NOTE: Song lyrics are from AC/DC and The Beatles.

I cite events from the graphic novels in this chapter. If you haven't read them, you should still be able to follow the story. Just know that's where the events John refers to came from. Remember, I am trying to keep this story canon and will be setting things up for the Pilot episode.

Chapter 21: What Matters Most

The hospital cafeteria was empty this time of day. The lunch crowd was gone and it would be a few hours before the dinner crowd started to trickle in. A few people loitered, picking up snacks or coffee, but otherwise the place was silent. Even the staff weren't at the counter, they were in back preparing the next meal.

Sheriff Moore had already had his afternoon coffee, with a kind priest from Minnesota who believed in demons and ghosts and much, much more. Some people see the universe as a small place, where only the things that science can prove are real. Some see beyond all that, and they are either blessed or cursed by the knowledge. So said Pastor Jim.

The Sheriff didn't feel blessed, that was certain. The world had changed in the space of a day. He couldn't ignore what he had seen. How kind of the universe to provide him an explanation that same day. Brian did not believe in coincidence. Events were tied together, as were people. A man's presence could change the tone of a conversation, or a town.

Sam was the central figure here. The violence, the supernatural, family and friends coming to his side on the same day monsters appeared. Events and people collided around him. He didn't ask for it, didn't control it, but it happened nonetheless. As long as Brian's family was near Sam, they ran the risk of being caught up in everything he dragged in his wake.

Sheriff Moore found his daughter seated alone at a cafeteria table, hand resting on a large manilla file in front of her. She barely looked up when he sat down beside her. I had this talk with your daughter yesterday, Pastor Jim had said. I'm not sure if she believed me. Not like you do.

Jessica had not seen nature defy the laws of physics, the delivery boy's black eyes, or the monster on the coroner's exam table. Her face was drawn and thoughtful, but not haunted. Her mind was open to the possibility that Sam believed all this, but she didn't know it for herself yet. Not really.

Do I want her to? Brian wasn't sure. He'd had little enough time to think about it himself. But there was more going on here than a belief in demons and all things nasty. Believing in ghosts was one thing, living a life of crime to hunt them down was something else entirely. Sheriff Moore placed his hand on the manilla folder.

"Are you done with this?"

Jessica nodded and pushed it toward him. "Yes." Her voice was thick with frustration. Brian's stomach churned.

"What did you find out?"

"Nothing!" Jessica pounded a fist into the table and rolled her eyes. "Those FBI agents don't know anything important."

Brian glanced at the file, then back up to his daughter. She was perfectly serious. The set of her jaw said she was spoiling for a fight, but there was no one to vent her wrath to. "There are over a hundred pages here."

"I know!" Jessica fumed. "It's mostly credit card statements. I don't need to know that they like to eat at Biggerson's and shop at the Big & Tall. I mean, have you seen Sam? Where else can he shop? They lived on the road and didn't stay anywhere more than three months. So? How did Sam feel about that? Who took care of him when his dad was away? He's a good fighter, but why did he decide to stop? How does he get along with his brother? Do they fight a lot? There's nothing important in here, nothing at all!"

"Hm." Brian knew better than to say much at this point. Better to let her get it out of her system. But as she broke it down, he realized she was right. The FBI didn't know much, not about the things that really matter. Facts and data are easy to assemble, he'd learned that long ago. It's the 'why' of a crime that's hard to gather. You've got to read between the lines.

"Pastor Jim said he talked to you."

Jessica nodded. "Yeah. About ghosts and demons and weird, creepy things like that. They all believe in it. His dad. His brother. Sam believes it all." She sighed and shook her head.

"Do you?"

Jessica frowned. "I don't know. Does it really matter? I mean, I wanted to know what his secret was so bad, but now-I'm not sure I learned anything at all."

"You don't think knowing monsters are real is important?"

"It doesn't really change anything, does it? You never see one until it tries to kill you. Traffic accidents happen all the time. People die from choking on their dinner. It's just one more random thing in the world that can kill you."

Brian blinked and leaned back in his chair. Jessica had always had a firm grasp on logic, a way of seeing the world at it's most practical base. Her comments stopped the fears galloping through is brain. So there's one more thing out there that could kill you. So what?

"So, what is important?" Brian asked.

Jessica opened her mouth, then closed it again and shook her head. "I don't know how to say it. It's just, that feeling you have when you know someone. When you've spent time with them and you know how they are. I know what Mom will say when Jenna asks for an extra hundred bucks to decorate her dorm room. I know what you would say if I decided to switch schools and move halfway across the country. We know each other. We know how we fit together. Sam and his family-I don't know how they fit."

