Disclaimer, Summary & Rating: Please see Chapter 1.

MILES TO GO BEFORE I SLEEP

Chapter 15

Dean lowered his eyes to the bedclothes, taking the silence for paternal refusal. In a heartbeat the moment would pass, and Dean would never ask again.

"I can't prove it," John said, slightly aware of starting in the middle, "but…Jessica may…have been killed…because…" there was no way to say it except to say it… "…she might have been pregnant."

He watched the words strike home in his son's eyes – the pupils reacting to the shock, the astonishment, and that faint, momentary flare of grief for nephew or niece Dean would never know.

Unconsciously John twisted his wedding ring around his finger, "And I will never be able to prove it either…you know…"

Dean gave a single sharp nod. Words were unnecessary. He and Sam had never been held or even questioned over Jessica's death. As far as anyone was aware, Sam had gone away for a relaxing, post-exam vacation weekend with his elder brother, Dean Winchester and had not arrived back at Stanford until after the fact. In the middle of the night nobody had seen Sam enter his and Jessica's apartment building or Dean drag him out minutes later.

In the furore of fire trucks nobody had noticed the black Impala parked way down the block in the blacker night with the two human shadows next to it. Sam had been 'informed' of the tragedy when he had 'arrived' at dawn. But the fire had been incredibly intense – something that had baffled the fire investigator, who even as he ruled it accidental due to a 'wiring' fault still noted that such immediate intensity only usually came from accelerant-fuelled fires in arson cases. Jessica had been identifiable only via dental records and her remains had been located on what was left of the bedding, as if she had merely been asleep when the fire started. Impossible even to identify the sex of the victim, ascertaining that another person had also died due to being in her womb would likewise never be possible.

Of all the explanations why the monster had murdered Sam's girlfriend, that had been one that had never crossed Dean's mind. He said hesitantly, "I don't think that could be…"

His father gave a soft snort, "Come on, Dean, 'safe sex' is only ever really 'mostly safe sex'. The only 100 categorically foolproof method of not ending up with a social disease or a child is not to have sex. You should know, you were the one who gave Sam his sex education."

"Dad…" Dean squirmed.

Despite the seriousness, John found a small lightness within himself, "Though to be honest I wish I could have heard your birds-and-bees spiel…"

"Daaaad…"

"…considering you were hooked up with that dominatrix chick at the time…" John shook his head, "only you, son – all of fifteen years old and you're hot 'n' heavy with Elvira, Mistress of the Dark. How did you explain to a ten-year-old why hurting people was bad – except when she did it to you?"

"Very badly," Dean conceded, "why you think we split up?"

He tagged on the quip, even though that hadn't been the reason for the abrupt cessation of his first 'real' sexual relationship. Ten-year-old Sam had been fundamentally unable to grasp why it was bad to hurt people, except when…what had her name been...had bruised him. All he had seen was that the weirdly dressed bad lady was hurting his brother – with his consent was irrelevant. Sam had taken to hovering protectively around Dean; sometimes when they were watching TV or sleeping side by side, Dean had felt his brother's gaze upon him and found that Sam wasn't watching the TV or sleeping but looking at the faint bruises around Dean's wrists or on his arms with a fierce yet anxious expression.

His constant presence had irritated Dean's playmate until one night she had pulled out a pair of handcuffs and not-jokingly suggested they tie up the kid and let him watch the fun. Dean had ended the relationship on the spot, but it had marked the beginnings of Sam's awareness of sex, even though he wouldn't hit puberty for another few years. And it had been Dean rather than their father who had provided Sam with instruction and information as required, because often John Winchester simply wasn't around when his younger son reached male milestones.

Going into their rented house's bathroom one night and finding Sam perilously close to slitting his own throat with Dean's razor because he had watched Dean shave had precipitated a lesson in that aspect of male personal grooming. Dean had shown Sam how to practise kissing on his hand; how to unhook a back-clasping bra or a front one with style, how to dance, how to practise rolling on a condom using a banana and a comprehensive grounding in a thousand other things not covered in any school Sex Ed lesson.

John followed the flickering emotions crossing Dean's face as his son considered the theory. Dean had also taught Sam much more subtle things about sex, too. About how sex was not fun unless both enjoyed it. How some girls didn't really want to give you what they were offering, but did so because of peer pressure or because they didn't feel good enough about themselves as a person to believe you would be interested in them otherwise. John had a pretty good idea just how few of Dean's long stream of girlfriends he had actually 'slept with' in a sexual sense, because that wasn't what Dean was about; underneath that James Dean swagger he was really Don Quixote.

