Chapter Warnings: Things come to head as ten years of grief and anger bubble over for Dean, and John makes a stupid choice.

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The Road So Far (This Time Around)

Season 1: Chapter 24

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The rest of the day passed almost like a normal family. They sat and talked like a normal family, caught up on their lives like a normal family. Sure, the topics of choice weren't exactly normal. Taking down an urban legend or shapeshifter were hardly common dinner topics, but still, for the Winchesters it was approaching dangerously normal.

Which is why there was no way it could last.

"How did you know it was a Baku?" John eventually asked as they circled topics, starting with their frankly miraculous save of Jess and the Moore family. Dean hadn't volunteered much information, letting Sam tell most of the stories with minimal input supplied by the man from the future. But it was obvious with every adventure or nightmare they recapped that there was a running them of one thing missing from each: information and where they got it.

"Uh…" Sam glanced at Dean, unsure what to say. His older brother didn't look particularly helpful, expression already growing stormy. The younger Winchester swallowed, looking down at his hands resting in his laps as he sat on the old, sagging couch. He knew they would have to tell their father eventually, but he'd sort of hoped Dean would provide more support than a brooding figure in the corner of the room. "I had a vision."

John straightened, brow furling as he stared at his youngest boy. When he spoke, his voice was that terrifying flat tone that always proceeded bad memories for both boys. "A vision."

"He's been getting them since Palo Alto," Bobby chimed in from his desk, purposefully keeping his tone nonchalant, like it was old news. In truth, the three men around John Winchester were watching him with the tension of skilled animal wrangler who knew, despite years of practice, that what he was approaching was still a pissed off lion. No matter how experienced you were in handling that beast, it was always going to get in a few good swipes.

"They, uh…they happen randomly, far as we can tell. First, it was nightmares, but now they happen during the day, too. Whatever I see always seems to come true, pretty reliably." Sam shrugged, trying not to feel small under the eye of his father, who somehow always made him feel like that. For the most part, it resulted in anger and defensiveness that bordered on the dramatic. But it always started with that feeling of being too small, too disappointing, to ever be a worthy son to the man across the table from him. "We don't really know what they mean."

Their father stood in terrifying silence, turning his back on his family as he ran a hand down his mouth. It was only a moment as he crossed the room, almost pacing, before he turned back around, but the tension in the room made it feel much, much longer. John leveled his boys with a hell of a glare, settling on his oldest. "Something like this starts happening to your brother, you pick up the phone and you call me."

Dean, who remembered this conversation well enough to know he had no interest in repeating it, opened his mouth for a lashing of his own. The last time they'd had this talk, he'd finally stepped out of his soldier mold, finally stood up for the brother who cared about him a hell of a lot more than his dad did. He wasn't the good little soldier his father had raised anymore; that kid had died in Hell a long, long time ago.

"Call you?" Sam stood up from the couch to meet John's height. Dean blinked, looking over at his younger brother who beat him to the punch. "Like Dean called you when I was dying? Like I called you from Lawrence?"

The older of the two brother's turned his head at that, eyebrows raised. "What?"

For a moment, Dean panicked, thinking of the cosmic consequences of John Winchester showing up in Lawrence with a bossy psychic already reading too much off of the man from the future. But he pretty quickly remembered he'd called John the first time around, and it wasn't like the man had shown up back then, either.

Sam trucked on right ahead, ignoring his brother. "All we ever do is call you! We called you when we found a demon who wanted to murder my girlfriend on the anniversary of mom's death! We called you when Yellow Eyes agreed to spare her if I kept hunting. We called you when we knew a Baku was on your tail. Don't bother lecturing us for not telling you about the least crappy of all the cards we've been dealt lately!"

Dean stared at his brother, eyebrows raised to his hairline and the corner of his lip pulling up as he, for possibly the first time in his life, watched his brother yell at his father and felt nothing but pride. He turned his green gaze back to John Winchester with a clear look of 'what he said.'

