Chapter 9

Danica

It was months before Dani and Bobby heard from John again. It was October and the air was just coming to the cool crisp cusp of winter. The mornings were still nibbling cold, but the days in the sunshine were still warm enough to be outside without a coat.

Dani was lying along the porch banister in the sun, sound asleep for the first time in weeks, when the phone rang.

Sleepily, Dani turned an ear in the direction of the kitchen to listen as Bobby picked up the phone. It was a long shot that it would be news of the Winchesters, but Dani upheld hope. Concern for the welfare of those boys had kept her awake day after day for longer than she'd bothered to count, and she couldn't help but imagine what terrible nightmares they must be facing alone on the road with John.

"Singer." Bobby said crankily. He had been on edge, too. Mostly because seeing Danica unsettled was a rather unsettling sight in itself. He was used to her chippering about the place, she knew, and recently she'd barely been able to keep up with their workouts.

There was a long pause and a sigh from Bobby. "It's good to hear from you, John."

Dani flailed wildly in surprise, and promptly lost her balance and went tumbling from the porch banister to the hard earth below.

"I'm glad you finally decided to call. Dani's been worrying herself sick." Dani scrambled to stand up and went flying up the porch steps and into the house. "Not about you, idjit. About the kids."

She reached Bobby's side and looked forcefully at him. He gave her his Don't-Give-A-Damn face and turned away from her. As if that would make her go away.

She stuck to his side, trying but failing to hear both sides of the conversation on the phone.

"Yeah, yeah, I know where it is. What in God's name is a Hellmouth?"

"Just another name for Hell's Gate." Dani supplied quickly, "An entrance or exit from Hell. How are the boys?"

He waved her question away and twisted to try and get away from her. She followed him.

"Well I don't think- John you can't just- Well you certainly can't take those boys. Look, Dani's been itchin' to see 'em and there's a good school a mile to two from here and it starts in a week. If you really want to follow this lead- no, I don't think six is old enough to take care of himself. You leave your kids here with Dani or you can count me out of your crazy plans. And I'll be damned if anyone else'll go on this suicide mission with you."

There was a long pause, and Dani grabbed Bobby's arm nervously. He turned towards her to give her another look, but seemed to think better of it when he saw the worry on her face.

A voice mumbled something on the other end of the line and Dani unconsciously tightened her grip. Bobby winced.

"Yeah. Yeah, okay. Sunday. See you then."

"SUNDAY!" Dani shrieked when Bobby hung up the phone. "Sunday! WOOT!"

"Alright, alright," Bobby said with a pained expression, shuffling away from Dani and toward the coffee pot. "You've got your kids and I've got a hunt, everyone wins. Quiet down."

"Sorry," Dani said, seating herself at her usual spot at the kitchen table. "I wish you didn't have to go with John, though. You'd love the boys, I know you would. And they could use a good role model. And don't you say that they have John, because we both know he's never there for them."

"Hmph." Bobby poured himself a cup of black coffee and sat across from Dani. "I have to go with John. He thinks he's got a real lead on the thing that killed his wife and he can't go after it himself."

"What is it, a dragon?" Dani joked. She felt chills along her spine in spite of her attempt to be aloof.

"He thinks it might be a demon. Like the thing that killed Karen."

They had talked at length about demonic possession, and what had happened to Bobby's wife in those weeks she was a host. It had taken Dani months to convince Bobby that it was the demon that killed his wife, not anything he had done. But still, Dani shifted uncomfortably in her seat, avoiding his eyes now.

"What?" He asked, giving her his suspicious once over.

"What?" she responded innocently.

"You got that look on your face like you're not sayin' what you're thinkin'. Is this about your fear of demons? Because we won't be anywhere near here-"

Dani shook her head. "It's not that, I just worry. Demons are squirrely, weasley bastards with a penchant for grudges. They're practically immortal. They have nothing better to do. I have faith in you that the two of you could catch this thing, but Bobby," she reached across the table and laid her hand over his, "The worst possible thing you can do is poke this bear. Hunt it, learn about it, gather intel, but don't engage with it. Don't follow it at close range, don't talk to it, don't get near it. For your sake, for the boys, and for mine. I can't… I can't properly explain to you how important it is that that demon does not know where to find John and his boys, or find me. If the demons know where I am, Bobby, they will come for me. And if they do, they will destroy any and everyone around me. Then and only then will they drag my ass down to Hell."

