A/N: Well isn't this a surprise?!

I decided to update early because I will not have access to a computer on Monday to publish this chapter so I thought sooner rather than later. You guys don't have a problem with that do ya?

I had fun writing this chapter, you'll see why….

So the last chapter ended with John making his second grand entrance. How will this affect the Winchester trio? Read and find out!

Disclaimer: All the characters belong to their respective owners, Iclethea and I own nothing more than the story lines!

Chapter 10: Mending Fences

July 10th 2006

"Dad it was a trap. I didn't know, I'm sorry." Dean apologized.

We were sitting down on the beds. I was beside Dad on one bed and Sam and Dean were on the other. I hadn't let go of him since I hugged him. It had been so long since I had seen him, I breathed in the scent of his worn leather jacket, it still smelled the same as I had remembered it.

"It's all right. I thought it might've been." Dad rubbed my shoulder.

He told us that he had gotten there in time to see Meg get dropped from the window. He smiled when I said "Serves her right the little bitch." He also said that the demon had started coming after him.

"Is that why you disappeared?" I asked, hoping for a yes.

"It's one of the reasons yeah. I didn't want him to come after you and Dean." He looked at the two of us; it was like Sam wasn't there. "It knows that I'm close. It knows I'm gonna kill it. Not just exorcise it or send it back to hell – actually kill it."

"How?" Dean looked puzzled.

"Yeah, how do you kill a demon?" I had never tangled with one before but I'm pretty sure there's nothing in the journal that says anything about killing demons. But there isn't a 'this is how you kill the monster, save the day and get the girl' kind of sentence in that thing.

"I'm workin' on that."

Sam tried to convince him to let us come with him, a sentiment that we shared. But Dad said that he didn't want us to get hurt. Then Sam got his chance to reunite with Dad, but it was cut short by the daevas coming in and attacking us. We were getting our butts handed to us until Sam lit some flares. Making them vanish.

We were all fumbling around blind from the flares, coughing and gasping for air.

"Dad!" Dean called out.

"Over here!" John responded.

We both made our way over to Dad and we helped him up. Sam had the good sense to pick up the bag of weapons and followed us out of the room. When we got out to the car Dean brought all my hopes crashing down.

"Dad, you can't come with us." He announced abruptly.

"What? What are you talking about?" Sam asked.

"Yeah Dean, did those flares fry some of your brain cells!" I almost yelled at him. "We just spent all this time to find him and you don't want him to come with us?"

Dean explained that Meg was right; Dad is vulnerable when he's around us, and we had to separate. Sam and I protested me more so than Sam, but Dad agreed.

"Daddy! Please don't go!" Tears started filling in my eyes. "I need you, we need you!"

"Bella I can't –" Dad sighed, trying to find the words. "Don't cry baby. This fight is just starting. And we are all gonna have a part to play. For now, you've got to trust me. You've got to let me go."

With trembling hands I finally let go and stepped towards Dean. He wrapped his arm around my shoulder. "Hey kid?" Dad walked over to me, he put his finger under my chin and lifted my head. "No tears, you are a Winchester." He smiled but it didn't touch his eyes, he was just as upset as I was, but he had it under control.

I nodded my head and tried to stop the tears. But it was too late to stop now. I buried my face in Dean's jacket so Dad wouldn't see. It didn't smell the same as Dad's did. It smelled like beer, women and someone else's blood.

I sat in the back of the car and put my headphones in and ransacked through my cd's and found a Green Day cd and popped it in. I refused to talk to Dean, he had ruined my life. We had spent so much time looking for Dad and then he just sends him away? He's such an ass!

Sam wasn't all that happy either, but he was taking it better than me. He didn't have a good relationship with Dad, I know, but I thought he should have been a little more understanding.

After Illinois we did what we always do, find more things to hunt. We crashed through Texas and while Dean and Sam, and me towards the end, had a little prank war we shut down a haunted house that was created by an internet audience, our first encounter with Craig and Ed. Talk about two characters….

Then we got a heads up about a case in Wisconsin, the town was plagued by a Shtriga, a nasty little thing that Sam and Dean had dealt with before. Then a short trip up to New York brought us a haunted painting that murdered its owners.

And then we come to probably one of my favorite cases: the vampires. While we were scanning the local papers and the internet for leads on cases Dean found an obituary for a hunter that Dad had mentioned in his journal. We packed up the impala and headed for Manning, Colorado.

When we went to the guy's cabin it had been trashed. The police claimed that it was a bear attack; it sure looked like one if it wasn't. Upon closer inspection we found salt lining the doors and the windows. This guy was defiantly a hunter, Sam found a journal just like Dad's except it went back into the '60s.

Then Dean found some scratches on the floor and took a piece of paper from the desk and took a rubbing of the scratches, turns out that it was a mail drop, just like Dad and I do.

We headed into town to the only post office and retrieved what was inside, an envelope with J.W. on it.

"'J.W.' You think? John Winchester?" Sam shrugged as we got back in the car.

"I don't know. Should we open it?" Dean started fiddling with the envelope.

We all jumped when someone knocked on the window of the impala. After I recovered from my mini heart attack I smiled.

Dad smiled back.

"Thank you for scaring the crap out of us Dad." I punched him when he opened my door. I moved over so that he could get in the back.

