A Brother's Sacrifice

by ayosb2000

Completely AU. John really did want Dean to have a home and for Sam to go to school. At Sonny's, Dean saw the possibility of another life, but chose family. Sam is chafing under his father's thumb. An exploration of what might have happened if Dean stood up to his father and decided that normal and hunting could co-exist. A large re-write of a previous story I wrote years ago.

26. April 2002

A/N Hey there! Don't be shy! If you're still enjoying this story let me know. I know my readers are anxious to get to the big reunion in the next chapter! But we can't have the Winchesters without a little more miscommunication, right? lol

/

Dean woke up to the pleasant smell of coffee brewing and bacon frying and that was pretty much a great way to wake up in his opinion.

A better one would have been to not have woken up alone in the queen sized bed, but Lisa liked to freshly grind these really fancy Brazilian beans and he could be convinced to forgo a little morning grown-up time for some of the amazingly tasty brew.

And if there was a side of pig to go with it?

Boom.

He was a simple man after all and could be bought off pretty easily.

Even through the closed door he could hear the excited chatter and general banging that usually heralded Ben's presence. The kid was a bundle of energy, especially in the morning, and more than once Dean had joked to Lisa that giving her little son caffeine for breakfast probably wasn't the greatest idea. But he was a good boy most of the time and Dean was finding himself becoming more and more attached with every visit he made to them.

He reached over to the nightstand and grabbed his phone to check for any messages, pleased when there weren't any that required his immediate attention or departure. Having just done five hunts back-to-back, Dean was wiped and he planned on enjoying his four days off, assuming that disaster didn't strike in the meantime. Bobby had sent a group text that there was a suspected wraith feeding off kids in a boarding school in Ohio, about three hours away from Dean's location, and it was already assigned to a pair of hunters that the salvage man had taken under his wing a little more than a year ago.

Tamara and Isaac were a married couple who got into hunting like most other people did. The violent and inexplicable death of a loved one. Their only daughter was killed by a Rawhead and the freaked out and grieving parents dealt with the tragedy the only way they knew how. Finding out as much as they could about the thing that had murdered their baby and then getting a little payback. They hadn't been on the job long, but they were fast learners and highly motivated. Preferring to go after things that preyed on kids.

Dean sent Bobby a quick text back to let him know that he was available for backup if they needed him to swing by, but otherwise he was holing up in Cicero for the next few days.

Out in the hall the patter of little feet running was coming closer to the bedroom and knowing what was about to happen he braced himself for the mini-tornado that burst through the bedroom door and launched himself on top of Dean with a joyful yell. The kid's aim had him solidly landing right on Dean's stomach and he let out an involuntary grunt as Ben bounced up and down.

"Breakfast!"

The tired hunter groaned as the tiny jumping body repeatedly pounced on his full bladder and he reached out to pull Ben off of him and into a cuddle by his side instead so he could catch his breath. The little wiggle monster only allowed him a few seconds of reprieve before he was back up and pulling at Dean's fingers in an effort to get him out of the bed, likely on his mother's orders. Surrendering, Dean shoved the blankets out of the way and got up, grabbing Ben up into a fireman's carry over his left shoulder and letting him dangle down his back while the boy giggled all the way into the kitchen.

He was treated to the sight of Lisa over by the stove wearing the short silk robe that showed off her shapely legs. Her dainty feet clad in the ridiculously pink, fluffy animal slippers that she loved and wore religiously no matter how many times Dean teased her about having her toes shoved up two piglets' asses. She looked up from the frying pan long enough to give him a smile, half hidden by the long lock of sleep tousled hair draped over her face. He strode across the kitchen, his mouth quirked up into a goofy grin, as he gently grabbed Ben by an ankle and held him out like an offering.

"I think this belongs to you."

Peals of childish laughter rang out through the kitchen. Clearly Ben liked hanging upside down and the adults couldn't contain their own chuckles. The little boy's glee was contagious. Dean pulled Ben up into a more secure hold, laying the kid across his forearms and leaning in to give Lisa a good morning kiss before swinging his arms up and flying Ben like an airplane, complete with engine sounds, to his booster seat at the table.

"Here you go buddy," he said as he handed Ben the straw cup of juice that was already waiting at his place. He ruffled Ben's hair and then darted into the half bath next to the kitchen to relieve himself and wash up before joining Lisa and Ben at the table.

Lisa was furiously texting when he sat down, her brows furrowed in agitation as Ben tried to feed himself by smearing syrup soaked pancake bites in the general vicinity of his mouth. Dean took a large swallow from the coffee mug at his place and sighed, almost feeling the caffeine surge right to his brain.

"Something wrong?" he asked when she still hadn't put the phone down and appeared to be growing more angry.

"The new Ashtanga instructor I hired called out for the ten a.m. class and if I can't find a replacement I'll have to teach it myself," she replied, scowling at an incoming text. "It's full and I can't cancel. So besides leaving you behind, I'll either have to take Ben with me to the studio or see if my sister can take him for a couple of hours."

Across the table Ben perked up and matched his mother's scowl. "No 'tudio, Mommy," he stated firmly.

Lisa sighed at the distress on her little boy's face and seemed to deflate. "He hates coming with me," she said to Dean. "He gets bored easily and destructive, no matter how many toys we bring. Then I get upset with him and then he gets upset because I'm upset with him. It's never a fun time."

"So leave him here with me," Dean said, shrugging as he put a whole slice of bacon in his mouth. "We can hang out. Right kiddo?"

He tried not to be hurt by the skepticism on her face as she looked from him to Ben and then back to him again. They hadn't been together all that long and while she had said on more than one occasion how good Dean was with her tiny son, she'd never left them alone together.

"I don't know," she said, still reluctant. "Are you sure? He can be a real beast when he wants to."

Dean snorted and reached over with a napkin to mop some of the syrup from Ben's cheeks and then held the straw cup to the boy's mouth so he could take a sip without getting it all sticky. "It's not my first rodeo taking care of a rug rat," he assured her. "I've got rope and duct tape in the car."

Her eyebrows raised adorably and made him laugh. "Kidding. Okay, not kidding, but only as a last resort, I promise."

He could see her mind calculating the potential fallout from agreeing to this. It probably wasn't personal and she would have no idea of just how much Dean had taken care of Sammy growing up. Truthfully he couldn't blame a single mom for hesitating to leave her only child with a practical stranger, even if they were sleeping together. But then Ben leaned over towards him with his mouth open like a baby bird, obviously searching for another sip of juice from the cup Dean still held, and she apparently decided that Ben trusted him already and that was most of the battle.

"If you're sure," she said reluctantly. "I'll only be gone for a couple of hours. And there's a park down the street he likes if you're willing to put up with the neighborhood gossipy moms."

Ben pushed his plate of mangled pancake remains away, clearly signaling that he was done with them, and started to struggle to get out of his seat.

"Hold on, little man," Dean scolded gently. "You finished already?"

When Ben nodded vigorously, Dean lifted him out of the chair and carried him over to the sink. He swiftly pulled the boy's soiled pajama top off before grabbing a cloth from the stack Lisa kept in the middle drawer that he wet and soaped. With practiced moves he grasped the squirmy toddler and washed the boy's face and hands free of syrup while Ben protested as Lisa sat at the table and watched in amazement.

"Okay, buddy, why don't you go watch some cartoons for a few minutes," Dean said as he lowered Ben back down to the ground. The boy lifted his arms out to the side and tried to imitate the earlier airplane noises as he zoomed out of the kitchen and into the living room.

Sitting back down at the table Dean scooped up a large forkful of his lukewarm eggs into his mouth, frowning when he realized that Lisa was staring at him.

"What?"

She raised her eyebrows and quirked a smile at him that had him confused for a second until he realized what he'd just done. Shrugging, he took another large gulp of coffee and played it down.

"I watched out for my kid brother a lot, is all. It's like riding a bike."

He hadn't talked much about Sammy since he and Lisa had started seeing each other. She knew of him, of course, but nothing more specific than he was away at school. It hurt too much to bring his little brother up in conversation and since Lisa didn't really go into detail about her sister either, Dean figured it was just normal to keep talk of his sibling at a minimum.

She leaned over, her robe opening just enough to show off the lacy top of the nighty he'd barely refrained from ripping off her last night, and kissed him softly. He returned the kiss enthusiastically and pulled her into his lap, chasing the lingering sweet taste of pancake syrup in her mouth with his tongue.

"I need to get in the shower," she whispered reluctantly as Dean moved from her mouth to nibbling her ear.

He slipped a hand under the thin fabric of her skimpy nightgown and caressed her hip as he nuzzled her neck. "What a coincidence. So do I."

She groaned sadly and flopped her head on his shoulder and snuggled into his chest. "Tiny person making big messes when no one is looking," she reminded him, casting a fond look at her child sitting cross legged in front of the television in the next room. "Do you know how many morning showers lasting more than five minutes I've been able to take since he was born? Six. In almost three years."

He couldn't help it when he started to laugh, even though Lisa sat up and gave him a look that implied she might get creative with her cutlery and his boy parts. He was smart enough to know when to quit however and he pulled her back into his arms for another snuggle.

"Tell you what," he offered. "I'll watch over Chucky and clean up the breakfast dishes and you go shower for as long as you want. Just save me some hot water because I don't want the gossipy neighbor ladies thinking I'm some smelly bum who stole your kid. Deal?"

"Really?" she asked, her eyes popping wide open while visions of steam and lazy bathing floated through her head. "You'd do that?"

Dean shrugged as he stood them both up and ran his fingers gently through her sleep tangled hair. "Sure. I mean, I'm totally planning on standing in the doorway and perving on you, so there's definitely something in it for me, but yeah. Go nuts."

She laughed and lifted up on her tiptoes to wrap her arms around his neck and kissed him again. He returned her kisses and then watched her sashay into the bathroom. She threw a look over her shoulder at him just before she went in and very intentionally left the door a few inches ajar. He chuckled to himself and then checked on the munchkin before starting to clean up the breakfast mess.

There were times like this that he could see himself settle into a more full-time domestic life. With a woman and a kid he was becoming very enamored with. It was getting harder and harder to remind himself that he couldn't really afford getting attached to them so quickly. Especially since he had promised himself that he wouldn't even think of anything longer than the next visit until he'd spilled the beans to Lisa and she accepted the scary harsh reality of his not quite 9 to 5 profession. Knowing that every time he walked out the door to go to another job there was a real chance he wouldn't be coming back.

It wouldn't be fair to Lisa to let her get really involved and not make sure that she knew the risks of being with him.

He simply wasn't going to go through another Cassie situation. Between her rejection on top of his still very raw pain of Sam's abandonment, it had almost broken him. Dean didn't have the strength to lose more people he cared about after foolishly letting them into his heart again.

He knew better than that. How many times had his father warned him of the dangers of getting attached?

But that was another time, to be fair. His life had changed in so many profound ways since then and maybe it wasn't necessarily impossible to do the job and have a family life at some point in the future. Lisa was pretty cool about most things. She might be the one who could handle who he really was.

Once the dishes were clean and the table wiped down, Dean stealthily crept towards the slightly cracked bathroom door. He pushed it open just enough to see Lisa's nude form behind the streaming rivulets of water running down the wall of her glass enclosed shower. It was too steamy to really see anything other than her shape and somehow that made it even more sensual. She was an incredibly beautiful woman but that wasn't really what was drawing Dean to her.

Of course her looks didn't hurt, but being a nice looking guy himself meant that he had slept with many beautiful women over the years. It was one of the better perks of a mostly crappy job. But with Lisa there was so much more than just the pretty wrapping. She was only the second woman who had ever looked at him closely enough to see through his crap, Cassie being the first.

But unlike Cassie, Lisa didn't judge him for it.

After he had arrived on her doorstep that Valentine's weekend and recovered from the shock of seeing a two-plus year old peeking out from behind the legs of the woman he'd tracked down in the hopes of exploring their previous time together a little more thoroughly, he'd done the math. Although she'd adamantly insisted that the boy wasn't his, it surprisingly didn't necessarily make him feel better because the initial thought hadn't been unpleasant.

Lisa confessed to being a little wild and having a type and since Dean already knew the other qualities she brought to a party it wasn't surprising to find out that he hadn't been the only one rocking her world at the time.

But unlike other guys who had apparently shown interest in her recently, and then bolted once they found out she already lived with a tiny man, Ben wasn't a deal breaker for Dean. In fact, he had grown attached to both of them far too quickly for his own good. Lisa was a wonderful mother and Dean genuinely enjoyed watching her nurture her small son while still being smoking hot and running her own business.

She was the complete package and a mess like him was a lucky enough bastard that she even let him through her door, let alone into her bed.

He felt a tugging on the hem of his sleep shirt and looked down to see Ben's little face peering up at him before the boy grabbed his hand and started to drag him back into the living room. He pointed at the screen and frowned at Dean, nervous to show that Scooby-Doo was on before running back over to sit on the floor. During Dean's visit two weeks earlier he'd tried to get Ben to watch an episode of Scooby but it was clear the boy was scared of the ghosts. The irony wasn't lost on him and he also didn't want Ben to lose his innocence of the world by trying to explain that while ghosts were in fact real, the ones in Scooby were never actually ghosts.

