Disclaimer: I. Own. Nothing.

Author's Note: Two in one day! Oh will the horrid despair never cease?!

He hadn't realized it'd been there, thin, delicately lined pages encased in a leather just worn enough to suit her, buried beneath his pillow. Her journal.

She never told him about certain things, those more disturbing, less apparent aspects of her dreams. The fact that her gift was likely demon given, every sight wished unseen, every inkling turned reality, borne from an evil he never knew existed, one she still so often denied.

But he knew more than she thought, catching clips of phrases tossed throughout either of their houses. He was a smart kid, smart enough to know when things he shouldn't hear were being said, smart enough to know to keep his mouth shut about it all, pretend to live in the ignorance they all wanted for him.

Because if there was ever one thing John Winchester was aware of, it was the hearts of others. If there was one thing he was unwilling to disturb, it was the walls they built up around them.

He knew that Maya had dreams, frightening, real dreams that she never wanted to admit to. And there were times she'd share her dreams with him, always prefacing with a desperate look of avoidance, a you shouldn't know, I shouldn't say sort of sheen to her eyes, that whether truly intended or not, he recognized every time.

And he abided by their silent promises. She would share, and he would never tell.

He knew that both sets of parents, his and hers, were too concerned about her sleeping habits to be anywhere near normal. And he knew that their old family friend, Bobby, took far too great an interest in her dreams for them to be anything nearly as benign as nightmares were so often thought to be.

Maya told him about the journal, nearly six years ago when Bobby first gave her the blank book. She told him that she was supposed to write all about her dreams, as soon as she woke, leaving no detail out, recording every image, every thought related to them. She'd said it as though even the idea were too much to bear, too much trouble to take on. But in her eyes there shone a resolve John sometimes thought only he could see and recognize. And he knew how important that journal would become.

In six years time she'd managed to fill only one book. The second, deep rich leather cover just like the first, he'd never even seen before. Before now. The first she'd always kept by her bedside, on the table near her pillow. It was there all the time, every day, every night.

This one, she had kept hidden, unexplainable secrecy being a trait he'd never cease to associate with his cousin.

And yet here it is, every dream she'd had for the better part of a year, painstakingly embossed on pure white pages, one folded into the next, butting against another. A leather clad compendium of memories that were not her own and a future she'd never be a part of.

He knows what it is the moment he sees it, knows it's the new one, not the first, thought the two are outwardly nearly identical. And he knows he doesn't want to read it, doesn't want any part of it.

She left it for him. Here, under his pillow where he was sure to find it. Only he'd barely been in his room for the past week, since her death, splitting his time between school, home and her house, her family, helping in any way he could. He'd gone to the airport to pick up Rachel when she flew in from Stanford, helped cook meals no one ever ate, did laundry that didn't really need doing. Anything, everything.

Part of him didn't want to leave her house, her voice still echoing from the floorboards, smell still clinging to the air. And when he did return home he usually forfeited the good night's rest he so desired for yet another task, traipsing into Samantha's room, wrapping himself loosely around her until she finally fell asleep, and then curling up on an old sleeping bag on the floor below. She hadn't asked him to, he just knew it was what she needed, being the smallest, currently the most insignificant, overlooked.

This is the first time he'd allowed himself to lay in his own bed in eight days. And he can't help but think that it's a mistake.

It all makes sense, and yet none of it does. She'd called an hour before the party – the one that he'd berated himself everyday for the last week for not attending. Never mind that he hadn't been invited by anyone, hadn't even been told about it in the halls, not even by Maya, which was strange in itself. She'd asked if she could borrow his leather jacket, the terribly worn, so often repaired one that had once belonged to his father, given to him when he first managed to seamlessly switch gears in the Impala. It was the same one they recovered, lying nice and neat and clean, in the trunk of the car she wrecked that night.

He'd told her fine, he wasn't going anywhere, wouldn't be using it. And when she rushed in forty-five minutes later, bounding up the stairs to his room without so much as a hello, he didn't think anything of it. Because this was Maya, the image of her racing around their house as common as that of his little brother or sister.

The jacket had been on his chair. In his room, where she flew off to seeming in such a hurry, Joe waiting in the car. And though he can't recall having seen it stashed beneath her arm as she blew by, she must have had the journal with her then. Which would mean, she must have known what was to happen, then.

And, God help him, he doesn't want to read it, doesn't want to crack the binding, peer at the pages where her words collected, imprinted by her unmistakable hand – thick and messy letters. But he doesn't have a choice. She left it here for him. She wanted him to have it, needed him to read it.

He doesn't have a choice.