Dean was a secretly chivalrous knight albeit in rusty armour, a dirty-faced angel who picked up the emotionally bruised and mentally crumpled woman from the ground and brushed her down and supported her; his 'safely dangerous' mystique made her feel positive and good about herself and who she was once more and, when she was strong enough to go on her way in the world again, he simply faded into the shadows…alone. Oh my Mary, you would be so proud of your boy…he thinks that he hides that gentle heart and that kindness and that his macho BS totally stops it spilling out around the edges.

"You taught Sam everything about adult relationships," John emphasised quietly. "Sam and Jessica Moore lived in the same apartment and shared the same bed for nearly four years. Do you seriously think they limited themselves to holding hands and heavy petting?"

Sam had lived with Jessica for nearly four years…Dean had never before comprehended the fact; he had never had a relationship that lasted longer than about four weeks…He never could, because the first, last and always most important thing in his life had been his brother and since Dean liked women with a hefty IQ as well as cup size, it had usually taken his girlfriends all of about five minutes to suss that truth and five more minutes to decide they would not tolerate perpetually being a distant fourth after Sam, Dad and Hunting; inevitably sooner or later he had been ditched for a guy who wasn't quite as imbued with bad-boy sexiness, but who would place her at the top of his priority list.

"No, sir…" he frowned, "so that's what linked Jessica to…?" even now, he couldn't quite bring himself to mention 'mom' in front of his father.

"Mary…Max Miller's mother…Jessica…and there have been others. Different ages, different life circumstances, different skin colours, different religions and social strata, but the one commonality was that all of them were either mothers or of reasonable child-bearing age." John's lips compressed with remembered grief and rage, "Plus the manner of their murders – all were slashed across the abdomen…"

"And if you want to kill somebody fast and without giving them any opportunity to fight back, you go for the throat." Dean nodded to himself; what he knew about human anatomy could fit onto a pinhead, but the abdomen and especially that of women, was protected by a very strong, very thick wall of muscle, fat and the pelvic bones. Often, even very serious abdominal wounds were survivable – had it not been for 'pinned to the ceiling and engulfed in exploding inferno', Mom and Jessica and the other victims could probably have been saved with prompt medical attention.

"So the demon killed my kid as well." Sam said quietly from the doorway.

Chapter 16

John watched his younger son soberly as Sam came fully into the room. Dean looked at his brother anxiously, but Sam was calm though sombre rather than angry at their father for his revelations.

"Sam…I may be wrong…and at that stage…Jessica herself wouldn't have known even if she was..." John suggested quietly.

Sam came and sat down on the chair on the door side of the bed, staring at his hands for several moments. "Guess it's a good thing I'd already bought the engagement ring then."

They flinched and Sam looked at his father, "If you're right, then I have to say it implies an ineptitude that this thing's never shown as far as I can see."

"Huh?" Dean murmured.

Sam shot his brother what managed to be a faintly whimsical smile despite the tremendous shock he'd received. He'd only turned back to the hospital room to ask if his father wanted another cup of coffee and had had been rooted to the spot on the verge of opening the door when he'd heard Dean's opening question and his father's response.

"I have these…abilities. So did Max Miller. The notion seems to be that Jessica was killed because little Dean – or Deanna –" he didn't notice his brother's reaction to the casually uttered name, "was going to have daddy's whammy and then some?"

"That's mostly my angle, yes," John conceded.

"Then we know it's misfired at least twice. Mrs Miller had already had Psychic-Psycho Boy when it killed her. And why did it wait until after I was born before trying to deep-fry me and my nursery?"

"You were unexpected…" John uttered his theory in the stark quiet, "the Millers had been told they were infertile…"

"And you never intended to have me?" Sam instantly picked up on what his father's phraseology…unexpected.

"Wow, was I that bad?" Dean made the quip with comically widened eyes and exaggerated 'lil' ole' me?' mock-innocence.

Both Sam and John saw through him like glass to the pain and the incipient sense of rejection underneath as once again Dean believed himself to be 'the freak', the one 'more trouble than he was worth'. John felt the invisible wave of anger rolling towards him from Sam's direction and once again felt that tingle of almost-electricity in the air as the wall picture – an uninspired and inappropriate seascape for a landlocked farming State – shivered slightly as if contemplating coming off the wall and clobbering him.