Freakin' humans. Every time...

Ben was eventually convinced to watch the world's best cartoon but only after Dean promised to sit with him and protect him in case the ghost came through the screen.

"Hey! This is a great one! A Tiki Scare is No Fair. Awesome."

Not in the mood to sprawl out on the hard floor, Dean scooped Ben up and carried him over to the sofa, sitting down and plopping the toddler next to him. When he encircled the little boy with the promised arm of protection he could feel Ben shivering a little and realized that they'd never put a clean shirt back on him and the living room was a little cooler than the kitchen. Lisa had a crocheted throw that her grandmother made draped on the back of the sofa so he pulled it down and wrapped Ben up in it and the boy snuggled into Dean's chest and immediately started to suck on his thumb.

Inwardly, he winced out of habit. Sammy had been a thumb sucker when he was about Ben's age, maybe a little younger, but their father had been unyielding in his insistence on nipping the habit in the bud early. It had been a regular source of tears for a while until Sam was fully weaned off of it because the Winchester boys didn't have a lot of comforts in their young lives and Sammy hated it when his daddy scolded him and told him to be a big boy.

A young Dean never questioned his father's orders, but years later, after a few too many beers, he had finally summoned up the courage to ask John why the thumb sucking had been such an issue. Why it was preferable to deny Sammy, which sent him into meltdowns that resulted in all of them being upset, rather than just let him do it. John had sighed heavily and rubbed his face and immediately Dean regretting asking because his father was weary enough most days already and this was an old sore subject. Eventually his father admitted that it was fear that Sammy, who had gotten into his bags often enough that the hunter had needed to start putting the weapons up high first thing upon walking into a room, would rub his grabby paws on something dangerous that got accidentally smeared on a bag or a pant leg.

It was bad enough that the worried father already felt like he needed to dip his kids in hand sanitizer every time they checked into a new motel room as it was. He just couldn't run the risk that Curious Sam would shove a thumb covered in supernatural ooze into his unsuspecting mouth. John would allow it when Sammy wasn't feeling well or truly upset over something. He would just make sure that the kid's hands were clean first. But as a regular practice it ran too many risks to Sam's well-being with the way they lived and it only took one mistake.

Dean had felt guilty for years over all the times he had allowed Sam to disobey their father's orders over this issue. Unable to resist his little brother's sad puppy eyes when he was caught curled up with a thumb in his mouth while Dad was away. Again. It's almost funny to think of how many times a much older and often angry Sam had gone on to accuse Dean of blindly following their father's orders when in reality he had often skirted them if it meant that his younger sibling was happy for just a few minutes. Or how much Sam resented the both of them for having rules for his protection that he hated but never took the time to see from their viewpoints as his caregivers.

He was pulled out of his reverie by a loud Shaggy screaming Scooby-Doo where are you? on TV and looked up to see the scene had changed to Fred and Daphne dancing at the Pineapple Parlor.

Mmmm...Daphne...love her...

Ben was content laying against Dean's chest, thumb from one hand in his mouth and fingers from the other hand idly fiddling with the crocheted holes of the throw while he watched the screen. He didn't have any worries like a vagabond existence that meant he never knew where he would wake up in the morning after hours in the car. Or whether or not the Spaghettios that had seemed like such a good idea a few days ago when he begged for them at the grocery store were now making him sick of even seeing the can because he'd been forced to eat so much of them. Ben lived in a clean house with a kitchen full of food and a mother that adored him. Lisa didn't have to worry too much about potentially lethal substances on a thumb.

There were times when Dean looked at Ben and his breath caught with the resemblance between him and Sammy at that age. The dark curly hair that was just a few inches too long to be manageable. The way they both pursed their lips in concentration when figuring out a problem. He even sported Sammy's baby bitch face a couple of times when Dean teased him. But then Dean would blink hard to clear his head and rationalize that it was normal to see someone you missed in a person right in front of you who was helping to fill the space in your chest that the missing one had left. That's all it was.

He was saved from drowning in a deep pool of melancholy, the episode just about over, when a freshly showered and much happier Lisa came in to join them, carrying a clean outfit for Ben.

"Your turn," she said, leaning down to give them both a kiss and bathing them in the woodsy jasmine scent of her Sensi perfume. "You shower, I'll get Ben dressed and then maybe I'll perv on you for a bit."

Liking the idea, Dean wagged his eyebrows at her flirtatiously and tousled Ben's hair before hauling himself up from the couch and sauntering off.

By the time he had finished cleaning up and getting dressed for the day Lisa was desperately trying to leave. It was clear she was having a hard time holding Ben still while she attacked his bed-head knots with a hairbrush and the little boy was just having none of it. He kept pushing her brush hand away and repeatedly tried to twist out of the grip she had on his arm.

"Nooo. 'top it," he whined as Dean could see Lisa getting more and more frustrated. Usually Ben was a good kid, but he was still in the terrible twos and could have a rapid fire mood shift just like any other little one his age. Sammy hadn't always been a sweet little ray of sunshine either.

He could also see the anxiety building as she kept taking quick glances at the clock on the wall that was reminding her that she was about to be late and could tell she was about three seconds away from either losing her cool or giving up and letting the child have his way. Shaking his head he went over to them and took both the brush and the grumpy kid out of her hands.

"Go," he said, leaning down to give her a kiss. "I've got this.

Lisa gave him a relieved smile, happy that she had another adult around to play bad guy, and picked up her work out bag. "Anyone ever tell you that you'd make a great wife?" she teased.

She froze as soon as she realized what she had just said. It was obviously meant to be a snarky comment, but they hadn't been seeing each other nearly long enough for a word like wife to even be considered a joke. There was no faster way to get a new partner to go running for the hills than to mention anything matrimonial in any capacity.

Fortunately Dean brushed it off. It startled him for the briefest of seconds, but he also knew how she meant it and just because he may not be in the market for something permanent yet, there were worse women it could happen with if he ever was.

"I can reach things on the high shelves in the kitchen too," he said matter-of-fact. "That's got to give me bonus points."

Lisa laughed, glad that she didn't seem to have stepped in it. Ben whined again, wanting to get back to his cartoons and Dean picked him up like a football, ignoring the little boy's petulant struggles and finished brushing his hair while his arms were trapped before giving Lisa a kiss.

"Thanks again," she said sincerely, leaning over to give her son a peck on the cheek too. "Listen to Dean, Benjamin Isaac," she warned. "Or we're not getting ice cream after dinner tonight."

Ben's eyes went wide at the threat and so did Dean's and between the two of them they had Lisa laughing and not quite so upset about leaving them alone together

/

Lost in thought as he jogged the campus perimeter, it took Brady calling his name three times before Sam heard him. He'd been in a particularly foul mood since yesterday when a routine ATM transaction for a little cash to kick in for his share of a few study night pizzas revealed that someone had recently made a five thousand dollar deposit into his account.

Obviously it could have only come from Dean or their father, but it didn't matter to Sam which one had done it. Either option upset him. Because he really didn't need more of his father's charity when it was already hard enough to use the meal plan and extra cash he knew came from John.

But having it come from Dean? That was even worse.

Sam didn't want the brother he'd betrayed and abandoned to feel any guilt about providing for Sam, and no one did undeserved guilt better than Dean Winchester.

Every time he got to a point in his life out in California where he was feeling, maybe not necessarily okay, but more or less manageable on his own, something like this would happen and he'd be back to wallowing in how much he missed his family. While also still knowing that whether or not they were continuing to provide for him out of habit, he was absolutely sure he wasn't actually wanted by them after what he'd done.

You don't get raised your entire life being told that family was the only thing that mattered and then get forgiven for running out on them.

"Earth to Sam. Come in, Sam."

Sam scowled and glanced over at his friend who was gamely attempting to keep pace with his much taller and faster roommate.

"What?"

"I'm trying to talk you into spending the summer in Park City with me, dumbass," Brady said, rolling his eyes in frustration as his breath came out in short ragged spurts. "It's the off-season, but there are still great clubs I can get us into. And a ton of outdoor stuff to do. It's going to be a lot of fun."

Sam took a swig from the water bottle he was carrying and slowed his stride just a little because he could hear that his friend was now panting pretty heavily between sentences. Brady might be a former football player who still trained occasionally, but he'd never been to Winchester Boot Camp and didn't nearly have Sam's stamina.

"I told you that I have to work, Brady," he reminded the other boy. "Some of us need income to get through the school year."

Although not as much as I'd thought I'd need apparently...

Despite his friend's protestations, Brady wasn't going to be deterred. He was currently in the middle of a huge pissing contest with his older brother for exclusive use of their mountain chalet and he had every intention of winning and making Park City into Party Central for the entire summer break.

"It's not going to cost you anything for the whole summer," he reasoned, trying to skirt the sore subject of Sam's more humble financial situation. "And I'm covering everything for everyone, not just you. Transportation, housing, food, booze, entertainment. It's all on me. All you have to do is show up and relax for a change. Recharge your batteries."

As tempting as that was, Sam wasn't all that keen on the idea that Brady had also invited a couple of his friends from high school to join them too. Sam didn't know these boys. He wasn't going to necessarily relax in an unfamiliar, unprotected environment with a bunch of strangers when he could be crashing on the already offered sofa bed at Milo's place and banking every penny he could make at the restaurant working every day. Unlike his previous break he wouldn't need to pay for a long term stay at the budget motel this time which was a huge savings.

Being able to put that kind of cash aside for a rainy day would also make his overall stress of being on his own that much lower and meant he could maybe pick up a few summer credit hours.

"It does sound great," he said, attempting to diplomatically placate his friend. "But I have a real shot at getting ahead this summer if I just put in a ton of hours and save up. Then I won't have to bust my ass so much when fall comes. You know?"

Brady did know and he wasn't unsympathetic. No one worked harder than Sam did and it would be nice to see him not have to run around like a crazy person for once. Although, Brady also knew that his buddy would more than likely just find another class or another study group to fill any work hours he dropped. Sam wasn't one to kick back.

But the truth was, Brady himself was in a kind of bad place at the moment. Things with his family weren't going well, even worse than usual, and Victoria had dumped him last weekend for a guy from her modeling agency. Plus, Brady's friendship with his buddies from his prep school had cooled a little since they went off to separate universities and honestly he hadn't really minded

In all truth, he was a little wary of their insistence to hang out together when he knew how it was probably going to turn out.

He'd always been the more serious among them when it came to education, because no one who considered becoming a doctor had any doubt about how much work it was going to take. These friends in particular were very good at convincing him to do dumb things that ultimately got him into trouble. Even though he had invited them along for old times' sake, he wasn't sure being around them again alone would be a smart idea and he really wanted a buffer.

Besides Sam, Brady had also invited their friends from across the hall and had no luck there either. Zach was required to spend his summer break in Europe with his parents and sister and his mother's extended family and Luis had already jumped at the chance to go to Paris with him. Not that Brady could blame them. Paris was definitely an attractive option and he would have accepted Zach's invitation himself if not for the stubborn streak he had in him that refused to let Clay have his way again.

It had taken a lot of sucking up to his asshole father to get permission to use the Park City place for the entire break and he wasn't about to let his even bigger asshole brother get it by default. It was a matter of pride.

Besides, Sam was the one he actually wanted to spend the summer hanging out with anyway. Not just because his affable roommate was a good guy that wasn't likely to put up with the inevitable shit that was going to come from the other invited guests, but because Brady had grown really attached to him. Kind of like finally having a good brother that he'd always wanted but never had.

Of course Brady knew that Sam was supposed to be close to his own brother, but whatever their relationship was, there was definitely something weird about it. Talk every day but don't bother seeing each other? Ever? According to Sam, Dean regularly traveled back and forth across the country for work, but somehow he never made the time to come out to California and see him. And why did Sam refuse to go home to visit his family?

Even Brady, who hated his family, went back home on the holidays.

As the two boys approached their original starting point of the Campus Drive Loop it was clear that Sam intended to do another lap. Already wrecked, Brady groaned and slowed down his gait, stopping completely to lean over with his hands on his thighs and take a few deep breaths. They had done the loop twice which was close to eight miles. Another one was out of the question for him against Sam's mile long legs.

Realizing he was running alone, Sam laughed over his shoulder and waved as his roommate flipped him the bird and started a cool down lope towards their dorm. Once again free to set his own pace he kicked his speed up higher and let the adrenaline take over.

The extra money in his account did take the pressure off but he was having a hard time accepting it. Maybe Dean would have made that kind of cash from another classic car rebuild, but the thought of him using so much of it to pad Sam's bank account had him feeling sick to his stomach. Sam didn't even want to know what his father would have have needed to do to get a bankroll that size and the thought that maybe John felt it was a good investment if it kept his problem child away from his perfect child pissed Sam off and made his chest ache in equal measure.

