A/N I'm very grateful to everyone that has taken the time to review and contact me by PM to discuss the story! Also, a big thanks to the guest reviewer - Kathy. Fanfic doesn't let me respond to guest reviews, so thanks for taking the time to enjoy my work and give feedback. Also, if you haven't yet, please check out Becoming Winchester by Blossom9. A talented writer creating a great AU including Adam.
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On March twenty-third, nineteen seventy-two, John Winchester was walking down Main Street in his hometown of Lawrence, Kansas. Recently back from Vietnam, John was out on a memory stroll, attempting to bury the horrors of the war behind him as he wandered from storefront to storefront. Reminiscing about simpler days, when his biggest worry had been whether or not he would help lead his high school baseball team to the finals.
Peeking into Bert's Barber Shop, where he had been getting his hair cut since he was just a small boy. Inside he could see Bert, well past retirement age, but still smiling, as he gave Mr. Mulroney, owner of one of the town's eating establishments, a quick trim. They waved at him through the window and he returned the gesture with a grin, glad to be back among the familiar and comfortable.
Across the street was Jay Bird's Diner. Reg brewed the best best coffee in Lawrence and made a mean plate of steak and eggs that could fortify a hungry man all day. John had spent many early mornings at the counter, availing himself of Reg's bottomless cuppa joe as he read the sports pages of The Lawrence Herald.
The Village Inn a couple of more doors down, where John's mother and stepfather held their low key wedding years ago. Just a handful of family and friends attending the simple ceremony, and ten year old John given the honor of Best Man. A nice day, even with his maternal grandparents making no secret of their disapproval of the match.
A short distance away was Rainbow Motors. A respectable, family run place that sold good quality used cars. John had a little military pay set by, and he was going to need some wheels now that he was back stateside. He didn't know quite what he was looking for just yet, wavering between functionality and frivolity. Welcomed back with open arms and working at his stepfather's garage, he was planning to save for a few weeks more before making a final decision, because some things just shouldn't be rushed. The family business had a good relationship with the car dealership and he already knew that Rainbow Motors would be the place to shop when he was ready.
He had shoved his hands in his pockets to warm them, because the late March air was still cool, and after the oppressive heat and humidity of Vietnam, it was hard getting used to it again. The collar of his jacket was pulled up, keeping a brisk breeze off the back of his neck as he wandered, his thoughts preoccupying his mind. He hadn't even realized how close he was to the door of the theater when it opened abruptly, and the next thing he knew he was knocked back on his ass on the cold cement sidewalk looking up into a pair of the bluest eyes he had ever seen.
Stunned for a second, he almost thought he was seeing an angel shrouded by the haze of the streetlights that lent an eerie glow to her long tresses of golden curls. It was like a lightening strike that took his breath away, and if he had believed in that kind of thing, he would have sworn it was love at first sight.
He shook his head to get his bearings back as his assailant sputtered mortified apologies, and he couldn't help the genuine peals of laughter that burst out of his lungs. Amused beyond words that this petite little lady could have bested the big bad marine that had just completed his second tour in hell on earth.
Somehow, between her frantic attempts to assist him to his feet, and his temporary overall clumsiness from the crack his skull took on the sidewalk, he managed to stand and focus his eyes enough to drink in her perfect beauty. He stood, quiet and indulgent, while she made adorable attempts to brush off what could only have been imaginary dust from his clothes and rambled sincere regrets for the lump that was growing on his head. He grabbed one of her delicate, china smooth hands, the soft tinkle of an exquisite silver bracelet jingling from her tiny wrist, and spontaneously insisted that she make it up to him with a cup of coffee.
They strolled hand in hand to Mulroney's Diner, her idea, because John was loyal to Jay Birds, the closeness of contact with a relative stranger feeling perfectly natural. She felt it too, he could just tell. Striding by his side, she was the perfect fit, like she had been next to him for his entire life. Inside they claimed a back booth and spent the rest of the evening until closing time talking about everything and anything. The diner could have been completely empty, for all the attention they paid to anyone else, happy and content, just the two of them in their own little perfect bubble.
That was the night John met Mary Campbell.
Their courtship had been brief, and not without its challenges. Mary's father Samuel seemed to have a hate-on for John from the moment they met, regardless of how polite and respectful the young marine had tried so hard to be. John wasn't stupid. Soldiers coming back from the war weren't welcomed by everyone, the bloody politics of the military action not sitting well with some. He also knew that he currently had nothing more to offer as a candidate for Mary's affections other than his honorable intentions and a fledgling career at the garage.
It had been easier to gain acceptance from Deanna, Mary's mother. A kindhearted, but no nonsense woman that kept Samuel civil, like a tiger on a leash, on the few occasions that John was invited to the Campbell house for dinner. Their house was tidy and comfortable. Samuel ran a dry cleaning business that he never seemed comfortable talking about, and Deanna was a substitute teacher. John often found the two of them talking quietly in Samuel's study, pointedly closing the door when they caught John passing by.
Mary was sunshine and warmth. Hope and beauty. Boundless energy that pulled him around town by the hand during their evening strolls, and he found himself following willingly, because just being near her took a rock slide of weight from his shoulders. Her smiles and kisses healing the still raw and bleeding wounds of his soul. With her, he felt that happily ever after was once again a possibility in a world where he had been engulfed in atrocities.
He fell for her wholly, and without choice.
In just a few short weeks, she had become his everything, and he committed his entire being to her happiness, feeling unswerving devotion and fierce protectiveness of this wildly amazing creature that had completely claimed his heart. She had inexplicable conflicts with her parents, especially Samuel. Only confiding in John that her father was forcing her life in a direction that she could no longer bear, and when she cried in his arms and asked him if he would one day take her far away, he had given her his promise without hesitation or regret.
Millie had been taken by surprise when her only son announced his intention to propose to the strange girl he had met only weeks earlier. Still feeling the long term ramifications of a failed marriage, and of how, after all those years, she had not recovered from the pain and shame of abandonment, John's mother was less than enthused. However, when she realized that her son was determined and there would be no changing his mind without risking an estrangement from him, Millie had eventually given her blessing, and offered her son the small red leather box containing the solitaire diamond ring that Henry had once slipped on her own finger.
