John stared at himself in the mirror, barely recognizing what he saw. Not that he'd spent much time gazing at his own face in Hell, or in Purgatory, but the few wavering glimpses he'd caught in lakes or streams had been of a wild man, all long hair and tangled beard and dangerous eyes. Since he'd washed and taken a pair of scissors to the mess, the reflection looking back at him was almost human. Almost the John Winchester he could remember being before, well…before. He squinted at it, watching it squint back. The scar making a furrow from his left ear to his chin was a new addition, courtesy of a shtriga soul he'd killed two or three years back. The thick pinkish line crossing his bare chest had been from some vampire wielding a blade near the beginning of his tenure in Purgatory, and as he gazed at himself he found he could put a story to nearly every scar. And he looked gaunt, with dark circles under his eyes and too-prominent cheekbones.

He shook his head at his own train of thought—wasn't like he was trying to win any beauty pageants here—and pulled on Sam's long-legged jeans, which didn't fit him a whole lot better than the other pair had Dean. A headache was pounding somewhere behind his eyes, some remnant of his trip through the portal, he supposed, that Cas's magical healing hadn't been able to stomp out. He rubbed at his forehead, willing it to go away, but it didn't. He'd just picked up the T-shirt when he heard a commotion, the unmistakable grunts and crashes of conflict, outside the door. He'd exchanged the shirt for a knife in an instant and was out the door, ready to face whatever it was. And so he was very surprised to see Dean and Cas tying a struggling, pudgy man in a bathrobe into a chair.

"Dean?" John asked.

"Look what we found outside," Dean said in explanation.

As soon as he spoke the man stopped struggling and raised his head to face John, a smile inching across his chubby face. "John Winchester," he said, then blinked, and his eyes flicked to black.

John was backing up before he could think, raising the knife he knew was useless against the creature. "That's a demon," he said.

Dean gave him a look like he'd just pointed at the chair and stammered That's a chair. "Yeah," he curtly, and John stared at him, not understanding how he could be so nonchalant about one of the creatures that had destroyed their family, killed their friends and the people who'd given them shelter, taken his soul and Dean's and tortured both of them in Hell for interminable decades. He knew that his boys had faced unimaginable enemies since he'd been gone, but seeing this was something else.

"Who sent you?" Cas asked the demon while Dean grabbed a thick marker from a table and started marking a circle on the linoleum floor around the chair.

The demon didn't respond, only leered at John, then disappeared in a rope of smoke out the man's mouth and fled through the cracks where the window met the wall. The man slumped in the chair, unconscious.

"Damn it!" Dean exclaimed, throwing the marker down and glancing around the room like the demon might still be there.

"There's nothing we could have done," Cas said pacifyingly. "I wonder where it's gone."

John realized his mouth was hanging open and snapped it shut. "What in the hell was that?" he demanded after a moment, somehow feeling even more like a rug had been pulled out from beneath his feet than before.

"What do you think?" Dean snapped.

"I know it was a demon," John retorted, not liking the lip he was getting from Dean though it annoyed him enough to shake off some of his paralyzing disbelief. Sure, his son could catch a demon like it was nothing, but that snotty tone he pulled out to sass John sometimes hadn't changed since he was a teenager. "Where did it come from and what the hell were you doing with it?"

"It was outside," Cas said. "We saw it heading toward the room. We intervened."

"Thought if we brought it back here we could get it to talk. Didn't think it would smoke off so soon," Dean said, then stared at John. "It recognized you. Must've run off to report."

"Report to who?" John asked, struggling to follow. "Only demons I really tangled with before I died were Yellow Eyes and his 'family.' In Hell…" he shrugged. They'd come and gone, sometimes to gawk and sometimes to join in, but aside from Alastair none had stuck around long enough to make his acquaintance.

"One of Crowley's?" Dean guessed.

Cas's response was hesitant. "Crowley holds a lot of power in Hell, but he's not the only powerful demon. And he knows us well enough—" he looked away just for a moment and John remembered that this Crowley was the creature Cas had betrayed Dean for, as well as the king of Hell and their ally on more than one occasion, "—that if he wanted something, I assume he would ask for it."

"Somebody's gotta get Sam," Dean decided. "See if he's smelled any sulfur in these parts lately." He glanced at the unconscious man. "I'll take this guy back. If he's lucky he'll just think he passed out there."

"I'll get Sam," John said.

"You will?" Dean sounded surprised.

In Purgatory, John had taken Dean's tales of the apocalypse and archangels and demons and everything else in stride because, so far away from everything, it had been easy to think of them as just that. Without context, they had a mythic quality, as if Dean was telling stories about someone else. But here, in a crappy motel room where Dean could wrangle demons and talk about the demon king of Hell like he was an old friend, it was impossible to deny how real Dean's stories had been. It was his Dean who'd broken in Hell and started the apocalypse and his Sam who'd set Lucifer free, but by the same token it was his boys who had nearly given everything to save the world from the forces of heaven and hell alike. And all he wanted suddenly was to go outside where he could clear his head.

"Yeah," he said. "I'll be back in a minute."

"Thanks," Dean said. "Be careful."

Despite the feeling that the whole damn world had shifted while he'd been gone, John couldn't help but give him a crooked smile. It was so very Dean—no matter how pissed he was, that protective streak of his wouldn't let John cross a parking lot where there might be a demon without a warning—that he answered easily. "Always am."

Once Dean had nodded and started untying the unconscious man's hands, John pulled on his t-shirt then stepped out into the still night and shut the door, leaving the warmth and the light behind. He breathed in deeply through his nose. His head was still aching but since the fresh air didn't seem to be helping any, he steeled himself and headed toward the room Sam had said was Amelia's.

