Chapter 1 – Now I Lay Me Down To Sleep.

Then there was the hospital all bright and white. Too bright and white. Doctors and nurses and a chaplain. Then social workers. He needed to be placed. Poor boy, mentions of PTSD. Hushed words. No family to speak of. How horrible. Animal attack.

None of it made sense to Ben. Well, except that his mom was dead. That was clear.

Psychiatrists with gentle, simulated concern that was so obvious it made Ben want to hurl.

The hospital became a psych unit in the hospital. Ben didn't feel crazy, but according to the doctors he was "at risk". At risk for what? Ben didn't know. It made no sense to him. Then again, maybe he was crazy because there had been something in his house. Could he have imagined it? His mom always said he was an imaginative kid. Imaginative or no, Ben didn't think he could imagine that hideous abomination he had seen.

He decided not to mention it to anyone. If they thought he was crazy now, how would they treat him when he told them there was a monster in his house? A naked, twisted black scaly form that still haunted him.

Somehow though, the crazy must have leaked out somewhere because despite his best efforts, it appeared he was stuck in the nut house for a while. They didn't even let him out for his mom's funeral. They felt it would be too traumatizing for him. Always in his best interest. Parens patriae or something like that. Ben knew a little bit of Latin and he doubted the courts and the legal system knew what was best for him. Ben may have been just a kid but this place was not in his best interest in any way, shape or form.

The psych unit freaked him out. There were other kids. Some were okay he guessed, some were kind of creepy. Ben didn't care. It was wrong. This was wrong. He wasn't sure why everything was wrong. His mom was dead. That was wrong, of course, but these people had no clue.

Unfortunately, neither did Ben.

Sometimes at night he would swear that he could hear soft-socked feet padding from door to door, window to window, latches latched, doors locked, salt down. The feeling of safe and home would hit him.

But it had to be a dream in his screwed up head. They said it was normal to feel "displaced" and to have odd feelings. But this wasn't odd really; in fact it wasn't even a feeling. It was half-remembered, like a foggy elusive dream that he woke from and could almost catch the tail end of. There was something significant rattling around in his head. Something so important he should never forget it and then it was gone with the gray morning.

So he sat in "group" and he listened. Liam and his abusive father. Steph and how badly she needed her coke. Michael and his platform shoes and his studded belt said nothing at all. Occasionally he would straighten his spiked hair to a spikier point or lip at the place where the stud had been in his mouth. Just a hole now. There was Bri who had been there for months, who took her meds and drew pictures of butterflies. Then Carl – "Please call me, Carl." - would ask Ben how he felt and Ben would say fine.

Because he couldn't tell them he wasn't fine. They didn't know.

It was during "group" that he came to realize he was nothing like any of these kids. Addicted to coke? His mom would have killed him. Abusive father? Never had a father but again there was that nagging feeling that if he did have one, he wouldn't be abusive. Tough maybe, Ben would think. Kind of like John Wayne. He wondered if other fatherless kids thought about what it would be like to really have a dad. He had a mom and she had been pretty awesome but a dad would have been cool too.

He cried at night to himself but never anywhere else.

Psych in a hospital was strange. There were orderlies and nurses and a nurse's station. Carl talked a lot about "personal responsibility" and "coming to terms with the past." If Ben did ask him a question, Carl never answered it, he just asked another question.

"How does that make you feel?" Carl would ask and Ben would shrug. He felt like shit. His mother was dead and he was in the nut house.

Sometimes they showed movies. "Your Life And Loss: A Teenagers Guide to Grief." Or once in a while a real movie that was supposed to "open lines of communication". How did it make you feel when "insert name" couldn't make his family understand his "insert emotion"?

Usually they were stupid and Ben just slept. Sleeping seemed to be a wonderful guide to grief and it kept communication to a minimum, which was just where Ben wanted it.

You had to earn privileges like TV, or outside time, even "personal time". They never really wanted you alone in this place. There was a "dayroom" and puzzles. There were crayons – no pencils. Pencils were sharp. Don't give the crazy kids pencils. But you could color with wax crayons.

Ben was thirteen. He didn't want to color, or play with puzzles but he liked TV so he earned TV time. It was easy. Cleaning up after dinner, wiping down the counters, doing the dishes. It kept his mind off of Mom but was simple work and he would daydream sometimes. They had to be daydreams because doing the dishes was hardly a reason to bring back memories that he didn't have.

They couldn't watch the news but educational TV was fine so Ben watched the History Channel.

