Author's Note: Special, special thanks to Cynthia, Faye, and Theresa for reining me in and patting my head and pushing me onward. Your pictures should be in the dictionary next to the word amazing :) Thank you so much to all my reviewers… It means a lot that you've taken the time to tell me how you're feeling and what you think. Several people seemed interested in the bonus (Mary) chapter, so it's on the way!
I apologize for my timeline suggestion in the previous chapter's AN. I'm fixing it, and now have the season one timeline appropriately adjusted in my silly little head.
Warning! Most of this is dark and disturbing, as John's introspection takes place… under duress, shall we say. It's not overly graphic, but fire, violence, torture, angst and, oh, character deaths are included. For those of you who love John – hey, I didn't do it on purpose; it just worked out this way. I'm making my peace with him (slowly but surely).
Disclaimer: No copyright infringement intended.
xXx
Chapter Seven
He could feel a cool breeze on his face as he opened the front door, puzzled by the shadows that should have been eased by the porch light. And the door wasn't locked. That was odd too. It didn't concern him, really, he just… wondered about it.
The living room was also dark… the whole house seemed devoid of life. Maybe Mary had gone to a movie, or had a meeting she'd forgotten to tell him about. That arts' council thing was gearing up and it'd turned out to take more time than she'd expected. But, with the boys out on their own, he knew she was enjoying more involvement in the community. Lawrence was a cultural hotspot and Mary was in high demand because of her dance experience and her passion.
Smiling to himself, he wandered upstairs, opening first, the door to Dean's room. Mary had insisted that they keep the boys' rooms for them until they were married, and since it wasn't like they needed the space, John had humored her. She'd told them that they would always have a place to come home to; no matter what, no matter why. She'd updated them over the years… turning them from the personal spaces of two very different teens, to rooms comfortable for budding doctors and lawyers.
The wall opposite the door held photographs in matching black frames, stark and sleek against the silvery wall. A few adorable childhood moments with his brother, the winning of track meets and science fairs, high school, college and KU Med graduations, and the newest one – his first day of pediatric residency at the university's medical center. John's heart swelled with a mixture of emotion which included pride and love.
Dean had taken longer to choose a path than his baby brother had, and although his family had been surprised at his decision to practice medicine (the degree in Industrial Design not preparing them to expect it), John knew that without a doubt his firstborn son had found his true calling. He'd seen Dean work with children, and his gut told him it was more than just the hope of a fond father. Dean was going to be a brilliant physician in far more than just the technical aspects of the job.
John and Dean had a standing lunch appointment on whatever day Dean had off, and when his parents heard a bump in the middle of the night, it meant their eldest son was hunting in their kitchen for something to eat (which meant he needed to talk to his dad). Dean spent an afternoon working in Mary's garden with her a couple times a month and even though his crazy rotation schedule kept them from setting plans too firmly, Sunday dinner was an open invitation that Dean availed himself of as often as he could. The Winchesters were a close-knit family and the bonds had only grown stronger as the boys grew, for which John was grateful.
Walking back into the hall, he glanced at the photos Mary had arranged on the sage green backdrop between the doorways… these were mostly professional shots, all printed in black and white to create a cohesive family timeline. They chronicled the boys from infancy, and John and Mary beginning with their engagement portrait. School pictures, Christmas pictures, and the anniversary picture Mary dressed John up for and hauled him off to every fifth year.
In a couple more, they'd hit thirty and John gazed for a moment in wonder at her face on the wall, bled of color but not of life. Time had only made her more beautiful – as cliché as that sounded, it was true – and he thanked the Fates again for filling up his empty life with exactly what he'd always dreamed of. A happy family. Everything he'd endured as a child he would endure again, to have Mary and the boys.
Standing in his younger son's room, John smiled. Sam came home less often than Dean did these days. California was a long way from Kansas and air travel was a sight more costly than clicking the heels of your ruby slippers – yet it was Sammy's room that held the most evidence of the life he was currently pursuing. Not ready to let go of home, even though he was so far away from it, each trip included him leaving much of what he'd brought and semester's end meant boxes of books and papers mailed back to this midnight blue room for safe keeping.
