AN: I am sorry this is so late! Time got the better of me today D: ...at least you guys will have this to wake up to? Enjoy!
John sat in the passenger seat, feeling like an invalid as Dean and Sam dug through the trunk and duffel bags looking for ingredients to their summoning spell.
Despite his impending death ticking down, he was bored. Without a task, he had nothing to think about but the angel coming after him, and how his sons were only helping him because they felt obligated to and nothing else.
He opened the glove compartment, not surprised to see the familiar cigar box crammed inside. John pulled it out and opened it, sifting through the various fake IDs Sam and Dean stashed. It was the usual stuff: FBI, CIA, Fish and Wildlife Services.
What wasn't the usual stuff, though, were the same IDs printed for the angel. Its face was the constant stern, concentrated gaze, like it wished it could set the camera on fire with just a look. John was surprised Sam and Dean had gone through the effort to make identification for the angel.
John shut the lid on the cigar box and went to put it back into the glove compartment when he noticed something else in there. It was a small, digital camera. It fit right in John's palm. He had to press several of the different buttons before he found the power one, and it booted up slowly. There was a flashing message that read LOW MEMORY.
John pushed the gallery option.
The first picture to pop up—the most recent one to have been taken—was a snapshot of a moment just a few days before John woke up.
It was a picture of Sam and the angel, sitting next to each other in a cruddy, greasy diner booth—Sam's arm was flung around the angel's shoulder, and he was gesturing thumbs up with both hands. The food they had in front of them was grand, by diner standards. John recognized it as a celebration dinner for a hunt well done.
John stared at it. His chest felt tight. Sam was so happy, in this captured moment. John couldn't remember the last time he'd seen Sam smile like that. It had to have been when Sam was still a young boy.
John rolled his thumb over the small dial, going to the next picture. This picture had the angel sitting up on a motel bed, legs crossed and knitting needles in its hands, with Dean lying next to it, a TV remote in his hand. They didn't appear to notice they were being photographed.
It was so strange. They looked so comfortable, like it was just another routine for them. Like it was something they did every night. Acid curdled in the pit of John's stomach. He clicked to the next picture: just the angel in the backseat of the Impala. The picture was taken through the rearview mirror. The angel was looking out the window, its fingertips lightly pressed against the glass.
And in the picture, the angel didn't look stern, or righteous, or malicious. If John didn't know the truth already, he would mistake the angel for a man. Just a regular man.
John couldn't bear to look at any more photos. He powered down the camera and shut it back into the glove box, and hoped neither of his sons would notice he'd looked at it.
John inhaled and stepped out of the car. He braced himself against the side of the Impala. Sam and Dean had pulled the duffel bags out of the trunk and were rooting through them on the dewy grass.
But John couldn't stop thinking about the photos. How many more were on the camera that were just like that? How many photos were more than what he had seen? More private, more intimate? Something was going on between Dean and the angel. John didn't want to think about it. But he had to. Too many things had been alluded to, between Sam and Dean and the demon, Crowley; and then there was the insistence that the angel was part of their family, especially on Dean's part—
And the way they looked at each other. Like they were the only beings in the whole world.
John bit his lip. He shoved those thoughts away. "Did you find everything?" he asked. His voice was barely above a whisper.
"We're missing stuff," Dean growled. "Every other day of the year, we're up to our eyeballs in this hoodoo shit, and the one day we need it, we're suddenly out!"
"Murphy's been biting us in the ass these last few weeks," Sam said.
"I'm gonna strangle Murphy when we find him," Dean spat.
John felt the color drain from his face. "So that's it, then?" he said. Hysteria clawed at his throat and threatened to burst out into the open night sky. "I'm a dead man." Killed by a demon, killed by an angel—it was poetic, and John might have appreciated it if it had happened to anyone else. It was never as funny when it was happening to you.
"We still got a couple hours left, Dad," Sam said, exasperation bleeding from his tone. "We're not gonna let you die. One dick with wings isn't gonna be any match against the three of us. Not with the knowledge and weapons we have against angels."
Dean pushed himself to his feet, loading the magazine into a gun at the same time. Dean's movements were well-rehearsed, well-practiced; instinctual. He locked everything into place without glancing down at what his hands were doing.