Once upon a time he'd been ready and willing to walk away from them just to get out of hunting. But then Dean had gone and made them a home and knocked Sam off his axis of self-righteousness. It was so much harder to keep away from his brother because of that, even if Sam knew that his continued presence in Dean's life was a detriment to it.

Brady obviously thought it was odd that Sam was planning on crashing in Palo Alto between quarters instead of taking the opportunity to see his family during the longer break. Of course Sam wanted to find his brother and spend time with him. To have a chance to patch up the crap way things had been left between them. Maybe even hunt a little just with Dean now that they were both adults and see if the two of them could do the job together without their father barking orders at them and keeping tensions high.

Sometimes Sam thought about that a lot, actually. It wasn't that he liked hunting, because he didn't. Not even a little bit. From an outsider's perspective he did understand that it was a job that needed to be done and someone had to do it, and since he and his family were the ones who were trained the burden fell to them and others like them.

Blah, blah, blah.

Sam had heard the speech on the responsibility of those in the know from his father so many times he could recite it in his sleep.

But for all the days and weeks that Dad had left them alone to their own devices while he was away fighting the good fight solo, he'd never let the two of them do a job without him. In fact, Sam was pretty sure that Dean still wasn't allowed to hunt just by himself and who knows if their father would ever loosen the reins enough that he ever would be.

It didn't change the fact that there were a lot of days when Sam wondered about what it would be like. Just him and his big brother on the open road. Dean behind the Impala's wheel while they listened to thirty-year old songs on worn out cassettes and ate bad takeout. Bickering over the older brother's faster than necessary driving and unbridled womanizing. Even silly things like which castaway was hotter. Ginger or Mary Ann? They'd crisscross the country and flop at motels with disturbingly exotic decor where Dean would sharpen blades while Sam, his trusty Geek boy sidekick, would research the next hunt. Catching a Jayhawks game or a concert between jobs and sharing a few beers together with a movie on.

No Dad telling them what to do every second and controlling them. Just Sam and Dean. Equal partners in the fight between good and evil.

It wasn't the life that Sam wanted in the long term. But it might be fun to try it out just to see what kind of a team they would make.

That wasn't going to happen, however. Sam had jumped ship and he knew when he did it what the consequences were. Dad had made that perfectly clear.

But he did miss his family.

Right now Sam was well on his way to another very successful academic quarter. Plus he was getting ready to finish up his work as Amanda's research assistant next week and she had promised him a glowing letter of recommendation that would open a lot of professional doors. Happy, normal things that he wanted to share with his family and have them be proud of him, but also knowing that they probably wouldn't because he wasn't out there with them saving lives and being another one of Daddy's good little soldiers.

As he pounded the pavement, Sam rolled his shoulders and tried to ignore the lingering soreness in his body that wasn't coming from his punishing pace on the Loop. Last night had been another marathon sex session with his hot professor and when Amanda got truly inspired she liked to use toys and leave marks of the fun variety.

Sam was really going to miss his time with her.

She had also invited him to join her for the summer, which left Sam wondering why everyone was suddenly so interested in how he was going to be spending his break almost two months from now. At least with Amanda he knew it was because their time together in the classroom was just about at an end and she was leaving. Only another three classes before the final and a week after that before he would be released from his internship with her.

She was taking a research trip to Colorado to study some Native American petroglyphs that had recently been uncovered and she'd seemed genuinely upset when he turned down her invitation to join her when his finals were over. He hadn't necessarily wanted to because a full-time jaunt with her promised all kinds of pleasure, but ultimately he felt that it would be for the best. All things considered he was thankful that she hadn't threatened to withhold the letter of recommendation for not accompanying her. Even though the work in Colorado wasn't related to the research they were doing together, she could have taken his rejection as a lack of dedication to the project and refused to reward him for it.

Honestly the problem was that it was just too tempting to drop everything in California to go hide in the mountains for a couple of months with his sexy professor. And the fact that it was so tempting, that Sam was almost blindly agreeing to it, was what finally brought him back from the edge into reality. That kind of spontaneous reaction was wildly out of character for someone who looked at a situation from all angles in great detail before making a choice. To find himself so easily impulsive had him thinking for a split second that she might be a siren or a succubus and he was under some kind of spell.

She'd enticed him from the moment that they met and nothing else seemed to explain why he apparently lost all rational thought in her presence.

But that was ridiculous. And it had him quietly fuming and resenting the jacked-up way he'd been raised even more. Because of his father's teachings, Sam couldn't even have a little not-quite-a-relationship drama with a hot woman without immediately suspecting something evil and nefarious.

Once again it reminded him that there were legitimate reasons why he'd decided to give up hunting in the first place. The job made him into a person that he didn't particularly want to be, even if he was pretty sure that he'd be good at it. After all, he wasn't so far out of the game that it escaped his notice that there was something up in the hunting world lately.

Regardless of how Sam felt about his previous life, there was never going to come a time when he wasn't concerned for his family's well being. So of course he still read the papers and scoured the internet for signs of a case. Always ready to go running to anything that looked truly awful and like something that his father and brother would be interested in taking on and maybe need a little more help with. He did love them both, contrary to the opinions they surely held about him, and he would never turn either one of them down if they asked.

Lately though it seemed like there was either a much lower instance of things going bump in the night or more hunters getting the job done quicker. The number of potential cases that he was tracking had dropped significantly. More than was normal without some kind of game changing event. As in, statistically impossible, if one was prone to catalog things like that as Sam was.

From a safety perspective, he probably should be pleased about the lessened risk to his family, but the steep decline had him beyond curious and he couldn't help but wonder what was going on in the world his father and brother lived in that had changed so drastically. It was a good thing, no doubt, but still something that he questioned just because that's what he did when presented with an anomaly.

Especially one that could impact his brother who didn't have Sam guarding his six like he should.

It unnerved him so much that he had toyed with the idea of reaching out to one of the other hunters that were close to his family. Uncle Bobby would probably know better than anyone what was going on and where Dad and Dean were working right now. Dean had grown really close to the older hunter after they moved to Sioux Falls and they'd keep in touch no matter what. But that was also the reason why the salvage man would probably be less likely to talk to Sam.

Uncle Bobby had always been kind to them both, but it was no secret that Dean was his favorite. Sam's betrayal was unlikely to get him very far with answers to his questions if his call was even accepted in the first place. Which it probably wouldn't be after all this time.

Pastor Jim had been in touch with Sam a couple of times after he arrived in California, but that had really been more about keeping in contact during a time of national crisis. Sam hadn't heard anything from him since October. Not even a phone call or a message at Christmas, when Pastor Jim had always made sure to check in with the family during the holidays.

The only other hunter's number Sam had on his phone was Caleb, and he knew for sure that a call wouldn't be welcomed by him. Caleb was even more committed to the cause than the Winchesters were and considering how close he and Dean had always been, Caleb was also more likely to just kick Sam's ass and write him off than give him any info.

Every night that Sam sat in the courtyard and only pretended to press speed dial 1 for his brother was another lost chance at asking for forgiveness and making amends with Dean and ultimately finding out what was going on in his old life.

Something that had Sam getting closer and closer to deciding that it needed to change, no matter how great the risk of rejection was. He'd cross that bridge when he came to it.

/

Dean turned off the side road outside of Lebanon and drove through the illusion of a copse of trees and through the hidden door into the tunnel that led to the bunker's garage. As he flipped on his headlights and expertly maneuvered through the narrow, winding brick drive, the wall sconces lighting it just enough to pass safely, he smiled to himself.

It was never not going to be cool that they had an honest-to-God underground lair now that would make Batman himself jealous.

The garage was already chock full of antique beauties in its stalls, both auto and motorbike varieties. Although the garage itself had a high ceiling, Dad didn't like wending his way through the significantly lower clearance of the tunnel with his new Sierra, so he usually just parked up the narrow drive outside in front while Dean took up the space in the middle of the garage with the Impala.

It was only right that his baby have pride of place with the other classic cars in his opinion.

Once he was parked he gave the Impala an affectionate caress and then got out, grabbing his duffel from the trunk and then plodding down the stairs into the main corridor. His bag was pretty gross since he was about three days overdue on his dirty laundry and he was looking forward to some clean shorts that he didn't need to turn inside-out to wear. While he was perfectly capable of doing it himself, it had been a rough few days and there was just something a little extra special with the way Mrs. Butters re-packed his things after they were clean.

Besides which, she genuinely seemed pleased to take care of him and the other Winchester men and who was he to deny her something that made her happy?

Henry had taken to life at the bunker right away. Not altogether surprising considering that he was always meant to be doing his rotation there right after his initiation anyway. The time jump still unsettled him every now and then but he was certainly handling it a lot better than someone who hadn't spent their lives training in the bizarre would have been able to manage. In truth, having him squirreled away inside a closed environment was probably making it easier for him to adjust. Physically and mentally set apart from all the exterior reminders of just how much things in the world had changed compared to what was, for him, just mere weeks ago.

He also hadn't been living on the road for the past 18 years like the other Winchesters.

Of course he'd acclimate better in a stable environment where there was a woman to take care of him. Something he'd never been without in his entire life. First living at home with his doting mother and then in a home of his own with his adoring wife. He'd never really needed to trouble himself with basic personal needs like where the clean clothes came from or how the meals were put on the table. It was only natural that he would embrace life in an orderly setting where he could be content with his studies and have the domestic chores done for him.

It also didn't hurt that he was fawned over by the resident wood nymph. Not only for his easy acceptance of her but also his higher standing in her eyes as one of the official Men of Letters.

That didn't mean that Mrs. Butters wasn't fond of Dean as well. While she certainly tried to do what she could for John, he wasn't particularly welcoming of her overtures and tended to avoid being near her unless he was having a meal with his father and son or one of the other hunters that she prepared for them.

But with Dean she seemed to sense a need in him to be mothered a little. So it was becoming common for him to arrive at the bunker and find a specially prepared treat as well as a cozily made up bedroom in case he was staying for a while. She would launder his clothes and fuss over his diet. Keeping his favorite weapons in pristine shape and ready for the next hunt before sending him off with a packed lunch that always had the crusts cut off.

He could hear her humming in the kitchen as he made his way through the hallway from the garage and stepped in to see her holding up a plate with one of her awesome ham and cheese paninis that was obviously for him. Not that he was surprised. She would have known he was coming the moment he drove through the magical entrance to the tunnel.

"You are a dream, Mrs. B," he told her, eliciting a girlish blush on her face from the praise as he took the plate and gave it an appreciative sniff.

Over at the table Henry was sitting with the remnants of his own sandwich, a stack of slim files surrounding him. He glanced up at his grandson's arrival and smiled as Dean dropped his offensive duffel in the doorway and walked over to sit down across from where Henry had been having a working lunch.

"How did the hunt go for the...uh?

"Chimera," Dean supplied before taking a big bite of his panini and moaning contentedly. "We ganked the witch that made it too," he continued through a full mouth that earned a tsk from Mrs. Butters. Chastised slightly, he swallowed and took a sip of the beer she had also put in front of him. "She was doing some real Mengele type experiments on a few creatures she collected. The whole place was a shit storm."

"Language!" Mrs. Butters scolded, making Dean roll his eyes. "Sounds like someone doesn't want the Rice Krispies treats that I made for him."

Immediately Dean's face fell, making Henry chuckle before Mrs. Butters let out an indulgent sigh and conjured a plate of the sticky squares that she placed next to Dean's lunch plate.

"Where's your father?" Henry asked, getting back to the file in front of him.

Dean swallowed the last of his sandwich and took a big bite of a treat, making sure to chew and swallow before answering because the nymph was still giving him the poop face.

"On his way up to Lansing to the Campbell compound. I guess they have some kind of way of extracting the fire from the chimera's corpse?"

Henry nodded and jotted down a couple of notes on the legal pad next to him. "Yes. That's probably why the witch created it in the first place. A chimera's fire is used in several upper level spells. We have some in the lab already."

Dean stopped chewing long enough to gape at the casual way his grandfather was discussing something that should be mythological. For years he had thought he knew the score about hunting and the supernatural but these past couple of months had been a steep learning curve and it was still taking time to catch up and realize just how ignorant he really was.

"We have chimera fire in our lab?"

Henry gave his grandson an incredulous stare and shook his head in apparent disbelief before returning to his writing. "Of course we do, Dean. The Men of Letters always keeps a fully stocked ingredients cabinet."

While Dean processed that little tidbit of information, his attention was caught by a small huff of indignation over by the door. Mrs. Butters had picked up his duffel daintily between her thumb and index finger and was waving her other hand in front of her nose with a look of disgust on her face.

"Sorry, Mrs. B," Dean said sincerely. "Witch hunts are always gross. You know. Always spewing their bodily fluids everywhere." He shuddered and stuffed another treat in his mouth.

"That's okay, dear," she replied with an obvious effort to keep from gagging. "I've put fresh towels and soaps in your room so you can wash up. You might want to considering taking more than one shower?"

Dean surreptitiously took a sniff of himself and winced. She wasn't wrong.

