"Time is making fools of us again." Dumbledore

.***.

Joshua sat, both hands cupping one of Max's, trying desperately to hold on to something that he knew in his heart he was going to lose.

"I asked him not to." The quiet voice from the other end of the room didn't startle Joshua. Since he'd gotten to the hospital, the only person he hadn't kicked out of the room with a well-place comment was JT. He let the boy stay, because he knew, as every father knows, exactly who is their son's best friend.

"I know you did." Joshua allowed. He wouldn't have expected anything less. Of all of the Guardian's kids, he got along with the middle son the best. It was hard not to get along with JT, who could make anyone feel at ease by a few words. A PR's talent, one that Sawyer had recognized in the boy from an early age.

"As soon as the ghost – demon – whatever said that one of us was going to die he…I've never seen him act so fast, sir. He just turned around and hit me. And Max has one hell of a left hook."

"So I've been told."

JT inched closer to the bed, until he and Joshua were flanking Max's still and battered body. JT touched Max's other hand, fingers drawing shapes on his friend's smooth skin. "By the time I got to my feet Max had already made the deal. He said that he never trusted a demon's word, but it looked like he had no choice in that situation, but if he died and found out that the demon was going to kill me, too, he'd beat the crap out of the guy from the ethereal plane."

"Sounds like my son." Joshua said, a small, proud smile unknowingly gracing his lips. "So Max…"

"Played a fucking martyr." JT said. Of all the boys he swore the least, and this exclamation was what made Joshua rip his eyes away from his son and look at the boy, standing grief-stricken over Max. And he realized exactly what all the philosophers had meant when they said something about ripple effects. Max was no longer just his son anymore. He was someone's best friend, a part of a future Triad, and those kinds of ties bind just as much as blood.

"If he gets through this." Joshua said slowly, making sure to lock eyes with the middle Winchester boy. "I'll help you knock some sense into him."

He'd meant it to be a joke, but Joshua should have learned, years ago, when he was the oldest and Reaves and the Winchesters were constantly harassing him, that his abilities stopped at joke telling. JT paled and met Joshua's gaze, wide-eyed. "He'll get through it, right, sir?"

"Of course he will." Joshua said with confidence he didn't feel. He gripped his son's hand harder, as if sheer force of will could keep him on this earth. "Your uncle will kill him – he invested too much time training Max to be a Knight for him to bail out now."

"He's my best friend." JT said brokenly, staring at Joshua with red-rimmed eyes. It was the first time he'd said the words aloud, or even thought them. Max was his best friend. Period. They didn't need to define it, or remind each other. Max had his back, and JT had Max's.

As the words left his mouth, JT wondered why he hadn't said them before. He'd heard Josie and Mary say it to each other, grab each other's hands and whisper and giggle and put their heads together. Every time the girls saw one another they hugged tight, as if it had been a year and not a couple of hours or days since they'd last seen each other. Why couldn't he do a similar thing with Max? Tell him, sometime before he was on death's door, how much the other man meant to JT's life?

He snorted at the thought and imagined what his father or Uncle Caleb would say about such things. He'd heard more than once that his relationship with Max resembled his father's own friendship with Caleb, and not just because dad was the Guardian and Caleb was the Knight. There were deeper reasons, more binding reasons, than that.

But Uncle Sam might understand what he meant if he ever told him about this strange evening sometime in the future (and, please, let it be one of those times when the Brotherhood gets together and laughs about near-misses, when things almost went wrong but everyone turned to rights in the end!) Sam would cock his head to the side and that look would get into his eyes, that look that said that he understood something about the depths of emotion that went into real brotherhood, something about sentiments not expressed until it was almost too late.

Max would have called him a pussy for the tear that fell from his eye, but he just couldn't stand the sight anymore, the vision of Max looking so pale, so broken, so close to death, swallowed up by the vast whiteness of the hospital bed.

And JT was grateful for the hand that clenched tight around his good wrist, for Joshua's sympathetic eyes swimming with their own batch of tears, for the knowledge that he didn't have to go through this alone.