John taught him that. He remembered staying up late at night, especially those first few months after Mary's death, drilling Dean. And when he stared at Dean in that moment, all he could see what his little four year old, legs dangling off the motel bed above the floor, with a gun in his tiny hands. And as Dean got older, the drills got harder, and John kept pushing, until Dean had been able to dis-and-reassemble a gun blindfolded.
John's training stuck.
He didn't know why that upset him as much as it did.
"Stay by us," Dean said. He went back to the trunk and pulled out the jug of holy oil. "Hey, Sam, you got a lighter?"
"Yeah," Sam said, reaching into his pocket. "You wanna set up a ring?"
"We need a lure of some kind," Dean said, frowning. "What can we use though to make sure she even gets in the ring?"
"She's coming after Dad," Sam said.
"You want to use me as bait?" John balked.
Sam shrugged. "Unless you got any other bright ideas?"
"Yeah," John snapped. "How 'bout the angel? It's the one Naomi wants dead!"
"Not happening," Dean said. He didn't yell, or get red in the face, like John knew he did when Dean was especially angry. Dean's tone was flat and clipped, but overall subdued.
John thought back to pictures; the ones he did see and the ones he didn't. The questions he had swirling in his mind that no one would answer.
The look in Dean's eyes…
"Do you love it?" John said.
The muscles in the back of Dean's tight tightened. He knew Dean's body language. John knew that was how Dean looked when he didn't want to talk about something.
"Okay," Dean said. "Dad, you stand right there, okay? Don't move. Sam and I will play lookout. We'll be close by."
Dean shoved the jug of holy oil into John's chest.
"When Naomi comes for you, scream. Don't let her touch you, and if you can, try and pour this on her."
"You didn't answer my question," John said.
"Maybe you don't deserve to know the answer," Dean said. Dean straightened his neck and spine, made himself as tall as he possibly could. John stared at Dean; at the angry Dean, the Dean he'd always been able to rely on to be steadfast, aggressive; do the job right the first time around. The Dean John could always count on to protect baby Sammy with his own life. The same conviction Dean always held deep in his bones about protecting Sammy, he had now, for the angel.
"You're really not brainwashed," John said tonelessly.
Dean snorted. "No shit."
"You're actually choosing this monster over me."
John would've rather Sam and Dean be brainwashed than for them to constantly be defending and protecting the angel out of their own volition.
"No, Dad," Dean said, shaking his head. "The only monster here is you."
John had no words. Dean took Sam by the elbow and led him away; it was an awkward sight, seeing Sam have to hunch over to keep up with Dean's pace.
John stood and watched until Sam and Dean were out of sight, hidden beyond the tree line. John leaned back against the front bumper of the Impala. The metal pressed uncomfortably into his skin. The jug of holy oil was heavy in his hands.
What was the point? In any of this? Even if Sam and Dean could defeat Naomi, he didn't want to continue this way. He didn't want to fight with his sons. And he couldn't live a life where they hated him, a life where they refused to speak to him. Not even Alastair could create something more torturous than this.
John checked his watch. Less than an hour left.
He swallowed. He looked to the line of trees where his sons had vanished behind. He couldn't see them. He wondered if they could see him.
His boys didn't need to see him die again.
The jug of holy oil fell out of his hands onto the ground, smashing and leaking over the grass slowly. John shoved his hands into his jacket pockets, and began to walk the opposite direction his sons had gone, towards the trees on the other side of the property.
He had woken in up a strange woods. It only made sense he die in one.
He thought of the many woods he'd been, the ones he'd taken Dean and Sam into, to fight a vampire, or search for a wendigo, or of the many safe houses they'd borrowed from friends of Bobby's, located safely in a wooded area, far away from anyone who didn't know better.
He walked until he could only see trees behind him, the sight of the Impala far away. He wondered if Sam and Dean would notice his absence. He wondered if they would mourn his death.
No, John thought bitterly. They have their frigging angel to look out for. To fret over. Can't waste any of it for me.
He looked up to the sky, but it was hidden behind the trick tree tops, just enough starlight pushing through the prevent John from walking in pitch darkness.
He walked forward. He stopped looking behind him. There was nothing back there for him anyway. Not anymore.