Praying that, this time, it would bring a lifetime of happiness to the woman that wore it.
John was planning for their future from that moment on. If he was going to ask for her hand, it was time to settle down.
He withdrew the cash he had been saving for the car, intent on buying the VW van that had caught Mary's eye during a walk one day. At the dealership, he gave the beige bus another once over, prepared to fork over the down payment and make it official. It wasn't what he would have chosen to start their life together with. What he was really looking for was a sturdy vehicle that would protect Mary and the family that he dreamed of having with her. A little something with some flash and a powerful engine for his own tastes.
It was happy fate that the strange man he met earlier that morning pointed him in the direction of the Impala. Heavy, yet sleek. Large bench seats to comfortably accommodate a team of little Winchesters, he made the split second decision to buy her. It hadn't taken too much to convince Mary he had made the right choice. That first evening, as they drove around, she fell just as much in love with the old girl as he had.
In the early evening of May second, Mary had called him, crying bitter tears over the line, and begged him to hurry to her parents house. He was waiting outside with the new car as she ran towards him, her face distressed, her beautiful eyes red rimmed and wet when she threw herself in his arms. She clung to him, with a desperate fierceness of someone drowning, and as he held her tightly, he once again promised to take her away from the life that was breaking her.
With the red box in his pocket, he drove her to their favorite spot near the river. She was pensive, grief still marring her beautiful face. Shaking her head sadly, as if she almost couldn't bear the words she suspected were on the tip of his tongue.
"There's things you don't know about me, John."
Said so sadly, and with such finality, that they would have broken his heart if he wasn't already set on his course. John hadn't been able to lend them any weight at all. He simply didn't care what was in her past, because nothing would ever have been so big and unforgivable that they would change how he felt about her.
"So? I will always love you for exactly who you are."
Heart in his throat as he struggled to enunciate words enough to convey the entirety of his love for her, he was on the verge of making his proposal when the passenger door was yanked open, revealing the preternaturally angry face of Samuel Campbell. Mary's father had roughly yanked her from the car, even as John screamed protests and ran to her aid.
"Dad, you're hurting me!"
Mary's voice was trembling and afraid, and John was forcing himself to tamp down the soldier's desire to annihilate the source of his love's pain, reminding himself that this man would be his future father-in-law, and no matter how angry John was right now, he couldn't take the drastic action he craved that would make matters worse for Mary. The only thing saving Samuel Campbell in that moment.
"Hey, take it easy!"
John's mind was a red haze of rage, and to this day he wasn't able to remember most of what transpired in the few minutes that followed. He clearly remembered struggling with Samuel, but then it goes blank. The next thing he knew, he was coming to on the ground, cradled in Mary's arms with Samuel's dead body laying scant feet away from them. Mary had clung to him as if her life depended on it, and once he had gathered his own wits, he had taken her in his arms and whispered passionate assurances in her ear that he would always protect her.
The next few days had passed by in a blur.
Mary had tearfully recounted the story of how Samuel knocked John unconscious. Her father's adrenaline running high from the all encompassing despair of finding Deanna dead in the kitchen of their home with a broken neck. A freak accident resulting from a fall off a step stool as she reached for something in an upper cabinet. In his fervent desire to find their only child and bring her home, his emotions had been riding high enough to allow him to assault John, leading to Samuel having a heart attack after overtaxing himself in a physical altercation with the younger man.
It had been a tragedy of the highest order of magnitude.
His sweet Mary had lost her family over the course of just a couple of hours, and John hadn't been entirely sure that she would ever forgive him for whatever role he had played in it. Miraculously, she had, but refused to ever speak of that night again. There hadn't even been a funeral. Family members took control of the remains of the Campbells, and that was the last John saw of his beloved's parents.
Mary had needed some solitude for a while, and John understood that. Felt familiarity with the urge to crawl out of his own head space to process the cascade of emotions that poured over you when the reality you found yourself submerged in just got too much.
With the help of Samuel's brother, Mary had managed to get her parent's affairs in order, wanting nothing more than to divest herself entirely of everything in the house and her father's business. John drove her to Rainbow Motors, where she immediately fell in love with the beautiful blue Camaro. Another Chevy, and every bit as sexy as the Impala.
That was when she started disappearing for days at a time.
At first, John had been worried. Worried that maybe she wasn't being honest with him about the depths of her grief. That she hid from him the obvious emotional collapse that was only natural under the circumstances. But she always returned to him with renewed strength and lightness in her eyes, as if whatever was occupying her time away from him was doing something to heal her smashed apart heart in ways that he himself had been unable to provide.
After a while, his worry turned to suspicion, with more than a flicker of nervous jealousy. Asking himself in the evenings, while he sat in the darkness of his parents' living room, if it wasn't more than possible that there was someone else responsible for the uplift in her demeanor. He looked for the signs, desperately searching for some clue that would confirm or discard the fears of her infidelity that would lead to the absolute destruction of himself.
They never materialized.
Each and every time she returned to him, he saw nothing but love and fervent devotion in her eyes. A genuine and deep seated relief of returning to the steadfast strength of his arms, and their love making passionate and consuming, leaving no room for any unknown specter to seep between the cracks of their union.
The little red box sat in a place of prominence on the dresser of the bedroom in the house they rented together. John withstood the condemnation and judging reprimands of his traditionalist mother who had been opposed to the marriage, but was even more deeply affronted by their premarital cohabitation. Because Mary simply wasn't ready. She didn't come out and say it, but it was clearly understood between them, and John loved her too fiercely and too completely to adhere to whatever society expected of them if it meant pushing her.
They lived comfortably this way, neither exerting pressure on the other, until one day, out of the blue, Mary woke up and made John breakfast in bed, the red leather box on his tray. When she asked him to go to Reno and elope, he didn't even have to think about it. They threw a bag in the Impala, and drove all day and all night, officially marrying on August nineteenth, nineteen seventy-five.
It was one of the happiest days of his life.
The deep contentment he felt was shattered a few months later that year, although it wasn't from his newly married state. A drunk driver, over-served and unconcerned, careened into the oncoming traffic, heavy with revelers coming home after New Year's eve celebrations, in the early morning hours of January first, nineteen seventy-six. In a split second, John's mother's and stepfather's lives were snuffed out like a candle. He might have laughed over the ironic coincidence of losing both his parents at once like Mary had, if only he wasn't so bereft with grief over their passing.
