A/N: Warning-Sam and Bobby's actual deaths are written out in this chapter. Since the scene where Ronnie's mother was killed has already been a flashback, I just wrote it out as a conversation between her and John. Basically, they're telling each other their stories in this chapter, so it's very angsty and emotional.

I got a review asking what exactly killed Ronnie's mother. That is revealed explicitly in this chapter when Ronnie's telling John her story, though I implied it very, very heavily in the last chapter.

I promise, though, that this is a long way from being finished. I have a plan for Ronnie to meet Dean in the next chapter, and some other chapters that I shall not mention here for fear of spoilers. Hang around!

"Whoa."

John smiled sadly. He gave Ronnie a few moments to digest what he'd just told her. This, for him, was the test of whether or not any sort of long-term relationship with Ronnie would be sustainable. When John had revealed to her his ultimate truth, that monsters were real and existed in the world, Ronnie had simply turned away from him and said nothing. "Whoa" had been her only response so far.

"So do you think I'm crazy?"

Ronnie looked up at John and took a breath before answering. "No. I don't. I don't know why I don't think you're crazy, but I don't think you're crazy."

"Really?"

"Yeah. Really." Ronnie said. "So go on with whatever you were about to tell me."

John sighed. "Well, Sam had been telling me all along he had a bad feeling about the hunt…"

Fifteen Years Earlier

"We can't do this, Dad. We can't go after this thing."

John rubbed the bridge of his nose to stop the headache from coming. "Sam, enough. We're going after this poltergeist, and that's all there is to it."

"But Dad, this being a poltergeist just doesn't fit all the information we have…"

"ENOUGH!" John slammed his hand on the table in front of him and turned to Sam. "Two miles. Now."

"Dad…"

"Three. Keep talking, I keep adding distance and taking away time."

"Why won't you just listen?" Sam asked.

"Five miles. You want to go for ten?"

Sam finally slumped his shoulders and shook his head. He headed out the door and closed it behind him. He didn't slam it, telling John that he was more upset that he thought his point hadn't been made than he was upset at this father.

John understood Sam's point. He really did get it. While, on the surface, this hunt seemed like a poltergeist, there were also things about it that didn't quite fit a poltergeist. While poltergeists were known to possess people on occasion, this one seemed to possess every single person who had lived for any amount of time in the house. The people who had been possessed had all gone on to commit some sort of crime, the most common one being murder. In the case that had caused John to take the hunt, a seemingly loving mother had killed her triplet girls for no apparent reason, then turned the gun on herself.

John did get why Sam thought they needed to do more research before going into the hunt. But the pictures of the three dead six-year-old little girls, holding each other's hands, was haunting him. The bastard that did it, whatever it might be, needed to be disposed of. There came a point in every hunt where the research had to be put away and action taken. John, being the leader, decided when that point had come. The sooner Sam accepted that, the happier everyone would be.

Sam came back later that night, and as usual, nothing was said. Sam went straight to bed, and for that, John was grateful. The fact that Sam was actually taking this hunt seriously, like John always tried to force him to do, did not escape his attention. John wished, again, that he could find some way to communicate with Sam, convince him that his contributions were valued, even if they weren't always followed.

He ignored the little nagging voice in his head that told him the real truth. Sam's contributions were never followed, and with the way John treated Sam, it was no wonder the boy didn't feel as if he was valued. John also knew that if Dean had made the recommendation to wait, John probably would have listened.

After the hunt, he'd have to fix that. Find a simple hunt, let Sam take the full lead on it, give him back some of the confidence he was losing by the day. He went to Dean and asked what he thought. Dean was fully behind the idea, and John had his plan in motion.

They just had to get through this hunt first.

The next day, things seemed to be going well. Bobby had come to join them, and John could tell Sam had tried to get Bobby to agree with him, but apparently Bobby thought they needed to go after the poltergeist too. While Sam was fuming, he stayed focused. They were at the house and while they hadn't found the poltergeist yet, everyone was in one piece. John was just about to call it a day when the world as he knew it ended.

Sam stood in the entrance to the living room, staring at his father and brother. There was a blank look on his face that took a moment for John to recognize. When he did recognize it, he stopped and his heart filled with dread.

"Sammy…"

"Oh, I think you know what's going on. Don't you there, Dad?"

"Look, whatever you are, just don't hurt Sammy." John said. "We can talk, and you can even stay inside Sammy if you need to to do that. Just don't hurt him, please."

"I am so sick of everyone coming into my house and telling me what to do."

"Okay. Okay, then we'll leave. Just get out of Sam and we'll be on our way…"

"No. No, I don't think so. See, I think I'll try something else here."

The poltergeist reached out an arm and Bobby was suddenly thrown up against the wall. He struggled and flailed against the hold on him, but the more he struggled, the tighter the invisible bonds became. Time seemed to slow down, but John would discover later that only a few seconds actually passed. The poltergeist used his free hand to reach into Sam's pocket, pull out the gun there, and shoot Bobby in the head. Bobby dropped to the ground like a stone.

Dean screamed and dove for Bobby. He was checking Bobby's wounds, begging him to wake up and stay with them, but Bobby was gone. John looked to Sam and what he found shook him to the core. It was in that moment that John kept the biggest secret from Dean that he ever kept.