Their dad frowned between the both of them, but finally settled back into the kitchen chair they'd dragged to the edge of the den hours ago. He was silent for a moment, head hung, before he nodded. He glanced up to meet is youngest son's fiery gaze. "You're right. I'm sorry."

Sam glanced at his older brother, who gave him a miniscule nod, and took his own seat. Bobby, eyebrows raised as high as Dean's, glanced between the three Winchesters.

"Well, now that that's off yer chests," he pulled his feet off the edge of his desk and straightened up. "How about you tell a story of your own, John. Like how you knew the thing chasing after you and yer boys was a demon. Last time I saw you, ya still didn't know squat about that yellowed eyed bastard."

The grizzled father sat in a contemplative silence for a moment. With a slow nod, he raised his eyes to his sons, and began. "Truth is, he hadn't shown himself in twenty years. Our whole lives we searched for this demon, right? Not a trace. Just…nothing."

"Till you caught his trail," Dean added, remembering the spread of research his father had presented them the first time he'd finally agreed to work with them.

"No," John huffed out, the sound self-deprecating. Both his boys frowned at him. "Not at first. I was on a hunt in Arizona six months ago. There was signs worth checking out: odd weather, crop failure, livestock mutilation, that sort of thing."

"Demonic omens."

John nodded at his youngest. "Yeah. I thought it was a run-of-the-mill demon hunt. Rare, but not unheard of. At least, until I got there. There'd been a fire the night before. It was a small town, so it was the talk of it. Only one room in the house had burned."

"The nursery." Dean's quite confirmation was the loudest thing in the tense room. John nodded, regret flickering through his hard eyes.

"And it took the mother with it."

"Just like us…" Sam stared at their dad. Realization was starting to settle over his features.

"The kid was six months old, to the day." John continued, glancing to his youngest as he started putting the pieces together. "Just like you were, Sammy."

"I was?"

Their dad nodded, turning his gaze down to his hands as they rested on his legs. "So I knew what it was. A demon. More importantly, that bastard was back. After all this time… I started looking for other signs. I looked back through the weather readouts for Lawrence and sure enough…"

Sam exchanged a look with Dean, though they both already knew what was coming.

"There were signs a couple days before your mother..." John let out a loose breath, a reminder to the two boys that their father was still mourning the death of his wife. "I chased the thing across half the damn country, following omens from one town to the next. I never made in time to save any of them."

The confession was weighed with the same guilt he'd spoken out in the salvage yard, admitting his failure as a father to his youngest son, who had never seen it that way and never would. John was many things, had made many mistakes, but what happened to their family that night had never been on him.

Sam swallowed, trying to remind himself it wasn't on him, either. "Every time, there was a fire?"

John shook his head. "No. Sometimes there was nothing. All the omens, but no house fires, no deaths."

Dean pushed himself off the wall, uncrossing his arms. "He only kills the parents if they interrupt him."

John's gaze followed his oldest son like a hawk, eyes narrowed. Sam, on the other hand, glanced at his brother in surprise.

"Interrupt him?" He frowned for a moment, before Dean caught his gaze. Sam stiffened, memory flashing back to that church and the empty jar in the mud. He looked away, self-loathing eating away at his expression and his insides. "You mean the blood."

John nodded, albeit slowly. "That's right. Far as I can tell, there are other kids out there; kids the demon did something to who still have both parents. Lead normal lives. But they're not exactly normal."

Sam worked hard to quash the flare of jealousy his dad's words immediately sparked within his soul. "How many are there?"

Their dad shook his head. "It's impossible to know. Two dozen, maybe more. Who knows how long he's been doing this."

"We need to find them." Sam shifted almost urgently. "If there are more kids out there like me, with visions or- or powers, we need to find them. Try to help them!"

John was already shaking his head, but Sam pushed on. "If Yellow Eyes did something to them…they could be experiencing things too. He said we were part of a…race. A game or something that demons were betting on. If there are more kids out there, we need to save them!"