Mind numb, he found himself in the same position of settling their affairs. It hadn't been an enviable prospect. The country was in the throes of an economic depression, and the garage and the house were heavily mortgaged. In the end, the bank took both, because John wasn't his step-father's legal heir and, being so young, had no substantial material assets to his name to make him look financially worthy enough to take on the debt.
He caught a lucky break when the owner of Woodson's Automotive took pity on him and offered him a job. Mr. Woodson had been a friend of the family for years, often engaged in a cooperative referral of customers to and from John's step-father. He knew how talented John was, and how destructive the blow to him had been. Mr. Woodson took John on at his own place, even though it was a strain on his own already precarious cash flow situation.
John and Mary made a comfortable home at the little rented house on Robintree. It was affordable, and just big enough for the two of them without feeling cramped. John worked hard, and Mary kept house, welcoming him home every day with the same passionate intensity that they had shared since the first day they met.
She still escaped for a day or two, here and there, sometimes coming home with wounds that were explained away with the flimsiest of excuses. John tucked them all away in a deep recess of his mind because, in truth, he just simply didn't want to know. In their bed at night, her warm body molded to his own, he accepted their lives for what they were. Happy to just have her by his side and in his arms.
In the spring of seventy-eight, Mary had whispered in his ear one night, as they lay spent from an especially exuberant romp between the sheets, that she was carrying his child. John lay prone on the bed as his mind flooded with a tidal wave of emotions.
Surprise, because while they both wanted children, they had never really talked about the timing. Sadness, that their child would never know his or her grandparents, and then anger for the same reason. Fear that he wouldn't be able to provide for Mary and their baby. An even deeper anxiety that John would fail at fatherhood, the way Henry had. Finally, absolute elation, over the knowledge that he and the woman he loved more than anything were creating a life, after John had taken so many of them.
A new feeling of purpose had come upon John during Mary's pregnancy. The rented house wasn't good enough to start their family in. John had wanted a home all of their own to welcome their little one. Two years of working hard and saving had given them a small nest egg and, with that, they went house hunting, finally falling in love with one with a small porch and three good sized bedrooms.
John worked long hours at the garage that was now run by Mr. Woodson's oldest son, after his father's untimely death. In the evenings after dinner, and on weekends, he puttered around the house and did renovation projects, determined that his child would have a happy and comfortable home.
At night, in bed, he placed gentle kisses and soft caresses all along Mary's swelling nude body as she lay by his side, watching in rapt fascination as their baby grew inside of her. Filled with a love that took his breath away, he worshiped at her altar and gave thanks to a higher power for the peace of his life.
Dean fought his way kicking and screaming into the world on January twenty-fourth, nineteen seventy-nine, and immediately became the center of his parents' universe.
John took one look at that tiny, red, infuriated face and his world spun completely around on its axis. A love so pure and complete engulfed him, and he knew, in that moment, that he would never be able to do justice in describing the overwhelming joy he felt holding his firstborn.
That day, while Mary and the baby slept off the physical exhaustion of the birth, John had hurried out to his bank and stuck a hundred bucks into a savings account for his son's future. He wanted Dean to have everything he wanted in life. Even a college education, if that is what the boy chose, because John was not Henry, and he vowed to his child that he would show him the real measure of a man.
Dean's every little move dictated his parents' lives from that moment on. They lived for his laughter, fretting over his tears. He was shamelessly fussed over and adored. The light in the darkness of his father's nightmares and his mother's still raw grief. With him, they both found a nearly incomprehensible bliss as they stood over his crib in wordless amazement to his perfection.
He grew fast. Strong and steady, a fierce determination in his beautiful green eyes. An ever-present underlining of gentle sweetness in his smiles and chubby armed hugs. He was motion personified, fearless and adventurous, needing only the attentive approval of his father and mother to keep him happy and secure.
He adored his parents. His mother most of all, and when Mary put an end to her wandering and sold her Camaro a year after Dean's birth, John felt an enormous pressure release itself from around his heart.
John didn't know how he could possibly be made even more content until another whisper in his ear in the dark told him that they were about to do it all again a few years later.
Sam slipped into their lives on May second, nineteen eighty-three, and his father didn't fail to take note of the significance of the date. He hoped against hope that the arrival of their second son would help heal the raw wounds that his beloved still harbored over that particular anniversary.
Unlike his older brother, Sam's arrival was quiet, a pensive thought already deep in the furrowed brow of the infant with a shock of John's brown hair. Sammy regarded his new surroundings with an air of judging introspection, as though he was determining whether or not to find his parents worthy or lacking. Finally, he cooed and seemed to relax in John's arms, and the marine felt a wave of relief wash over him as if he managed to pass some sort of test.
The first six months of Sam's life were not as smooth as his brother's had been.
John had repeated the pledge he had given to the newborn Dean to his new son. Starting a savings account for Sammy, just like he had been contributing faithfully to Dean's for the past few years.
After the initial skepticism by the infant, Sammy was all love and cuddles, and John felt that his little family might be complete just as it was.
Determined to give his boys everything, John enlisted in the Marine Forces Reserves on the weekends for the extra benefits for his family. Unexpectedly, the training brought all of his repressed nightmares of the war screaming back at light speed, and he quickly found himself mentally flailing from the darkness that had surrounded him during that time in his life. Mary tried to help him, but she had her hands full with two little ones that needed her far more than John did, and they began to fight in a way that had never marred their marriage before.
For one regrettable week, John had even moved out of their home, unwilling to bring the pain he was harboring back to stain the happy home life of his wife and boys.
Somehow, they managed to push past their troubles, and the little family was united and whole again until that terrible night of November second, nineteen eighty-three.
/
John was sitting on the area rug covering the cement floor of the basement bedroom. Through the bleariness of his wet eyes, and the muddled comprehension of a mind soaked in Jose Cuervo, he took in his surroundings and appraised the state of the walls. The painful memories of the past were barreling down on him without mercy tonight, like they always did on this day as the years passed by. It hurt to breathe at all, really. Especially knowing that his beloved couldn't anymore.