Twelve hours later, eleven hours after Sam was pronounced dead, John would comfort Dean by telling him that Sam had been possessed when he shot himself. It would become a lie that he'd believe himself, accepting what little comfort it provided. But Sam wasn't possessed. John could see it in his face. He'd processed what had just happened. He had shot and killed Bobby. John wanted to tell Sam it was okay, that it wasn't his fault, and that he needed to help him and Dean. He never got the chance. Sam just shook his head, distraught and heartbroken, looked at his father, and pointed the gun at himself.

"Wow." Ronnie whispered.

John nodded. It was the first time he had admitted the entire story to anyone. He'd always known, deep down, that Sam had known what he was doing when he shot himself. In some ways, he couldn't blame Sam. If it had been John to pull the trigger and kill Bobby, he doubted he could have lived with it either. But speculation like that was pointless.

Sam's death, as well as Bobby's, had been entirely John's fault.

"It wasn't your fault."

John looked at Ronnie for the first time since starting his story.

"What?"

"It wasn't your fault. You didn't kill either of them. That ghost did."

John smiled. "I appreciate the sentiment, but it was my fault."

"No. It wasn't. Trust me, I know something about blame. It wasn't your fault."

John frowned. Was Ronnie finally about to tell him what happened with her mom? "What does that mean?"

"Nothing."

"Ronnie, please. I just told you…"

"This isn't a damn game of truth or dare!" Ronnie yelled, the first hints of that anger John had seen in her first few days living with him coming back. "I'm not gonna tell you all about myself just because you opened up to me a little."

"Okay. Okay, you don't have to."

"Just trust me, okay? You didn't kill Sam. Or Bobby. It wasn't your fault."

"Why do you think your mom's death was your fault?"

"Because it was and that's all there is to it."

"Honey, you were five years old when your mother died." John said.

"That doesn't matter, okay!?"

"Yes, it does. Please tell me what happened."

"No. You'll hate me and you'll kick me out." Ronnie said. "Everyone else does."

"I won't." John said. "I promise you I won't."

"I'll have to leave in a week anyway."

"What if you didn't?" John asked, surprising even himself.

"What?"

"What if I talked to Gil about getting licensed? You could stay here for longer than the week."

Ronnie's mouth dropped open. "You'd do that?"

"Yeah. Yeah, I would."

Ronnie sighed. Her heart was starting to hurt thinking about it again. But if he insisted….

"Fine. Long story short, my grandma lived with me and my mom. They got into a fight one day. Grandma drugged me and I fell asleep on Mom's bed. I woke up a few hours later and found my mom in the living room."

"What was she doing?"

"She was bleeding. Grandma had stabbed her and left the house."

John was shocked. Gil hadn't mentioned any of this before he'd taken Ronnie in. "What?"

"She came back after I found Mommy. Mommy had tried to make go next door with the neighbors and call 911, but Grandma stopped me. She told me it was just a bad dream and to go back to bed."

"Oh, sweetheart."

"I went upstairs and hid in the closet. I heard a loud noise and I didn't know what it was at first. Not until the police came and picked me up the next morning."

John knew what the 'loud noise' that Ronnie mentioned was, but something told him that Ronnie needed to admit it to herself.

"What was it?" he asked gently. "The loud noise."

Ronnie swallowed against a painful lump that had sprung to her throat. Why was she telling John this? She had never told anyone the full story of what happened that night. As far as she knew, the only people who were aware of the full story were the police, Gil, and the judge who had sent her Grandma to the mental hospital when Dolores admitted what she'd done in killing 'that slut that called herself my daughter'. But she felt something with John she'd not felt since her mother died. She felt at peace with him. She felt safe. She didn't feel the need to blanket her responses in any sarcasm or anger.

She felt cared about. She didn't know, quite yet, whether or not to call it loved, but she knew, beyond any doubt, that John genuinely cared for her.

"You swear you'll talk to Gil about me staying with you?"

"I swear." John promised. "I'll call him right now if that's what you want."

Ronnie nodded, and despite the dread she felt that simply wouldn't go away as she told her story, she finished her story. "Grandma shot her. That was the loud noise I heard."

John said nothing for a moment, fighting to get a clamp on his rage. He wanted to kill this evil bitch for killing not just Ronnie's mother, but her own daughter. He'd dealt with nasty sons of bitches before, but this one took the lead. He wondered briefly if Ronnie's grandmother had perhaps been possessed when she killed her daughter, but John ruled out that possibility. Ronnie had lived in Sioux Falls all her life. If her grandmother had been possessed, John would have heard about it. At some point during his thinking process, Ronnie had leaned over and started to cry in her hands.

"Hey, hey, hey. What're you thinking?" John asked.

"It's all my fault."

"What? Your mother?"

"Yeah. I shouldn't have gone back to bed. I should've run out the door like Mommy said. If I had she might be alive right now. I'm as bad as some of the things you hunted…"

"Ronnie, look at me. Sit up and really look at me."

Ronnie looked up as best she could through her tear-soaked face.

"I have seen evil things. Truly evil things and truly evil people. You are not as bad as any of things I hunted. You were five years old…" Ronnie opened her mouth to protest that her age didn't matter, but John shook his head and put a gentle finger to her mouth to stop her talking. "You were five years old. You trusted an adult in your life that you had every reason to trust. The only person, the only one to hold any blame for what happened to your mother, is your grandmother. The buck stops with her. You got it?"

"I got it."

"Good. Thank you for telling me. I know that was hard." John said.

"Thank you for telling me about Sam." Ronnie responded. "I know you said that you and he used to fight a lot. I think he'd be proud of you."

"I hope so, sweetheart." John said. "I hope so. Why don't we go call Gil and see what he says?"