So he laughed, genuinely, and even more so at their astonished faces. "Are you kidding? Oh, Dean…it was exactly the opposite problem – you were everything I wanted in a son."

"And that was a bad thing?" Sam gave Dean a sidelong 'okay this is whack even for him, right?' glance to which Dean equally silently replied, 'You're telling me, bro'. I think Dad may actually be losing it…'

Not in this lifetime, boys. Composing himself, John said. "It's simple – I was hoist by my own petard. Be careful what you wish for, because you might get it…and I did."

"You wanted Dean to be…like Dean." Sam said cautiously. "Well, yeah…that's insane."

"Hey!"

John ignored the indignant protest. "Look, you know I met your mom when I was in the Marines, right?"

"Yes, sir," they chorused.

"One of her girlfriends was a uniform groupie," John muttered with remembered distaste, "but Mary had no time for that macho military BS. Oh she liked me, and she was fond of me, but no way was she going to let herself fall for a soldier with an over-developed sense of self-confidence. I was her final fling, her own bit of future bad-boy nostalgia. Sure I was good in bed, but –"

"Dad!" again with the chorusing, "TMI!"

"But then she would find someone who thought with what was between their ears rather than their legs for the long haul." John finished. Despite the underlying seriousness, he grinned; for too long these memories had tortured his dreams but now the reminiscences were sweet with recalled affection, "I'll never forget the look on her face when she opened the door and there I was in that ghastly demob suit I'd picked up at JC Penney's on the way. She couldn't believe it when I said I'd left the Corps. She asked me why and I said, "'because if I'd stayed you wouldn't have married me.'"

They remained respectfully silent as he savoured the moment.

He blinked and focussed on Dean. "When the doctors told us they thought you were a boy I was cock-a-hoop. You'd have thought I'd invented fatherhood. I went around telling everyone how my boy would be a real chip off the block…like that movie...a genuine mini-me. That was when your mom told me to shut up else I might get what I was wishing for. Boy, was she waaaay smarter than me."

"But I wasn't bad?" Dean asked the question with a sort of cautious hope in his tone.

"You were everything I'd wanted you to be – before you were born at any rate." John chuckled again. "It was like you were turbo-charged from birth. Most first labours can take a minimum of twelve hours. From the first contraction hitting Mary to you being born was about twenty-three minutes, and there was no smacked bottom for Dean Thomas Winchester. They knew your lungs were working in Paraguay."

"Yeah, he's never shut up since," Sam commented; he grinned as Dean silently mouthed 'bitch' at him and he mouthed back 'jerk'.

"You gotta realise, me and your mom were in our twenties when Dean was born," John explained, "We were young, healthy, eager for the whole Mom & Dad experience…and we were exhausted. You were an insomniac from birth –"

Dean flinched slightly, but John saw it.

"But you were a great baby," he emphasised firmly. "Most insomniac babies whine or grizzle or are cranky. You didn't sleep but you didn't fuss; we'd hear you moving in the small hours and when we got up you'd be there playing with your toys in the cot or just grinning generally at the world. You were trying to crawl at two months and were trying to walk at six months, and when you could…"

"What'd he do?" Sam urged his father gleefully, soaking up every word like a dry sponge; John Winchester had never been this open, this communicative about 'Before', when he was just a normal husband and father with a normal life.

"Mary said she was going to superglue you to the floor as it was the only way to keep you in one spot," John told his blushing elder son. "When you were two, you watched The Wizard of Oz and then we found you trying to crawl out onto the roof to play at being a flying monkey…when you were three you saw Mary Poppins and the next day Mary walked into the room to see your little legs dangling from the chimney because you were trying to crawl up the flue to find Dick van Dyke."

Sam laughed – a real, genuine, 24-karat belly laugh. "Awesome!"

"Shut up, Sam," Dean's face was beetroot but the glare he gave his brother had no heat – it made Sam happy and laugh to hear about his toddler mishaps, and any humiliation of himself was therefore acceptable and of no importance.

But it is important, and that you accept it's not is part of the problem, John thought to himself as he watched Dean from the corner of his eye. Ruthlessly he shelved those thoughts – this was not the time.

Sam, seeing the faint hurt in Dean's eyes, sobered up quickly; did Dean really think he was laughing at his expense? Later, in a few days, when Dad was inevitably gone again after this 'playing the father' interlude wore thin, Sam would revisit this discussion and make it clear that he was laughing with and never at.

