Chapter 2

Bobby Singer's POV

Sam and Dean Winchester are the first kids I was given to foster three years ago. So far, they're my favorite, but I can't admit that out loud. I got into fostering kids when my wife died in a hunting accident. We didn't have any kids because I'm sterile. We both wanted to, though. We were gonna adopt a little girl named Pamela. Tears slide down my face, soaking into my beard and making it itchy. Balls. I wipe my face. I'm doing what she'd want me to do. I sigh, slumping over the World War I book I'm reading. I need to stop thinking about my dead wife. She's dead. It's my fault she's dead. My fault we didn't have kids. I pour myself a drink. Not enough to get drunk, but I'll certainly be in a hell of a better mood. I sip it, barely feeling the burn. I decide to think of the brothers instead.

Dean is nine years old and he has more energy than a squirrel that drank a gallon of coffee. He's always ping-polling around the house. He hasn't knocked anything over in the three years he's lived here, surprisingly. He refuses to cut his hair, so it's all shaggy and growing funny. His hair is light blonde, getting darker as you look closer to his scalp. It reaches his chin. He has light freckles across his nose that get harder to see as he tans. The older Winchester is smarter than he acts at school. Poor boy can't pay attention or sit still long enough to learn anything. Overall, he's a happy, energetic maniac. But the loss of his parents makes it so his grins with dimples don't quite reach his green eyes. He's very protective of his little brother.

Sam is five and just started kindergarten. He admires Dean and is always depending on his big brother to save the day. Probably his subconscious has something to do with that. After all, Dean did save Sam from the fire that killed their parents five years ago. The younger Winchester is too smart for his own good. He's going to skip first grade next year. He's the tallest kid in his class, so he'll certainly fit in with the second graders. Heck, he's taller than most of the first graders. He's also insanely mature for five. He follows his older brother's refusal to cut his hair. His brown locks reach his collar bone. The brothers' hair grows so fast that I've been having to trim their hair in their sleep just to make sure they don't become two Rapunzels. They're certainly princess enough, those spoiled brats. It's not my fault their so easy to spoil rotten.

Sam and Dean are great kids. It's a shame they have to grow up like this. Both parents dead in a house fire five years ago. One brother remembers the whole thing while the other has no memories at all of his parents. It's sad that the world can be so cruel. At least they don't know it was caused by a demon. I only know because on the news it was reported that there was sulfur in the nursery. The story is that John Winchester, the dad, was smoking in his six-month-old son's nursery where he was so drunk he dropped it into a pile of sulfur (which got there from an attempt at making a new kind of drug). That apparently caused the entire house and two adults to get torched. What utter bull crap. I'm just glad I gave up hunting for fostering kids. I'm still helping humanity by raising another generation of clueless children. How it should be. I hear yelling in the kitchen and a crash.

"Balls," I grumble. I toss the last sip of my beverage down the hatch. "Knock it off ya idjits!" I shout. I'm the tough love sort of guy.

Social services dumped two more kids on me this morning. Now I foster four boys. God knows I'm getting too old for this. At least they're older than the Winchesters. I don't know nothing about the two new boys other than that their names are Michael and Lucifer and that they're sixteen and twelve, respectively. Michael seems too loyal to whatever father figure he had before. Lucifer is wild, always smashing things. Almost like the devil himself. I know all this from after ten hours of taking them under my wing. I groan. There's more yelling and another crash. I'm suddenly very thankful I don't own anything nice or expensive. There's another crash. I should probably step in now.

"Balls," I mutter under my breath as I lurch to my feet, banging my knee on the desk I was just reading at.

I lumber toward the kitchen, holding my pounding head. Conflict always did give me a headache. I limp. I just gave myself a nasty bruise. Lovely. My foot catches on something – a shoe – and it jolts my injured knee too badly. It buckles. I fall backward with my arms flailing for something to hold onto. I gasp in shock and pain when my spine hits the corner of the desk causing a chunk of the corner to get stuck in my back. My legs go numb from my hips to my toes. I don't feel any blood, but I can tell that I'm bleeding by how woozy I feel. I try to stand up but I can't move my legs. I'd be ashamed of myself if I wasn't panicking. My breathing is shaky and my heart irregular. A world-class ex-hunter, taken out by a damned piece of furniture. I think I'm going to die because it doesn't hurt. Not one bit. I just made my body go into shock probably. I could have a heart attack at any moment I scared myself so bad. Hell, I might already be on my way to cardiac arrest the way my heart's beating. The situation gets worse when my foster boys come running in. The Winchesters gag at my blood, but the older boys are unfazed. Lucifer calls an ambulance while Michael kneels next to me.

"The Winchesters can't stay here. It isn't God's will for them to stay. They are to face their destiny. You got in the way of that, Bobby Singer. You're injured too severely for humans to heal you completely. The social services are going to take them away, to where they belong," Michael says. The way he talks bout Sam and Dean… it's like he owns them.

"Yeah, yeah. God's will, destiny, fate, religious mumbo jumbo. I was getting too old for this anyway," I mutter. I'm freakin' forty two years old. I've lived my life. I just don't want to die in front of the Winchesters. They've seen more death than they should have already.

The ambulance arrives. I'm carted away on a stretcher that smells more sterile than I am. I ignore the doctors' pestering questions and fall asleep after settling into the clean pillows.

38 HOURS LATER

"Should we heal him? The Winchesters can now follow their destiny. It is unnecessary for him to remain paralyzed in his legs."

"No, Michael. He could still get in the way of our plans."

"Lucifer, we have orders. Rebel one last time and you will have committed blasphemy not even Father could forgive."

"La-ame!"

"He does have a point though, Zachariah."

"Shut up, Uriel. What were the orders?

"Who cares about the orders! I say we should just kill him here and now! Come on you guys, you know how -"

"Lucifer, get out. You are no longer welcome in Heaven."

"Aw, you're no fun, Michael!"

"I mean it, Lucifer."

"Can't make me."

"I'd beg to differ."

My eyes are sealed shut. A bright white light flashes, bright enough to blind me even with my eyes closed. I peel my eyes open only to be greeted with the sight of a bacteria-free hospital room. I'm hooked up to a morphine drip and a bunch of other gadgets that go beep. Balls. Three emergency surgeries later and I still can't move my damned legs. At least the wood from my desk ain't still embedded in my spine. The Winchesters didn't see my die after all. Speaking of Sam and Dean, I want to see them, tell them that I'm okay. I call for a nurse.

"How can I help you, Mr. Singer?" a pretty young nurse asks as she walks in, looking at her clipboard. She's wearing a salmon-colored nurse's outfit.

"Can you get me my foster kids? I want to tell them that I'm okay. I know I freaked the littlest ones out," I say.

"I'm sorry sir, but I have been informed that you no longer have any custody over them," she says. She leaves the room before I can yell at her. The beeping noises get faster.

"Balls!" I shout, slumping deeper into the bed.

Curse Michael's "destiny" bull crap. I'd rather start hunting again than be paralyzed from the waist down.