He tells his dad the simple truth. He found Maya's journal. They need to take it back, return it to Sam and Sarah. Now.

And Dean starts to question, tries to, but each time he opens his mouth, What do you mean found it? Where? How? ready to drip from his too confused tongue, his son's eyes stop him. Because they're far from steady, glistening gaze pleading with him not to ask.

It takes some coaxing to get Sarah downstairs, finally appearing dressed and ready for bed as though she were simply trying for an early start – it being only eight o'clock – when in reality she'd barely been out of bed, or those clothes, going on three days now. But in typical Sarah fashion she does join them in the living room, always eager to put up that false front, keep others from dishing out any pity on her behalf. She sits cautiously, perched on the very edge of the couch as though eagerly awaiting her dismissal.

It wasn't rare for them to be there, not odd at all, all the Winchesters having floated in and out of Sam and Sarah's house forever, hardly ever leaving over the past week and a half. But this was different. And though the small noninvasive talk begins their meeting, it's clear that something else has brought this little visit about.

It's a long and awkward moment before anyone speaks, a long and awkward sizing up of all present – swollen-eyed Sarah clinging too tightly to the sweater wrapped around her. Hunched and broken Sam, empty gaze trailing out the window at nothing. Nervously twitching Dean, dancing from foot to foot in the corner of the room, uncomfortable, wary. And John, tight and small, a posture mirroring Sarah's, though he stands, back pressed against the wall.

It's Dean who finally says something, never one to easily take forced silence. "John said he found Maya's journal," he mutters slowly, without preface.

His words seem to echo through the room, deep and loud in relation to the silence their house has grown accustomed to recently. Sam straightens and stares, eyes shooting a confused look at John even as he asks his brother, "What do you mean, found?"

"Where?" Sarah spits quickly, red-rimmed eyes suddenly wide and wild.

And it's all John can do to even stutter out, all frantic eyes on him, "Under my pillow."

"What?" Sam asks, face contorting in a confused grimace. "How…"

"She came over, before the party," Dean says softly, voice carrying with it a knowing edge, a terse almost rehearsed quality, as though he realized the truth long ago. As though he somehow knew all along.

John turns to face his father, questioning gaze falling to his sullen eyes. He had pieced much of it together, that was clear. But the pain and fear etched into his features makes him certain that the realization is still quite fresh.

"She wanted to borrow my jacket," he says, eyes still locked with Dean's. "That's what she said." He turns slowly to his uncle, sees him sitting small – and he never thought that would be a word used to describe him – and still, mouth loosely hanging open, not an ounce of understanding on his face. "She ran up to my room to get it, must've left her journal up there when she did."

Sarah laughs, an oddly maniacal sort of snort, before saying, "That's ridiculous. Why would she take that with her? It's only for," she stops short, realizing suddenly that John doesn't, or shouldn't, know about her dreams. The look she shoots him makes that plainly apparent.

So he turns away, averting his gaze down at his scuffed shoes. "I know what it's for," he mumbles almost to himself.

Dean's firm when he asks, "How?" Almost angry when he demands, "What do you know?"

And John doesn't beat around the bush, never has, having inherited a sort of terse directness from his father, an unabashedly frank quality from his mother. "I know she had dreams. And she had to write about them, record them." He looks up, locks identical eyes with his father, both sets glowing green, currently pleading helplessly. "She told me," he says simply. "She told me first," punctuating the last word with a sort of absolute authority.

Silence reigns a moment more, everyone merely soaking up all that just been said. Until, "Did she let you read it?" comes from Sarah in a near squeak. Because the journal was always only for Maya, a thing to help her remember, aid in putting together the too often jagged fragments of her unconscious mind. It was a record, but not one to share. She was always supposed to keep her parents aware of her dreams, be open and honest regarding them. But she never handed over her little book, it being too personal, too important.

John shakes his head, "No," trailing from nearly quivering lips.

Sam drops his face into his hands, seems to speak to the floor in absolute exhaustion when he says, "Then why do you have it?"

"I didn't notice," he tries to explain, the words no longer making sense once out in the open. "I hadn't slept in my room, on my pillow," he sputters. "I didn't notice until today…that it was there. But it was. She left it. For me. I know she did."

Barely a breath is heard as Sam's head slowly rises from his palms, calm, unreadable expression juxtaposing his fiery eyes. "Why would she do that?" he bites out.

And it wouldn't be entirely a lie to say that his uncle's words alone, laced with such hostility, intimidated him into utter stillness. But the real truth was simple. He didn't want to say what had to be said, what they'd all been contemplating for nearly two weeks, no one brave enough to voice.

