Disclaimer: I don't own Supernatural. Believe me, if I did I wouldn't have had the heart to kill off any of the characters.
5.
Bye, baby Bunting,
Daddy's gone a-hunting,
Gone to get a rabbit skin
To wrap the baby Bunting in
The nightmares grew less frequent, got pushed to the back of John's mind as new worries surfaced. He had never known how dangerous the world was.
He'd thought, being the war veteran he was, that'd he had seen the worst of this world. He had been wrong. Every day some new threat surfaced.
They moved frequently. He knew it was hard on the boys, but at they had each other when he was gone. They may not have had the happiest childhood, but they had each other. And they were safe, for the most part.
So when John returned 'home' and saw a monster leaning over his youngest son and his eldest with a shotgun in hand doing his best statue impression, John may have overreacted.
When he had a chance to calm down and think rationally again, he realized that even if Dean had fired, nothing but pure iron could have killed the thing. And the shotgun hadn't been loaded with anything but rocksalt. He could have lost both his boys. Shtrigas worked their way through families.
He didn't sleep that night. Sam and Dean usually shared a bed when he was away, he knew by coming 'home' far too late far too many times. Tonight (and every night after) Dean slept at the foot of his little brother's bed, like he was keeping guard. John watched them slumber peacefully on.
Until 3:18 that morning.
At 3:17, John was staring at the ticking clock. At 3:18, Dean began to scream.
A quick scan of the room convinced John that nothing was attacking his son but his own mind.
"Wake up!" John shook his shoulder roughly. He had no desire to get kicked out of the hotel.
Dean didn't wake up; he kept screaming and babbling.
"Dean, wake up! Wake up son!"
Abruptly, the screaming stopped. Dean was sitting up now, but he wasn't awake. Green eyes stared past his dad and into the void.
"We're burning, we're burning, we're BURNING!"
"Stop it Dean!"
"Mom's burning and you're burning and I'm burning and Adam's burning and, and-" Dean was gasping for air. "-and then Sam burns everything else."
Dean began to laugh, not the happy, unburdened laugh of a child, or the sarcastic scoff that was characteristic of him. This was the laugh of a broken, bitter man.
Of all the things he had seen and heard that day, the laughter scared John the most.
"Dean, stop it! Stop it this instant!"
The croaking laughter continued.
"Stop, Dean! That's an order!"
As suddenly as it had begun, the nightmare stopped.
"Yes, sir." Dean confirmed and his eyes rolled back in his head, sleep taking hold once again.
John didn't sleep for a few days after that. And though he would be ashamed to admit it, he couldn't look at his eldest son the same way again.
Dean didn't have nightmares after that or, at least, he never gave indication that his sleep was anything other than peaceful.
John considered it a good thing
He didn't consider that some small, essential part of his son had been buried deep under the surface of this facade.
Years later, when a woman would call him and tell him that he had a son with her, John wouldn't remember that night. But when she told him that she'd named that son Adam, John's subconscious would tell him to protect the kid, protect him in a way that John had never been able to shield his own sons.
John wouldn't remember Dean's 'nightmares' at all.
Years after that John sought guidance from a psychic named Missouri, shamefully hiding from his fully grown sons. He knew they were searching for him, but he couldn't reveal himself. Not yet.
"That boy, he has such powerful abilities." Missouri remarked. "Why he couldn't sense his own father, I have no idea."
There was a rebuke in that observation, but John didn't hear it. He dismissed the statement; John knew Sam was psychic. It didn't make sense for her to remind him.
Missouri wasn't talking about Sam.
.
.
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Well, that's the end of it. A big THANK YOU to my readers for your thoughtful and helpful reviews! You guys rock :-)
If you need a bit of light humor after all the angst, check out my profile for stories that, um, don't make sense but are funny anyway.
Once again, thank you for reading!
*bows out as the curtain falls*