Dean saw the way his father's head snapped to his youngest son at the revelation. The man from the future immediately tensed. John hadn't known that last time. At least, he didn't think he had. Dean honestly didn't know how deep John's knowledge of Azazel's plan went. He was pretty sure his dad hadn't know about the apocalypse. It had been kept too under wraps, not to mention John would never have left his boys to face it. Dean didn't waste time conjecturing whether John would have stuck around out of love, patriarchal obligation, or just being a control freak who didn't trust anyone else to handle a problem that big.

But Bobby was already talking it through for them, and with a hell of a lot more reason than John Winchester. "Only problem there, is there's no way of trackin' 'em. We could probably find the ones that had house fires as kids, but if this thing didn't leave signs on every stop, it'd be a crapshoot guessing which kid he messed with twenty years later. We'd be up to our eyeballs in research that could take years to lead anywhere."

"We don't have years," Dean bit back, with some confidence that that was exactly where Bobby had been leading. Not that it would hurt to track down Azazel's other kids. They could stop a lot of pain, everything from warning them about the Battle Royale to come, to stopping Azazel from hurting future kids.

Dean's brain paused on the thought, having never given it time before. What did happen to those kids Azazel had been infecting in 2005 and 2006? They would be too young to participate in the free-for-all to be Lucifer's vessel. They were too young for anything.

Had the yellow eyed bastard popped back up just to catch Sam and John's attention? Or had he been turning more children for a purpose? In the years after the apocalypse, they'd never run into a psychic child. Would their powers even activate without Azazel's presence? Or had other hunters found them taken care of it? It wasn't the kid's fault, but a lot them had turned into killers.

Suddenly, Dean wished he'd followed up on it a little more. He made a mental note, adding it to the ever growing list of shit they would need to deal with.

"They're not a priority," John insisted, staring at Sam. "We'll deal with 'em after, but right now, we focus on Yellow Eyes. He comes before everything else."

Dean's head twitched slightly at his father's words, at a memory he couldn't grasp, but he knew he'd heard before. It passed as quickly as it came, leaving him with an uneasy feeling, but nothing he could do about it.

"But, Dad, these kids-"

"I told you, we'll deal with them later."

The harsh finality of John Winchester's tone is what finally clued Dean in to the memory flickering at the edges of his mind.

"Deal with them?" He took a step towards his father. His brain was filling with images of those kids who'd never stood a chance, whose deaths had been written for them ten years before they were even born. Andy and Ava. Gordon coming after Sam. His brother sinking to his knees in Colorado, the ghost of a knife sticking out of his back. Even Jake What's-his-name didn't deserve what John Winchester would deal out to him in the name of human justice and protecting the world.

No, life wasn't that black and white anymore. It never had been. And you didn't kill kids for the shit lemons life handed them.

More to the point, what exactly would John decide to do to his own son? Because Dean remembered the last thing John Winchester had said to him. The hunter remembered, vividly, every time his dad told him to take care of Sammy. How John had raised him to take care of his little brother. He remembered each time he'd been yelled at, screamed at, reprimanded and brought down. The disappointment in his dad's eyes. The anger in his voice. That one time when John got too drunk and struck him for letting Sammy run off to a cabin and a friggin' dog. It was always watch Sam, protect Sam. Save Sam.

And the last words Dad ever said to him, telling him to kill the one thing Dean had formed his entire life around. The one person who kept Dean going, no matter how dark it got, no matter how much he hated himself.

To do the one thing John Winchester had raised him to never let happen.

"How exactly are we going to deal with them, Dad? Where do kids with demon blood in them fall on your black and white scale of the world? You gonna deal with Sammy after you've dealt with all of them?"

"Dean!" Bobby barked harshly, warning the kid he was approaching a line. But Dean didn't stop there.

"Let me guess. If you can't save 'em, well, we'll just have to kill 'em, huh? That your grand, master plan?"

"Dean…" Sam sat, shocked, staring at his big brother who had switched, once more, into that cold, hard killer he'd seen a handful of times over the last six months. The man who was probably from the future, who had seen things that had frozen him over, turned him dark and dangerous. This Dean had killed, of that Sam had no doubt. And not monsters, not the things that went bump in the night that needed to be put down. No, this version of his brother had done things a lot darker than try and save the world one monster at a time.