Mary had left Sam's glow-in-the-dark stars on the ceiling removing them when she painted and then putting them back up when she was done. They were clearly visible in the moonlight, and John remembered with a chuckle helping Sam carefully placing them for the first time nearly a dozen years ago. Even then, Sammy had been a little scientist and he lay on his bed with A Pictorial Galactic Encyclopedia, making sure his father got everything celestially accurate. It had been the beginning of a love affair with the heavens, which culminated in Sam's minor in Astronomy. Shelves lined the room, with legal books bearing witness to his Pre-Law (soon to become actual law) major, and volumes in a dozen languages besides his native tongue indicative of the second minor (Sam had a bit of an over-achiever complex his father suspected) – in Linguistics.
As he sat on Sam's bed, he became aware of light, flickering across the ceiling and his gaze turned toward the window that faced the back yard and Mary's garden. His brow wrinkled in concentration as he tried to think what could be creating the dancing glow. Slowly, he stood and walked to the window, brushing aside the curtain, taking in the bizarre scene below, his eyes widening as comprehension dawned.
Frozen, he stared in horror at the nightmare on display below him – his wife and sons were tied to tall wooden stakes, arms high above their heads, feet… in the flames of the pyres under them. With a strangled, disbelieving cry, he turned and ran to the door – which slammed closed with a deafening sound that somehow did not drown out the tortured screams now reaching his ears. Try as he might, the door would not budge and after a few seconds he raced back to the window, unlocking it and trying desperately to raise it. Like the door, it was… stuck, and logic left him as he searched the room wildly for something to break the glass with.
Picking up the desk chair, he threw it with all his might, and the window shattered. Smoke, acrid and choking, filled the small bedroom and he climbed up and out onto the roof. Two stories up and no way down except a suicidal jump, John bellowed in his own agony. Standing above it all, he now saw several dozen people assembled in front of his family and he sobbed – pleading for help, begging for the deliverance of Mary, Dean and Sam. The group seemed oblivious to the figure on the roof, and they continued what John could now distinguish as chanting in a language unknown to him.
Suddenly he felt strangely hollow, and he fell to his knees as he gazed on the faces of his family, meeting their eyes – filled with terror, confusion and reproach – he saw the life force drift away, their heads dropping as they were released into unconsciousness… or death. The blazing fires leapt, consuming the beloved figures, and the company of observers turned as one to look up at John and they spoke, the clamor overwhelming his senses but the words clear. "Your doing. Your blood. Your reward."
Delivering the verdict once seemed not to be enough, because they kept at it, growing louder and more raucously frantic by the instant. John Winchester raised his eyes and his arms to the silent sky and issued a shout filled with the pain of a solitary, tormented soul – "No!" And then he jumped.
xXx
It was pitch black when he opened his eyes, and the disorientation he felt freaked him out almost more than the horrific pain in his head and left arm did. For a moment he thought he was lying on the grass in his own backyard, the sting of bitter smoke causing his eyes to water.
As his vision adjusted to the darkness, he automatically took stock. His arm wasn't broken, but there was an awful lot of still-damp blood. Probing his forearm carefully, he winced as his fingers found a half dozen gashes almost an inch wide scored into the skin. Logically, they couldn't be too deep or he wouldn't be conscious, but gaping wounds were prone to infection and thus were not a good thing to be hanging around with.
The pain in his head seemed to be radiating from the near the crown, slightly behind the right ear. He was gentle as his fingers explored his scalp and was grateful in a weird sort of way when he found a goose egg – literally about that size. Swelling outward meant it wasn't swelling inward, which was good news for his brain. His hand came away sticky and slick, but the slice in the skin seemed to be fairly small so he figured it was mostly surface damage – even little head wounds bleed a lot.
It was difficult to make out where he was… there was barely a lick of light for his eyes to take advantage of. He was on the floor (cold, damp stone), weaponless but clothed, alone and unbound. The last observation caused him the greatest concern – captors who left you free to roam generally made sure there wasn't much room to roam. If they'd left him without tying or shackling, they didn't expect him to cause much ruckus. This meant those holding him were either very stupid, or very powerful. Either way, it made him nervous. Power was predictable. Stupidity, not so much.
He then turned his thoughts to the less easily answered questions swirling in his head. Where were the boys and Mary? What had they done with them? Where was he and how did he get here? He tried to think about the last thing he remembered and found his recollection fuzzy. In his mind he saw flashes that didn't seem to make sense. Running through a burning house, people he didn't recognize with glittering black eyes….his sons cleaning shotguns in a grungy motel room.
Shock like ice-cold liquid hit him and he staggered to his feet gagging violently. It was the fragmented image in his mind of Sam and Dean handling weapons with such ease – his brilliant scientist, academic sons – that broke the dam and brought the past into focus.