He sat by himself in the dayroom. Bri was coloring, Liam was sulking and Michael was laying his head on the table in the kitchen. Ben thought maybe he was sleeping but he didn't care.

He had earned TV time so the History Channel was fine. The history of guns sounded fine. Mindless. Perfect.

Master gunsmith Jonathan Browning designed the Winchester rifle.

There was an uncertain swirl of emotions and Ben felt he might be sick. He heard nothing else but that.

Winchester.

It clicked then. Winchester. There was something associated with Winchester. Winchester, like the rifle. He wasn't sure if the association was good or bad but the bile rose in his throat and he made a choking noise. He was not going to puke, not going to puke.

He glanced wildly to the right and left. Liam was still sulking. Ted the orderly was reading the paper and Bri was still coloring butterflies. Michael was drooling.

Nothing was the different but suddenly things felt a little better. He could breathe just a bit easier.

He slept that night fitfully at best and woke sweaty, his sheets damp and his hair curled at the nape of his neck. He'd seen himself in the mirror – or what passed for a mirror in the crazy house. Sort of stainless steel with rounded edges; it reminded him of trying to look into the side of a stainless steel refrigerator. The kind in an institution - solid, easy to clean, and durable. Durable was important when you were crazy. Lord forbid you have a real mirror. Hell, if a pencil could kill, God knows what a jagged mirror could do.

Ben knew he looked rough that was true, there were dark circles under his eyes and he was paler than he had ever been. He looked critically at the face that stared back at him. Freckles bridging his nose and hair dark but a little curly now that it had grown some. He recognized that he needed sleep, not just the cat naps during movies.

He hoped whatever bullshit Carl was feeding him wasn't sinking in.

For some reason Carl liked to talk about how much sleep everyone had at night. It was as if sleep was directly related to the amount of crazy a person could be. Carl was really starting to annoy the hell out of Ben. Ben wondered if a crayon could kill. Periwinkle would be a great color. Stabbing a periwinkle crayon in Carl's carotid seemed unlikely though. So he said he slept well.

It was a lie of course, but everything was a lie.

XXX

The days ran into each other and Ben didn't care. There was talk of placement but for some reason, Carl still seemed to think that Ben might be a risk to himself or to others. That was another important question. "Do you feel like you want to hurt yourself?" Then there was the follow up question. "Do you want to hurt others?"

The only other that Ben could thinkof was Carl himself. Ben found it odd that Michael and his piercings and platforms appeared to be in better shape than Ben. Steph left to go to rehab and a new kid, Connor showed up. Connor was skittish and if Ben didn't know any better maybe his drug of choice was heroin. But it turned out that Connor was just afraid. Afraid of everything. Afraid of Carl. Afraid of sleeping. Afraid to talk. The kid just lived in a state of perpetual terror.

It occurred to Ben that if Connor had seen what Ben had thought he had seen, he would be catatonic.

Ben woke on a Tuesday morning after another restless night with the feeling that he was choking. He automatically reached for his neck to find a supple leather thong around his throat and dangling from it a hard heavy object. There was just enough light through the barred windows to allow him to see it. It looked like brass and maybe some kind of cow.

A brass cow seemed an odd thing to have around his neck. He held it up to the light considering what he was going to do with it. He doubted anyone would allow him to have a brass cow. It was heavy and pointy. The better to swing at Carl. Maybe the thoughts and extreme measures regarding dangerous items were not all that off the mark. Ben studied the necklace, felt the weight of it around his neck. It was a little shiny on one side, as if maybe it had been worn for years and years. He held the cow in his hands. Allowed his fingers to caress it, trace the cow's horns. It was cold, frigid in fact as if it had been in a deep freeze and then had been suddenly and inexplicably thrown around the warmth of his neck.

He liked it, so he carefully slid it under his t-shirt and wondered how in the hell it got there. It was a puzzle. Not like the scenic covered bridges or brightly painted fish puzzles in the day room. But it was strange. The only new person he was aware of was Connor and Connor was too afraid to sit in the day room, let alone walk into an unknown kid's room and give him a frozen necklace.

Michael – the kid might think it was cool but he preferred fake silver studs and Carl? Well, Carl would no more give him a heavy pointed cow necklace than offer him razor blades to play with.

