Sam stayed up for the better part of the night talking quietly to Lyssa about anything and nothing. Shying away from questions concerning her mother or her uncle. Eventually she'd fallen back to sleep. He managed to doze a little thanks in part to the painkillers Bobby had provided. He didn't think he'd ever really sleep again.

He lay there in the dark staring at the point on the wall where a shaft of moonlight made shadows dance and listening to the soft cadence of her breathing. Sometime during the night Bobby had placed an old pair of crutches next to the pull-out. Whatever he'd taken earlier was working well enough for him to attempt to get out of the bed. It only took him a second to recall the rhythm of walking with crutches.

He went into the kitchen filled a glass with water and set it on the table. The hand that lifted the phone receiver off the cradle wasn't his, didn't feel like his. The finger dialing Leanna's cell phone number shook so badly that he had to start over again and again before it rang through. One ring, two, three, on the other end the strains of Beethoven's symphony number five would be cheerfully playing away. He knew nobody was going to answer but he had to hear it again. He had to make sure he hadn't been dreaming. After the fifth ring there was a click as his call was rerouted to her voicemail.

Silence then… someone sniffled and … "You have reached the voicemail of Leanna Anders. If you are getting this message then…" she broke off. The distinct sound of flesh against flesh then his brother's voice in the background, "Leave her alone you BITCH!" Another voice this one harder to make out. "Shut him up I am sick of hearing him…..I don't care rip out his tongue." Then close to the phone again. "Go ahead say it."

"If you are getting this message then I am dead." His brother screams then she's choking and choking and Sam can almost smell the blood. Someone's laughing. "Hey Sammy come out and play." Behind the taunt Dean yells… "MEG, Sammy!" Then he's choking too but mercifully it cuts off.

He didn't cry this time. He was too empty to cry. He sat there at the table clutching the phone so hard he was sure he'd leave imprints of his hand on it. Still he couldn't let it go. He was still sitting there….

X x X x X x X x X

….when Bobby walked into the kitchen Sam was already up sitting at the table. His eyes were vacant, miles away. Bobby gently peeled his fingers away from the phone and replaced it in the cradle.

"Don't torture yourself boy." Sam shook his head and attempted a wan smile. In Bobby's opinion he failed miserably but it was better than that thousand yard stare.

"I had to make sure you know? That I wasn't imagining things." Bobby did know so he didn't say anything else about it. He walked over to the counter where the remnants of last nights attempt at coffee still sat. He picked up where he'd left off turning the flame on under the coffee pot. Lyssa came into the kitchen a little while later and Sam helped her get breakfast then he sat and listened while she chattered. That was a good sign. The rest of the day passed quietly. Almost too quietly.

Two days later there was a knock on the front door, uniforms on the stoop. That afternoon Bobby left in his tow truck for Washington. It was damn near the hardest thing he'd ever had to do but someone had to identify the bodies and Sam, well, he thought that maybe it would be the straw that broke the camels back for Sam. So he went. Alone.

He didn't know what he'd expected to see when he walked into the house but Sam on the floor doing bent knee push ups, Lyssa seated on his back hadn't been on the list. Sam didn't look up when he walked in. Lyssa flashed him a huge grin.

He shook his head. Better him doing that then sitting and rotting away. Later, after Sam had put Lyssa down for the night, Bobby called him into the kitchen to sit while he brewed up some coffee. Real coffee this time. It was such a calm, simple, normal thing. He needed calm and normal for at least tonight because tomorrow they'd be bringing Dean and Leanna home for the last time.

"Be here tomorrow. Well up to the coroner's anyway." He said setting down a steaming cup in front of Sam.

"Ok." Sam replied, his voice flat. He was staring at the cup in front of him as though it held the secrets of the universe. Silence stretched between them like taffy on a pull.

After a while, Sam picked up his coffee and tucking one crutch under his right arm, he hitched out of the kitchen to the large wraparound porch outside. Bobby debated following him. He almost didn't. The sound of shattering glass decided for him.

The cup of coffee sat steaming on the porch rail. From where he stood, he could see Sam leaning hands spread on the hood of his SUV. The single crutch poked out from the shattered windshield. He'd seen hundreds of busted windshields. Hell he owned a damned junk yard but this? It scared the hell out of him.