Dean was not a doctor; Sam was not in college. Mary was dead. The demon… John felt for the chilled rock of the wall and slid down it to sit on the ground, his arms folded over his knees and his head cradled on them. Twenty-three years flooded back and broke his heart, again.
It seemed a while, but he had no idea how long it had been when he heard the tapping and as he listened, it became footsteps, steady and careful. Whoever it was making their way toward him had quite a hike and as he listened he cursed himself for dissolving into an emotional puddle. He'd made no effort after his little reality-check to investigate his surroundings and this tactical folly was, frankly, stunning – if he did say so himself.
The footsteps were close now, and he cut off the internal reprimand, opting to think through what he could in the short time he had before the advancing foe arrived. Ultimately, he decided to stay where he was rather than move and find himself in a worse position. Not a good plan, but all he could come up with at this point. Slowly, light began to filter from a now-distinguishable doorway to his right which appeared connected to a long hallway, and he remained on the floor, his back against the wall, waiting.
Someone stood in the arch of door and John couldn't make out any features because of the brightness of the light behind them. Tall, slender, probably a woman – he ran through the rolodex in his head, considering possibilities. He struggled to remember details about how he'd gotten here, hoping for a clue. The figure leaned back languidly against the doorjamb and recognition dawned on John. Tamara. Unmoving, he waited for her to speak, refusing to give an inch, refusing to acknowledge her.
"So, Johnny," she said, her identity confirmed by the odd lilting demonic accent that sent a freezing spike up John's spine. "How are we feeling today? More cooperative?" She wandered slowly toward him, taking her time and continuing to speak. "Such a sneaky, naughty little family you Winchesters are… it was much harder to find you than it usually is."
She was close now – about a yard or so, and she paused and posed, one hand one her hip, inspecting the nails on her other hand. John almost laughed at the childish tactic, used most of the time to set a prisoner at ease, make them feel more comfortable with the bad guys. Even half-dead, it wasn't a ploy he'd fall for. Since she must know that, John wondered why she used it. She did like to strut and preen, he'd noticed. Deliberately, put his head down on his arms again, and he heard her take a step or two forward, almost hesitating.
"You were no fun last night!" she scolded, "I expected more… stamina from a man such as yourself. One itty bitty knock to the head and out cold," she sighed. "I'll have to restrain myself… this time."
John felt his stomach begin to churn as pieces of the previous torture flooded his mind. Tamara ran her hand caressingly over his bowed head and then jerked it up by the hair.
"Look at me," she hissed savagely, her black eyes gleaming in the light she somehow brought with her. Her features softened and she let her hand slide lingeringly along John's cheek and jaw, "when we're having a conversation, darling."
John met the black orbs, which seemed – impossibly – to hold emotion and nuance. It was not the first time he'd come up against a demon… not the first time he'd come up against this demon. She called herself Tamara, and she'd given him the first inkling that the evil powers that be had something in mind beyond the simple extermination of his adored wife.
xXx
He'd met her in a bar several years ago and it wasn't until he declined the invitation to go home with her, that he'd realized what she was. She'd been offended by his lack of interest, beat him, hard, and thrown a few nasty (but new) pieces of information at him concerning Sam. Then she indicated that he would do well to enjoy his freedom while he could – in the end her father would let her choose a reward, and then John Winchester would come home with her, for good.
Twice since that initial meeting, he'd run up against her. First, about two years later in the case of a teenage girl in Florida with extraordinary psychic abilities – telekinesis, telepathy, even astral projection (which John had never seen up close and for real until then). Tamara had been inconvenienced and infuriated by John's interruption of a horrific ritual meant to strip the girl of her powers and transfer them to a demon and while he'd saved Kendra Prescott, the hunter he'd tagged along with had died in the fight. Now John and Tamara had more than just a conversation between them.
Most recently, she'd showed up at John's motel room in Sellville, North Carolina just less than a year ago; appearing out of the night in a slinky blue-black number to stand over him in his bed, acting like she wanted nothing more out of life than him.
John had learned over the years that demons didn't always, actually, have an otherworldly agenda. Like any being obsessed with power, (human or not) they tended to be a little unstable when it came to self-control. When you combined that with the frustratingly slow and completely arbitrary demonic promotion process… occasionally, they just needed someone weaker than they were to take it all out on.