Ben pulled the amulet up from under his t-shirt. It had settled comfortably there, against his chest and no longer felt cold. He studied the brass figure again in the dim gray morning light. On second thought, it wasn't a cow, though it did have horns. There was a noble face, a man's face, he turned it over again, Egyptian maybe or Burmese or something like that. It wasn't American though and it wasn't some dime store knockoff.

He closed his hand around the brass, feeling more than looking at it now. Ben had always been a tactile kid, he liked messing with cars and fixing things, he could feel the regal length of the man's nose, the indentations where the eyes were. There was a swirl between and above his eyes and Ben wasn't sure if the horns were part of a headdress of sorts of if they were part of the man. Was it a man? A god maybe? He didn't know.

Once again he slid it under his black t-shirt. It nestled there up against his bare chest and for the first time in a long time Ben felt safe.

XXX

It started out innocuous. At least it appeared that way. Ben started dreaming. He didn't remember the dreams at first he just woke feeling oddly more comfortable than he did when he went to sleep.

Then he started remembering the dreams. A big man, tall, dark with a scruffy, grey flecked beard and a voice that rumbled low. It was no one that Ben knew.

"Call me John." He said.

"John." Ben repeated.

The man smelled oddly familiar but that was the only thing that Ben associated with a memory.

John was standing with his hip against the desk in Ben's room. "Not too bad here."

"For a nut house," Ben amended.

"You're not crazy."

Ben shrugged, "They all seem to think so."

John smiled slowly then, "Who? Carl? He doesn't know his ass from a hole in the ground."

Ben grinned. His mom didn't cuss much but he liked the analogy. "So, John. What's with the dream? I thought I was supposed to dream about flying or monsters chasing me. You know normal stuff."

John's smile faded and he dropped his eyes, "Monsters chasing you aren't dreams, Ben. They're real."

Ben pulled his legs up tight to his chest, wrapping his arms around himself. The thin blankets and linen did nothing to stop the sudden chill.

"That's dumb, John. Monsters aren't real. Everyone knows that."

"You know that's not true, Ben. You know it 'cause you've seen it. You know it 'cause Dean taught you."

"Don't know a Dean."

"Yeah, son. You do." John turned then as if to hear some invisible bell or a voice that demanded his attention.

"We'll talk later and Ben, hold on to that amulet. It's important."

And then he was gone.

XXX

Ben never figured he liked to go to bed as much as he wanted to now. It seemed to concern Carl because although getting enough sleep was a determining factor in crazy, so was too much sleep. So Ben backed off, went complacently to his room at night and waited. He figured he fell asleep pretty quickly because John came all the time now – so he must be sleeping a lot. Sometimes though, Ben wasn't even sure if he was asleep. But dreaming about John seemed fine.

Hallucinating John seemed so much worse.

"Hey, kiddo." John rumbled.

"John." Ben smiled. He liked this man with low voice and the dark brown eyes.

"We got to get you outta here, son."

Ben tilted his head and looked quizzically in the half-light of his room.

"John, you do realize I'm in the nut house right? It's locked, there are bars in the windows and I'm not going anywhere unless Carl feels I'm ready to go. And even then I don't know where I'll go, 'cause I don't have anywhere to go."

John shifted his weight a bit and narrowed his eyes. Suddenly, John seemed less comforting and more commanding. It was strange but John did that sometimes. It didn't scare Ben but Ben found himself sitting a little straighter and listening a little harder. It was stupid. John was a dream and there was no reason for him to more or less attentive to a figment of his own imagination.

"You have family, Ben." John said it with a firmness that startled Ben just a bit.

"John, my mom is dead." Ben knew he sounded a little bit patronizing but John just didn't seem to get the score, "I have no father, no uncles or brothers, not even a crazy batty aunt somewhere with a thousand cats."

John huffed, a sound that was both pissed and resigned at the same time.

"You do have a family. You have Sam and Dean. And Dean? Well, he is normally a pretty smart boy but he made the wrong call here. He made it for the right reasons, but he was wrong." John seemed to think about his own personal soliloquy and then rolled his eyes at the apparent irony of the statement.

"He gets it honest, I guess."

Ben shook his head, "Leave me alone, John. I'm tired – let me get back to my real sleep. You don't make any sense and when you bring up Dean, I keep telling you I have no idea who he is."

John glared then, honest to God, drilled a look at Ben that had him instantly wishing he hadn't said anything at all. Ben had the sudden feeling that he should watch what he said around this dream, this man, because John didn't appear to be a patient dream. At. All.

"You do have a father, Ben. It's Dean. We need to get you to him and we need to move soon."