He missed Mary, more than he could ever possibly enunciate or comprehend.
She had been the other half of him, and all these years without her had been like trying to stumble his way through life on one leg. Bleeding out and swaying dangerously without being able to ever really regain his balance. The depths of his despair over failing to bring her justice consumed him, like a fire sucking all the oxygen from the world, and if it wasn't for their boys, he would have suffocated long ago, and gone willingly just to be with her again.
The cement walls had been covered recently. Dean's slick tongue had bartered November's rent in exchange for his purchase of sheetrock and other supplies, along with the labor to install them. The landlady was no fool, recognizing a good bargain when she heard one. The weekend Sam had been so sick with the flu, John followed his boys back home. He and Dean had loaded up the bed of the Sierra with materials, and together they had installed the panels while their youngest slept upstairs in the comfort of his own bed.
John's firstborn had spent the next couple of weeks meticulously filling the seams and nail holes with tape mesh and joint compound before sanding everything down. They were ready for paint now, but in his boozed addled brain, John couldn't help the humorless observation that their current state was a perfect match for him already.
Plain, cold and gray. Their seams standing out stark and raw. Unfinished and ugly.
Just like John felt about himself most days.
Overhead he could hear the steady footfalls of his eldest son. Moving, moving. Always moving. That was Dean. Probably cleaning up the dinner he had made for them all. John hadn't been able to join his boys at the table.
Not tonight.
Every year on the day, no matter what was going on, John made sure to be with his children. Not that it made it any easier on the boys. Because John was never in any kind of shape to comfort them. Grieving and wrecked without exception, he was continuously emotionally and mentally unavailable to them, even as he insisted on burdening them with his presence. Later, when the clouds cleared, and he came back to his senses after a day or two drowning in a pool of his own depression, he felt the deep roiling of guilt for pushing them away at a time when they were also in need, and he knew that there would never be any way to make that up to them.
It was Dean who insisted on spending the money renovating the basement. John thought it was a waste of resources for a house that didn't belong to them. An aesthetic excess he didn't need for himself. His desire for creature comforts had evaporated with the passing of his wife.
But his son was insistent.
The money already put aside from a recent sale of a rebuilt BMW. Reminding his dad that John had promised this would happen, and the guilty father who had broken so many of them relented, for the sole reason that it would afford him a day spent working alongside his boy. Showing Dean some normal instruction on home repair from a loving father that had once worked on their own house.
John had forked over the wad of cash he had accumulated for November's rent and told Dean to pay Sam's tuition for the month instead.
God, he was so proud of Dean. Proud of them both. Somehow, in the middle of all of this chaos and his chronic absenteeism, they were growing up strong and capable. He wished he was able to tell them that more. They deserved it, he knew. If only it wasn't for this stubborn little nagging in the back of his mind that endlessly cautioned him to be reserved in his praise. That to make them overconfident in their undertakings would make them compliant and lazy. And they couldn't afford that kind of luxury.
Not yet.
Someday.
Leaning against the bed frame, the floor cold, even through the rug, chilling him, he twisted his wedding ring around in perpetual frenzied circles.
"I wish you were here to see them, Mary. We did so good."
/
Dean hadn't wanted a sibling.
Perfectly content in a world where his parents' happiness revolved around his own. A prince, fawned over and pampered in his own little kingdom where he was John's buddy and Mary's little boy.
When his mommy and daddy told him that he was going to have a little brother or sister soon, he was upset over the idea that he would have to share his parents with the new intruder. Dean wasn't even able to have a puppy, because Daddy had said that they were too much work, and now there was this new person coming to invade their happy home, and it wasn't fair, and Dean couldn't understand why his parents needed another baby when they already had him.
A crying needy stranger, like the Millersons next door had, taking up Mommy's time and destroying Dean's toys.
Before long, Mommy was too tired to play with him as much as she used to, and she was getting bigger in the tummy. Dean watched with increasing worry, wondering why little brother or sister was making Mommy look like she was going to explode. What kind of monster was this tiny interloper anyway? The four year old's little face was in a constant state of frowning over something terrible happening to his mother.
Baby Sammy was a tiny, squirming bundle when Dean's parents brought his little brother home for the first time. Daddy had lifted Dean into a chair in the living room, showing the little boy how to position himself, and Mommy very carefully placed the wriggling infant in Dean's waiting arms while Daddy took a photo.
He had looked into the baby's scrunched up face, and tried to figure out how he felt about the stranger, and Sammy had stared back at him with wide eyed wonder, already comfortable and safe in his brother's arms. Dean held him tight in his arms, mindful of the fragility of the tiny human. When Mommy wanted to take the baby back, Dean had frowned, liking the warm weight held against his chest. As soon as Sammy relaxed, Dean's fears and jealousy did as well, as he watched his little brother nod off to sleep.
From that moment on, Dean acquired an all encompassing protective instinct over the bitty creature, and when Mommy would tell him to watch out for Sammy while she went to the kitchen to heat a bottle, it was a job the four year old took seriously.
One of the only clear memories Dean had of that night, was being entrusted to carry Sammy out of the burning house. When it had finally become clear that Mommy was gone, Dean remembered what she had always told him, and began to watch over his little brother's every move, determined to keep the baby from harm. Even going so far as to climb into the baby's crib at night to comfort Sammy, when his little brother would cry out the tears of loneliness and grief for both boys over the loss of their mother.
As the years progressed, with Dad becoming more and more engulfed in the supernatural world, hell bent for leather on finding what happened to their mom, Dean kept a steadfast watch over his little brother. Sammy was his responsibility, and it was Dean's job to keep him safe and protected. Dad had never even needed to tell him.
Overnight the boys had lost their mom, and with her, by extension, a large part of the father that John had once been. Sammy was too small to remember what life had been like before the fire, and Dean became determined to make sure that his little brother was given some sort of understanding of what it had been like to be loved and adored by two whole and happy parents. It's what his mom would have wanted him to do, and Dean wasn't going to disappoint her.
He was little, but he tried hard, and it wasn't always easy, because Dad was so different now that sometimes he scared Dean. Coming home after being gone for a few days to places that he wouldn't talk about. Sometimes Dad came home bleeding and damaged, looking like any minute he would burst into tears. Lost in a world of misery that he refused to explain. It seemed like they were forever moving around from one unfamiliar place to another, their home gone in a memory that faded a little more every day over the years.