Dominion over others was a huge deal in demon-land, and those who lacked it among their peers made up for it by finding humans to play master-slave with. As much as they'd like the rest of the universe to believe it, the demonic race had just as many selfish, insecure, idiotic screw-ups as any other bunch of beings and this was a weakness that hunters had been exploiting for centuries. If John were asked, he'd say that inbreeding had caused the demons to have more than the genetically expected percentage of idiots, actually. He'd met a number of intelligent "dark lords", but each seemed to have a more supremely inflated ego than the last (which is why most of the ones who met him were dead). They would not win this war without new blood, and they'd finally begun to realize it.
The North Carolina encounter with Tamara had answered a few niggling questions for John but created a good deal of confusion as well. He'd wondered before why she didn't just take him or kill him since he was clearly considered akin to a pet rat to her. She had been furious by the time he'd asked – he'd been taunting her for the better part of an hour as she tortured him, ever since it became clear that she wasn't going to kill him without permission from the higher-ups.
With measured cruelty, Tamara mentioned Sam again and the puzzle began to take shape. John's heart had nearly stopped beating as she complained that her father was making her wait to take John because his precious baby boy wasn't ready to cross over yet. "Daddy" didn't want anything to interfere with the precise order of events he'd worked up so that Sam would end up in the right place at the right time.
The endgame apparently called for Sam to become some kind of demon-human hybrid – "heir to the kingdom", John to become the groom of Franken-bride here, and Dean… well, according to the doting daughter; "father" had no long-term use for Dean. When he'd fulfilled his purpose (which John guessed had to do with maneuvering Sam into the demon's trap), he'd be killed or given to whichever of Tamara's sisters deemed him a suitable prize. Confidentially, she told John that Jodi and Suzette were duking it out for the hazel-eyed hunk, Andrea having lost interest a while back.
John couldn't say which of these three prospects disturbed him most. Not the threats to himself – he'd swallow a shotgun before he went through a shotgun wedding with the little lass in question… but the idea that these demons actually had plans for his sons… that his family – Sam specifically – had been sought and stalked by this demonic patriarch for more than twenty years was almost more than he could bear. He finally knew upon which altar his beloved Mary had been sacrificed and the hunt now became more than one of pure avengement. It became one of survival.
xXx
"How are your boys these days, Johnny?" she smirked, crouching near him. "I've missed being able to call you that… Johnny… has such a lovey-dovey ring to it, don't you think?"
John kept his eyes on her, not allowing himself to recoil at her nearness. He wondered idly where he was – she'd never taken him off somewhere before. That was a scary thought. She hadn't seemed to hold back in the alley near the bar they'd first met in, nor last time in his motel room. What kind of predilections would privacy bring out in her?
If he could play his cards right in this maybe he could gather a little more intel before he blacked out from the thrashing he was sure she had in mind for him. The information he'd gained from her last time had led him to the weather patterns, to the other children taken or marked… there were no more loose ends when it came to knowing what had to be done. It was simply a matter of timing now, just as it was for the old man demon himself.
"You know, being a younger sibling may have its perks, but it also has its drawbacks," she pouted. "I'd have taken Sammy in an instant if my big sister hadn't chosen him." She wandered away from him, seemingly lost in thought. "But I didn't get to pick first. You're a good second – I don't mean to make you feel like chopped liver, Johnny," she cooed, turning back toward him and smiling coyly. "I'd choose you over your goody-goody firstborn in any case."
Working hard to hold in a laugh, John remained expressionless. Dean would have her head if he heard that. And yet, John could see the truth to what Tamara said – Sam's motivations had always been complicated and unsure, while Dean… Dean's were complex but clear. He didn't buy into the grey-ness that caused his father and brother to stumble on the line between good and evil. Dean would choose the hard, best, road at any given time without a backward glance. Neither John nor Sam trusted their internal compass further than they could throw it. They had to think things through each time, for better or worse.
"I really do find your sons fascinating in an… insect under the microscope kind of way," Tamara trilled, turning her back to him and pacing toward the doorway.
John decided to test where this was going – she'd been at it a good twenty minutes now and he was feeling a little impatient. He'd rather get it over with sooner than later. Unfolding his arms, he stood in a smooth movement but almost before he was fully upright his head snapped painfully against the wall and he felt himself pinned hard and unable to move his limbs.
Not turning around, she clicked her tongue and pulled a strand of her long auburn hair around her finger, twirling it leisurely. "Now, Johnny, you don't need to get up just for me, sweetheart…"
"I'm not your sweetheart and I'm not going to help you kill my boys," he growled.
