Disclaimer: I don't own Supernatural.

His dad only told stories about his mom when he had too much to drink and his breath reeked of alcohol and cigarettes, courtesy of the closest bar that cut him off when the bartender realized he was already too far gone and had no plans of stopping. Dean had been the one to take that call. He'd been the one who had to walk to town and back in the rain, spending half the trip with his dad's arm over his shoulder and his unsteady steps threatening to knock him over.

Sam got to stay behind (unwillingly) in a dry motel room that was about as warm as they could hope for given the freezing rain and watched the local news through a veil of static on a little, boxy TV as he waited, his eyes darting to the corners of the room at the slightest illusion of movement. The words from his father's journal that he read mere months ago still haunted him, both while awake and asleep.

They hunted to save people, but mostly to find whatever it was that killed his mother in the middle of an autumn night. But it was spring now, and Sam was nine and deemed old enough to be left behind again and again with boxes of macaroni and cheese, cans of soup, and a stash of money hidden with a list of phone numbers to call.

Just in case.

In case Dad and Dean didn't make it back. In case they couldn't make it back because they needed help. In case Sam needed help because they weren't there to provide it.

In case Sam decided to run and leave behind the world of monsters and nightmares and pretend it never existed, but he had nowhere to run.

So, he stared at the TV and listened to the local news that he couldn't bring himself to care about, not when they'd be moving again soon enough. Every few seconds, he glanced at the door, until Dean finally pushed it open, lugged their half-conscious father into the room, and helped him fall onto his bed without a trace of grace in his movements.

Dean shucked out of his soaked outer layers of clothes and grabbed a new set to replace the rest before he headed into the bathroom to change.

Sam watched his dad try to maneuver himself on the bed. He made it to a sitting position and managed to scoot his back to the headboard of the bed without falling off. Sam wouldn't have been able to help him had he fallen, not unless he wanted to be crushed.

Then, Dean would have twice the burdens to take care of.

When Dean came out of the bathroom, he pulled their dad's shoes off along with his coat, but stopped there.

"The bed's already soaked," Dean answered without Sam asking. "I wouldn't be able to get him to cooperate enough to get dry clothes on, and the bed would still be wet anyway. No matter what I do, he's not gonna be very comfortable."

"I'm sorry," Sam said.

"For what?"

Sam shrugged.

Dean had a few of the towels from the bathroom and tried to dry their dad off despite his comments that he would be uncomfortable no matter what. He still did his best to make sure he would be as comfortable as Dean could get him. John batted his hands away, taking the towel.

"I can do it," he said. "I didn't have that much to drink."

Just enough for the bartender to cut him off and to make Dean walk through the rain to bring him home, Sam thought.

"It's fine to need help," Dean said.

John huffed out a laugh and shook his head. "You sound just like your mother," he said. The moment of mirth was replaced by lines of sadness and a deep sorrow in his eyes. "I never wanted this life for you boys, but there are some things that, once you see them, they change you. And you can never go back to the person you used to be."

Sam sat against the headboard of the opposite bed, silently watching his father and brother with the blankets pulled around him. No matter how warm the day was, the rain always made it feel frigid.

He understood his father's words. After learning about the supernatural, he couldn't go back to the days before he learned about the things that exist that should just be imaginary nightmares. He couldn't stop seeing monsters in every corner of his life, barely out of his line of sight, but waiting for their chance to strike.

"I still see her," John said, his words slurring as he slumped down until he was nearly lying flat. "The way she was on that night. She had on her favorite, white nightgown. White is always considered a symbol of innocence, and she was. She was innocent. She didn't deserve to go out like that. And so young."

Dean tried to pull the blankets from under their dad and cover him with them. "You should go to sleep, Dad," he said, his voice soft. "Your head is going to hurt in the morning."

"She was… she was on the ceiling," John said, the walls he normally kept around his emotions brought down by inebriation. "She was burning right above Sammy. I got him out. Handed him off to you. And I knew it was useless, but I tried getting her out. The fire was too fast."

John's eyes started closing and his words became more and more mumbled. "There wasn't anything left," he said, drifting into a deep sleep.

Dean took the towels from John's limp hands and tossed them to the floor with the rest of the wet and dirty clothing, his expression so blank that Sam couldn't tell what he felt at all. Sam didn't know if he heard how their mother died before (aside from their old excuse of 'car accident'), if maybe it became easier to hear over the years, but it was the first time John told the story with him present. Since Sam knew about the supernatural now, he figured that John no longer felt the need to hold his tongue.

At six months old, Sam hadn't been able to understand what was going on around him or remember his mother's death, but he wanted to deny his father's words and what they could mean. Why above his crib? What killed her, and why was it there in the first place?

Why just her?

Sam sunk back down in the bed, his head resting on a pillow that might have been soft once and the blankets pulled up as high as he could manage. Before, he only felt fear in the darkness and in silence. Now, he felt guilt, too. He couldn't have possibly killed his mother at six months old, but she died in his room above his crib.

And why? The word echoed in his mind. Why? Why? Why?

Unshed tears burned at the back of his eyes, and he squeezed them shut before they could escape, trying to calm himself by listening to the almost silent footsteps of Dean as he went through his routine of getting ready for bed. The light being turned off was a small mercy. If the tears fell, at least they wouldn't be seen.

The bed sunk down as Dean settled onto his own side. He still smelled like the rain and remnants of the low class bar he had to drag their father out of. Sam wouldn't say it aloud, but having Dean so close made him feel safe, even more so after he confirmed that everything Sam read in John's journal was true.

Dean had been on hunts. He had killed bad things before. If anything came for them in the middle of the night, he would kill that, too.

"You shouldn't have had to hear that, Sammy," he whispered.

Sam didn't have a response to that, and he didn't trust his voice not to break if he said more than one syllable at a time. So, he settled with asking, "Is it true?"

"I don't know. I was young, and I didn't even go into your nursery that night."

"Dean…"

He heard Dean's sigh, could imagine the indecision on his face as he decided how much to tell Sam after being called out on his lie. Living in close quarters meant that Sam knew Dean better than anyone, and vice versa. He could tell when Dean wasn't telling him the entire truth, even if it wasn't an outright lie.

"The fire was in your nursery. It started there, and Dad said that the official cause was faulty wiring."

"I'm sorry," Sam said, his voice cracking on the 'sorry' and almost freeing the tears he was trying so hard to hold back.

Dean's hand snaked over to rest on his shoulder. "You don't have anything to be sorry for, Sammy, okay?" he said. "You were just a baby, and you know we have the worst luck. Now, get some sleep. Everything will be better in the morning. I promise."

Sam curled in on himself as much as he could. Dean told him the same thing after he read their dad's journal, that everything would be better in the morning.

But it wasn't. In the morning, the scary things were still real and his world turned into something straight out of nightmares. The foundation of facts that he built his life on crumbled apart once he saw that they were lies.

He wouldn't call Dean out on that this time. Instead, he tried to settle his mind and fall asleep, hoping for nothingness instead of a nightmare.

He dreamed of fire.

Author's Note: I was actually working on the latest chapter of Becoming Human when this idea struck me, and I just had to write it out. I think that the months after reading John's journal would've been hard on them all.

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