(10/19/2016) I made the mistake of rewatching Watchmen. If John Winchester sounds like the Comedian I apologize. I'm so tempted to start watching Walking Dead again because of Jeffrey Dean Morgan :D

The next update might be a while. My final class is looking like it's going to be a doozy. Of course, I could always procrastinate just like I'm doing right now…

Thank you thedarkpokemaster and missmeow1968 for the reviews! And cookies and candies for all the new favoriters and followers!


Upon hearing that John's friend Elkins had been murdered by vampires, Buffy immediately and imperiously demanded to know how many and where they were. When her father refused to give any details Buffy began walking off by herself. She proclaimed that this was exactly her kind of thing and she would find and take care of them. John followed his daughter and put a restraining hand on her shoulder.

He ended up flat on his back.

It was the first time John Winchester had encountered the strength and reflexes of the Slayer, and if it had been anyone but his daughter he would have been merely flummoxed. Circumstances being what they were, once he clambered to his feet he was furious.

At the look on his face Buffy cringed and peeped out an apology. Despite her power and her calling the Slayer was still a sixteen-year-old girl, considerably shorter than her immediate male relatives, who had never been the focus of her father's ire.

Oppressive silence reigned. For a long moment John stared down at his youngest child, a look on his face that neither of his sons had ever seen. It suddenly dawned on Dean that his father was torn between blistering Buffy's ears with a scathing tirade and laughing himself sick.

John settled for walking away and climbing into his truck. He barked an order to follow, waited until the Impala's engine roared, then sped off. Dean saw his father's shoulders shaking through the back window; apparently he'd given in to hysteria.

In the meantime, Buffy had regained her cantankerous attitude and was sitting in the Impala's back seat with her arms crossed. "Dude," Dean said to her, "you look like a pouty baby."

"Shut up," she shot back.

"We need a plan," Sam placated. "We can't just go charging in. Buffy, there could be, like, twenty vampires in there."

"Sounds like fun."

Sam twisted around to look his sister in the eyes. "You might be the Slayer but you're not immortal. Remember: you got dinged just like we did when we went after that tulpa."

"But I got better faster," Buffy argued.

"Yeah, but you got hurt in the first place. All it's going to take is one of those vampires getting a lucky shot in and you're dead just like the rest of us."

"Then the next Slayer gets called. Yippie dippy doo."

This sort of fatalistic commentary had been creeping into Buffy's speech ever since the tulpa had knocked her out of the window of its ramshackle home. As focused as he was on the job Dean didn't seem to notice, but Sam, who had previously spent a considerably larger amount of time with their sister, could see she was acting different. There was more of this Angry, Morose Buffy than the usual Peppy, Excitable Buffy as of late.

Concern for his sister was warring with the inevitable irritation that his father's presence normally brought on. Sam had already caught the sidelong glances Dean had been throwing at him. For Buffy's sake, at least, he was going to try and hold it in.

They laid up for the night in motel rooms with an adjoining doorway. Buffy and Sam took one, John and Dean the other. Despite the late hour Dean offered to go get some beers and dragged his brother along. John and Buffy were squaring off as they left.

"Okay," Sam said after they'd pulled out of the parking lot, "spit it out. I know we're not really going for a beer run at one in the morning."

"Something's wrong with Buffy."

"Huh. I thought you weren't paying attention."

"What? Why?"

"Because you weren't saying anything."

"Dude, she freaking beat that shtriga's head in with the kid's bat. I don't want to think about the therapy Michael gets to go through after that."

Sam sighed. "She keeps talking about dying. Like it's inevitable."

"Well, I mean, she already died. Not like it'd be a new experience."

"Exactly! She keeps saying she's all right, but I don't think she's over it. We need to watch her, especially now that there's vampires involved."

"She might go all She-Hulk on them. Can't say that'd be a bad thing."

"Sure, then she gets so maniacal about killing them she forgets we're in the fight too. Then someone gets hurt."

"Yeah, okay. I get it. Right now I just hope we get back and dad's still in one piece."


Buffy folded her arms tight and stared up at her father. "Well?"

"Well what?"

"Go on! Start telling me I was stupid and to never do that again and… and that boys are bad."

John chuckled and shook his head. "It wasn't stupid, but it wasn't nice to do to your old man. Buffy, I might have never wanted you in this life but it came and yanked you in anyways. The fact that you can defend yourself makes me feel better."

"And the boys?"

Her father's eyebrows lifted. "Do I gotta worry about any when you've been hanging around this whole time with your trigger happy brothers?"