Bobby just stared at her for a while, absorbing the information.

"What are you?" He asked, finally.

Dani leaned back in her chair and gave Bobby a smirk.

"Nunya."


Dean

Dean could see his dad from the car, watched him hang up the phone and lean hard against the wall of the phone booth. He looked tireder and tireder every day lately- and Dean was getting tireder too. Dad could be gone for days and it would just be him and Sammy, breakfast for every meal and nothing but TV all day. Dean knew there were other kids that thought it was the best thing ever to watch TV all day and not have to do anything else, but he really missed having everything the way it was before Mom died.

Dad started walking back to the car and Dean shrank in his seat so he could pretend to be asleep. He didn't sleep very much since Mom died, and he heard Dad talking about it to one of his friends one time and he sounded really worried so Dean had pretended to sleep in the car a lot. And then when Dani made him and Sam the dreamcatchers he started sleeping again but he still pretended to sleep in the car anyway. He snuck a hand into his backpack and touched one of the feathers with the tip of his finger.

His dad opened the car door and sat down, careful to close the door quietly so he wouldn't wake his sleeping son.

"Dean," he whispered, touching Dean's knee, "Dean."

Dean pretended to wake up and looked up at his father.

"I'm going to take you and your brother back up to Sioux Falls, do you remember where that is? The old house in the junkyard?"

"With Dani?" Dean asked.

"Yes, with the babysitter Danica." He looked mad. He always looked mad when Dean brought up Dani so he stopped talking about her weeks ago. "I'm going to go out for a few days. With that man you met, Bobby. We're going on a hunting trip. It's a long one this time, and I want you and your brother to stay somewhere safe. And I want you to go to school."

Dean nodded. The people they stayed with last year made him go to preschool on some days. It was a good and bad experience- Dean always hated leaving Sammy alone with strangers, but he liked having the chance to play with other kids.

"Should I wake Sammy up?" Dean asked, looking back at his baby brother.

"No, let him sleep. He likes sleeping in the car on the long rides."

Dean nodded again. He put on his seat belt while his dad started the car and took another long look out of the window. They'd stayed in this hotel for almost a whole week, and it was just starting to feel like home. He knew better than to say so to Dad, because he would get that sad look on his face. So Dean stayed quiet as they pulled out of the parking lot and began their long journey down the open road, Dad turning the volume on the radio up just so the Soft Rock station could be heard over the hum of the engine.

Dean took another look back at his brother and, satisfied that he was still sound asleep, relaxed into his seat to watch the flurry of red, yellow, and orange leaves fly past the window.


John

It was different when Mary was alive. There was never a dull moment on road trips- if she wasn't playing "I Spy" with Dean, she was letting him draw with Magic Markers on her 3rd trimester baby bump.

Apparently Dean had x-ray vision and could draw his sibling with complete accuracy - which, as it turned out, was a blue and purple troll with very hairy eyebrows.

At the next rest stop Mary got out to stretch her legs while John pumped the gas. Dean was sound asleep in the backseat, so it took her a moment to get out of the car by herself. She walked around the car and showed John the drawing, and he laughed.

"That must be the mailman's." he told her.

"Oh, you just don't want to admit he has your jawline." She said, smoothing her shirt down.

"He," John rolled his eyes and smiled at his wife. "You wanted a girl, remember?'Keep it balanced' you said."

Mary pouted in that way she did and John tried not to look at her. That pout was like his kryptonite. Made him do crazy things. It was those big, playful blue eyes and that mischievous way her lips turned up at the corners whether she was trying to look sad or angry. Hers was an honest face, always an honest face.

"The girl, the one from town, she said it was a boy."

John frowned at the memory of the girl. It wasn't the sort of thing he wanted to remember happening. A seventeen year old girl with dark skin and hair in braids that walks up to your wife and predicts the sex of her unborn child while making cryptic references to her past is not a girl you want to think about, not if you want to keep your sanity.

"What does a girl her age know about babies? She probably thinks the stork put that thing in there."

"There's no way this baby is half stork, John. He kicks like a mule."

John had to agree with her there. The kid had kick. But he didn't want to believe that the girl who'd stopped them on the street just days ago had said anything close to the truth from start to finish.