"Didn't you want to go with him? You haven't met your Campbell cousins yet," Henry asked, looking up again from his writing. Dean pursed his lips and went to take another sip of beer out of habit before pushing the bottle away. Beer and marshmallow didn't exactly go together.

"Nah. I'm not really interested."

Henry sighed and finally put the file he was working on aside to give his grandson his full attention. It wasn't that he necessarily wanted Dean to get cozy with the hunter side of his family tree, but these were strange times and they were the ones keeping his brother safe.

"Are you sure it's not because you're still upset about finding out that your mother was a hunter?"

You could hear a pin drop in the room as Dean started to fume. Henry had meant the words kindly, but he also had a bad habit of being too blunt without meaning to be. He was also still getting used to his grandson's hair trigger temper that was far too much like John's. The young man tended to get a little volatile when a sensitive subject was brought up. Especially when it was about his brother or mother.

"Don't head shrink me, Henry," Dean snapped. He got up from the table and strode across the kitchen to the icebox, grabbing a glass from the cupboard and pouring himself some milk.

Of the things that had come roaring out of the closet of family secrets with Henry's arrival, the stunning revelation that Dean's revered, perfect mother had actually been a hunter was one that shook him badly. So far he had been managing to bury that little nugget of unpleasantness fairly successfully by distracting himself with everything else going on, but it wasn't going to help if his grandfather insisted on bringing it up.

Henry recognized his faux pas and held up his hands in a placating gesture. He didn't like conflict. Especially with his grandson.

"I'm just saying that you might be missing out on an opportunity to find out what your mother was like before she was a wife and mother. You were too young to know her as a person. People don't stop being who they are just because they become a parent."

Dean slammed the full glass down on the kitchen island causing some of the liquid to jump out and spill on the stainless steel counter. He saw Henry flinch a little from the outburst and attempted to temper his response.

"Well, she didn't stop hunting just because she became a mother. Did she?" he spat out bitterly.

That was the part that had really thrown him for a loop. Once his father had confessed all to him about Sam and the Demon, he'd also come clean about the source of the photo that accompanied Sammy's restored Camaro last Christmas. Contrary to the belief of some who didn't know him all that well, Dean wasn't an idiot. It hadn't been hard to figure out that he'd already been born by the time his mother rescued Asa Fox from the werewolf.

There's nothing that Henry could say to that in Mary's defense. To be perfectly honest, he hadn't been exactly over the moon on finding out that not only was his beloved son a hunter, but he'd apparently married one too. Not just any hunter either, but a member of the Campbell family. The Campbells, who were one of the most well known hunting families and among the team that worked with the Men of Letters back in the day.

A true dynasty, all of them had been decidedly good at their profession. A family that went back in a hunting lineage almost as long as the Winchesters went back as Letters. Henry had even met John's future father-in-law Samuel Campbell once to exchange information on an antidote for djinn poisoning. One of the unpleasant beasts had been taking people in large numbers outside of St. Louis. The Campbells had found the location already and killed the djinn, but by that time a lot of people were already too far gone with the poisoning and needed help to be brought out of the coma before they were lost inside the dream world forever.

Of course the research section of the Men of Letters had already developed an antidote. They were always many steps ahead of everyone else. It's what they had been doing for centuries.

That meeting took place just a few months before Henry's initiation night. He remembered that Samuel had come along with his own father Jeb who was the official contact with the Men of Letters at the time. The two of them had never done a job together for the Letters before, but Jeb's hunting partner, his brother James, was recovering from a fight with a shapeshifter and Samuel's usual partner, his wife Deanna, was back in Kansas with their four-year old daughter who had the chicken pox. Putting aside his usual wariness of hunters, Henry had sympathized and made small talk with the younger Campbell.

John, who was also four at the time, had just gotten over them as well. Even strangers could find common ground when talking about their kids.

If Henry had been around while John was growing up, his son would have been training in the ways of the Letters and would have been told who Mary Campbell was and to steer clear of her. Because a Man of Letters certainly never mingled with hunters on a social level, let alone a matrimonial one. In retrospect, it was obviously a good policy to have considering that John's hunter wife made a deal with a prince of Hell that destroyed her family.

They were by far too careless in their actions and thus unpredictable and dangerous.

But then Dean wouldn't have been born. Sam either. And Henry would be the first one to admit that he'd already become very attached to his eldest grandchild and was desperate for the chance to meet the younger one as well. Dean might have several exasperating character traits that his grandfather pointedly ignored for the sake of familial harmony, but there was no denying that the quietly smart young man was a good and honorable person underneath all the swagger and bluster.

A true Winchester.

Family, no matter what side they came from, was important. Something that Henry knew that Dean was well aware of regardless of how upset he was at the moment.

During one of their latest squabbles, John had already told Henry that it was because of Dean's insistence that his little brother was better off at school that Sam had not yet been brought home to meet Henry and take his rightful place as a legacy. On one hand Henry understood why Dean would want to keep the boy safe in California. He hadn't been told the entire story, but he'd heard enough from his son and grandson, and even that grubby hat wearing Singer fellow, that Sam adamantly chose a life away from his family.

Honestly, Henry couldn't blame young Samuel for wanting to get as far away from hunting as he possible could. Especially considering the abject poverty he'd been raised to endure and the limited intellectually stimulating environment that the hunting associates his father worked among would have surrounded him with. Obviously a golden life at a fine institution like Stanford University would be immeasurably preferable. However, that didn't mean that Samuel shouldn't be brought back home now that things had drastically changed.

He was still a Winchester, with a long history of obligations and duty to fulfill.

Henry also knew that Dean, as the driving force behind his little brother's continued absence, was the one who would need to be convinced. It hadn't taken long to realize that when it came to many things Dean was just as protective of his little brother as their father was. Maybe even more so, because it also seemed that Dean had adopted some of the more traditionally maternal roles in his younger sibling's upbringing. You didn't necessarily have to be a mother to act like one, and a mother's love was fierce indeed when it came to the happiness of her child.

So Dean was going to have to be made to understand that what the Men of Letters could offer young Samuel would greatly appeal to someone more scholarly in nature than his older brother was. John's firstborn needed to embrace the reality that their heritage and responsibility were more important than any single man's illusion of happiness.

"Come with me, please," he beckoned as he stood up from the table, gratified when Dean huffed but followed anyway.

After a quick greeting to Pastor Jim Murphy who was on duty in the map room, they made their way to the archive room and Henry gestured to a seat at the table that Dean filled. He could tell from the sound of his grandson's irritated breathing that the young man's patience was thin and growing thinner by the second. So, as much as some of this was going to hurt, he didn't waste time. He opened one drawer and pulled out a file that he'd already read cover to cover several times over since arriving at the bunker. Then he went to the other side of the room, rifled around in one of the lower drawers for a moment and then extracted another one.

With both in hand he walked over to the table and gently placed them down before taking a seat across from Dean and rubbing his face in a gesture that startled the younger man with it's resemblance to one of his own father's tells. Opening one of the files, Henry flinched slightly before sliding it across the worn surface.

"Our family's history is really the history of the world, Dean. You and I? We're just the latest chapters in a very long and illustrious book."

Dean scowled a little but took the offered file and began to read. "Eric Winchester?"

"That's my father," Henry replied sadly. "He was a great man. He gave his life to help save the world. Sound familiar?"

Curious, Dean skimmed over the file's contents that summarized all of the missions his great-grandfather had gone on for the Men of Letters. All the discoveries he had made and the research he had done to contribute to the wealth of knowledge contained inside the bunker. The sheer scope of it all was astounding and more than a little humbling.

"I loved my father very much, Dean," Henry continued. "He was my hero. He loved me very much as well, although, like most men of his day, he didn't always know how to show it. I'd hoped to do better with my own son, but we know how that worked out, don't we."

Dean looked up and winced from the obvious pain and sadness that showed on Henry's face. So great that he had to avert his eyes and return them to the file in front of him until another one was pushed towards him.

"This is our file on your other great-grandfather, Jeb Campbell. As you can see, he did quite a lot of good also."

Reluctantly taking the file, Dean leafed through it and sighed heavily. "Why are you showing me all this?"

Henry took a moment to choose his words, sitting forward in his chair and clasping his hands together. It was hard for him to try and convince Dean of something that he himself was having trouble accepting. His son's marriage to a hunter was never going to sit well with him considering what it had done to turn Henry's sweet little boy into a hardened killer.

"Dean, your family. Both sides," Henry intentionally clarified, "have never been, nor with they ever be, what some would call normal. Our families were born to a higher purpose and because of that we have to carry a little more weight than others."

"I know that, Henry," Dean growled, slapping the files down. "I've known that all my life. You don't need to tell me because I've lived it."

Henry took a deep calming breath, hoping that his relaxed posture would subconsciously encourage his grandson to calm down as well. Nothing productive was going to be accomplished by Dean flying off the handle.

"But you haven't," he countered, frowning at the anger on the young man's face from his statement. "You've been a hunter almost all your life, because that's what your father made you do. Because you didn't know any better. Because he didn't know any better. Winchesters are more than that. We have always been more than that. You didn't just get pulled into this life because of what happened to your mother. It was always your destiny, as a member of our family, to be a part of this world and it's so much bigger than you ever dreamed."

Dean appeared to be giving that some thought. Chances were likely that the young man had already considered everything his grandfather had just said on some level, but it was different to see evidence of what his ancestors had been up to for generations before him. To his credit, as a hunter Dean did the job to save people without any purpose more lofty than that. It was a good and pure approach to their line of work that was commendable, to be sure, but far short of his obligation to carry on the true family tradition.

"What I'm trying to say," Henry continued, "is that your mother, whether she liked it or not, was part of all of that too. I didn't know her, but I doubt she could have found it easy to stop what she had also been doing all of her life. No matter how much she loved you, your father and your brother. When you become a father, could you just stop?"

By the pinched look on his grandson's face, Henry knew he'd hit his mark. Now it was time to really push the envelope.

"All of us, at one time or another, wanted to walk away from the responsibilities that come with being from a family like ours. It's perfectly natural," he reasoned. "I myself had doubts before the night of my initiation. I worried about whether or not my involvement with the organization was fair to your father and grandmother. The death of my father so young left a deep mark on me and my mother and I didn't want that for John and Millie."

Dean stopped fiddling with the file he was holding, and even though he wasn't looking at his grandfather, Henry could tell that he was listening very carefully.

"But then I went out on my first field assignment and saw the difference that we make in this world and finally truly understood our responsibility. Obviously your mother, like myself and many others, thought about having a different life at some point. Which is probably why she was attracted to John, who she thought was just a civilian and not another hunter. But, as you see, at the end of the day none of us can fight who we were meant to be."

While Henry paused to let his words sink in a little, Dean grabbed the file on his Winchester great-grandfather again and closely studied the photo clipped to the front.

"He looks like Sammy."

"I thought so too, " Henry said sadly. Seeing photos of his younger grandson had been physically painful at first. He exhaled a deep, shuddering breath and allowed the tiniest smile cross his lips.

"It's remarkable, really. I'd always wondered how much John was going to take after my father when he got older, and he did to a certain extent. I'd even planned on naming John after him, but Millie had her heart set on honoring her own father. I couldn't deny her anything," he said with a fond chuckle, "so we used Eric for John's middle name instead."

Dean's forehead crinkled in thought as he continued to stare at his great-grandfather's photo. He could almost see Sammy at that age, the resemblance was so strong. God, he really missed his kid.

"It's mine too," he said quietly, almost as an aside. Still caught in rapt fascination with the picture.

Henry cocked his head to the side and looked questioningly at his grandson. "What's yours too?"

"Eric," Dean answered, finally shoving the file away from him and grabbing the one on Jeb. "It's my middle name too."

That little piece of information had Henry beaming widely. He was inordinately pleased that his son had passed on the name of his beloved father to his own son as well. Of course he should have expected that John wouldn't have dreamed of honoring him with naming either of his sons after a father he thought abandoned him, but it was even better that the name of a good man like Henry's father was part of the newest generation.

"You don't know how happy that makes me, Dean," Henry assured him. "Family and tradition are so very important."

Dean half shrugged an acknowledgement as he leafed through Jeb Campbell's file. "At least my middle name comes from a dude."

Henry probably shouldn't have wanted to laugh at the look of irritation on the young man's face from being named for his grandmother. He should also have maybe tried to make Dean understand that it wasn't at all unusual for family names to trade genders when passed on. You honored a beloved relative and they weren't always the same sex as the recipient.

"Well, obviously Samuel is named for your maternal grandfather," Henry observed as casually as he could. The curiosity getting to him. "What's his middle name?"

"John." Dean replied, still deep in thought. "We both got one of Dad's names."

It was proper, so it really shouldn't have hurt, but if Henry was honest, it did. Somewhere in the back of his mind he might have been harboring the tiniest subconscious wish that his son had remembered how much Henry had loved him and used his name for one of his children. Hoping that not all of the memories they had made together were bad. Maybe John carrying around the journal that Henry had ordered for himself was all the memory his son could allow in his life."