For Sammy' sake, he tried to make it seem like a game. An adventurous game where they were explorers always going out and seeing new things, and his little brother had never really known the difference. Never known that this wasn't what life was supposed to be. The life that Dean had once had, and never would again.
Sam was kept in the dark about the real reason that Dad was gone so often, and Dean was happy about that, because all too many nights his own sleep was interrupted by nightmares, dark and twisted and terrifying. Worrying about Dad, and what he was facing when he was a way from them. Worry about what would happen to them if their father never came back. Or if he would one night burn on the ceiling of their motel room the way their mother once had.
He shared none of these troubles, because it was his job to shield Sammy from things that could hurt him, and his little brother was going to get a chance to be an innocent kid for a while. Be protected from knowing too much about the horrors of the world around them for as long as Dean could manage it.
Dean tried to make up for their mother's absence as much as he could, even knowing that his fledgling attempts at standing in for her were nothing more than cold comfort.
When Dad was too hurt, or too distracted, or too drunk to care for Sammy, Dean stepped in, sparing his father the task of tending to the boys when his firstborn was capable of doing it for him. He made sure that Sammy was bathed and fed. Tucked into bed at night with a story, because the kid loved books from an early age. He learned how to make a simple version of tomato rice soup that wasn't nearly as good as Mom's had been, trying his hardest to take care of Sammy when he was sick like their mother had taken care of Dean.
And when Sammy had finally found out the truth of their lives, Dean had comforted his brother as he cried himself to sleep over the scariness and unfairness of it all, and renewed his pledge to protect his brother with everything he had. Dad had finally come home, a day too late for Christmas, and Dean had cared for him too, trying his best to smooth over the ruffled feathers of both father and brother, intent on keeping his remaining family members as happy and safe and together as he could.
Because every night Dean had promised his mother that he would, and it was a promise he meant to keep.
/
There was a low buzz in the mud room off the kitchen, and Dean put down the rag he was washing the table with to go and transfer the load of clothes from the washer to the dryer. The landlady had been casually apologetic when she told them that the house did have laundry facilities, but that the washer was currently broken. It hadn't taken Dean long to tinker with the old Maytag, and now it was running like clockwork again. A blessing to their budget that they no longer needed to make frequent trips to a laundromat.
He was pleased to see that the stain remover recommended by the mother of one of Sammy's teammates had done a good job getting the grass stains of out his little brother's jersey. Happy that another run through wasn't going to be necessary, he turned the setting on the dryer to delicate and started the cycle before loading the washer with Sam's school uniforms. Kid went through clothes like crazy these days.
At least they weren't scrounging for quarters every five seconds anymore. Before he went to bed, he would throw in a load of Dad's stuff too, because Lord knew his father wouldn't be in any shape to do it himself, and Dean was pretty sure the man was down to his last clean tee.
The kitchen still smelled like the meatloaf that he painstakingly assembled for dinner. He didn't think it came out bad for a first try. Not nearly as good as...Mom's...had been, but Dean gave it a shot. Sam ate it without complaint, for once, and Dean wasn't looking for teeth on that particular gift horse because his little brother could be a picky little bitch when it came to food.
The kid needed to ingest more calories if he was going to try and build up a little extra muscle. Sammy was shooting up fast, his body elongating in a gangling Stretch Armstrong kind of way. Maybe some protein shakes were the way to go, at this rate. He'd pick some up on the next trip to the grocery store.
He thought about going downstairs and checking to see if Dad had bothered to eat something from the plate Dean had brought him earlier, but he quickly decided against it. His father would eat when he was ready, which probably wouldn't be tonight if history was anything to go by.
Returning to the table, he finished wiping the surface clean before washing out the cloth in the sink and hanging it to dry on the faucet. The house was too quiet, but Dean couldn't make himself turn on the TV or play any music.
Too many things reminded him of her, and he was barely keeping it together as it was. All it was going to take was one small push off the edge, and he would go spiraling into an abyss of razor sharp memories, and he wasn't quite sure if he could find his way back to the surface again if that happened.
Off to the side of the sink were the royal blue latex gloves that Sam wore when washing the dishes after dinner. Dean hadn't been able to resist the Watch out for your manicure, Princess comment that was a completely reasonable reaction to his little brother's insistence that they buy them. Blue, not yellow, as if that little distinction made wearing them less girly.
Sam had gone upstairs right after his chores were finished tonight, and Dean hadn't tried to stop him. The last thing he needed today was his little brother's sad poop face, or some uncomfortable caring and sharing moment when all Dean wanted to do was try and keep his heart from disintegrating.
It destroyed him, more than his kid brother could possibly realize, that Dean couldn't help him understand how much Mom had meant to them all. How her smile and her laughter and gentle touch kept them warm and afloat.
He had to stop.
Couldn't bear to keep thinking about her and how the loss of her had scarred his very essence.
Better to keep busy.
Pay homage to her by doing the things she would want done. Scrub the counter, because she didn't like messes. Then mend the rip in Dad's green flannel and try not to think about what might have caused it. Cut up the melon in the fridge for Sam's breakfast in the morning, so that he could be sure that his little brother ate something before school without coercion.
Keep moving. Always moving.
Because to stop would mean that the excruciating assault of memories would threaten his very sanity, his very ability to breathe, and he couldn't allow that. Like a shark that could never stop swimming. No rest for the wicked or the weak.
He needed to be strong.
For his father, who on this day became a shadow of the man he once was, and needed his firstborn's steady shoulder to lean on.
For his little brother, who needed someone to take care of the little things in his life, because he had never had a mother to do them in his memory.
To be the glue that held his family together when life proved to be too hard, and too cruel, and too much to fight.
He reached into his back pocket and grabbed his wallet. Gently withdrawing the creased photo he kept tucked away behind his assortment of aliases and credit cards. There she was. Still as beautiful as she was on the last day, when she had tucked him into bed and told him that angels were watching over him. Her arm around his four year old neck as they smiled. He gently rubbed the photo and thought about how it was the last time he felt truly happy.
"Don't worry, Mom. I promise, I'll take care of them."