"You're welcome kid." He winked at me. "It's what I do."

He explained to us that he had heard about his friend dying and came to investigate. He followed us to his house and then followed us to the post office.

"I should probably take a look at that." He took the letter from Dean and started reading. "'If you're reading this, I'm already dead'… that son of a bitch."

After Dad stopped asking us seemingly random questions he told us his why Mr. Elkins was killed for a gun, and who did it.

"They were what Daniel Elkins killed best: Vampires."

"Vampires?" I questioned. "I thought there was no such thing."

"Yeah, you never mentioned them before." Sam shared in my disbelief.

"I thought they were extinct. I thought Elkins and others had wiped them out. I was wrong."

He told us that most of the myths about vampires were wrong, crosses, sunlight and steaks don't affect them. The only way to kill them is by ripping their heads off. Otherwise the stories were true. They needed human blood to survive and they can blend in and look just like everyone else, and once they have your scent, they have it for life.

Later, after two huge fights between Sam and Dad, he finally told us what was so important about this gun; supposedly it could kill anything, even yellow eyed demons.

Our first attempt to retrieve the gun crashed and burned. We barely made it out alive. Then it was back to the drawing board. Dad sent Dean off to a funeral home to get a dead man's blood; it was poisonous to vampires, who knew right?

He made me and Sam stay behind.

"Why can't I go with Dean?" I protested, something ugly was going to go down between the two of them and I didn't want to be anywhere near ground zero when it happened.

"Because I need you here, I haven't spent enough time with you." He ruffled my hair.

Sam was pacing the floors. Dean had only been gone for 20 minutes. "It shouldn't be taking this long. I should go help." He went for the door.

"Dean's got it." Dad seemed totally at ease sitting at the table, looking at Mr. Elkins' journal. He looked up then and noticed Sam's pacing. "Sammy?"

"Yeah?" Sam wasn't paying attention to him; he was watching the window waiting for Dean to come back.

"I don't think I ever told you this but…" He looked between the two of us. "the day the two of you were born you know what I did?"

"What?" I asked.

"I put $100 into a savings account for each of you. I did the same thing for your brother." Sam stopped pacing and came to join us at the table. "It was a college fund. And every month, I'd put another $100 until… anyway my point is Sam that, this is never the life that I wanted for you."

"Is that why you left me with Charlie?" I tried to keep my emotions in check.

"Yeah, I figured if you didn't know about hunting then you would grow up normal."

I rolled my eyes. "Normal is overrated." He laughed.

"Then why did you get so mad at me when I left?" Sam's face was set in a mask of irritation.

Don't be such a pre-Madonna Sam! I told him.

This is between me and Dad Bella.

"You gotta understand something. After your mother passed all I saw was evil, everywhere. And all I cared about was keeping you kids alive. I sent Bella away because at the time I thought that was what would keep her safe, though afterwards I realized that I had left her defenseless. I wanted you… prepared. Ready. Except somewhere along the line I… uh… I stopped being your father and I… I became your drill sergeant. So when you said that you wanted to go away to school, all I could think about, my only thought was, that you were gonna be alone. Vulnerable. Sammy it just...it never occurred to me what you wanted. I just couldn't accept the fact that you and I were just… different."

Then Sam laughed and told him that they were more alike than he realized and explained what happened with Jessica.

"Hey Dad? Whatever happened to that college fund?" Sam asked afterwards.

Dad grinned and said. "I spent it on ammo."

It seemed like for a few minutes that both sides were waving the white flag in a truce. We all laughed as Dean came in. He had gotten the blood and Dad sat us down to explain the plan. We were going to use the blood to catch one of the vampires to draw out the leader. We were going to trade the captive for the gun. Then the peace treaty between Dad and Sam came to an end. He still wanted us to get out of town when we captured the vampire.

Dean agreed with Dad, to the point that Sam almost got into a fist fight with him, but later explained that while Dad was bargaining for the colt we would go back to the nest and rescue the captives and kill the vampires to show Dad that we could handle ourselves.

It was fun raiding the nest and killing the vamps. It felt good to be included in the fight this time. Even though I was 23 years old, the same age as my twin, they still treated me like I was a kid. I know they are protecting me, but they have no right to argue with me since Dad treated them the same way.

Then we went to the meeting spot and helped Dad take out the leader. We distracted the leader so that Dad could grab the colt. It was a little dicey when the leader grabbed me and nearly took a hunk of my neck off. Dean picked up his machete and was about to go after him when he spoke

"Don't! Or I'll break her pretty little neck. Put the blade down."

Dean didn't move to do anything. So the leader tightened the grip around my neck, cutting my air supply off completely. Dean dropped the machete and put his hands in the air.

"You people. Why can't you leave us alone? We have as much right to live as you do."

"I don't think so." Dad's voice came from behind us. The vampire spun me around and looked at Dad. "Now take your filthy hands off my daughter you son of a bitch!" he was holding the colt and fired. The bullet went straight into his skull, a sigil appeared where the bullet went in and he stumbled, letting me go. I ran over to Dad and watched as a flash of light illuminated the vampire's skeleton and fell to his knees, dead.

The remaining vampires retreated and left us in the street.