"Oh, oh!" she exclaimed, laying the drama on thickly. "You're concerned, now Johnny," she said as she faced him, "you're worried are you?" Her laughter was not a pretty sound (though she obviously found herself charming), and John flinched.
Demons had a way of taking reality and either varnishing it within an inch of its life or dumping it in front of you naked and incriminating. He'd noted it in his current journal.
"I don't think you've been paying close enough attention, dearest," she said carefully, as if speaking to a slow child. "My sister has already met your precious baby Sammy, the train has left the station. You can't stop us."
"What do you mean?" John asked evenly, his voice purposely devoid of emotion.
"Don't you wish you knew?" Tamara sauntered towards him, her dimpled grin belying the truculence in her tone. "Not terribly successful in the fatherhood department, are we Johnny," and she added a hint of contrived sadness to her voice. "But then, I only have my father to compare you to, and well…" she leaned in and lifted his chin with her fingertip "there isn't much comparison, is there?"
John resisted the urge to spit in her face. "No one has ever loved their children more than I do," he whispered fiercely.
"May-be," she said lightly in a singsong voice, "but love isn't really the issue here, is it?" Her breath brushed across his face and her voice was low and throaty in his ear as she spoke again. "There are many things at play here John Winchester, but love, darling, isn't on the list."
"You –" John bellowed, struggling against the invisible chains. Generally, supernatural monsters couldn't find John's buttons to push – his military training kept him stoic and clever in nearly every situation and normally, imprisonment wasn't enough to break his control. But demons, it seemed, knew how to find a man, even where he'd hidden himself under the armor of soldier and hunter. And they had neither virtue nor compassion when it came to torture.
"Dean's heart gives out, Sam gets locked in a cannibal's cage, big brother's pledging his undying love and the little brother's moving furniture with his mind, Johnny, and where are you? Chasing my family so hard that you forget to look after your own? Did you forget who it is that we're chasing? If you're behind us, you can't see what's in front of us…" she slowed in her tongue-lashing and giggled, clapping her hand over her mouth and adopting (again) an almost comical look of astonishment. "But what a stroke of…luck for us!" she laughed, sounding for all the world like a cheerful little girl.
John didn't say anything. He'd didn't doubt his sons had been through some bad stuff, but he'd taught them to survive – trained them for battle – and this demoness' biting criticism of his parenting skills wasn't going to get another rise out of him. He'd left his boys in order to finish hunting Mary's murderer alone, and when he'd found out that the demonic collective responsible was preparing to make his youngest child the new devil incarnate and add John and Dean to the breeding stable his focus had shifted. This was bigger than the death of his wife. If he didn't stop it, it would be death of his sons as well.
Yet, after all of this time his obsession with supernatural extinction had created a lone wolf out of him in many ways. He was unused to consulting anyone when a decision needed to be made, and certainly not the kids he'd dragged around and drilled their entire lives. He trusted them as much as he trusted anyone, but that wasn't really saying a lot. John Winchester had been forced to look out for himself for as long as he could remember, and his "trust no one" motto had only been overridden by one person in his life. And she wasn't around anymore.
He had considered, briefly, letting Dean and Sam know that they were the demon's targets. But ultimately, he figured he could get more done, faster, without them… and Sammy wasn't exactly on the believing end of this crusade anymore. Dean would do anything he asked him to, and he was one of the best hunters his father knew…but something in John didn't want to give up his sole hold on the fate of this demon.
It had been his nemesis, even without a name and a face, for nearly half of his life now. While the purpose for destroying it had altered, the end result would be the same and John couldn't get his head or his heart around changing his strategy. When the time came, he'd annihilate the demon alone and he'd likely die in the process. In his mind there wasn't any huge reason to tell the boys or not to tell them. This wasn't their fight, even if it was, now, about them in a way. Regardless, of motivation he'd do what he had always planned to do. Avenge Mary's death and make the world a safer place for his sons.
Lowering her eyes in an imitation of demureness, she looked up at him through long dark lashes. "Things will be so much simpler when we're one big happy family, won't they, my treasure?"
He refused to meet her gaze, close and cloying as she moved back so she could swing, slapping him hard with a backhand that felt like a baseball bat to the face.
"You don't even remember what day it is, do you?" she demanded, cool and vicious.
The wheels in John's mind were turning, trying to think his way through the blinding pain and the slightly double vision he was experiencing. It was April, no… May now. Early, though… the first week maybe.