/
When Sam was in first grade, Dad brought them to a new town a week before Mother's Day. Sam didn't know it then, but there had been a rash of killings in the town involving the removal of the victims' eyes and tongues. Something John had never seen before, but suspected that it was probably in his particular wheelhouse.
It had been an innocent mistake by the teacher.
As part of their afternoon art session, she sat her group of first graders down at the activities table and gave them colorful pieces of construction paper, glitter, stickers, markers and glue sticks. It was a simple assignment.
Make a card for Mom.
The teacher wasn't insensitive. After almost a year of parent/teacher conferences, she knew which families had moms and which didn't. The kids without a mother in the house had already been separated for the day and given the chance to join an afternoon viewing of Sesame Street in the neighboring second session of first grade.
Overworked and understaffed, it was unfortunate oversight that she didn't think to ask Sammy, the new boy, about his own family.
Faced with crippling nerves over upsetting his new teacher by not doing the assignment. Combined with the petrified reluctance of making a card for his absent mother, knowing that talking about her only made Daddy and Dean mad at him. Sam had sat helpless in his seat, not knowing what to do, with fat tears of fear and frustration, and then, ultimately, humiliation, streaming down his face.
His teacher's frantic attempts to get him to tell her why he was crying only upset him more, and by the time he was hysterical and sobbing, Dean had somehow managed to hear his brother's distress from a long hallway away. Darting out of his fifth grade classroom, with the chastising tones of his own teacher echoing behind him, as he ran to Sammy's aid.
Sammy had flung himself into Dean's arms, and his big brother stumbled for a minute under the unexpected weight before managing to drop himself into a tiny chair, where Sammy scrambled onto his lap and held on tight.
The school had fortunately been able to reach John by phone because, just by dumb luck, he was in the town library researching, as opposed to actively on the hunt. Ten minutes later, he strode down the hallway of the elementary school, tall and brooding and clearly pissed. Dean had taken one look at his father's foreboding face and paled under his spate of tan freckles. Snapping to attention, even as he held Sammy sniffling under his arm.
The boys were expecting their father to be angry, because he had warned them a million times to behave themselves and not cause any problems at their schools. But after John got the gist of the trouble, he had simply picked up his teary six year old and grabbed his ten year old by the hand, something he never did with Dean anymore, turned on his heel and walked out.
Dad didn't yell. He didn't rant or remind them of the risks of being noticed. He leaned against the hood of the Impala and held them in his arms until they were both calm and breathing easily again. Then he took the boys out for ice cream, not mentioning one word about what happened in the school. Later that night, John had killed the witch that was responsible for the mutilated corpses, and the next day they were on the road again.
/
There were three bags of candy sitting untouched on Sam's dresser, and the very sight of them offended him.
He hated Halloween. Hated it with the disdain he only reserved for people who abused animals, and getting stitches without anything to numb the pain.
There were no pleasant memories attached to it from his childhood. Their lives were scary enough as it was, and he certainly had never needed some plastic mask to add to the horrors he actually saw in real life.
It didn't help that Dad mentally checked out for a few days right about that time every year.
When Sam was little, and had wanted the fun of an outing with other kids, dressed up and getting free candy, his father had never been able to summon up the will to take the boys to a store and drop a couple of bucks on the dime store disguises that all the other students at school had.
Dean had tried to make it up to him a few times. Either rummaging around the hotel rooms for something that could pass, maybe, possibly, as a disguise so at least Sam wasn't the only kid at the school parties just wearing his street clothes. Or, worse, risking a five fingered discount to snag a tube of make up to paint Sam's face with, or a flimsy, plastic wand, so he could pretend to be a magician, and potentially incurring an ass beating of epic proportions if Dad caught him.
Not that they were allowed to go out trick-or-treating anyway.
In Dad's fucked up world, Halloween was a night of actual spirit activity, and John wasn't having his kids running around, unprotected, amid the potential of real danger and chaos. So Sam would have to sit in school the next day, hearing about all the fun the other children had, big piles of candy in their lunch boxes, while Sam sat quiet and tried not to be noticed as he ate the battered PB&J sandwich that Dean gave him for his own meal.
Later, as the years passed, and Dean had more autonomy over their spending, he always bought Sam a bag of Halloween candy to enjoy during the night, in an attempt to take the sting out of missing out with the other kids. He would also wait for the after Halloween sales, and buy a couple of other bags cheap the next day, so that they could enjoy sweets for a little longer.
Sam was past the days when a bag of candy could make up for missing out on a regular activity because of what their family did.
And he was really not going to be appeased this year. When he was supposed to be able to do normal things like regular guys.
Like taking his hot girlfriend to a Halloween party.
Well, kind of, sort of, his hot girlfriend, anyway.
Dean had managed to get Dad in a charitable mood, the weekend Sam was so sick. While the two of them were playing Bob Vila in the basement, his big brother convinced their father that Sam wouldn't be in any danger going to the Homecoming dance at his school the next week.
He had even sweetened the pot by assuring Dad that he would offer himself up as a chaperone, just to make sure that little brother was well guarded in case anything supernatural just happened to be, on the random off-chance, lying in wait at a freakin' dance in the gym of a Catholic school.
Sam had nearly laughed himself sick at that thought, but somehow his big brother conned the adults on the planning committee into thinking he would be a responsible guardian of the students attending.
Dean Winchester.
The guy that was more likely to spike the punch than keep horny teenagers on the straight and narrow. It still amused him.
With consent grudgingly obtained, Sam had asked Kristin to the dance, and her squeals of excitement were still ringing in his ears a day later. That next Friday, Dean had given him money to pay for a corsage and tickets to the dance, as well as the keys to the Impala to pick up his date. Wearing his pretext suit that Dad had gotten for him last year, once Sam started looking old enough to pass for an intern during investigations, he had picked Kristin up and spent the next few hours having the time of his life.
Kristin was edged out of the crown for Homecoming Queen by the slightly more popular Jenny Caldwell, the head cheerleader, but she did get a spot on the court. Sam had clapped wildly in the audience when the silly rhinestone tiara was placed on her head because she looked so incredibly happy. He and his brother were left utterly shocked, a few minutes later, when Sam's own name was called for a place on the court as well.