After another moment of skimming the pages, Dean pushed aside Jeb's file as well and got up from the table.

"I really need that shower," he announced, rubbing a hand through his spiky, unwashed hair. "But I'll think about it."

"Talking to your mother's relatives?" Henry asked as he gathered the files together.

"Sam," Dean replied, his face stony. "Bringing Sam home. That's what this little walk down memory lane was all about, wasn't it? You couldn't care less about the Campbells. You're trying to convince me that Sammy has a destiny to join your boy band. Don't con a con man, Henry."

"Dean, I assure you..," Henry stuttered, caught off guard by his grandson's intuition.

Holding his hand up to stall any further discussion, Dean shook his head.

"Don't. I get it. Now that we have access to the magical clubhouse you want the smart grandson home to pass the baton to. That's fine. I know I'm just a grunt and that's okay with me. But you have no idea what Dad and Sammy are like when they get in the same room with each other and it ain't always pretty. Sammy's happy now where he is. If you really care about him like you say you do, that's all that should matter. But, like I said, I'll think about it."

He didn't wait for his grandfather to blurt out a denial before he strode out of the archives and down the hall towards the shower room.

/

In order to conclude that a person is a narcissistic sociopath, they must first be diagnosed with aspects of both narcissistic personality disorder and antisocial personality disorder.

For example, someone with narcissistic personality disorder will exhibit character traits such as having a grandiose sense of self-importance or preoccupation with dreams of unlimited power, success, physical attractiveness, and love. They will often hold the belief that they are of special or high status and can only be understood by similar people or should only associate with those people. As well as having a need for excessive admiration or possessing a sense of entitlement and expect favorable treatment or compliance.

Other behaviors such as a willingness to exploit other people to achieve personal goals, lacking empathy regarding the needs and feelings of other people or being envious of them or thinking that others envy them are often commonly present.

Someone with an antisocial personality disorder will show signs of excessive negative behavior such as a repeated failure to follow social norms or a tendency to regularly engage in deceitfulness. They will regularly exhibit a reckless disregard or concern for the safety of other people or display a stunning lack of remorse about hurting others. Often, they are irritable, aggressive and impulsive.

If you take all of these combined traits and mix well, you get a narcissistic sociopath.

When Cuthbert Sinclair was born in 1914, the practice of psychiatry had not yet been advanced enough to routinely identify and diagnose someone like him. Some of the giants in the field like Freud and Jung were already well into their work at the time and it was certainly known that sociopaths existed, but the focus had really only been on the ones who truly went off the rails in very public and spectacular fashions.

Serial killers for example are often textbook narcissistic sociopaths.

No one was necessarily looking for a young boy with a disarming smile and a penchant for bow ties that lived in an impressive six bedroom Palladian mansion with his affluent parents in Peoria, Illinois.

Throughout his privileged and openly unremarkable childhood, Cuthbert managed to skirt close examination of his more morally questionable actions through a combination of cleverness and charm. He was rarely caught in one of his many acts of cruel mischief and when he was he very skillfully pinned the blame on another child in a wholly believable manner.

It didn't hurt his cause that he had an indulgent mother who was certain that her only child walked on water, often becoming indignant of any slight against her sweet boy who wouldn't harm a fly. Meanwhile his father, an Ivy League educated trauma surgeon, was too busy with his career to pay attention to the many signs of something being quite wrong with his son other than to harshly berate him for a less than perfect grade.

An unfortunate oversight on the part of the elder Sinclair, since by the time Cuthbert was old enough to slit his father's throat in the parking lot of his hospital and arrange the crime scene to look like a mugging gone wrong, it was far too late to contain the young man's mania.

Like his not-so-dearly departed father before him, Cuthbert went off to school at Yale. It was his intention to pursue an occupation in the field of chemistry. Something he had a real passion for as he'd always had a somewhat morbid flair for coming up with new and often horrifying experiments. His father's lineage and professional success meant that Cuthbert was a financially well-off legacy student and, like all members of that social rank, he was easily welcomed into all the right clubs.

He was smart, charming and said all the correct things and his fellow students who drank with him and laughed at his jokes had no idea that they were nothing more to him than as a large scale experiment on the flaws of human nature.

And Cuthbert wanted to experiment on these silly children. To probe them and study them under a microscope. It was only the need to become even more crafty with his true intentions to avoid unwanted and problematic detection that kept several people in his line of fire safe. Growing more skilled, but also more cocky by the day, he might have eventually slipped up and caused real damage during his time in New Haven if not for his timely recruitment by a member of a very special, very secret society.

While most of the Men of Letters were legacies of the organization going back generations, occasionally to keep their numbers growing they recruited from the very best schools. The initiative of the New England chapter house especially kept a sharp eye out for those rare individuals who possessed desirable skill sets to add to their roster. Cuthbert Sinclair, with his seemingly affable nature and undeniable sharp wit, accompanied by a hearty appetite for the discovery of the new and unusual, was just who they thought they were looking for.

Once officially apprenticed, he flourished under the tutelage of his early mentors, and they in turn marveled at his natural talent for spell work and ingenious ideas for the creation of new potions and protections. True out-of-the-box thinking that impressed the older and somewhat stagnant members who had become complacent with what their archives already possessed. So excellent, in fact, that Cuthbert soared through his training and was initiated as a full member at the tender age of twenty-three. Years earlier than the normal average.

It wasn't just his premature initiation that set him apart from the rest either. His creation of several powerful warding spells for the newly constructed main bunker for the Men of Letters was the very foundation of secrecy and security for the treasure trove being housed inside. The ingenious complexity of the spells gave the other members peace of mind to know that their most precious collections would be kept safely away from those that would use them for harm. They were well pleased with their youngest member and his ever growing mastery of spell work and their continued admiration ultimately earned Cuthbert the title of Master of Spells on the day of his twenty-fifth birthday.

But of course he couldn't hide his true nature forever. Especially with a group of men who prided themselves on being skilled observers.

Cuthbert did have a few redeeming qualities, but they weren't necessarily enough for the other members to excuse his disturbing proclivities. For one thing, he was very vocal in his opinion that their vast resources should be used in a more active fashion. Whereas the Men of Letters prided themselves on merely being chroniclers, their youngest member was unsettling in his eagerness that they should be much more physically active with the resources at their disposal. It didn't seem to matter to him that their organization had always done their bit during times of real crisis, like their actions during the First World War for example, because they generally tried to stay out of things.

With another global conflict looming on the horizon, there were many arguments between them about the role that the organization should be playing.

The young Master of Spells would have had the other Letters leading a magically powered faction of their own against Hitler and his upstarts. Not traditional fighting tactics per se, but as far as he was concerned it was their job to do great things in order to bring the fight to the monsters of this world. The Letters, with their enhanced skills and resources, were worth so much more in times of crisis than as mere foot soldiers.

The fact that the methods he was suggesting could also very easily result in wide scale destruction and the loss of thousands of lives didn't seem to disturb the young man. In his opinion, it was a mere price to be paid for the greater good.

The other members found it blood chilling how easily the young man discounted the death of so many innocents. Especially when it was clear to them that he truly didn't see it as being a problem.

What Cuthbert perceived as an unforgivable laissez-faire attitude of the organization as a whole enraged the young man, and as a result his carefully composed mask of rationality and respectability started to slip. In his inflated opinion, anyone with half a brain could see that he was only trying to help in more of a way than his organization would allow. Sadly, all his short sighted fellow members seemed to be nothing more than spineless cowards and his disdain for them grew daily.

When the real battle of World War II began in earnest, the Men of Letters' tradition demanded that they have small teams working behind the scenes like many occasions before. They may have been hesitant to get involved in the early days but their organization was never entirely inactive. Duty required that they play their part like their ancestors before them, and once again it was through several of their contributions that the world was saved from mass destruction by the time it was all over.

For Cuthbert's part, his appetite for power and subjugation and his distaste for non-humans was fueled during his involvement in battling the Thule necromancers. It was here that his more distasteful talents were an asset. It was a case of darkness fighting darkness after all. Sadly, even with all the positive gains that were made in the elimination of the enemy, his sociopathy was eventually allowed to manifest itself in the torture and manipulation of a captured wood nymph. A creature he considered quite beneath him as a much more intelligent and important being.

All things considered, he thought it really was quite amazing how none of the other Letters ever questioned how he was able to convince her to serve their cause.

And by serve their cause, what he really meant was serve them.

After the war, when everything had calmed down and everyone returned to their duties at the Lebanon bunker, the members were so taken with the affectionately named and seemingly happy Mrs. Butters they never gave a second thought as to why she wanted to stay with them instead of returning to her forest. The idea of her being abused by Sinclair not even crossing their minds although they should have known better by this point.

Years in peace time passed and the organization continued on with their quiet studies and collections. Cuthbert, who by now was heavily studying the alchemy of the great Albertus Magnus and proposing some genuinely scary experiments without official oversight, was once again making the other members truly uneasy with his increasing lack of moral compass. This led to him being cited on several occasions with disciplinary infractions and it was beginning to become a real problem for a circle of men who didn't like conflict.

Ultimately it was the recovery of an ancient codex desperately sought after by members of the Grand Coven and Sinclair's growing impatience with what he perceived as the organization's unwillingness to understand just how badly the witches wanted it back that led to his design and production of the Werther Box. An enchanted vault so deadly that it took the lives of two members in good standing who had been stationed at the St. Louis chapter house where the codex was housed.

Fletcher and Martinez were good men and highly regarded by all the Letters. Their brutal deaths at the hands of a contraption designed by another member shook the entire roster to its very foundation. It was long past time that something was done with Sinclair.

Unrepentant to the last, Cuthbert Sinclair was officially separated from the Men of Letters on May 16, 1956.

Seething, Sinclair set into motion the demise of the spineless jellyfish who didn't possess the necessary vision to see plans of a better way. Those mealy mouthed librarians who merely sat back on their hands the majority of the time while the world outside crumbled. They were unworthy of their collections and resources.

The one exception to his disdain was a young man named Henry Winchester. A legacy, who by all accounts stood for the traditions of an organization that his ancestors had helped found, but also displayed a refreshing desire to jump into the fray. A fellow Illinoisan, Sinclair had volunteered to take on the early tasks of Henry's mentoring. Selectively seeing in the young man a bit of himself, if you were wearing the right kind of glasses.

Cuthbert admired Henry's drive, especially when the young man leaped at the chance to enlist during the Korean action, but he also believed the talented apprentice to be much more valuable to the cause outside of basic enrollment. It was his intention to cultivate Henry into an assistant of sorts for carrying out his own experiments. A potentially like-minded companion not to be wasted on the battlefield when his contribution could be so much more. It wasn't easy, but he did eventually convince the younger man to put aside any rash decision to sacrifice himself as a common infantryman and continued to train him with larger goals in mind.

After his expulsion from the Letters, Cuthbert furiously retreated to the familiar Peoria area to set up his own impenetrable base of operations. His beloved mother long dead, he took possession of a large parcel of land inherited from his father's estate. On it he built a mansion worthy of his self-inflated stature. An almost exact duplicate of the home where he grew up in every way.

With a few exceptions.

The addition of a large warded workspace for his continuing experiments was fully outfitted with state of the art laboratory equipment and a handful of custom designed enhancements inspired by his father's surgical kits. As well as a subterranean highly secure containment unit that he affectionately named his zoo.

Something he began to fill immediately with the help of a few motivated hunters who were happy to trap instead of kill and be paid handsomely for their trouble.

Highly paranoid and always cautious, a few simple spells erased the memories of the contractors and decorators that built and furnished his residence. A few more complicated ones warded it and himself against all comers and rendered both invisible and undetectable. Not even his former brethren had the necessary skills to locate him.

Not that the boy scouts would even bother to try.

Sinclair was Infamati et Obliterati in their eyes.

Dishonored and Forgotten.

He intended to keep it that way.

However, as Cuthbert hoped, Henry had developed such an attachment to him that the younger man continued to remain in contact with his former mentor. He was the first and only guest cordially invited inside the Peoria fortress. With Henry now married and working in the area, he would often drop by for a glass of bourbon or whisky and a little intellectual discussion where Sinclair continued to impart his wisdom. It was pleasant companionship and something that, to his warped mind, resembled adoration that Sinclair needed whether he admitted it or not.

Unfortunately, the other Letters were not quite as in the dark as Sinclair thought them to be.

When they finally got wind of the continued association between their most promising legacy and the dangerous former Master of Spells, Henry was forbidden to continue his visits under penalty of expulsion himself.

The young Winchester might have bristled a bit to have his friendship with his former mentor curtailed under normal circumstances, but in all honesty, Sinclair had begun to scare him a little by then anyway. It was clear that there was something troubling about the older man who had begun to almost maniacally insist that Henry refer to him as Magnus as he talked about the new world they could create together. To be honest, it was staring to border on sheer lunacy in its scope. The ravings of a potential lunatic that Henry had tried hard to explain away as fanciful and idle talk to himself until he just couldn't anymore.