Not wanting to surprise them again, he knocked on the door, a few businesslike raps. He heard the lock turn and Sam answered in sweatpants. Amelia was sitting cross-legged on the bed and from the indentation in the blankets it looked like Sam had just been sitting beside her. He noticed a dog sleeping on the floor and remembered how Sam had run away long ago and turned up weeks later in a cabin with a dog of his own. John had been so worried he'd nearly killed Dean that day.

"Dad?" Sam prompted, eyebrows climbing. "What's up?"

"We've got a…a situation," John stumbled over the words, not sure what to say in front of Amelia. This was new too, and he didn't like it.

"What kind of situation?" Sam asked.

"We had a visitor," John said sharply. "A very dark-eyed visitor. Sam, come on."

"You're kidding," Sam said, a touch irritated, as if it was John's fault a demon had showed up in his motel. But he took a deep breath after Amelia gave him an encouraging nod. "Okay. Right. I'll be right back, I guess. I'm sorry."

"It's fine," Amelia said, then smiled at John. "Don't let him get into too much trouble." John stared at her flatly. "You look much better, by the way," she added. "I like the haircut."

John narrowed his eyes at her but couldn't think of anything particularly fitting to say in reply. "Come on, Sam."

As soon as they were out of the motel room John couldn't help himself. "What did you tell her about me?"

Sam looked taken aback but shrugged after glancing back to make sure they were far enough from the door that the sound wouldn't carry. "You've been in a mental institution since 2006, and after his…near-death experience overseas Dean decided it was time to get you out and do some family bonding. I thought he was really dead, and I tell people you're dead because I'm ashamed of your schizophrenia." He shrugged, then gestured with a big hand at John's cropped hair. "She's right. You look better."

"Sure," John said impatiently, not particularly liking how easy Sam had found it to throw him under the bus, though he had to appreciate the more-or-less-plausible nature of the explanation. Lying on the spot had never been Sam's forte so much as it had been Dean's, especially not to those he cared about. This, well, it was just another indication that things had changed and John felt another wave of helpless frustration. He was glad to be out of Purgatory, of course, and gladder to be out of Hell, but he'd never in all that time imagined things would be like this. He wondered, as he'd often used to wonder, what Mary would have thought of it all, and felt his stomach drop even more when he realized he had no idea.

"Dad?" Sam said. "You said there was a demon. What happened?"

"Dean and the angel can explain," John said curtly. He knew if he tried he'd only end up sounding more out of his depth than he felt.

"Okay," Sam said slowly, then studied John. "How are you adjusting to all this?"

"What?" John snapped at him. Dean had said Sam's psychic days were over but it was as if he'd read John's mind, and he hoped his feelings weren't written so clearly on his face. He'd always thought of Dean as the perceptive one, at least when it came to their family, but here was Sam trying to look out for his feelings despite how tensely they'd left things. "I'm fine," he said, a little suspiciously. He just wanted everything to be like it had been, Sam's bullheaded inability to see (or care about) his point of view included. "There was a demon here. We have to deal with that."

"Okay," Sam said again, still far too understanding. "As long as you're good with this. Let's talk to Dean."

John was tempted to pick another fight with him just to return to some sense of normality. After encountering Dean's apparently long-held bitterness he'd been so prepared to deal with Sam's that it hadn't even occurred to him that the kid might've forgiven him.

They'd resumed their places in Sam's room, Dean perched on the bed, Sam on the chair, while John stood with his arms crossed and Cas watched beside him, keeping mostly quiet. This time, Dean and Sam were arguing, equally passionate about the question that they faced now: whether to stay or leave.

"We should move out," Dean was insisting, addressing John urgently. "Demons are scoping us out, scoping you out, it's bad news."

"We can't just leave," Sam aruged. "I can't just leave. I have a life here. Amelia has a life here. We can't just uproot her but I am not leaving her on her own if demons have made this place."

"Damn it, Sam, this is our family," Dean growled.

"It was one demon, Dean. We can handle it."

"It was looking for Dad and we don't know why. There's no reason to stay."

"Did you not-? Of course there's a reason to stay. My life here is a reason to stay."

"Since when do you have a life anywhere?"

Somehow they both ended up looked to John for affirmation at the same time, and he refolded his arms. "Dean's got a point. We're not safe." After years of running in Purgatory, it only seemed natural that they'd have to pick up again. "Other hand, thing found me so fast it's like it wasn't looking. More like it was just checking to see if I was really here. Somehow doubt moving to another town's going to change that much."

Dean and Sam exchanged glances and both, amazingly, seemed to concede something. This was more like it, John thought. He might not have a place here in the calm and quiet, but throw a demon and a dispute over safety into the mix and—for all his boys had seen and done, for all dealing with a demon meant nothing to them, Dean's anger and Sam's inexplicable forgiveness—they were looking at him like what he thought mattered again.

"Look," Sam said. "If we stay here I can watch out for Amelia and she doesn't have to know anything. We can go if it gets hairy."

John nodded, figuring it sounded reasonable. And hell, he was tired.

"…Fine," Dean said after a moment, seeing himself outnumbered. "But first sign of trouble, we get the hell out of here."

"Of course," John said, running a hand over his now-clipped beard. Pale sunlight was beginning to shine through the curtains and his head was still aching persistently, right behind the eyes. Of course he didn't like the notion of demons on their tail—on his tail—but the feeling of being hunted was nothing new. At least here there were locks and walls and doorways to salt. And beds. "Until then, I say we all get some sleep."

"First sign of trouble," Dean repeated, then shook his head slightly. "Sure is good to be home."

John snorted. "Least it's home," he said, and was amazed to find that he meant it. More had changed than he'd imagined could in what had been six short years—at least up here—but he had his boys and, damn it, that was something.