Sam was still a fairly unknown quantity at the school, but apparently Kristin had enough pull to influence the votes, and the other students had enough curiosity about the new guy, to elect him.
They danced, and socialized, and drank the spiked punch that left Sam wondering if it really was his brother's doing by the grin on Dean's face. Although, probably not, since his big brother would have kicked his ass for driving his Baby under the influence. Sam had stopped at one cup just to be safe anyway. Towards the end of the evening, Sam led Kristin out to the Impala to drive her home, and the two of them had spent several pleasurable minutes in a heavy make-out session in the front seat.
Sam had waltzed into the house exactly thirteen minutes late for his midnight curfew. Dean was pissed, glaring at him testily as he held out his hand for the return of the car keys, but otherwise let the infraction go without further comment, and the younger brother headed up to bed, his mind swimming with the pleasure of a perfect evening out with a beautiful girl.
During the next couple of weeks, Sam spent as much time dating Kristin as he could. It was hard with the limited free time at his disposal. He had to be home after five for the mandatory training that no coaxing or pleading on his part persuaded his big brother to release him from. He was allowed to go back out afterwards, provided that Dean knew exactly where he was and who he was with, and that he was home by his school night curfew of nine o'clock.
Something that Sam wasn't about to share with Kristin.
A few times he had managed to take her out for dinner. Dean was going overboard in his attempts to give his little brother normal. Sam had a list of assigned household chores. Some of them being things that neither brother ever had to worry about before, like raking leaves in the front lawn, but that was fine, because Sam enjoyed embracing the mundane of suburbia.
So his brother had also started to slip him some money every week as sort of an allowance, because Dean didn't need to be told what it felt like to be a teenage guy with no cash of his own in his pocket. Sam was trying to squirrel most of it away, because he already knew that his college applications were going to take money he couldn't come out and ask his brother for, but he still splurged a little on taking Kristin out on the few occasions he could wrangle permission.
As a compromise, Dean encouraged him to invite friends home for an evening, so Sam had asked some of the guys from his team to come over, and Kristin brought some of her cheerleader friends. Dean ordered a stack of budget busting pizzas, determining the expense worthy when it meant that the kids in Sam's new social circle could discretely be put through the appropriate tests.
When Kristin started hinting about a Halloween party being thrown at the home of one of the football players, Sam already knew he would never be allowed to go.
For one, Halloween was falling on a Tuesday this year, and even if Sam would be permitted out, he still would have to be home early for curfew, and the party wasn't even starting until eight o'clock. It didn't matter anyway, since the Winchester brothers didn't leave the relative safety of wherever they were currently making their home on the night of Halloween.
Ever.
It was a losing prospect to even try to argue for consent, because he didn't need to go another few rounds with his father to know it would never happen. Although it didn't stop him from appealing to his big brother for leniency.
Dean had been sympathetic, but firm, because he actually agreed with Dad on this one, and that discussion had ended with heated words, a couple of insults, a few threats, and Sam slamming his bedroom door shut. When Dean had knocked on his door the next evening after dinner, because Sam was still too angry to keep him company, and gave his little brother the traditional bags of candy, Sam had dismissively shoved them to the dresser and slammed the door again.
Because sometimes Dean just didn't understand him at all.
Sam wasn't a little kid anymore who could just be placated into submission over the jacked up way they were raised, and if his brother was paying any attention to him, in the least, he would know that Sam didn't eat candy anymore.
Well, he did. Sometimes. Occasionally. Okay, a lot. But that wasn't the point!
Maybe it was the fact that today was Mom's anniversary. Or maybe because Kristin couldn't stop talking about how much fun the party had been. Maybe it was both. Either way the youngest Winchester was feeling pretty miserable right about now.
Sam lay on his bed, on his stomach, arms wrapped around his pillow and staring out the window, since he could never quite manage to look at the ceilings above any bed he ever slept in.
On one hand, he knew he was being an asshole. His big brother had been nothing but kind, helpful and understanding the past few months. Sam wasn't stupid. He was aware of everything Dean was giving up to give him this chance. He could tell that Dean missed being on the road. That his brother paced the house like a caged lion when he thought Sam wasn't paying attention.
Maybe it was the knowledge that he knew Dean was expecting him to get his desire for regular life out of his system and then get down to the life of a full time hunter.
They hadn't talked about it.
Not in so many words, but Sam knew his brother. Could already guess that this was the expected outcome after his graduation. Dad was expecting it too. Sam could see it in his eyes during every meet up. His father had been trying way too hard lately to suppress the hunting talk in some kind of twisted patronizing attempt to make it seem like this was a vacation from hunting, and not the launch of Sam's college plans, which it was actually going to be if Sam had anything to say about it.
This is what Mom would have wanted for him. He was sure of it.
Before, their family had been a run-of-the-mill, every day, average nuclear unit. They had a normal house. Dad co-owned his own normal business. Mom was a normal suburban housewife. Dean had friends and played T-ball. Sam was pretty sure that somewhere in that cozy picture perfect life was a backyard where they had barbecues too.
Mom wouldn't have wanted to see her husband crazed and strung out most of the time. Her kids running on a perpetual wheel of terror as they faced down horrors that were sometimes so evil, even Hollywood backed away from writing about them. Dragged from town to town like luggage in a lonely and sad drifter existence. Wondering every day if it would be their last.
At least, that's what Sam assumed.
In reality, he didn't know. Mostly because the only two family members he had left unanimously refused to talk about her. Not that he hadn't asked a million questions over the years, thirsty for any scrap of information they would reluctantly give, like people passing by a beggar, homeless and hungry on the street, just needing the tiniest amount of mercy and kindness to get through the day.
Sam shouldn't have to beg for information about his own mother.
While it was true that he didn't have the relationship with her that his father and brother had, it didn't mean that he was a familial afterthought. She belonged to him, too. He was her baby, and if anyone deserved to have details given to them about what she was like, and the hobbies she had, and the dreams she dreamed, it was the son who didn't have one clear memory of her to sustain him.
Dad and Dean guarded their memories of her like selfish pit bulls. They hid all the details of the family life before like greedy hoarders, unwilling to share even the tiniest fraction of insight with a boy that just wanted to know his mom. Sam knew they were hurting. That thoughts of his mother caused them physical pain, but couldn't they see that he was hurting too? In a way that they may not be able to comprehend, but they could do something about?