The SUV was a Ford Aquatyc. In addition to being hydrogen fueled this particular model had near impervious glass. Safety feature. It was supposed to be able to withstand a head on collision with a Mac Truck. At least he hadn't used his fist.

The next morning Sam had him tarp the Impala and store it.

"I can't drive it. I can barely look at it." He did look at it though. All that day he kept peeking inside the shed Bobby had pulled it into. He never touched it. Never moved the tarp just looked. That night, after Lyssa had finally drifted off, they built a pyre. He'd offered to do it alone but Sam had insisted on helping even though the cost of it all was etched plain as day on his face. In the glow of the flames Bobby could see him crying silently.

They scattered some of the ashes out in the field behind the yard. It was real pretty back there. Sam put a handful inside the Impala's trunk.

"When are you gonna tell her that they're gone?"

"Never?" Sam asked hopefully.

Bobby shook his head.

"Not yet…. soon." Sam stared down at the stretch of black cord that hung around his neck, it was the same piece of cord that Dean's amulet had hung from since the day Sam had given it to him. Now it shared its length with Leeanna's little gold ring.

Time picked up pace after that. Despite his broken limb Sam worked out for hours every day, with ruthless intensity, till he was all hard angles, bone and sinew. In the evenings he'd read to Lyssa. Sometimes from one of the books in Bobby's extensive collection. He showed Lyssa how to break down and clean a gun. She practiced moving things.

Days ran into weeks ran into months. Bobby became increasingly uneasy with every passing hour. He'd thought at first that things would be okay but more and more Sam had the lean, hungry look that Bobby had always associated with John.

The day Bobby cut his cast off Sam left the yard in his Ford. He came back in a forest green Jeep Wrangler. He said he'd pick up the 37' long motor home, which was being sent for a custom paint job, at the end of the week.

He drove that monster of a vehicle into Bobby's yard at 11:00 on a Saturday morning. He packed up the few things he'd purchased for Lyssa and himself. That was that. After spending nearly three months holed up at Singer Salvage, Sam was ready to leave.

"Where're you gonna go boy? Chasing after that thing like your daddy did? Wasting your life?"

"I have to find my daughter." He grabbed his duffel and Lyssa's knapsack.

"You're not planning on taking that one with you? Right?"

"She's all I got Bobby. She stays with me."

"And just what the hell do you figure you're gonna do with a four-year old when you're out hunting huh? Strap her to your back? Come on Sam use your head. If you're gonna go off and get yourself dead at least leave her here."

"I can't." He shuffled his feet.

Bobby didn't want to ask his next question but he felt he had to. Had to try and get through to him somehow.

"What if there isn't anything to find? What then son?"

A muscle twitched in Sam's jaw. His eyes went diamond hard and when he opened his mouth it was John who spoke. "Then I will cut a swath across the world to find that demon. There won't be a corner for it to hide in even if I have to walk into hell myself to kill it and I will kill it."

"You sound just like him you know. You saw what hunting from vengeance did to him. You were there!"

"This won't be the same."

"How d'you figure?"

"I'm not the same. Besides I have an advantage my father didn't."

"And what's that huh?"

"Having him as a father. For the first time in my life I truly understand him. What it was like for him but I don't have to spend the next twenty years learning this stuff. I already know it."

Damn fool. "You'd do it to her then? What your daddy did to you? Drag her helter skelter across the country. Leave her to fend for herself while you're out feeding an obsession that no possible good can come from."

Sam had the courtesy to look ashamed. "What do you expect me to do Bobby? I tried. I tried to lay off. This life is in my blood, in my bones. It'll always find me." He shrugged adding quietly, "It'll find her."

Bobby opened his mouth to argue more, decided there wasn't really anything else he could say. Damn Winchesters. Whole lot of 'em too stubborn for their own good.

"Look thanks for everything Bobby. I'll keep in touch. Lyssa!"

"I love you like my own Sam but if you walk out that door with that child don't you come back."

Sam nodded. Lyssa ran in from the other room pigtails bouncing. She grabbed her daddy's outstretched hand, waved over her shoulder at Bobby.

"Bye Uncle Bobby!"

Then they were gone swallowed by the glare of the sunlight reflecting off the tears in Bobby's eyes.