"Guess not." Buffy perked up. "So you're not going to hold me back?"

"Hadn't planned on it. Long as you follow my lead we've got nothing to worry about."

"Your lead? Dad, if these are vampires then we should be following my lead. You know, me being a Vampire Slayer and all."

"That ain't how this works, Buffy. If you're coming along on this job you do what I tell you or I send you home."

"But—"

"No buts!" John said, his volume rising. "This ain't Sunnydale and you ain't walkin' all over me like you walk all over Rupert. You don't do this my way then you might as well be locked up in here while we go out and handle things." When his daughter merely stared, her jaw set, he demanded, "Well?"

"Fine," Buffy managed to drag out.

"Good. Now head on back to your room. We're probably gettin' an early start tomorrow. Don't forget to salt those doors and windows!"

"Yeah, yeah."

John turned his attention to a set of transistor radios, a silent reaffirmation of his dismissal. Buffy huffed quietly and stomped into her room, slamming the door on the way. Her father shook his head ruefully. Soldier of his she might be, and now under his purview, but he still had a soft spot for her; that sort of attitude from the boys would have had him in a towering rage. Instead John let her be, and wondered faintly why his daughter was so bent on throwing herself to the wolves.


Thankfully, Sam and Dean came back to two intact family members. Their father and sister were in separate rooms, and Buffy was still fuming over whatever they had talked about, but physically they were fine. The brothers exchanged apprehensive glances before heading to their beds.

John woke them all up around five. He got a lesson in patience when he got to his daughter. Through their weeks of traveling the brothers had discovered that Buffy was not a morning person. Their sister was good for staying up late, but getting her up in the morning was a trial. Sam normally bore the brunt of her temper; Dean was prone to late night bar crawls and falling asleep in the beds of random women. Let Buffy get her coffee and her ablutions in and she would be back to normal, but until then she could be as recalcitrant as a five year old.

Buffy actually whined at her father about the state of her face and hair until he mentioned the vampires. Apparently a 911 call about a body in the middle of the road had turned up an abandoned car and three missing people. After hearing that she forewent her tantrum (much to the bemusement of her brothers, both of whom had been looking forward to seeing how their father reacted to Early-morning Buffy), pulled on her jeans, and was good to go.

When they arrived at the scene, John ordered his children to stay put. He picked an FBI badge from their box of counterfeit IDs and walked over to the police.

Buffy blinked at the expression on Sam's face. "What's with the angry eyebrows?"

"I don't see why we couldn't have gone over with him."

"Oh, don't tell me it's already starting," Dean groused.

"What?" Sam asked brusquely.

"What?" Buffy repeated, looking back and forth confusedly at each of her brothers. "What's starting? Is it a vampire thing? What's the thing? Tell me what the thing is!"

Buffy's barrage of rambling questions effectively bewildered the brothers out of their impending argument. Their father approached unnoticed and relayed what he'd discovered, his voice startling his children. "It was them all right," he said. "Looks like they're heading west. We'll have to double back to get around that detour."

"How can you be so sure?" Sam demanded petulantly.

Dean spoke his brother's name under an exasperated sigh and shook his head. Sam turned towards him and snapped, "I just want to know we're going in the right direction."

"We are," Buffy answered. Her male relatives all looked at her as she pointed at the abandoned car. "I can tell they were there."

"How the hell…?" Dean started to ask.

"Slayer's senses," John said grimly. He shot a glare at his younger son. "Any more questions?" When he received nothing more than sullen silence, John told his children, "All right, let's get out of here; we're losing daylight."

"Can I ride with you?" Buffy asked cheerily.

"Sure," John responded. As father and daughter headed for his truck, the former remarked, "Hey, Dean. Why don't you touch up your car before you get rust? I wouldn't have given you the damn thing if I thought you were going to ruin it."

As she climbed into John's truck, Buffy watched her brothers. Sam gave Dean a knowing, exasperated look before the two of them entered the Impala. All this tension and weirdness added to her growing supposition that something big had happened between Sam and their father and she was determined to suss it out.


They drove swiftly down the asphalt, John leading. Buffy watched her brothers through the back window. Whatever they were discussing had Sam incensed and Dean defensive; her younger brother was gesticulating angrily while he drove and her elder brother was hunched down while supposedly consulting their father's diary. She turned back to face the front and ventured, "Dad, what's going on with you and Sam?"

"Nothing you need to worry about."

