Second part, yes it is very short but I couldn't justify making it any longer without stuffing in things that it didn't need. Hopefully it feels as if it doesn't need anymore. One more part to go and this story is wrapped up.

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Of Heroes

"Your dad was a hero," she whispers to the wriggling softness in her arms. "So was your uncle, and your grandparents and your great-grand parents." The baby - her son - mewls and croaks out a cry, Abi rocked him softly, trying to find a rhythm and breathed in his newborn scent before time would steal that away from her. Time was a bitch. "You come from a long line of heroes Luke, don't you ever forget that - no matter what."

She knew it was too much to ask though, he'd want to know who is dad was and she'd tell him: Dean Winchester. He'd want to know what kind of man he was and she'd tell him that too: arrogant, conceited, thought he was god's gift to woman kind … giving to a fault, brave beyond reason, charming as sin, hero, hero, hero …

She'd manage on that for a while but then he'd want to know how his dad had died … should she tell him about the demons then? He might be in high school, still young but old enough to understand death, he'd tell his friends since he'd still be too young to understand that some things have to be kept to yourself, and they'd laugh at him. They'd tell him that there are no such things as demons, or hunters, they'd tell him that his mother was lying, that she was an escaped loony who probably got knocked up by they guy she buys drugs from. He'd come home, having fought with his friends, fingers still wrapped around a suspension notice, eyes accusing her but still unsure, after all she was still his mother and at that age he would still think that mother's can't lie.

He might leave it at that, for a few years at least, but it would grate at him like an unpeeled scab every time someone asked where his dad was or why his mum lived alone. 'Divorced?' they would ask him, like that was the worst thing in the world. 'Or … is he - dead?' some might venture. Still worse things then being dead … things like being stuck in hell for the rest of eternity at the mercy of those that you put there in the first place.

Or knowing that the man you love - the man you will love forever with the same kind of intensity as you did when he was alive and kissing you back - is being tortured … and you can do nothing about it.

But then again he comes from good stock, even when he's nothing more then a pink blob with not much personality and no other demands then being fed and cleaned she knows what kind of man he'll grow up to be. Dean may not have been book smart, but Sammy sure was, and eventually he'll go digging, searching for answers in files and records, as if hoping to make sense of Dean out of a bunch of papers and a computer screen. As if that was even possible. Dean was so much more … too much more. Un-containable to such a degree that they'd had to threaten him with Sammy to kill him.

Luke wouldn't think that though, he'd see the arrests, the murders, the charges that trailed a mile long and read like a script from a slasher movie and he'd be angry. 'Liar!' he'd scream at her, judging her and finding her lacking. Judging Dean, changing hero to sick, twisted fuck who liked to hurt people and got off on it.

He'd hate her and he'd leave, swearing that he was never coming back and when people ask him about his family it would be him that lies, not her. 'They're dead,' he'd tell them stiffly, his face tight like Dean's when he wanted you to drop the subject. His mother had a heart attack and his father died young - car accident. And if she was still alive then surely hearing talk like that would kill her anyway. Dean Winchester? A car accident? As if he'd be so lucky.

As if she would.

What she wouldn't have given to have had him die normally. To be uncertain whether the smug arse was living it up in heaven or being punished for all that sex before marriage, not to mention those incidents where he had pretended to be a priest.

What she wouldn't give …

He'd grow up handsome - with such genes on his father's side it was highly unlikely he'd be anything but, even with hers muddying him up. He'd meet a woman eventually - after imitating his father for a couple of years and collecting a couple of hundred notches on his bedpost - and being a Winchester he'd fall hard for her. Like Dean had fallen for her, so hard that even if a million years went by people would still be able to see his imprint on her without a microscope. Marking her more thoroughly than a fake marriage certificate and a cheap silver ring would ever be able to. Such a deep imprint that when other men - good men - smile at her and promise her the world, she'd wonder bemusedly why they can't see Dean's name all over her, scoring her so harshly that she is ruined and no one else would do.

He'd have children, hopefully lots of them, but Luke wouldn't raise them as Winchesters, he'd continue to live a lie, stubborn to the end like his uncle Sammy, and tell them that their grandparents were dead. He won't tell them about how brave their granddad was, how many lives he'd saved at the risk of his own, how he'd dreamed and dreamed of living to be old enough to have children … or how he would have been delirious to have been around to see his grandchildren. How if he had lived he would have been the coolest grandpa ever, letting them listen to Black Sabbath, teaching them how to pick locks and tutoring them on how to seduce the opposite sex

So those kids - Winchester kids - would grow up as someone else, as strangers. And soon, John; who had loved his wife too much to live, Mary; the kind of mother Abi dreamed of being - would be if it ever came down to it, Sammy; a man who could have had it all: a good job, a good woman, friends, family … But left it all because he wanted to be there for his brother ... And Dean; the best man she had ever known - would ever know - all these people, these heroes, would be … forgotten. Like they had never existed. Like they hadn't come kicking and screaming into the world and gone kicking and screaming out of it.

Like they hadn't loved and lived so fiercely that the world felt empty without them - darker.

Abi's tears dripped on the blinking face of her newborn son, he had a thick thatch of silky ginger hair that would have had Dean screaming at her for the rest of her life. His son - Dean Winchester's son … with ginger hair? Blasphemy!

But he also had hazel eyes, big ones with long curly lashes like Dean's - cherub eyes she used to call them when she was in a good mood. Heifer eyes she would snipe when she wasn't.

… She should have known better, after all, she knew more than anyone that a Winchester never does what you expect them to do, not even when you order them to. They're annoying that way. But what is certain is that a Winchester will always surprise you, so maybe she should give this baby a chance to surprise her.

No matter what the surprise is.

Abi smiled down at her boy, her hopes and dreams for him lighting up her tired eyes, a story of the old days on the tip of her tongue, her shaky fingers straightening the protection amulet around his thin neck. "Your father's name was Dean Winchester … and he - he was a hero …"