam's dead weight along, out of the water, onto the ice and finally, to solid ground.
John collapsed on the snow, grabbing his jacket and wrapping Sam up in it, desperately searching for a pulse beneath the skin. It was there, frantic and thready and fading. John laid Sam out on his back, grabbed Sam's knees and slowly but firmly pushed his legs up toward his chest. It took ten tries with John's grip slipping as the cold set in, rattling his fingers, but finally Sam vomited up lakewater in a viral spew and rolled onto one side, gasping and choking.
"Easy, easy." John crawled back to Sam's head, pulling the boy awkwardly into his lap, Sam's back resting against John's elbow, John's arm across Sam's chest. Even at twenty years old, and easily six-foot-four with his soaked clothes weighing him down, Sam seemed to fit into John's embrace as he rearranged his son's gangly limbs and held him tightly. "I gotcha, boy, I gotcha."
Sam's eyes flickered dizzily open, and he squinted. "Dad?"
John's throat closed with a fierce love that made him feel like he was the one who'd almost drowned. "I'm not your dad, Sam. You went through the ice, cut your head real bad." He rested his hand on Sam's cold, wet cheek. "You're gonna be just fine."
Sam turned his face into John's chest, too weak to care if a stranger was holding him or not, it seemed. John pulled Sam up close to him, clutching his son almost frantically to his chest, burying his face in Sam's soaking chestnut hair.
"My God, I almost lost you. I almost lost you again." John muttered, rubbing steady circles of warmth into Sam's cheek. Sam sighed, his hitching breaths easing even in a state of semi-consciousness. For the first time in years, a feeling of affection flowed between them unhindered, even if Sam wasn't really aware of his surroundings, much less of whose arms he was in, or why.
Like sitting under the stars all night. Like hot chocolate beside a fire. Like fireworks under open skies. John never wanted the moment to end.
He was still sitting there when the kids returned, the girl among them, dropping to her knees and grabbing Sam's hand, lying limp on his chest. "Is he—?"
"He'll make it." John said; and it was true, Sam's color was coming back, that heavy leather coat warming him down to the inside. "Get him up to the lodge and into some dry clothes. Before the medics get here." When no one moved, John's composure broke. "Now!" He barked, and a couple of the kids scrambled to obey, grabbing Sam under his armpits and by his legs. Sam stirred as he was slid away from his father's embrace, reaching out for John with a fragile whisper of, "Dad, no." John reached for Sam as well, pure instinct, but let his fingers slide through Sam's when the other boys carried him away.
It was just John and the girl, then, and she looked cold and scared. But she picked up the jacket that had fallen off of Sam, and wrapped it around John's shoulders. "Are you his father?"
John shook his head, staring across the lake. "I wish I could be."
The girl pressed her lips together and offered him her hand. "I'm Jessica. Jessica Moore. Thank you, for saving his life. That was so brave."
"Stay with him, Jessica Moore." John said, getting unsteadily to his feet. "And for what it's worth," He leaned in close to add in her ear, "He likes you."
It was water and tears that froze on John Winchester's cheeks as he drove away from Oregon. He never knew that he was the first person Sam asked for when he woke in the hospital the next day, and that Sam always believed the whole incident was just an illusion of his sapped lucidity.
5-South Dakota, 2006.
John Winchester died so that Dean could live and Sam would never be alone.
And there was nothing more to be said.
They burned him on a funeral pyre of angry words and unshed tears, things unspoken and broken, scattered possibilities of dreams.
They burned him wrapped in linen ribbons made of heartbreak, and the five times he let them go, let them grow up and at the same time, tried to hold them so that they would never be in danger of death's cold grip.
Of course, it wasn't perfect. It never could be.
But five times in a lifetime, John Winchester was their hero.