"Well seeing as how we're heading into a nest of vamps and we wanna fight together I think it is a thing to worry about."

John inwardly cringed. His daughter had this in her teeth and wasn't going to let go. Since Joyce had thrown him out, John and Buffy hadn't seen each other more than once every few months (sometimes narrowed to weeks if more than one hunt took him near California), but it was enough time to watch his little girl form. Buffy had become as obstinate as her father and as perceptive as her mother, the latter developing mostly after she had grown out of her valley girl phase. He suspected that particular time of her life had been snuffed quickly after a Spring Break that Dean had spent relentlessly mocking her new attitude.

However, this issue between him and Sam wasn't something he wanted to air in front of his beloved daughter. It had taken him a long time of hunting and thinking, but John had eventually realized that Buffy reminded him of Mary, what with her blonde hair and fierce attitude. The physical resemblance was vague at most, but it made him want to do everything he could to shield her from the evils of his world.

The same evils that were most likely swirling around her younger brother.

"It's just a thing, Buffy," John finally replied. "Not everyone in every family gets along."

"Well, duh, but last time you two were all huggy and stuff." She thought for a moment. "Is it because he went to Stanford?"

John's knuckles tightened on the wheel. "Buffy, I ain't talkin' about this right now."

"I was just—"

"Young lady, I said I ain't talking about this and that's final!"

Which inadvertently answered her question. Buffy remembered the day Sam showed up on their doorstep in Los Angeles. He'd been driving a car with dubious origins and had all of his meager belongings in a duffel on the backseat. Hank had been doubtful about letting him in the home, but after hearing what had transpired between Sam and and his father he was more amenable; Joyce's husband pounced gleefully upon any chance to criticize John Winchester (which did nothing to endear Buffy to her stepfather).

Sam explained that his father had thrown him out and he was now at a loss about where to go. He ended up staying with them until the beginning of the first semester, acting the entire time like a polite houseguest and a dutiful brother. But Buffy knew he was missing Dean. She caught him more than once picking up the phone, beginning to dial a number, then slamming it down and walking away. When she broached the subject of their elder brother Sam played it off like it was inconsequential, but it was obvious he felt otherwise. Her younger brother might harbor resentment towards their father but she knew how deep the bond with Dean went.

When it was time for school to begin, Joyce happily took her daughter and pseudo-stepson on a shopping excursion (despite her husband's grousing). Buffy didn't think Sam had ever had so many new clothes at once in his entire life, not to mention a full array of school supplies and a laptop just for him. The three of them then made the six hour drive north from Los Angeles to Palo Alto to drop him off. Joyce invited Sam to stay with them during the summers with an open door if he wanted to visit during the school year.

Buffy saw Sam relatively often, at least once a month, and even if he spent most of his time doing homework he always made room in his schedule for something with her and her mom (Hank conveniently found business trips when Sam came around). Not once did Buffy see her brother try again to contact either John or Dean.

Now as she gazed at her father's white knuckles and tightly pressed lips Buffy was beginning to think that maybe the previous communication blackout had been imposed by John rather than volunteered by Sam. There had to have been more than just being "thrown out" for them to still be clinging to this animosity. She would just have to wait to find out.


It turned out Buffy didn't have to wait long. Her father called her brothers with a terse command to turn off at the next exit. They both then watched, astonished, as Sam gunned the Impala in front of the truck and swerved it into an angle across the road. John was forced to slam on the brakes to prevent t-boning his sons.

"Dad, no!" Buffy cried as John wrenched open the door and pounded the pavement towards her brothers. She could hear Dean calling out Sam's name in much the same tone.

"What the hell was that?" their father demanded as he and his youngest son advanced upon one another.

Both Buffy and Dean came hurrying up behind them as they stopped nearly chest to chest, nostrils flaring and fists clenched. Sam ignored his father's query and angrily stated, "We need to talk."

"About what?"

"About everything. Where are we going dad? What's the big deal about this gun?"

"Sammy, come on," Dean urged, "we can Q and A after we kill all the vampires."

"Right, remember them?" Buffy added. "Fanged guys tagging the locals as lunch?"

"They're right," John said. "We don't have time for this."

Sam's expression was thunderous. "Last time we saw you, you just took off and said we didn't have any business going with you. Now out of the blue you need our help!" His voice had risen to a shout. "Now obviously something big is going down, and we want to know what!"

"Get back in the car," their father growled.

"No."

"I said," John demanded, quietly and dangerously, "get back in the damn car."

"Yeah? And I said no."