Now being forced to choose, it wasn't as difficult as it might have been for Henry to decide to gracefully bow out of his friendship with Sinclair after his official initiation.

But that never happened.

Henry traveled through time that night and was lost, and without a social outlet to keep Cuthbert grounded in reality, his full warped attention turned to his experiments and growing his particular collection as he descended further into madness.

/

John happened to be working in the war room early that morning when his father came out of his bedroom carrying an overnight bag that he hadn't even realized that Henry had acquired at some point. Granted, he wasn't always at the bunker, but as far as he knew Henry never left the secure premises. Much preferring to hole up in his lab, especially when the other hunters were around.

"Going somewhere?" he asked, genuinely curious.

Taking the packed lunch that Mrs. Butters had come out of the kitchen to hand him and thanking her, Henry put on a new suit coat and nodded.

"Yes. I'm taking a short trip. I expect to be back in a day or two."

For some reason this information disturbed John and he couldn't immediately figure out why. It's not like Henry was a prisoner. It was just more like his whereabouts weren't something that his son had needed to worry about so far. An unnecessary addition to the heaping pile of crap that John already had on his plate.

"Alone?"

Henry straightened his tie and stifled a small huff. "Yes. I'm going to check in on an old acquaintance."

He walked over to the new computer desk underneath the map mounted on the far wall and rifled through a stack of papers until he found the directions he had printed out the day before. They were probably unnecessary, but Henry liked to be prepared. John scowled as he stood up and positioned himself between his father and the hallway.

"What acquaintance?"

Furrowing his brow, Henry stood his ground against the indirect challenge his son presented to his departure, but deigned to answer him anyway.

"A former Man of Letters," he answered patiently. "Someone who may have survived Abbadon's massacre. I have questions."

"I'll go with you," John said after a few seconds of thought. "Singer will be here tomorrow morning. We can leave then."

While Henry appreciated an apparent moment of concern on his son's part, the fact of the matter was he didn't want to risk having John with him. His visit would be dangerous enough on his own.

"Thank you," he replied as politely as he could. "But it's really not necessary."

He grabbed the two bags along with his new hat and moved to step around John but was blocked by his son's hand pressed firmly to his chest.

"Henry, you have no idea what it's like out there now," he snapped. "This isn't 1958 anymore. Just hold your horses until I have someone watching the radar and I'll take you wherever you want to go."

Looking down at John's hand, Henry pursed his mouth and let out an irritated sigh. It was one of those times when he had to fight very hard to keep control of his temper.

"John, while I understand you may feel the need to keep tabs on me," he began in a warning voice, "I would remind you that I am the father and you are the child. I am neither in need of nor asking for your permission or approval if I choose to go out on my own. Step aside, please."

As Henry could have predicted, that answer did nothing to mollify his son into compliance. If anything, it only served to enrage John who clearly didn't like a reminder that he apparently considered to be a challenge. Over the course of the past two months Henry had seen the way John barked orders at others around him, especially Dean, and it wasn't a habit he intended to let his son adopt with him as well.

"Fine," John snapped, crossing his arms as he moved out of the way. "Just don't expect me to come running to save your ass if you get in a jam."

"Duly noted," Henry replied coolly. "See you in a couple of days."

Leaving his fuming son behind, Henry made his way down the hall and then up the stairs to the garage level and over to the key rack. Dean had recently tuned both the green '56 Thunderbird as well as the red '55 MGA and the convertibles were in tip-top shape. They'd also acquired the necessary paperwork and registration documents to make them roadworthy. The MGA was certainly a sportier ride, but as a rule British cars tended to be far too fussy and Henry wasn't exactly a skilled mechanic. The last thing he needed was to be stranded on the side of the road.

Grabbing the keys to the Thunderbird, he opened the door and threw his things in the passenger seat and got in.

John wasn't wrong about the outside being different, but that didn't mean that everything was entirely foreign or that Henry wasn't fascinated by the new world he lived in. Enough similarities remained that he wasn't completely out his depth. His trip today wasn't even a hard one, all things considered. He estimated that it would take nine and a half hours or so of prudent driving to reach the hidden domicile of his former mentor. From Lebanon, it was an easy cruise along Route 36 east all the way to Springfield before he would turn north. Even accounting for a certain amount of build-up in infrastructure, once Henry was in Springfield he could still find his way to Peoria in his sleep.

Landmarks and buildings may have changed, but entire cities didn't move and this was his home turf.

Happily it was a lovely spring day outside so the decision to ride with the top down proved to be a good one. Although he was sure that he'd be exposed to more sun than was probably good for his skin, life below ground had him yearning for as much Vitamin D as he could get right now. The breeze was warm and the traffic was light. It was easy to enjoy the trip.

He stopped first for gas in Brookfield, Missouri, glad that he had paid attention to his son and grandson when they pumped their own fuel. In his day there were attendants for such things but it was certainly something he was capable of doing. The pit stop also gave him time to take care of personal business and spend a few minutes consuming the thoughtfully packed lunch Mrs. Butters had provided him with.

Another stop in Elkhart for coffee and a top-off of fuel, with a few minutes to stretch his legs, and then the final push to Peoria, where he took the chance that the Pere Marquette hotel was still in operation. Luckily it was, and just a few minutes after his arrival he was settling into a nice one bedroom suite to wash off the grime from traveling all day in the sun. He ordered a light dinner from room service, too tired to mingle in public, and was pleased to receive a call from Dean while he waited for it to arrive.

Henry's grandson had clearly been briefed on his out-of-character road trip and was a little less obstinate than John had been about inquiring into his whereabouts. He assured Dean that everything was fine and he was safe and sound for the evening, and then promised to call him after the visit he intended to make in the morning. His grandson didn't like that answer anymore than John had and Henry felt a mixture of affection and annoyance with the two of them.

He wasn't going to let either of them know what his plans were until everything was over.

After dinner he caught the second half of Destination Tokyo with Cary Grant on the classic movie channel and then turned in for a good night's sleep. The next morning after a shower and then a hearty breakfast in the hotel dining room he got back in the car and drove the twenty minutes outside the city to the area where he had last visited Sinclair. He pulled off the side of the road, carefully checked that everything he planned was prepared, and then walked into the thick line of trees until he came to a seemingly empty clearing.

"Magnus!" he called out into the air. "It's Henry Winchester. If you are still in there, I would love to see you again, old friend."

For a moment Henry felt a wave of disappointment wash over him. He had the necessary means to enter the abode by himself if for some reason the other man had abandoned it or passed away, but then the air began to shimmer and a cloud in the shape of a door rose up from the ground. He smiled, feeling relieved, and then walked through the cloud and into the hallway of Sinclair's mansion.

Edith Piaf was warbling on a gramophone in the background and Henry walked cautiously until, right on cue, a young woman with glowing blue eyes tried to grab him from behind. He opened the clenched fist of his left hand and blew some of the yellow powder into her face.

"Bahrahgado"

The djinn's eyes fluttered shut and she fell to the floor with a thump and behind him Henry heard the sound of clapping. He turned carefully and looked into the smiling still young face of his former friend.

"Henry Winchester," Cuthbert mused happily. "Now where did you get off to all those years ago?"

"It's a very long story," Henry replied, moving close enough for the two of them to share a quick embrace. "I'll tell you all about it."

/

"Hunters?" Cuthbert asked incredulously with a huge smile on his face. "Wow! Hunters. With the key to the kingdom! The boys must be spinning in their graves. Damn snobs."

He was by far too happy discussing the demise of their long-time friends and brothers-in-arms for Henry's taste, but then again, the younger man expected no less. He'd already accepted the unfortunate truth when it came to his former mentor.

"Yes," he agreed. "I'm sure they would have many things to say about it. But as my son was forced to grow up without me and then became enmeshed in the fight in a different way, I've had to accept certain changes."

Cuthbert had a look on his face that was trying hard to be sympathetic but really smacked of a perverted sense of glee. That was the trouble with sociopaths. They didn't always know how to successfully mask every facet of their illness. Henry watched placidly as the older man reached over to grab his tumbler of Macallan and took a sip in an attempt to hide his inappropriate smile.

"It's really been difficult to be surrounded by such people," Henry continued. "I'm so pleased to have found you still here. It's a breath of fresh air."

The flattery stroked Sinclair's sorely neglected ego. It was one thing to spend years coercing his captive creatures to adore him. It was another thing altogether to have it come deliciously unprompted from a person he had always felt as much regard for as someone like him could feel for another person. He really had missed Henry's company and to be given the chance to have that back filled him with, not exactly pleasure, but a kind of energy akin to it.

"I have so much to show you," Sinclair said, beaming a mile wide smile. "You really need to see all of my latest work. And all of the additions to my collection! Just incredible. You will be absolutely amazed."

Henry smiled and nodded as he lifted his own glass and feigned taking a sip. "I can see that already. That unicorn skull couldn't have been easy to come by."

They both glanced over to the horned skeleton head mounted on the table on the far side of the sitting room. Cuthbert grinned like a lunatic and the madness in his eyes sparkled.

"Oh that one was a likely tricky," he admitted gleefully. "But as soon as I heard about it, I knew I had to have it. No matter what the price."

The price was the lives of the two dealers who were offering it during a very exclusive auction, but Henry didn't need to know those little details.

Henry smiled again and chuckled as he scanned the rest of the room. Cuthbert wasn't an idiot. While he had always appeared to like Henry, he would also be intuitive enough to eventually guess that his apprentice hadn't come all this way just to share a glass of whisky and a few stories.

"My son is up against a Prince of Hell, Magnus," Henry said quietly. "I don't suppose you've come across the location of Colt's gun during your acquisitions?"

Sinclair's face fell just the tiniest of fractions from the open confirmation that Henry's appearance in his home wasn't just out of a desire to resume their friendship, but it was enough for Henry to see it.

"If I'm going to leave him to possibly come and join you here so we can resume our work together," Henry continued as sincerely as he could manage, "I would like to know that he has every tool I can arm him with. Hunter or not, he's still my boy. He should benefit from our superior knowledge."

The quick thinking compliment soothed the spark of rage that had flared up inside of Sinclair and he visibly relaxed again. Henry's assertion that he could have his companion back again was successful in lowering his guard.

"I haven't," he admitted, taking a small perverse pleasure at seeing Henry's resigned acceptance. Wanting to draw out the suspense, he took a pregnant pause before giving the younger man the better news.

"But I do happen to have the spell he used to create it in the files in my lab," he said triumphantly as he watched hope bloom on Henry's face. "All he'd need is a gun made from the right materials and the appropriately consecrated bullets, as well as a large astrological event. There is a full lunar eclipse scheduled in December this year. I would think it would be sufficient if John wanted to try and make one for himself that day."

Henry smiled and let out deep breath of relief. "That would be wonderful, Magnus. Without that worry on my mind, I could concentrate on more important things."

Sinclair preened at the revered use of his preferred honorific and the seemingly genuine appreciation on the part of his apprentice. It was only natural that Henry would want to assist his son with his little demon problem before he took his rightful place at his mentor's side. The anticipation of having a like-minded companion working with him after all of these years alone succeeded in having him unconsciously lower his guard even further.

"Come with me," he said, rising from his seat on the leather sofa. "I'll show you my files and all the new experiments I've been working on."

When the older man turned towards the hallway, Henry knew the tiny window of opportunity had opened. Shifting his right hand slightly, he allowed the concealed blade up his shirt cuff to drop into his hand and he swiftly sliced his left palm until he could feel blood flow.

"Magnus?" he called, as casually as he could. "What is this?"

The older man turned and saw Henry indicating the deformed skeleton of a primate that was one of his earlier attempts in cross breeding. It was an unusual piece.

"Oh that? It's a..."

He didn't get any further because at that exact moment Henry raised his bloody left hand, palm forward, as he uttered the command for a Chinese mind control technique that Sinclair himself had taught him.

"Xi!"

Immediately Sinclair began choking as his eyes went wide in surprise. He flailed for a bit before dropping to the ground and grabbing ineffectually at his throat. Helpless and knowing better than anyone that there was no counter to the spell that the one affected by it could use. Desperately he tried to plead with his eyes, but the cold, hard look on Henry's face told him that no mercy would be coming.

"I know it was you, Sinclair," Henry said calmly, as he continued to hold the writhing man in his magical grip. "Only a full member would have known all the names and addresses of the entire membership roster and their families. Abbadon may have been possessing Josie, but Josie didn't have access to that information. You also knew they would bring the key to the bunker to our initiation. It was all your idea, wasn't it?"

Sinclair gagged and by the look of hatred that flashed in his eyes Henry knew he'd hit the mark. After weeks of going through the bunker's records and finding several key items missing from its collection, he'd known right away what had most likely happened to them. It wasn't hard to make the connection between the pilfered antiquities and his former mentor's hatred of the rest of the organization.

He also knew that Sinclair was one of the best possible candidates for having the only weapon in existence that could kill the thing that had destroyed his son's dreams of a happy life with his wife and kids.

