Totally AU, Dean came and went in the pilot, and Sam and Jess stayed home, got hitched, grew normal. Doesn't mean the demon wasn't going to come.

Thanks for the reviews to chapter one. Not sure where this could go, so hope you enjoy wherever it ends up. Reviews are desperately needed.

Btw, please forgive my ignorance of all things American. If I get places, geography, terms etc wrong, just, accept it. Thankyou.

Dean Winchester had been on his own for almost 3 years, searching across the country for his father. He had hunted almost continuously throughout those years, the time between the never ending jobs being used to try to find a clue, anything, on where his only remaining parent had disappeared too. There had been some infrequent hospital visits, ranging from overnight to several weeks, it was after all hard to watch your own back and fight the supernatural at the same time.

He had taken only three breaks from his routine of hunt, sleep, hunt, search, hunt, drive, in that past three years. The first had been about 6 months after John dropped off the grid, when he had swung by California to watch Sam say 'I do', a radiant Jessica by his side, framed by trees aflame with autumn coloured leaves. The second had been just after a rather extended stay in the hospital, he had been blindsided by a werewolf as he shot its partner and had woken up two weeks later in a hospital, unable to understand how he, unconscious, had not only defeated the other werewolf, but walked to the hospital and placed himself in a position to obtain help. One of life's unsolved mysteries. He had been on crutches, leg broken in enough places for walking to be impossible, and had been only 75 miles away from Cassie's place. The third break had been to California again, not a year ago, when he had visited his nephew James in hospital, when he was only a few days old.

He had begun to notice changes, subtle things at first, growing more obvious as the year had passed. There were more demons about these days, he had found himself up against five or six possessed people in the past five months, more then he had seen in almost his whole childhood. Caleb, and others among his father's associates had mentioned to him the same sort of increase in their prey. There were whisperings in the hunter community of a building, an increase in supernatural intensity that created apocalyptic connotations. Dean had continued to hunt, taking on the information, but not letting it affect either his search for his dad, or his campaign to help other people as often as he could.

Then, about a month ago, he had received a phone call out of the blue. His father, talking in a voice more choked with emotion and pain and loss then Dean had heard since his father explained to him, all those years ago that mummy wasn't coming back.

"He's dead… I'm so close, and they, they, they killed him, to throw me off the trail, they killed him, I just…"

Dean had known immediately who it was, and on hearing his father's distraught tone, his mind had flashed immediately to Sam, and his heart had clenched so painfully he had trouble breathing.

"Sam?"

There was a harsh chuckle that could have been a sob. "No, Sam's safe for now. Jim, Dean, Jim."

The clenching wasn't relieved. It was replaced with an intense pain that seemed to move through his whole body like a fire. He had lost another parent.

"Dean, I know you'll want to go to the funeral, but I need your help. I need… Dean… I need to get it for this. I have to make it pay."

The pain had been so real in his father's voice and the need so great that Dean had already been on the road by the time he was told where they should meet.

It had been a small town in South Dakota, a stereotypical place with one main street, a diner and cheap motel that they had met up. John had been composed by then, focused on his task, and, when they were settled in the motel room, windows salted, coffee in front of them he had begun a rather sketchy explanation of why he had left Dean without a word for so long. A quick explanation of a lead on a particular demon, one that hibernated for long periods, but that did a lot of damage when it was awake, damage like burning mothers to empower 6 month old babies. The thing had been slowly waking, starting 3 years ago, and John had taken off to find it. It had been slowly waking ever since, but now it was awake, and somehow knew of Johns intentions ("I'm gonna kill it, not just exorcise it, or banish it, actually kill it"). There had been a quick explanation of his way to do that, with a colt he had obtained a week or so ago after a fight with some vampires.

He didn't really explain why he had left Dean alone, changing the subject when Dean asked after a weak mutter about safety.

"I don't have time to explain everything fully. We need to move fast. There was a death here, two days ago, same way was Mary. I think we should find clues here as to where it's gone next or at least something that should help us to find where it's going next. We have too."

So they had looked around the town for a week, spoken to the distraught husband, who was sure he remembered a cloaked man standing over his daughters crib. They had searched the remains of the house, though its blackened corpse revealed nothing except strong EMF readings, and had ended the week with little more then they had had when the started.

And then there had been another woman killed in a fire, in some town, ten-miles-from-nowhere, Texas. It had seemed there would be no results from their hasty trip there, until, just when they were about to give up hope of finding any trail of the demon, Dean had heard an old man commenting on his dead cattle as he was winding down in a smoky bar. It clicked with a comment he had heard in a similar establishment in the town the other woman had died in. He had left so quickly he didn't get the bar tenders number.

They had pulled the pattern together eagerly that night. Dean researching livestock deaths, John taking the idea off on a tangent and trying to find anything else unusual that could have happened to add to the pattern.

It was a day later that they had a definite pattern, tracing back as far as they could obtain records, following electrical storms and cattle deaths back into the 1800's. Every 20 or so years.

It was during the time they were creating the pattern that another woman turned up dead in Colorado. They drove there quickly, wanting to confirm the pattern so they could beat the creature to its next destination, shoot it with the gun that could kill anything, and move on with their lives. Dean hadn't had the heart to comment on that notion of his fathers. Not really wanting to tell him that actually, really, he didn't have much of a life to move on too. Cassie had told him she would wait, and he wanted more than anything to be able to stay with her forever, but how could he when he could still see evil in the world?

Unfortunately, the demon had still been in Colorado, and they had walked straight into a trap...

It was three days later that Dean was screaming to a stop in front of his brothers house, blood dripping down his head, tears springing to his eyes when he saw the flames and realised he was to late.

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Well. There we are. Chapter two. More explanation will come in the next chapter. I just, wanted to post something, because I have free time at the moment. And this was what appeared from my efforts. Hope you liked it. Keep reviewing please.