"John," breaks him from his reverie, his total stagnation, his father's soft yet commanding tone calling him to attention, ordering him to answer the question. As though he could, as though he really had any answers at all.

"I think she knew," he nearly whispers.

"Knew?" Sarah questions, her voice drawing his eyes to her. "Knew…about the accident?" she asks, words rounded and bloated with a childish sort of hope, an innocent kind of longing that John would never before have associated with his always together, always strong, quick-witted, fearsome aunt.

He struggles against the dam of tears in his throat, the pleas from his heart, readies himself to say something to the effect of, "I think she knew she was going to die," an easy and relatively painless version of the truth. But when he opens his mouth what come out is neither easy nor painless. "I don't think it was an accident."

Sam rises, all six foot four inches of him looming dangerously in front of John. "What do you mean?" he asks, all in one halted breath.

Before he can answer Dean is at his back, stilling hand rising to his brother's shoulder in an act of calming intervention. John sees this and thinks everything is under control, his father is ready, whatever Sam's reaction may be.

But he's wrong. Because there's no way to be prepared for, "She did it," sliding from his lips like the tears seeping from his eyes, words and saline both dropping in perfect devastating unison.

Sam doesn't even bother shrugging off his brother's hand, doesn't need to, his body lurching forward so quickly, so uncontrollably, that Dean's hand falls away as though never even there. And he connects, hard, with his nephew, slamming the boy into the wall with such a force that the house seems to shake, trinkets falling from the shelves.

John's sixteen now, nearly a man, but he's slight in build, no longer short, but no where near his uncle's height. By no means weak, but no where near his uncle's strength. So it's all he can do twist and cower uselessly within his grip.

Peering over Sam's shoulder, he can see his father working to pull him off, hands trying desperately to get a hold, get between. He can even hear, barely piercing the din, his panicked, "Sam! Sam!"

But the only thing he's really able to focus on is the absolute tenacity of his uncle's grip, the undeniable fear in his glistening eyes, the uncontrollable waver in his livid voice. "Don't you dare. Don't you fucking dare say that about her," each word slithering from between his clenched teeth, echoing in John's too guilty conscience.

"Get. Off," finally breaks through in strangled tones, his father's voice, as Dean manages to break the two apart, still taking a moment to untangle Sam's fingers from John's shirt.

And he doesn't know why he says it, not really. But something about having his father so near, his hands on his chest, a gentle, reassuring touch, sends him back to a time when all things made sense. When everything was supposed to make sense. So with his uncle's back to him, his father's face torn before him, he mutters, "She wouldn't have done it if there was any other way." Nearly cries out, tears now steadily streaming down his face, "She wouldn't. There was no other way."

His father's hands rise up to his face, hold tight to either side of his head before pulling him forward, wrapping around him in an embrace so longed for and familiar, it almost makes him think that maybe his words are true.

He cries, steady, unabashed tears flowing to his father's shoulder. And Dean lets him. Because at this moment he's not nearly a man at all. He his little sandy-haired boy, who cries at the drop of a hat, not because he's weak, but because he feels it all so strongly. And he wishes he could take that away, just as he had all those years ago when John's grief over mere trivialities seemed almost too much for him to bear.

And this pain, real and true and so like his own, yet more powerful, more forceful, can almost be felt rolling off him in waves. Fear. Grief. Guilt. Sorrow. And he can do nothing to halt the tides. He can only hold his boy through it.

"Do you have it?" Sarah asks, her voice breaking through the long moment of silent tears. "The journal," she clarifies when Dean's red streaked face turns her way.

He lets go of John, slowly, patting his back reassuringly as he does so, and reaches into his jacket pocket, finding it there, right where he'd tucked it safely away when John handed it over. He offers the worn leather book to her, but she makes no move to accept it, can't bring her hands to rise up and grab it. So he simply sets it down on the coffee table before her, where she takes one long look at it's too familiar binding, before rising to leave, footsteps on the creaky stairs echoing her ascent.

"I'm sorry," Sam ekes out from the other side of the room. And though no one, not even Sam, is quite certain whom he's apologizing to, or why, John offers a shrug of forgiveness.

He pushes himself off the wall slowly, moving timidly past his father as he bends down to pick up the journal. Sam turns when he reaches him, sensing the presence at his back, and instinctively holds out his hand to accept what is offered. "I didn't read it," he says, words tarnished with tears. "You can," he mutters, wrapping Sam's long fingers around the leather. "I couldn't. But you can."

And it's only because his nephew's declaration seems so strong and true that he makes himself open the book.