Brian waited. There was more coming, he knew from experience.

"Sam's dad wants him to come home. He wants to take Sam away with him." Jessica stared at her knees, sniffling. "Daddy, I don't know what Sam's going to do!"

Brian wrapped his daughter in his arms and let her sob on his shoulder. So. Sam might leave them forever, and take this new, dark world of monsters with him. As much as he'd come to care for the boy, in that moment, Brian wasn't sure whether he wanted Sam to stay.

000

It was too quiet. Dean didn't like silence. He liked crowded bars full of people and music. He liked to blast the bass until the car windows vibrated. Waiting in the hospital this past day, there had always been noise. The beep of the machines, the murmur of voices, the foot traffic and nurses and members of the Moore family came in and out. There had always been someone nearby. Even in the quietest moments, the space had still felt full, alive.

Now the hospital room felt dead and empty. Jessica had gone to meet up with her father in the cafeteria for a coffee. Moore family and extended family had stopped passing through. Caleb and Jim were both out searching the town for demon signs. Dad was at the nurse's station, checking on Sam's status. The machines were quiet and tucked away in the corner, no longer needed. Sam was doing well. He was breathing on his own, he had even eaten a little bit. Now he was asleep, still dosed on strong painkillers and not very coherent when he was awake.

Sam was never this quiet when Dad was so close. Always, there was a constant string of complaints coming out of his mouth. His silence felt wrong. Dean knew it was the drugs, keeping Sammy comfortable while he healed, but he wanted his brother back, awake and alert and yes, complaining about Dad.

Dad had given Dean orders to find a hotel room on the other side of the state line. A clean, reputable hotel where they could stay for several days. Dean had found it, with the help of a local travel agent. A room was reserved and waiting for them. For Sam.

Dean looked at his little brother, face purple and swollen from the beating he'd taken. He wanted to take Sam away from here and keep him stowed safely away in a hotel more than anything.

He also knew it wouldn't work. When Sam woke up and realized where he was, he would try to leave immediately. They might convince him to stay and rest for a few days. After that-well, Dean had witnessed that fight once already. He didn't want to see it again.

Dad didn't seem to care. He was moving forward with the plan to take Sam home, oblivious to the obvious. Sam wouldn't stay home. Dean had said as much. John didn't care.

John came into the room pushing and empty wheelchair. "Let's get him up, Dean."

"Dad, you know he won't stay."

"He'll stay." John reached forward to pull back the covers from Sam's thin frame. Sam twitched, but didn't wake. "I'll tell him that he lost his job and the Moores wanted him out of town as soon as possible. I'll tell him that two fights in one summer made him lose his scholarship. He won't have anywhere else to go."

"She'll call him. Dad, Sam and this girl, they're really serious." They're in love. Dean had noticed on his first day in town. This wasn't a summer fling or a college experiment. They might not have exchanged rings yet, but they might as well have.

"She can try." John picked up Sam's phone and pulled out the SIM card. "She won't get through. Help me get him up."

Wake up, Sammy, Dean wanted to shout. He wanted to shake Sam awake here and now. Because having it out here would hurt less, somehow, than watching Sam leave again in a week. But he didn't. He followed his father's orders, and helped him shift Sam gently from the bed to the wheelchair. Sam mumbled something, but otherwise was quiet. That would change as soon as the painkillers wore off.

Na-na-na-na-na-na-na! Thunder! The distant murmur of a gravelly voice and a thrumming bass rolled through Dean's head. I was caught, in the middle of a railroad track! AC/DC was the soundtrack of his life. He knew every word and every chord by heart. It played through his mind as he wheeled Sam out the door, following Dad to the lobby and the parking lot beyond.

"SAM!"

Jessica stood between the Winchesters and the rotating glass doors, her hands outstretched like a human stop-sign, face flushed red with anger, eyes flashing. "What are you doing?"

"I'm taking him home." John didn't even paused. He pushed past Jessica. Dean tried to follow, but it wasn't easy to steer a wheelchair around a girl who kept shifting sideways to keep in front of him.

"He's not ready to go home yet!" Jessica dropped to her knees and took Sam's hand in hers. His eyes fluttered, and he murmured her name.

"Jess. Are you mad?"

"Furious." She jumped to her feet again and squared her shoulders to face John.