Hours Before

JT made to grab for Max's arm, because he knew, knew before his friend even stepped out in front of him, that the older boy was about to do something incredibly stupid. "Max…" he begged quietly, the word hitching as he choked back a sob. This was most definitely not the situation he wanted to find himself in at the end of summer. He'd just wanted a camp-out, an opportunity to be away from the adults and responsibilities of their world, and now he had plunged head-first into it.

"I'm doing this." Max snapped, wrenching his arm from his friend's grip. The book that was still in his hand, his father's book, and he shoved it into his friend's hand. "Don't lose this. It could save your life one day."

"I won't let you do this!" JT said, surging forward. "You think I can just sit by and watch you die?"

"Yeah, Jay, that's what I think." Max snapped. It had been a hell of a day – it should have been a fun day. By now they should have been sitting around the campfire, telling stories and cracking jokes, and even Jimmy would get in on it, losing his thirteen-year-old attitude long enough to get along with Max for JT's sake.

Now…Max didn't want to think about what could have been waiting in the farmhouse for Jimmy, what may have already attacked Ben. The other two Winchester boys could already be dead. Max was too much a part of the Brotherhood to let the Guardian potentially lose all three sons in one terrible night.

And he was too much JT's best friend to let his friend march willingly to death. Not when he had a chance to stop it.

He didn't have time to be afraid for himself. Every cell in his body was busy being afraid for JT, for little Jimmy, for the entirety of the Brotherhood. He almost forgot that what he was doing would kill him.

Well, JT always said he was reckless. And Jimmy always told him he was an idiot. He was proving them both right, now.

"Max!" JT pleaded, and Max only had time to think an apology to his friend before he wound up and punched JT the way Caleb had taught him. As promised, JT crumbled to the ground, an amazing bruise already forming across his face.

Max locked eyes with the demon and raised one thin eyebrow. "Don't worry. He'll be a good messenger anyway. I just didn't want him trying to stop this."

He stepped forward, hands up. He had no gun. He had no spells. The Triad, if they were on their way, were still hours behind. He'd just knocked out his JT so that he wouldn't stop this. It had to be done.

And that's how Maxim Sawyer, who was supposed to be a Knight, supposed to grow up to be a best friend, a husband, a father, let himself die. For love.

18 Years Before

Joshua's hand flailed in the air and Caleb grabbed it, held it fast. He said something to the older man, some small, comforting words that were supposed to take the pain away, but he was sure that Joshua, who was now writhing on the ground the throes of agony that accompany your entire body changing on a cellular level, couldn't hear him.

"Sam!" He snapped, glaring at the younger Winchester, who was perched on a small rock, looking like he was in the middle of chemistry class with ingredients splayed out in the front of him. "Do something!"

Dean pressed hard against the biggest of Joshua's many wounds, wishing for more than a tiny First-Aid kit and throwing his head between Caleb and Sam. He knew that the (spell/potion/antidote) that Sam was trying could work. There was documented cases of it. Documented case. But Joshua had spent nearly an hour with the rogaru's venom running through his veins. The success case had only been under the influence of the poison for fifteen minutes.

"Reaves." Joshua ground out, pain laced in every syllable. Caleb squeezed his hand and leaned closer to hear over the cold, howling wind. Joshua's lips moved for another second and then he cried out, his pain echoing off the trees and crags.

"Don't talk like that." Caleb said, leaning away as if pain was contagious. "I'm not going to kill you. Do you think I can do that? Do you think I can let you die?"

Eighteen years later, Dean's second oldest son would say something very similar to the very boy Joshua had gone into the woods to avoid. Eighteen years later, when the rogaru's bite was just another white scar on Sawyer's body, all four men who had been there that day would listen to JT's account and suddenly flash back to that moment in time, up on the lonely mountain when they were still in the throes of war. And eighteen years would be like a moment in time.

Sam got the right mixture of the thing he hoped was an antidote the same second Joshua let out a high, arching scream that made hairs stand up on the back of the Triad's neck. The same moment he went limp and still in Dean and Caleb's arms, because his heart just couldn't take it anymore.

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