"Twenty-three years ago, Johnny…" she taunted. "My father's shown him more devoted interest than you've ever managed." Tamara's eyes narrowed and she waited a moment, cackling triumphantly as she saw understanding in her victim's face. "He'll be so much better off with us – for that matter, so will you, Johnny. Meg and I will make sure the Winchesters are taken such good care of!"
John stared unseeing, the words gnawing at his insides like acid. His eyes flew to hers, startled as she spoke again. Tamara's voice was hard and tinged with something raw and dark that made the bile rise in his throat.
"Alright – enough talk, darling. Shall we get down to it?" The force holding him to the stone suddenly let go and he landed on the ground, his limbs tingling and unmovable. "Time for a little fun and then I have to take you home." Sighing, the demon took her foot and planted it firmly on John's wounded left arm, causing him to gasp in agony. "Oh, Johnny. Someday I won't have to return you. Won't that be lovely?"
It was the second day of May. Today was Sam's birthday. He tried to remember where he'd been last year… he knew he hadn't contacted him with even so much as a card since he left for college – too much fury, too much pain. He'd given him the M-21 for his sixteenth birthday… but that was the only gift that stood out in John's beaten-to-a-bloody-pulp mind.
xXx
He rarely marked holidays and birthdays for the boys, but one day he'd idly glanced at a gun show brochure that came in the mail addressed to Occupant, and there she was. John had never named a gun, and was slightly uncomfortable with the common feeling among hunters of lovingly calling their firearms "she"… but this, this was a beautiful weapon. He'd been thinking of adding another shotgun or rifle to their arsenal for Sam to use as his own, and something vaguely sentimental tugged at him as he read the name printed in glossy red curls: Winchester.
He'd spent months looking for that shotgun and had called in a couple of hefty favors to get it and it just happened that the call came for him to pick it up a day or two before Sam's sixteenth birthday. Dean had been hounding him about getting something special for the kid and as Sam opened the box, (which Dean had wrapped), his face brightened in wonder at the gift and the giver. John almost wished that he'd bought the present like a real dad would have – with the sole purpose of seeing that look on Sammy's face – instead of letting coincidence create this moment, and once again, guilt cast its shadow over his title of fatherhood.
xXx
There had never been a time in all the days after Mary's death, in all the months on the road with the boys, in all the haunted years that he'd hunted the evils which had stolen his only true love… that he had resented his children. He'd been frustrated with them and by them, torn inside as he was reminded of his wife by seeing their mother in them now and again, but he hadn't ever wished them gone from his life.
Even when he realized that Mary had been killed because of Sam… it had only angered him more at the demonic monsters whose twisted thirst for power had ravaged his life so completely. It wasn't Sam's fault, even if it was for him that his mother's life had been forfeited. And John could never blame him for it. He would always be glad for his youngest son – always be glad that Sam had been born. Nothing could change that.
John lasted about forty minutes, during which his only conscious thoughts were of Sam and Dean. Things he'd said that he shouldn't have, things he hadn't said that he should have, and things both done and undone that would haunt him 'til he died. Which at the moment he dearly hoped was not going to be today.
He thought about Mary and what she would have wanted for the boys… he thought about the dream he'd had before waking up in this slice of demonic paradise… and every hope he'd hoped, and then soundly crushed beneath the boot-heel of vengeance in the last more than twenty years. This life, this hunter's waltz, had been Hell on his children and somewhere along the line he'd forgotten that they weren't just his. He owed more to his sweet wife than just keeping them alive – the part he'd told himself for years – he owed her the creation of an actual life for them.
John Winchester knew now; Mary's murder wasn't just about her and his obsessive quest to annihilate the demon was justified. But he hadn't known that during Dean's and Sam's childhood, and the satisfaction of being right was sawdust in his mouth tonight. He felt overwhelmingly trapped, by Tamara, by the past, by the future, by the ties that bound him to his family and his horrific grief.
Even as his body felt like it was being bit-by-bit decimated, his soul felt the same. Through the pounding in his head he heard wrenching, convulsive sobbing and the realization that it was coming from him brought him around, his soldier's indoctrination kicking in at the last moment of survival. Opening his eyes, he tried to roll to evade the next round of assaults, and saw the demon's claws emerge from her human fingertips as she raised her hand to slash him.
The last coherent thought John had, was a cruel and tempting double-sided one. He couldn't change it now. But maybe he could.