"I want to thank you for everything you taught me Cuthbert," Henry said conversationally as the other man verged on death. "Including this particular little spell that I know was your personal favorite method of assassination. Who knew that it would come in handy during my visit?"

Henry reached with his free hand into the waistband of his trousers behind his back and pulled out the gun that John had insisted on giving him several weeks ago for protection.

"I've also learned a thing or two from my son recently," he continued as he brandished the weapon. "Hunters have their own way of taking care of monsters and I think it's only fitting that I should employ their method in ridding the world of one of the biggest. Goodbye, Cuthbert."

With that Henry pulled the trigger and shot a silver bullet straight into Sinclair's forehead. The body on the floor jerked slightly from the impact and then stilled. The bloodshot eyes staring up at Henry like those of a dead fish. Henry exhaled deeply, feeling a moment of remorse before reminding himself of all the atrocities the man had committed. He wasn't even close to the definition of being a human after engineering the massacre.

There was a rack of swords and scimitars mounted on the wall behind him, so he walked over and grabbed the largest sharpest blade on offer and then used it to neatly separate Sinclair's head from his body. Henry wouldn't put it past his old mentor to have an insurance policy for a bullet to the brain but, with the exception of Nachzehrers, decapitation generally trumped everything outside of a wood chipper.

He also knew the entire place was more than likely to be filled with traps as well, and Henry wasn't foolish enough to think that he could just stroll around at will on his own and purge the dead man's files. He was going to have to call his son and their team of hunters and together they would all need to clear out this mess. Taking a pinch of the herbal blend he had in his inside suit pocket he uttered the incantation and blew on his fingers before finding himself safely on the outside.

To say that John was furious was an understatement.

Henry remained as calm as he could while explaining to his hot-headed son exactly what had transpired and why it had been necessary for Henry to do the job solo. He wasn't about to apologize for his actions either. It had needed to be done and he had done it. A Man of Letters wasn't some wet behind the ears civilian and whether John liked it or not Henry was well trained in things that his child couldn't begin to understand.

One of the problems of John not having received his rightful education.

By the time evening rolled around a full team of hunters had arrived to join Henry at the location of Sinclair's hidden fortress. Besides John, he was joined by Dean, Singer, Pastor Jim, Caleb and two more he hadn't met yet. Lee Webb, a young friend of Dean's and Rufus Turner, Singer's old hunting partner. Both of them were on the Hunter Corp payroll. The bunker was left in the hands of Mrs. Butters for a couple of days as Henry didn't want anyone else there during the cleansing and extraction of the creatures and materials that Sinclair had filled his home with.

Working as a unit, with Henry's counter-spells clearing the way, they spent two days methodically securing and emptying each room before moving on to the next one. There were a few nasty surprises, but between their combined skills and talents, nothing that they couldn't handle. A couple of jump scares from the unexpected arrival of one of Sinclair's stray trusted pets and a few minor injuries, but all in all it was relatively uneventful.

What was not uneventful was cleaning out Sinclair's zoo. There were several exotic breeds contained inside, including the vampires that the hunters had all been under the impression had been hunted to extinction years earlier. Those, along with a few other rare creatures that none of the other men had faced, led to a fairly spirited and slightly harried killing spree.

Quickly followed by hot showers in their rooms at the nearby Sleep Inn and then several rounds of drinks to blot out the resulting horrors.

The next day the team went back and tackled the enormous task of emptying out Sinclair's lab and his impressive weapons collection. John and Murphy left to rent large U-Haul trucks and when they returned the trucks were filled to the brim for the trip back to the bunker. During his son's absence, Henry had managed to slip away to review the files from the cabinet he found in Sinclair's office and he breathed deep sigh of relief when he found Colt's spell for the gun. Making sure the others weren't looking, he surreptitiously slipped the paper into his pocket.

There was no need to get John's hopes up until he was sure it was the real deal.

/

John's last minute flight landed in San Francisco just a little after 9 pm.

Even with the four hour drive in the opposite direction from Lebanon to the large airport in Kansas City and the one hour layover in Denver, the five and a half hour flight got him to his son's bedside at the Stanford University Medical Center in half the time it would have taken to drive the distance. Although he didn't like being without his main weapons arsenal, especially when going into a situation where things might get hairy, time was of the essence when it came to the safety and well being of his child.

He had been neck deep in research at the bunker that morning, his fourth cup of coffee slowly cooling next to him as he painstakingly translated an ancient Greek scroll retrieved from Sinclair's house of horrors, when his phone rang. It was a nurse at the Vaden Health Center on Sammy's college campus calling to tell him that his son was sick and had been transferred to SUMC.

It's every parent's worst nightmare to have their child become seriously ill. With John, his kids ran the risk of endangering their lives more than others, but that didn't make it any less scary for him.

One of the things he had managed to do during his initial trip to his son's school was have himself listed as Sammy's emergency contact. He knew his boy wouldn't do it himself, especially in light of how badly they had parted, but it didn't mean that the worried father wasn't going to make sure to cover all his bases when it came to Sammy's protection. Somehow he forced himself to keep calm as the nurse informed him that his youngest was brought into the health center by his roommate with chills and a high fever as well as severe vomiting. But when Sam had begun to seize in the middle of the exam, he was rushed to the nearby medical center for further tests.

The symptoms could mean a lot of things, she continued to explain as John was already gathering his go-bag and keys, but when a student was taken to the medical center it was standard procedure to inform their emergency contact. He thanked her curtly and hung up as he pulled on his coat and mentally calculated the fastest route to Palo Alto before dialing Mark Campbell's number, hoping the boy that lived mere feet away from John's son would know something.

Irritatingly, Mark hadn't heard anything unusual during the night or early morning and John swore colorfully, his faith in Robert's so-called protection duty rapidly slipping. Dean was in Idaho tracking werewolves with Lee Webb at the moment since the other young man was still in the area when the hunt got assigned. Physically he was a lot closer to Sammy but they were deep in the mountains and far out of cellphone reach. John's calls to both of their phones went straight to voicemail and it only raised his blood pressure further. He wasn't necessarily crazy about the idea of the two young men handling that kind of case on their own, but now that they were also armed with the silver nitrate grenades recovered from Sinclair's zoo they should be more than equipped to handle a few rogue wolves so he had let them go without him.

Surprisingly it was Henry who quietly suggested that John get on a plane to save time after his furious son stormed through the war room, cursing the distance to California and hissing threats of violence against lazy Campbells under his breath.

Flying had never even occurred to John. After so many years of using fake IDs and fake credit cards, that kind of next level scrutiny was something that they didn't risk. Especially since they couldn't take their firearms with them and Dean would rather shave his legs and work the next job in a dress before getting on a plane.

But John had also stashed a small arsenal in a storage unit outside of Palo Alto months ago just in case he ever needed more firepower if something happened with Sam. So he could easily travel by air and have everything he needed at the ready the minute he rolled into town. Henry even made the phone call to their dedicated American Express concierge who immediately arranged both the closest, quickest flight as well as assuring them that Hertz would have a rental car waiting outside the arrivals gate as soon as John landed to save precious minutes.

It definitely took some pressure off and John felt a wave of gratitude wash over him for his father's quick thinking. The thoughtfulness healed over a little of the stress induced battle wounds they'd inflicted on each other in the days since John was summoned to Peoria and saw how easily Henry could have been slaughtered. Something they still weren't talking about.

John's seat in the first class section meant that he was also the first one off the flight. As promised, a Hertz associate was waiting at the arrivals gate with keys to his rental vehicle, an '02 blinding white Cadillac Escalade. An excessive choice that screamed Notice Me! and had John fuming since the last thing he wanted was to announce his presence to anything that might be lurking. If he hadn't been in such a hurry he would have insisted on changing it out for the least conspicuous sedan the car company possessed, but his need to see his baby boy trumped any other concern at the moment.

As it was, he already had to take the time to stop by the storage facility and grab some of his stash before heading to the hospital.

General visiting hours were long over when he finally arrived at SUMC, but John had called ahead and was told that Sam's attending doctor was still on duty and would meet him to explain what was going on. Keeping a sharp eye out for anything out of the ordinary, he strode through the hallways until he came to his son's room and saw his boy resting fitfully in the bed. His thin face flushed and pinched with pain and his dark hair plastered to his forehead with sweat. An IV pole next to the bed held two clear bags that were feeding the tubes snaking their way into Sam's slender arm on one side of the bed and on the other side was a bank of equipment monitoring the boy's vitals.

Glancing quickly around the room John couldn't immediately see anything out of place or potentially harmful to his son, but he wasn't about to let his guard down either. He stepped quietly over to the bed and leaned over to gently push Sam's damp hair back, wincing when he felt the heat emanating from his son's skin. The boy stirred from the touch and his eyelids fluttered open. John smiled as his sick boy looked up at him. The hazel orbs glassy and unfocused in their feverish state before they closed again and had Sam breathing out a deep sigh and leaning into his father's touch.

At that moment, all John wanted to do was scoop his son up into his arms, carry him to the car and take him home. There were no thoughts of demon deals or tainted blood or arguments and hurtful words. All that remained was the very real pain of how much he missed his baby.

"Mr. Winchester?"

Reluctantly turning away from Sammy's flushed face, John looked over to the doorway and saw a gray haired man in a lab coat holding a clipboard. The man indicated to him that they should speak in the hallway and though the worried father was loathe to leave his son so quickly, he needed to know what was going on. Bending over he brushed a kiss on Sam's sweaty forehead before pulling away.

"Be right back, kiddo," he whispered, quickly fixing the rumpled sheet covering his son so it wasn't tangled around the arm with the IV port.

He joined the doctor just outside the room, his fear for Sam's safety and his anger over something being allowed close enough to hurt him jockeying for position at the forefront of his mind.

"What's wrong with my boy?" he barked, a little more forcefully than he probably should have, given the flash of irritation that passed over the doctor's face."

Used to scared parents, the doctor took a calming breath and pulled Sam's door closed a few inches so that his father's raised voice wouldn't wake him. The poor kid needed all the rest he could get and while he did understand the tension of a worried parent, the patient came first.

"I'm Dr. Daniels, Mr. Winchester. I've been treating your son since he was brought in. Right now, we're not quite sure," he admitted, involuntarily stepping back a couple of inches from the sheer rage that instantly spread over John's face. "He presented with symptoms that would usually indicate flu or maybe infection, but we've done all the tests and scans we can think of and haven't found any underlying cause. No viruses, no harmful bacterium. Normal blood cell count. Nothing out of the ordinary in a healthy 18 year old male."

Like magic, all of the anger bled out of John as fast as it had risen and was immediately replaced by a cold sense of dread. This doctor was a civilian who didn't understand that terrible things could have no medical explanation, but John certainly did.

"Honestly, Mr. Winchester," Dr. Daniels continued, "if I didn't know better, I would swear he was having withdrawal symptoms. But we've run a full tox screen and came up blank. I've never seen anything like it."

John sighed deeply and ran a hand down his face as he processed the physician's words. It was one thing to worry about your kid when they came down with something identifiable and treatable. It was something altogether different in their world when the ailment was a complete and utter mystery. There was a whole long list of possible suspects at play and John was going to have to try and figure out what it was as quickly as possible.

"Now as scary as this might seem to you, he is improving," the doctor assured him, taking his silence for acceptance and moving on to the better news. "The seizures have stopped and we're giving him saline for the dehydration and something for the nausea as well as a broad spectrum antibiotic just in case our tests missed something rare. As long as he continues to make progress, we'll monitor him for a couple of more days and then release him."

The physician's words were meant to be comforting, but they did nothing for John since the man was completely ignorant about a lot of things that could be harming his son. Although he was obviously relieved to know that Sammy's overall health was trending in the right direction, right now John needed to figure out what was causing his son's illness in the first place and it wasn't likely to be anything you would find in Gray's Anatomy.

A whimper from Sam's bed had his father curtly thanking the doctor for the information before he headed back to his son's side. Sam's fever was causing the boy to thrash around a bit in the sweat soaked sheets and he just looked completely miserable. John grabbed a clean washcloth from the cabinet next to the sink in the adjoining bathroom and ran it under cold water before wringing it out and bathing Sammy's face with it. A moment later a nurse came in, already prepared with a tympanic thermometer due to Sam's violent bouts of in-and-out states of consciousness, and took his reading.

"103.1," she whispered to John with a smile as she popped off the protective covering into the trash by the bed. "It's lower than before."

John was well schooled in first aid, his boys were too, and he simply nodded. It was high but not necessarily dangerously so. "He's drenched," he observed, worry darkening his features as the nurse checked the IV bags. Sammy's inner thermostat had always made him prone to sweating profusely.

"I know, poor thing," she clucked. "We've already changed his gown and bedding twice. I'm happy to do it again, but he's a pretty big boy and I need to wait for one of the other nurses to be free to give me a hand. We're a bit slammed tonight."

"I can help you," John assured her, unable to watch his son writhe in discomfort in the wet, tangled sheets. "If I lift him, can you make up the bed?"