My mind raced, and I thought, what could I do. Dean hummed the familiar chords, and he saw Sam's head bobbing along to the beat.

Somehow, Jessica's explosion released the tension. Dean hated it when Sam and Dad fought. Their anger always pinned him to a wall like a bug, helpless to stop the train wreck in front of him. But this girl and her calculated fury were comforting. Familiar.

She's a lot like mom. His memories of Mary Winchester were distant and hazy, held together by willpower more than fact. Dean had seen his mom square off against his dad just that way more than once. She never lost control and she never yelled. She steered the conversation by sheer force of will.

Dean flipped the parking break on the wheelchair. This could take a while. Dad looked at him, Dean looked down, keeping his eyes fixed on Sam.

I knew there'd be no help, no help from you. This was one fight Dean planned to stay well out of.

"Sam is coming home with me, where he belongs."

"He belongs here."

"He's safer with me."

Jessica's voice was fierce but not shrill, the train's warning whistle. Dad's was deep and firm, like the rumbling of the train on the track. They were in for a head-on collision, and his only job was to keep Sam out of the way.

"Strickler's dead! There isn't any danger anymore."

You've been thunderstruck!

Ha! Dad thought there was danger everywhere. It was rule number one. You are never safe.

"Dad? Jess? What's wrong?"

Sam's voice was so soft Dean could hardly hear it. Sam started to squirm in his chair, blinking at his surroundings.

"Hey, Sammy. You're ok." Dean put a hand on Sam's should and spoke in the softest tone he had, the one he'd used to soothe Sam to sleep as a child.

Sam shook his head. "Not me…Jessica…" He pushed on the arms of the chair, trying to lever himself up.

Dean jumped around to catch Sam before he could pitch face-first into the floor and kept an arm firmly over Sam's chest to prevent him from moving again. "She's fine, Sammy. Just fighting with Dad, like you usually do. Where did you find her?"

Sam grinned. "Ethics class."

Jessica was talking about Sam's right to make his own choices while John insisted on his right to protect his son. Dean snorted. "Figures."

A doctor had joined the fray now, holding paperwork and talking about Power of Attorney trumping family.

Thunder!

Now the Sheriff was there, and hospital security was threatening to throw John out altogether.

Thunder!

"I don't think Dad's going to shoot her today. She's not a monster is disguise, is she?"

Sam laughed at some hidden memory. "No, she loves salty food." Sam's face was draining of color, and he held his arm close to his injured side, a sure sign of pain.

"Good. Ready to go back to bed?" There wasn't any point in waiting around. Dad had lost this fight, and he would figure that out soon enough. Sam was the priority, and he needed rest.

Sam nodded. "Yeah. Wait…why are we in the lobby?"

Dean knew when telling the truth as a very bad idea. He'd had an instinct for it ever since he was small. It was a good think Sam had yet to figure out how to tell when he was lying.

"I'm trolling for chicks, you're my wingman. Look pathetic, ok?"

Sam tilted his head back, eyes wide and sorrowful. Then he frowned and clutched his stomach. "I don't feel so good."

"Well, maybe we should ask them to check your meds."

"Yeah." Sam slumped back in the chair, his head lolling against Dean's arm. "Thanks, Dean."

The sound of AC/DC faded away, crowded out by the warmth suddenly flooding him. Dean was glad Sam had grown up, but sometimes, he missed the child his brother had been. Things had been so much easier, when Sam was a child. Dean hummed all the way back to the room, their mother's favorite lullaby.

Hey Jude, don't make it bad. Take a sad song, and make it better…

000

The California sky was blue and clear, the sun a warm promise of a pleasant day ahead. The storm clouds were long gone, banished when the demon left. John kept a wary eye on the sky nonetheless. He didn't trust the calm, and knew form experience how quickly a storm could blow in from nowhere. Dark fears thundered through his thoughts, each bloody what-if worse than the next. He paced the hospital parking lot, fuming, unable to hold still yet unwilling to leave his son.

It didn't matter that he could no longer hold his baby in one arm, that Sam had surpassed him in height years ago. It didn't matter that Sam was legally an adult and society said he could make his own choice. It didn't matter that he had lived safely on his own for three years. Trouble could come at any time, and when it did, John had to be able to defend his baby boy.

"The demons are long gone."

Jim had followed John to the parking lot. He sat, calm and still, on the hood of his rented car and watched John pace.

"We don't know that."