"During the night your mom used to elbow me awake," John confessed, "and when I whined she used to point out that I'd wanted a son just like me, "'So suck it up and Semper Fie, Winchester.'" You had more energy than both of us put together." He looked at Dean, allowing his deep love to show on his face, "We wanted to give you the time and attention that you deserved."

"And you were too exhausted to cope with a second Dean." Sam put in dryly.

"That too," John conceded drolly.

"What changed your mind?" Dean asked when it became obvious Sam wasn't going to.

For the first time in the history of the world, John Winchester looked sheepish. "We didn't, exactly. That's what I meant about unexpected. Like I said, safe sex is only ever mostly safe. Abstinence is the only certain guarantee of non-parenthood."

Neither son needed the exact details, whether wonky contraceptive, split condom or just momentary carelessness; a single spermatozoon deposited at the top of a woman's thigh outside the vagina still had a realistic chance of making the (to it) 70 minute journey to the womb, and one single drop of semen contained on average over 200 million spermatozoa.

"And you were worried I'd be a hyperactive brat too?" Sam deliberately drawled, smirking at Dean.

"For most of the pregnancy the doctors didn't know whether you were Samantha or Sam," John replied obliquely. "But if we'd known what would happen when you were born, we'd have started trying for another baby when Dean was about two days old!"

"So I was angelic," Sam smugly declared.

"Hardly," John countered drolly deciding it was time for a little proxy payback on Dean's behalf, "considering you wailed like a banshee non-stop for the first three hours of your life and used to wait until you'd just been put in a fresh diaper before filling it again three seconds later, accompanied by loud farts."

Now it was Sam's turn to be scarlet as Dean sniggered.

"…but you calmed Dean down and seemed to have switched off his turbo…and you did save Dean's life when you were a couple of months old."

"I did? How?" Sam straightened in his chair; his earliest conscious memories were of Dean holding him, feeding or playing with him…I carried you out the front door…he had never been able to equal that.

"I don't remember that," Dean huffed under his breath.

"You were only four yourself," John answered anyway. "One day Mary put Sam on the couch for a moment, when suddenly he freaked. I'm talking full-on baby tantrum," John told Sam, "Your legs were pumping, your arms were thrashing, your face was beetroot and your lungs were going like warning klaxons. You scared your mom out of her wits and you wouldn't stop."

They waited respectfully as he momentarily dwelled on the reminiscence.

"Anyway, Dean came in from outside at a fast clip and you shut up like someone had hit a MUTE button. Dean clambered on the couch and picked you up and you just gurgled at him as if to say, 'Me? That racket? Your mom said it was enough to give her a complex."

"I have a way with kids," Dean said with mock humility.

"Then Mary went out into the front yard for something and noticed the gate was open. She went down to shut it…" John nodded at Dean, "and then she saw your toy dumper truck in the gutter about three yards down the sidewalk and realised you'd gone out."

"I don't remember," Dean shook his head as he tried in vain to recall the memory.

"At the time our street was very dangerous," John explained, "drivers used it as a rat run to avoid a toll road and the idiots frequently tore down it as if they thought it was the Indy Car 500. But you heard Sam and came back."

He fell silent and for long moments none of them spoke until Sam pondered, "And that's when the demon must have found out about me and…"

John shrugged and cleared his throat. "It's possible…although…" he sighed, "we were worried about sibling rivalry but you two had such a positive relationship that we'd already decided to try for Samantha when you a week old." His voice faded with old regret…he would have given a great deal for a daughter with Mary's hair and bright eyes and that pugnacious tilt to her chin…

"Genetics," Sam was unaware he'd uttered the word aloud until he looked up and found both father and brother regarding him quizzically.

"There was an article on hereditary traits in a magazine," he explained, "parents pass some dominant genetic tendencies to their children regardless of gender, but if the child is the same sex as the parent, the chances of that genetic tendency being particularly prominent are increased. My powers are strong as it is and I'm Mary Winchester's son…" he looked over at Dean, "…our sister's whammy would probably have been off the scale."

For a moment there almost seemed to be a shade in the room, the ephemeral form of a Winchester who never had the chance to be. Dean remained silent as the ramifications burned in his brain. Maybe just like Jessica, two people had died in the Winchester house on that terrible night.

Concluded in Chapter 17…

© 2006, Catherine D Stewart