She pursed her lips and looked from the distressed father to his unconscious son. Her patient was just a teenager, but he wasn't exactly small and it had been hard enough between her and the other floor nurse to manage him earlier. Officially what his father was offering to do was against hospital policy, but he certainly looked capable of managing the weight of his son while she took care of the rest. The look of desperation on the man's face was breaking her heart.

"Okay," she agreed after a minute. "I'll be back in a few minutes with a fresh set and see if we can't make him more comfortable."

John stood watch over his quietly moaning child until she returned with sheets, a new gown and a bathing kit. Carefully she maneuvered the IV pole to the other side of the bed so that all tubes and wires attached to Sam were in the same place.

"Be careful when you lift him," she warned. "He has a Foley."

Frowning, John glanced down the side of the bed and noticed for the first time. "You put a catheter in him?"

"Sometimes seizures interfere with a patient's ability to control their bladder," she said apologetically. "We didn't really have much of a choice."

Of course she was right, John thought sadly. It hadn't even occurred to him. His poor little boy. What he must be suffering.

When the nurse had everything ready to go she nodded at him and removed the mangled sheet covering Sam, tugging his damp gown to protect his modesty as much as she could. John appreciated her efforts as he bent to gather Sam up in his arms. His son was now all long, gangly limbs but John knew from years of experience how to pick up his boys no matter how big they'd grown. Sadly, it wasn't the first time he'd had to hoist one of them up when they were unconscious and it probably wouldn't be the last in their line of work with their luck.

Shifting his boy gently, he got Sam's head and upper body propped against his left shoulder and slid his right arm under the knobby knees and then lifted.

A small whimper left Sam as he was moved from the bed but John leaned close to his son's ear and softly shushed him. He also managed to roll his shoulder enough to get Sam's slightly lolling head to nestle in the crook of his neck so he could shore up his grip on the boy. On the other side of the bed John could see that the nurse was moving as quickly as she could, but it wasn't necessary. Sammy might be a few inches taller than he was the last time his father had held him like this, but he was still John's baby and he would easily bear his boy's weight for as long as necessary.

In his father's arms, Sam seemed to settle a little as John held him close and slowly swayed him without thinking, an instinctual throwback to years gone by. As if the boy's unconscious mind could tell who was holding him and that he was safe. For his part, John was relishing the feeling of holding his son close again after almost a year of unhappy separation, although he would have preferred it was under different circumstances.

Not even five minutes later Sam's clean bed was ready and the kind nurse motioned that John could lay him back down, which he did reluctantly, not wanting to let go of his little boy. She quietly reminded him that Sam still needed to be sponged down and his gown changed as well as his Foley cleaned. Things she would do on her own to give her patient some privacy. She gently but firmly ushered John out of the room and pulled the curtain around Sam's bed to attend to his needs.

Banished to the hallway for a few minutes, John took the opportunity to call Robert and vent his frustrations over what he perceived was a dangerous lack of necessary diligence on the part of the younger Campbells, as well as his suspicions that something more than a garden variety bacteria was causing his son's illness. To his credit Robert kept his composure if for no reason other than he could hear the stress in John's voice brought on by a sick child. He assured the younger man that he was going to get to the bottom of what was going on at the Stanford campus.

Realistically, right now John only cared about what they found on campus to the extent that he didn't want whatever it was following them home before he could hunt it down. As soon as Sammy was able to make the trip, he was going to pack his boy up and bring him back to bunker. He'd let Dean have his way for weeks now but enough was enough.

When the nurse finally allowed John back in the room he pulled up a chair and took Sammy's hand in his own and just stared at his boy. His son had grown so tall in the time they'd been apart but sleeping, his face smooth and placid instead of so angry, he still looked like he did when he was just a little guy. John missed his kid fiercely no matter how much they fought and his heart ached over their estrangement as he wondered if his kids knew just how much he loved them both.

No one on the nursing staff was stupid enough to suggest that he leave Sam's bedside, which was a very smart decision on their part. Contrary to the doctor's assertions that Sam's outlook was improving, the boy was obviously not quite out of the woods yet and the rest of the night did not pass as smoothly as they hoped. The poor kid suffered in agony. His body wracked with pain and alternating bouts of fever and chills and occasional hallucinations. Sammy was sweating buckets one minute and then shivering like he'd been locked in a freezer the next. His pain was John's pain and his distraught father held him down when the throes of fever had him writhing on the bed so he wouldn't accidentally hurt himself and then bundled the boy in his arms for warmth when he trembled so badly John was worried that his kid would snap himself in half.

Hovering only on the outskirts of consciousness during those long hours, Sam's bleary eyes looked right at his father and he cried for Dean. The mournful plea for his brother to please help me and I'm so sorry over and over again piercing John like a knife until a couple of seconds later Sam would look at him again and cry for his dad to do the same. With his heart breaking John held his boy and rocked him, getting soaked himself as he nuzzled his head against the sweaty brow of his baby. Helpless and desperately trying to make Sam understand that Daddy's here Sammy to comfort him but Sam was bereft and completely out of his mind, not recognizing his father right in front of him and inconsolable in his delusion.

For hours the two of them rode the emotional roller coaster and John tried very hard to ignore the sheer fright paralyzing him from seeing the slight telekinectic trembling of objects in the room that accompanied Sam's cries of pain.

Right about the time that John was close to losing his sanity from watching his baby suffer, Sam finally settled into a deep sleep just before the sun rose. His temperature finally breaking for the last time into a normal range and his breathing slow and even. It seemed that the worst of the crisis had passed and now his body needed rest. John sat mentally and physically wrung out in that hard chair by the side of his son's bed, the boy's long fingers wrapped around his father's hand in an iron grip even in slumber. Thoroughly exhausted, he blinked the dryness out of his eyes, still red rimmed from the tears of his own he'd shed during the night, and tried to stretch as much as the chair would allow him when he felt his phone vibrating in his pocket. Thinking it might be Dean, he pulled it out and saw Robert's name flash on the screen and took a deep breath to dial back his boiling temper before he answered.

"Yeah?"

"You were right, John. We found something."

Robert's words had him sitting up straighter and he carefully extracted his hand so he could talk without waking his son. Moving over to the adjoining bathroom John turned on the tap to let the running water drown out the sound and partially closed the door.

"What do we have?"

"I had Christian trigger a fire alarm on campus and when the dorm was evacuated Mark searched Sam's room for anything that could be doing this. No hex bags, no sigils or spell work. It was clean."

"So then what did you find?" John hissed, exhaustion crushing any hint of patience he might have otherwise possessed.

"Mark remembered that Sam had been sick with something similar in February, just not as badly. No one thought anything about it at the time. Just a normal stomach flu. But between them they realized that it happened when the professor Sam was doing research work for had gone away for a few days. The same one that left the school this past week. Christian and Gwen tossed the house an hour ago. It was full of sulfur."

John closed his eyes and gripped the phone so tightly in his hand it threatened to crack. A demon. Maybe more than one. And those Campbells had let it get close enough to his child to make him sick with some kind of paranormal addiction. Probably by poisoning him judging by the lack of spell work. Maybe even with more of their foul blood. His head pulsed with rage at the thought and he desperately wanted to kill something. A demon, or a Campbell. Right now it didn't matter which. It was a good thing he hadn't even entertained the idea of telling Robert about the bunker. It was bad enough they knew John was the real head of Hunter Corp. Mary's relatives or not, this arrangement was over.

"Any idea where it is now?" he ground out through his clenched teeth.

"One possessed the real professor would be my guess," Robert admitted. "Christian's got some of her personal items that were left behind. We can use them to do a tracking spell and at least follow the meat suit. If she lived she might remember something."

John stepped out of the bathroom and looked at his sleeping son. He couldn't trust this job to anyone else. As much as it was going to pain him to leave, he needed to be the one to track down the filth that had hurt his boy and extract answers from it.

"Have Christian meet me at the usual place in one hour. Tell him to bring everything he got from that house. I'll do the tracking spell myself."

"Are you sure you want to leave Sam right now, John?" Robert asked quietly. "We can handle this for you."

"Am I sure?" John scoffed before lowering his voice in a deadly tone. "Your so-called experienced hunters let a demon not only roam around my son's supposedly protected campus but get close enough to him to nearly kill him. Yeah, I'm sure. I'll take it from here, Robert. I have other people who know what the fuck they're doing to keep on eye on my son for a few days and then I'll be back for him. If anything else happens to him? I'm holding you personally responsible."

"John I would remind you that we have gone to great personal lengths to keep Sam safe for several months," Robert said coldly. "Asking nothing in return because he's family and that's what you do for family. I don't know what went wrong, but I'll find out and I don't appreciate the threats."

"Oh yeah? Well I trusted you with my kid and now he's in the hospital. I don't give a damn what you appreciate." John growled before hanging up.

Tossing the phone on the countertop of the bathroom John bent over the sink and cupped his hands to scoop water from the faucet to repeatedly splash on his face. He could probably use a little shut-eye, but there was no way he was going to let a potential lead on whatever demon had done this to his boy get away. Sam was probably safe where he was for the time being if the thing was on the move. Once he had the location from the tracking spell, he'd get on the road with his rented obscenity and track the thing down and make it beg to talk. As much as he needed to have Sam come home with him, he knew his boy would be in no shape to travel for a few days considering everything he'd been through the night before. He'd call Murphy at the bunker and have him send out the nearest Hunter Corp team as soon as possible to keep eyes on his kid until he got back.

Sam was still deep in sleep when John silently crept over to look at him one more time before he took off. His boy's poor thin face was pale as a ghost now with dark bruising blooming under his closed eyes from exhaustion. John reached over and tenderly brushed his knuckles along Sammy's jutting cheekbone, relieved to feel cool skin under his fingers instead of the inferno it had been earlier. Leaning over he pressed his lips to Sam's smooth forehead and closed his eyes, hating that he had to go but knowing that it was necessary.

"I'll be back soon, Sammy," he whispered. "I love you, son."

Swallowing hard, John stood back up and squeezed Sam's shoulder briefly for just a second and then strode off to hunt down the monster that had dared to hurt his child.

/

Sam woke up fully for the first time just before noon. His entire body ached and his eyes felt like they were glued together and it took a minute for him to open them. He wasn't sure what had happened but he'd been in enough hospitals in his lifetime to recognize the telltale signs of one. He groaned and shifted on the unnecessarily hard bed. No one ever slept well on those things.

"Hey, you're alive."

Turning in the direction of the voice, the words sounding like he had cotton in his ears, Sam saw the very concerned face of his roommate and began to recall what happened. The blinding headaches, the nausea and excruciating body pains. Just like what had happened on Valentine's Day only worse. God, he hoped he wasn't about to be diagnosed with some kind of chronic disease or anything like that.

"Wha' happened?" he mumbled, his mouth not quite ready to work at full power yet.

"I don't know, man," Brady replied looking decidedly uncomfortable. "I got you over to the heath center when the chills started and the next thing I know you're screaming that your head hurt and then you're flopping around on the floor like a fish. Scared the shit out of everyone."

Sam grunted a little and tried to shift around on the bed again to relieve some of the pain he was feeling. Swallowing thickly, it felt like a dead animal had taken up residence in his mouth. He was still pretty foggy about everything as he blinked his eyes and tried to get his bearings, but soon some of it was slowly starting to come back to him. Like...

"Was my dad here?" he asked, his forehead scrunched up in confusion.

For some reason his fairly addled brain was trying to convince him that he'd heard John's rumbling baritone telling him that everything was going to be okay and he could also swear that there was still a lingering scent of father's aftershave in the room.

But that was impossible because his father had written off his younger son and certainly wouldn't haul ass to California just because Sam was a little sick. Not that John would even know about it in the first place. Clearly Sam was going insane and the tiny spark of hope he'd very briefly felt when he thought his father might have given a damn quickly died out and left a large lump in his throat.

Thinking about his family only made him feel worse knowing that they weren't there with him when he felt like crap and was a little scared.

"I didn't see him," Brady answered cautiously, worried that his friend was still hallucinating. "But I've only been here for an hour or so."

Just then Sam's day nurse came in to check his temperature and she helped Sam sit up in his bed a little more so she could smooth some of the linens that were visibly irritating him.

"Ma'am? Have there been any other visitors here besides me?" Brady asked, seeing that Sam wasn't going to.

She put the wand in Sam's mouth and started the count before shaking her head. "Not that I know of. But I just got here myself. Do you want me to ask around?"

The thermometer beeped and she pulled the wand out as Sam was shaking his head sadly and tried to put on a brave face.

"No, that's okay," he assured her. "I was probably just imagining it."

Sam licked his dry lips and she poured him a cup of ice water that he gulped down thirstily, the coolness soothing his sore throat. Gamely keeping his face turned away from both the nurse and Brady so they couldn't see the stray tear that slid down his cheek.

/

Watching John's ridiculous white SUV storm off down the road, Christian pulled his phone from his front pocket and dialed a number.

"He's headed your way," he said with a smile on his face to the person on the other end, laughing as his eyes went black.