It occurred to Ben that maybe he wasn't very patient, either, because suddenly he stood up and took a step in John's direction.

"I do NOT have a father and it is NOT Dean Winchester. Mom told me. She told me she had loved Dean but no matter how bad, he or me or Mom wanted it, it wasn't true!"

John looked mildly down at Ben.

"Really? Because sometimes parents want to protect their kids so badly that they will do anything for them. Including lie."

"My mom was not a liar. "

John huffed again, "Yeah, well stick to that thought, son. Everyone lies. What saves them is the reason behind the lie."

It wasn't a light bulb going off, not really. It was more a rewind of his last few words.

Dean Winchester.

It was then that Ben realized what he had said. His mom had told him that Dean wasn't his dad. Dean had loved him like a dad though, Ben was sure of that. Everything came rushing back so fast that the room swirled and he staggered fell toward John. For a dream, the man felt pretty solid and he was enveloped in the crushing warmth of a man that he had never known but felt closer to than anyone he could think of at that moment.

Except Dean.

John held him tightly and once again there were familiar smells of motor oil and whiskey and a sharp biting scent that for some reason Ben associated with guns. Dean had guns. Oh, there were very specific rules about not going near them and Ben had felt pretty damn sure that Dean's threats were real. The one time he caught him messing with the Impala, Ben had known that Dean meant business.

John just held him for a while and Ben realized his face was wet with warm, salty tears. Ben could barely breath; halting, stilted breaths and his chest ached with pain. It was embarrassing. Sort of. But John was his dream and maybe you really couldn't get embarrassed by your own dream.

"Shhhhh." John whispered low into Ben's hair, a rumble shush that comforted him. He could feel John's breath on his head and feel John's heart thumping solidly against Ben's body. John was real. He had to be real. No dream or hallucination could be like this.

"I remember, John."

"Of course you do."

"I loved him." Ben stated matter of fact. If he didn't know any better he would swear that the warm presence holding him hitched just a bit, or that the solid thumping in John's heart almost skipped a beat.

"I know that, too."

"I think he loved me." Ben felt John push him a way just a bit and those dark brown eyes met his.

"Like nobody's business, son. Dean loved you so much he let you go. But like I said he was wrong and things have changed. You're in danger and we need to get you to Dean."

Ben wiped his hand across his eyes, sniffled once and stood a little straighter.

"Okay, but how?"

John took a deep breath. "I can interact with you easily, we're connected, you and I, but others it's harder. Did Dean ever teach you how to pick a lock? Hot wire a car?"

Ben's look became genuinely puzzled. "Pick a lock? Hot-wire a car? Of course, not. We lived a normal life. Kids get in trouble for stealing cars and breaking into houses."

John laughed a little wryly. "Kids might, but Winchester kids don't. Look, let me scout it out a little, I'll get the door unlocked easily enough but I may have to teach you how to hot wire a car."

"Drive? Did he teach you to drive?" John thought suddenly.

Ben smiled then, "That he did. He said you could never start too early to learn to drive a car, and if my legs were long enough to reach the pedals that was good enough for him."

"What did your mom think of that?"

"We never told mom." Ben spoke a little shyly but with just a hint of pride.

John laughed then, deep and low.

"Smart boys."

XXX

Despite John's apparent inability to "interact" with things other than Ben, he reappeared in Ben's room fairly quickly.

"The door's unlocked, the hall is clear. There are no guards or anything but you will have to move fast and low past the nurses' station. The lights are dim, I guess even the nurses are trying to encourage everyone to sleep. Hug the walls, you know where everything is. Use the cover around you and open the door slow and keep the opening as narrow as you can. Crawl your way through if you have too. Then down the hall for about 50 yards and the steps are on your left. That door is open, no lock and haul your ass down the steps. I'll meet you there. "

For a moment Ben was scared. "Can't you stay with me?"

"Sorry bud, I've got other things to be doing. I'll meet you at the bottom floor and we'll get out of the hospital from there."

Ben nodded.

"Repeat it back to me."

Ben rolled his eyes; sometimes John was an annoying hallucination. But he relayed the info back verbatim. Then sighed, "I got this, John."

"You are your father's son." John grinned in the darkness of the room.

XXX

Ben met John at the bottom of the steps and from there John guided him through the bowels of the hospital, left, right until Ben had no idea where he was or where he was going. He also wondered why he trusted a hallucination. John had to be a hallucination because Ben was wide-awake. But then, he remembered the warmth of John's embrace.