Jim tilted his head back to take in the clear sky. "We're pretty sure. Dean, Caleb, and I have been sweeping the city and surrounding countryside for two days. There's nothing."

"They could be back. They're biding their time. We can't know when they will strike."

Jim shook his head. "John, this conspiracy theory you've got going…"

"It's not a theory. They tried to kidnap Sam when he was seven. They've been following him his entire life. They want something from him."

"John, demons don't make grand plans. They don't have any leader or centralized organization. They're all out for themselves, and they thrive on chaos and pain. They play with people like a cat plays with its dinner. They don't follow kids for twenty years, they move from one victim to the next."

"There is something more going on here." The knowledge was branded in John's skin. The old burn from the fire in Lawrence. The cuts from his fight against Lillith. The scar in his chest, from the first time he'd faced the yellow-eyed demon the night Sam left for Stanford. He knew more than he could ever say out loud because he never knew who was listening, whose ears might have been hijacked. His enemy could hide anywhere. In the child across the street, in the woman unloading groceries from her car, in the paramedic taking his break at the picnic table by the ER doors.

"They're not coming back, John. Sam is as safe here as he will be anywhere else. You can't force him to accept our way of life. He's got to make his own choice."

"He's not watching his back anymore. He's gotten soft. When the time comes, when they come for him, he won't be ready."

"He did pretty well, considering."

John closed his eyes. Yes, that much was true. If Sam hadn't been through John Winchester's school of hunting, Strickler would have killed him within the first five minutes. "He's my son, Jim."

"You can't control him, John. If you had taken him out of that hospital, what do you think would happen when he woke up? As soon as he could walk-"

"He'd be back out that door. Dean said as much." John slumped against the car next to Jim. The storm inside was stilling, the energy funneled to a clear purpose. "I have to find that thing, before it comes back for Sam."

"You could try talking to Sam, you know. Tell him the truth."

Truth. John shuddered at the thought. If he told Sam what little he knew, Sam would demand more answers, answers that John didn't have yet. The resulting argument could wind up worse than their last encounter.

"No. That's not an option."

"If you want him safe, John, you have to give him the tools to survive. Which includes the truth. Unless you don't really want him to hunt. Unless this," Jim gestured to the surrounding town of Lakeport, going about its daily business, oblivious to the evil that had just passed through. "This is what you actually want for him."

"He's got a chance at a real life." The life I couldn't give him.

Jim just nodded knowingly. He'd spent too many years listening to people divulge their darkest secrets. He knew how to read a man, cut through the lies he told himself, and get to the heart of a matter.

"They will all suffer, if the demons come for Sam."

"If there truly is a grand plan."

John didn't care if the priest believed. "I'd better get back to it, then. I've been working on a system to track demons. Time to test it out."

Jim perked up at this. "Track a demon?"

John grinned. "Yep. Now all I need is the right gun. When I find it, this bastard won't see it coming. I'll snuff out that hellfire in his eyes, and I'll dance on his bones."

"You're leaving without seeing Sam?"

The words were like hook on his heart, pulling him back to the hospital. John looked toward Sam's window, and shook his head. "He won't want to see me. It'll be a while before his head is clear. I don't need to lose any more time."

000

DENIED.

Henricksen stared at the red letters stamped across his request for an arrest warrant. Paper-clipped to the file was a memo from his supervisor, demanding his immediate return to his permanent office.

The phone on his desk rang. Henricksen didn't want to pick it up, but he didn't have much choice. His boss knew he was in the office. Probably had someone notify him as soon as the paperwork reached him.

"Chief."

"Victor, what the hell do you think you're doing? There's a kid in the hospital, he's there because you dropped the ball, and you want to arrest his dad for a phony ID we can't prove he made or had in his possession?" The voice was taut with stress and in no mood for argument.

"Boss, it came out of his truck."

"You think. Agent, you don't have a case and you know it. What is it with you and the Winchesters?"

Henricksen ground his teeth. 'They creep me out' was not going to fly. "John Winchester is up to something bad, boss. The other son is probably in on it. If I can hold him long enough to question him-"

"You don't have cause! You are not allowed to arrest a Winchester until you have evidence that a defense attorney can't refute. Got it?"

"Yeah, I got it."

"Good."

The line went dead. Henricksen grabbed the arrest paperwork and ripped it apart once, twice, three times. Bits of paper flew through the air like confetti. One day, he would catch the Winchesters.

NOTE: Hope you enjoyed the chapter. More to come. Please review!