"Okay you made your point tough guy," Dean attempted (Buffy continued to be nonplussed by the scene). "Look we're all tired, we can talk about this later. Sammy, I mean it, come on." He grabbed his brother's arm and yanked him towards the Impala.

"This is why I left in the first place," Sam mumbled.

"What'd you say?" John asked harshly.

His younger son swiveled back around. "You heard me."

"Yeah? You left. Your brother and me, we needed you. You walked away, Sam!"

"Sam," Dean pleaded at the same time Buffy said, "Dad, no."

Enraged, John stepped into Sam's face and roared, "You walked away!"

Both Dean and Buffy began begging their father and brother to be civil, the latter going so far as to pull a little on her father's sleeve. "You're the one who said don't come back, Dad," Sam shouted back. "You closed that door not me. You were just pissed off that you couldn't control me anymore!"

Finally, Dean managed to wedge himself between his father and brother. At the same time, Buffy tapped into her Slayer strength to jerk her father away. "Stop it, stop it," Dean snarled, "That's enough!"

Sam turned away first, but when John looked ready to continue their argument Dean snapped, "That means you, too."

Both Sam and John stormed off towards their respective cars. Dean threw up his hands and dropped them. "Terrific."

"Dean," Buffy said, astonished. "What was that?"

"That was something that was a long time coming." Dean patted his sister's shoulder as John barked his daughter's name. He pushed her gently towards the truck. "You better get going. Don't ask dad about it, okay?"

Her curiosity stifled by the agony in her brother's eyes, Buffy agreed. She could only hope that whatever this was didn't impede them during the upcoming fight.


They didn't make it to the vampire's hideout until early the next morning which, Buffy explained, was a good thing; the sun would have the monsters holed up and most likely sleeping. In accordance with their vulnerability to the omnipresent ball of fire, the barn the creatures had picked was haphazardly shored up with broken planks so not a single beam of light peeked through.

To all outward appearances the place looked abandoned; the incongruent presence of a smeared, bloody handprint on the front door spoke of something terrible inside. The family of hunters and Slayer ignored the implication to concentrate on practicalities. "Plenty of wood," Buffy whispered. "Stakes aren't an issue."

"Beheading works too," John added. "But bullets won't do shit. You boys still keeping the holy water stocked?"

"Yes, sir," answered Dean.

"How many are inside?" Sam asked.

"A lot," said Buffy. "More than two, less than twenty."

"Gee, that helps," Dean deadpanned.

Buffy stuck her tongue out at her elder brother as their father said, "So you three really want to know about this gun?"

When his children nodded, John relayed the tale of Samuel Colt and his miraculous pistol. Seven bullets were all that remained. John's friend Daniel had discovered it who knows when. "They say this gun can kill anything," John concluded.

Dean's eyes widened. "Kill anything like, supernatural anything?"

"Like the demon," Sam inferred.

"Banana eyes?" Buffy asked.

"Yep," affirmed John. "Ever since I picked up its trail I've been looking for a way to destroy that thing. Find the gun, we may have it."

"Then after that it's all puppy and rainbows?"

"We can only hope."


John reluctantly let Buffy take the forward position after she pointed out that she was geared specifically for this sort of monster. After Dean had passed out bottles of holy water and John some pre-made stakes they crept for the barn doors.

Buffy carefully pushed one open, wincing at the creak of rusted hinges. Nothing in the darkness stirred, but she could see and feel each of the fourteen vampires sleeping in the hay or on makeshift hammocks. Two were curled up together in a larger one of the latter.

She peered around more as they slowly inched inside. There were steel cages in the back filled with humans who eyed the intruders with hope and trepidation. As Sam silently shut the door, Buffy tapped Dean on the shoulder and pointed. He nodded and headed over to the prisoners, Sam on his heels.

John and Buffy headed for the pair on the hammock. The gun they were looking for was displayed prominently on a crate beside them. As Buffy kept watch, John sidled up to the crate and reached for the gun.

When a pale, female hand shot out and grabbed his wrist, John stifled his shout. Over the edge of the hammock a beautiful brunette peered over, her mad, brown eyes fixed on her prey.

"Spike," she cooed and the vampire on her side stirred, "bring out the tea and biscuits. Someone's here to play."


Acknowledgement : Some lines of dialogue are taken directly from the episode "Dead Man's Blood" (SPN 1.20).

Author's Note : I promise Spike or Drusilla won't meet the same fate as Luther. Cross my heart, hope to die, put Mr. Pointy in my eye.