"Either way, I'd rather our baby, boy or girl, not have so many warts."

Mary made a face and nodded. She planted a kiss on his cheek before heading for the passenger seat.

By the time she was in the car, John was finished filling the tank and returned to the wheel with a snack from the gas station.

"Twinkies!" Mary squealed. She then flinched and checked the backseat, but Dean was tuckered out. She grinned at John and unwrapped the spongy yellow cakes while he started the engine. "You know I've been craving these for days. I didn't say anything. How did you know?"

"A man knows these things." John said simply, eyes fixated on the road as he pulled out of the gas station. Mary was too good at catching him in a lie, and he didn't want to admit she'd used the word "twinkie" in place of "twinkle" for the past week.

He looked over at her and couldn't hold back a smile in reaction to her smile. It was like an impulse- Mary happy made him happy. He shook his head.

"What?" Mary asked, still smiling but confused.

"I just love you. That's all."

"Oh," Mary said. She ran her fingers through his hair. "Well I like you a lot, too."

John shook his head and the corners of his mouth twitched.

Suddenly Mary leaned forward and turned the radio on.

"I hate the quiet," she said, turning the volume lower and scanning the stations. "That's what I'm talking about. Beatles."

She leaned back in her seat and closed her eyes, humming along to the tune of Let it Be.

It only took a second before her hand slipped into his. Her hands were always warm to John, warm and relaxed. He ran a thumb over her finger and kept his eyes on the road head, not needing to see her face to know her smile.

Things after that were different. They went on their little vacation, came back, Sam was born and everything changed. John couldn't stop asking about the rest of the little girl's predictions, and Mary wouldn't talk about it. Things got strained, strained led to tense, and tense led to nightly shouting matches.

John looked over at his firstborn who had fallen asleep only a few minutes ago.

He hated leaving them, hated dropping them off places while he went off on his damned mission. The longer he kept at it, the less justified he felt. In the beginning he had thought, at least he was making a better world for his boys, ridding the darkness of monsters. But wave after wave of newer, badder things had made him realize there was no end. He would be doing this when his hair was beyond gray- if he lived that long. And there was Dean, who already knew how to hold and shoot a gun. He'd be probably die in this life, too.

It wasn't what he would have wanted for his sons. Not what Mary would have wanted either, he was sure. They had talked about how to manage two boys, to be able to send them both to college if that was what they wanted. Never about teaching them how to kill and how to be ready when someone they loved was killed. You don't plan for that kind of thing. Not then, they didn't. Now was a different matter. John would be damned if his boys would ever lack the skills they needed to protect themselves, or the ones they loved.

Dean twitched in his sleep, and brought his legs up to tuck between him and the door, burying his head in his arms.

John only saw how young his son really was when he was sleeping. Dean spent so much time trying to fix things- he sometimes suspected that Dean thought that Mary's death was his fault. There was a guilt in his eyes that mirrored his own but shouldn't. Not at six years old.

It was hours more of driving alone with his thoughts before the road grew dark and he found a hotel they could stay in for cheap. He left the boys in the car while he talked to the owner, then brought the car around to their room. He brought Sammy in first, carrying the still sleeping two year old with all the gentleness he could muster. He thought about waking Dean and having him walk to the car, but when he saw his son asleep he couldn't bring himself to wake him.

He laid his oldest son next to his brother , and covered them both with the thin blanket provided by the motel. Sam wiggled restlessly, and for a moment John worried he would wake, but before he could react Dean planted a calming hand… right over his brother's face.

John almost laughed, but it seemed to calm Sam down and they both stayed asleep.

John stood up from the bed, and more than anything he wanted to reach over and rustle his son's hair and tell him that everything would be okay. That one day things would be back to normal, that he would never have to worry about monsters or death or protecting his little brother from the horrors that waited in the dark.

But when he'd started this mission to find Mary's killer, he promised Dean that he would never lie to him.

John walked to the dresser and took the keys. He'd be back from the bar with enough time to get a few hours of sleep before they headed out in the morning.

.

A/N: I am such a dick for taking this long to update. So sorry. I had writers block, I didn't know what I wanted, but I have a lot of material now and I want to help you feel feels and I still love getting suggestions so keep doing that and YES the requested Halloween chapter is forthcoming.

PS Who knew Mumford and Sons was such great Supernatural Fanfic music, amirite?