It made no sense. None of it made sense. He must really be crazy. Maybe Carl was right? They raced through the hospital and out through a service door that led to a darkened parking lot. John lead and Ben followed.

It was nuts really.

But no matter how he turned it around in his head or considered it, despite the apparent crazy, it felt right. John felt right. So he went with his instinct and that was something Dean had talked about.

Thinking about Dean was hard. He didn't understand the wheres and whys of his sudden remembering nor did he understand his apparent previous inability to remember a man he obviously loved. But if Dean had taught him anything, supernatural shit was weird and if it was weird then it was no weirder than a hallucination leading him through a parking lot and into the woods.

Suddenly and horribly it occurred to Ben that what if John was a thing? He didn't know. He could be.

Ben stopped abruptly just as they headed into the tree line.

"What are you doing, boy?" John sounded tense and irritable. The lack of patience that he had shown earlier reared its ugly head.

"How do I know you're not going to kill me? Why should I trust you?"

John scowled then, "God damn it, if you aren't Dean then you are Sam. Just fucking do what I tell you to do!"

Ben dug his feet in, both figuratively and not. He was not going anywhere with John. He hated the hospital and despised Carl, but Carl was real and not a monster. John? Truthfully, Ben could not be sure.

"Fuck you." Ben sounded pretty brave when he said it. He didn't say fuck a lot. His mom would've grounded him for sure or maybe washed his mouth out with soap. His mom was pretty cool about most things but she hated Ben to cuss, something about being a smart boy and she was sure he could express his displeasure in more articulate ways.

Ben usually tried. For his mom. But this wasn't his mom, this was John. His own damn hallucination dream. He could cuss if he wanted to.

"Pardon?"

For a moment Ben stilled. John was really, really pissed. He could feel it. In the low, deadly rumble of his voice. Not soothing like before, not warm and welcoming. No -this was a pissed John and a pissed John appeared to be something Ben did not want to be around.

"I'm outta here." Ben turned and stepped away from John – not toward the hospital but not where John was leading either. He could do this on his own. He didn't need his own personal hallucination to guide him. He was Ben Braeden and he was a smart kid. He could find Dean and without the help of the potentially supernaturally evil John.

"Ben."

John's word was soft and clear in the night air. Again, Ben stopped, a little irritated at the fact that a hallucination could stop him in his tracks.

"I don't have time to go over it now, you have to trust me."

Ben spun on John, eyes blazing in the darkness. "Trust you? Trust you? You are a dream, a hallucination. I'm crazy but not insane. Why in the hell should I trust you?"

John took a deep breath, debating his next words carefully.

"Because, I'm your grandfather."

Ben's heart skipped a beat. His grandfather?

"I'm Dean's dad."

"Dean's dad died a long time ago."

"Yeah, well, dead ain't always dead and I needed to be back so here I am."

Ben stuck his chin out, defiant and angry. "So I'm supposed to believe you? My hallucination is really Dean's dad sent back from the grave to help me find him. Supernatural is one thing - off the fucking chain is another."

"Where'd you learn to cuss like that? Did Dean teach you that?"

The question caught Ben off balance, "I dunno, maybe."

"Well, he shoulda been more careful. You're just a kid."

"Well, from what I know, Dean was just a kid, too, and he was taking care of Sam and taking care of you sometimes."

John ran a hand across his chin and muttered, "How much did he tell you about me?"

"Not much really. I mean he said you were a great hunter and a good man but…" Ben paused, "But not always the best Dad."

John shuffled his feet awkwardly in the dirt, "Yeah, well, he was probably right. But I loved him and Sam and always did what I felt was best. Which is why you are going with me even if I have to pick you up and carry you."

"He never told me you were an ass."

"Yeah, well, I am. If you ask him now, he'd probably say the same. Hell, if you'd asked him ten years ago, he probably would have too. Doesn't matter though, you walk or ride over my shoulder. Take your pick."

Ben studied John, his hallucination and apparent grandfather. There was no doubt that John meant what he said. Then just to prove a point or maybe John was again losing patience, he picked Ben up easily and threw him over his shoulder like he weighed no more than a bird. Ben's head was down near John's waist and his ass in the air and his legs dangling down John's chest.

A very undignified position.

"Walk." Ben muttered.

John maneuvered him quickly to the ground in a motion that was as effortless as the pickup had been.

"Good choice."

They headed into the woods.