It wasn't fair.
It wasn't fair at all to ask Sam to devote himself wholly to a crusade waged in the name of the mother he wasn't even allowed to ask about. He could summon up some anger, sure, because as a son he should feel the need to fight for justice on her behalf. That's what a good son would do, right?
But it still wasn't fair.
If he was expected to be willing to devote the entirety of his existence to hunt down her killer, and the killers of other mothers, fathers, brothers, sisters, sons and daughters, shouldn't he at least be given the chance to hear about what kind of person his own mother was? Shouldn't his father and brother, who had known her as a real living person, be willing to paint a multi-dimensional, vividly technicolor painting of her so that Sam could understand exactly who he was fighting for?
Not shut him out and demand blind loyalty and obedience, when all he wanted to know was what her laugh sounded like. Or what kind of perfume she wore. What her favorite flower was, and did she like soccer?
Why was that so much to ask?
Their lives were a mess. Their little family warped and damaged and mutilated by a life lived in the shadowy underbelly of evil and depravity.
Sam was going to get out. He was going to do it for his mother, because surely Mary Winchester, normal mom and loving wife, would want to see at least one of her kids live his life in the daylight. One of her boys was going to walk in the sunshine and be safe. He owed it to her.
The alarm clock on his nightstand glared red at him as his mind wandered. Realizing that it was almost time for lights out, he pushed himself up from his bed to wash up and get undressed. Because of the day, Dad was here with them, as he always was.
At least physically anyway.
In a regular year, John would already be passed out by now, his face wearing a mask of naked grief so raw and excruciating, even in unconsciousness, that Sam couldn't bear to look at him. A parade could march through their motel room and never breach his father's absent mind in tequila soaked sleep.
This was opposite year.
Where day was night and black was white. For all he knew, Dad might decide that this was the year he was going to take a moonlight drunken stroll through the house, and Sam wasn't going to risk his wrath and get punished for not being in bed with the lights off by ten.
Especially not when booze tended to make Dad more likely to lash out, and especially not on this particular day.
He washed his face, and brushed his teeth, pulling on his usual tee and pajama pants before flipping off the light switch. In the darkness of his bedroom, he knelt on the side of his bed and clasped his hands in prayer. He didn't really know who he was praying to every night. God, or the angels. Maybe saints. Maybe his mother.
Who knows how heaven really works.
All Sam knew was that he had to have some kind of faith. Something to save him from the wreckage of the life they lived.
Deep down, in a pit of his own being so remote he could barely reach it, he knew there was a darkness inside of him building. Sometimes he wondered if it was a byproduct of the terrible things they had done. That the evil they dealt with so often was somehow tainting him. Claiming him. When his temper got the best of him, he wondered if it was a symptom, a residue of a young life spent in the presence of real malevolence.
He prayed hard that night. Harder than he normally did. For guidance to control his anger. For patience of his failings. Understanding of his honorable goals. Forgiveness for not being a better son and brother. He prayed for his father's and brother's safety. For his mother's love and eternal peace.
And when he couldn't pray anymore, he climbed into his bed and took the framed photo from his nightstand in his hands. Illuminated by the light gray ambient light of the moon, shining brightly in his window, he looked at the young, happy faces of his parents. Dad in his fatigues, and Mom looking so beautiful next to him.
It was only a copy of the original photo. Dad kept it in his journal, plucking it out from time to time when especially melancholy. A few years ago, Dean had sneaked it out of the worn pages, just long enough to run to an all night Kinkos in the city where they were crashing for a few days. He made a copy for Sam that night, encasing it in a frame from the gift shop next to to the motel.
It was Sam's most precious possession.
"I'm going to make you proud, Mom."
/
It wasn't the scariest creature Dean had ever encountered, but it was still fugly.
Pasty, slick and rough skinned. A huge gaping maw that stared back at him.
As it lay motionless in front of him, the young hunter circled around it in wary anticipation as he plotted his next move. He was prepared. His blades were sharpened. A large supply of salt within easy reach, just in case things got difficult.
He had spent a large part of the last week completing the research he knew he was going to need, because Dad had drilled into both of his boys the absolute requirement of being completely informed and prepared at all times.
He glared at it with a critical eye. Dean had taken on his first werewolf when he was sixteen for fuck's sake. He certainly could handle this.
"Christ, Dean. It's just a turkey. Put it in the oven, already. I'm not eating KFC this year."
Dean looked up from the kitchen table and smacked the back of Sam's head as his little brother strolled through the kitchen.
"Ow! Quit it, jerk."
"Don't rush me, bitch. Perfection takes time."
/
Thanksgiving dinner wasn't perfect, regardless of his brother's noble intentions.
Dean and Dad had cooked. Which was already surreal enough in Sam's mind, since Dad had never made them a Thanksgiving dinner in their entire lives. Of course it had been Dean spearheading the whole operation, but still.
The turkey was a little dry, the mashed potatoes a little soupy. The stuffing was mushy, and somehow they even managed to make the jarred gravy lumpy. The rolls were a bit burned on the bottom, and the green bean casserole that Dean had assumed would pass for a vegetable in Sam's world looked like a big pan of snot.
It was still the best meal that Sam had ever tasted.
Uncle Bobby had joined them, bringing a pumpkin and apple pie that he made from scratch. Sam remembered the salvage man telling him once about all the pies that his late wife would bake and these were her recipes. Dean had absolutely flipped his shit, eating two pieces of each before getting scolded by their father for being a complete pig.
Dad was drinking some, but not enough to blur his senses. He was quiet and contemplative at his end of the table. One minute smiling. Not quite enough to reach his eyes, but still smiling just the same. The next he would be staring at his sons with a painful wistfulness in his eyes.
The house was warm, despite the first few flurries of snow that were starting to swirl outside, and there was a ball game on TV in the background.
Sam looked from one family member to the other in turn. Taking in their faces when they didn't know he was looking. Happy, content, mischievous. A little sad.
Wondering what it was going to be like next year.
Worried that this was going to be the only Thanksgiving dinner he would ever have with the people he loved.
.