John shoved himself up from his chair, knocking it over in the process as he matched his son's aggressive stance, tension-filled inch for inch. One hand hovered on the gun he kept in the waistline of his pants. Even in Bobby Singer's house, John did not go unarmed. "I don't know who the hell you think you are, but you are not my son."

"Dad," Sam immediately cautioned, eyes darting to the hand wrapped around the butt of a handgun. John Winchester wouldn't really shoot his son, would he?

….He would if he thought Dean was a monster.

Sam swallowed around the sudden lump in his throat and the dryness pervading his entire mouth. Well, he had been asking himself for a week now where he stood on the line between human and other. What his father would do once he learned that information.

Guess he'd just answered his own question.

"No, I'm not your soldier," Dean barked back, placing his hands on the table with rigid arms and locked elbows. He looked like an animal about to pounce. "I stopped being that man when I realized just how much you lied to us – kept from us. You're right; I'm not the Dean you know. I'm not the good little soldier anymore. But I'm still your son."

The hunter shoved away from the table, green eyes lit with a fire forged by ten years that no one in that room could ever understand. Dean jabbed his finger in Sam's direction. "And so is he, demon blood or not."

Then he marched himself straight out of the kitchen, through the backdoor and into the salvage yard before he could do worse to his dad than just yelling. He left behind a room full of stunned family who had never yet heard the eldest Winchester boy talk to John that way.

Bobby was the first to finally react, clearing his throat in the awkward, tense silence.

"I'll go after the idjit," he mumbled, but his trademark insult lacked the usual fondness and levity it often brought.

Sam and John were silent as Bobby followed the volatile hunter out into the yard. John was still fuming, red in the face and hand gripped tight atop the butt of his gun. Sam didn't think he would exactly be the calming force in any discussion between them, so he chose not to speak. He was still reeling from his brother's words and what they implied. Lucky for him, John stormed off on his own after several aborted steps, one towards the back door, then the den, then the back door again. When he finally left in a huff, it was in the direction opposite of his oldest son.

-o-o-o-

Dean was angry. Angrier than he thought he would be. His dad's death had been hard. Devastating, really. It had changed his entire world and had been the first crack across a soon to be broken man. But none of that compared to having his father tell him – expect him – to do the one thing he just couldn't, wouldn't do.

John should have let him die in that hospital. He should have taken care of Sammy himself rather than ask his oldest, a child he raised with only one purpose, to kill his own brother. To even think that he could do such a thing.

Dean had spent months after John's death angry and desperate and hurting. There was guilt over his father selling his soul to save him, rotting in Hell in exchange for a life Dean had never felt he deserved. There was anger that those were the last words his father found strength to say, that John Winchester had staved off the demon long enough to find his son and pass on a final message. A final message Dean wished to God he'd never heard. He hated himself for it, but he wished John had died before he'd been able to whisper that damning sentence to him. Then came the fury and shame, equal in proportion and destruction, that John thought Dean could ever do it.

It felt like a terrible, unfair test. Killing Sammy hadn't even been an option. Hell, killing himself would have been a thousand times easier. But failing to follow his father's last order, his last warning, was like spitting on the man's grave before his body was even cold.

No matter what he did, he'd already lost.

John should have fucking stayed and finished the job himself. He had no right – no right – to ask that of his own son. No right to offer himself in some noble sacrifice so he could shuck what he couldn't do himself off on Dean.

That thought had ultimately let the anger beat out over the guilt ten years ago.

The thing was, Dean thought he'd gotten over it. It had been nearly a decade since he'd lost his father. He hadn't killed Sam, and sure they'd started the Apocalypse in exchange for it, but hindsight was a bitch. Besides, Dean knew that neither Heaven nor Hell would have let Sam's passing slide by. They needed their Michael Sword in Hell, after all.

But here he was, ten years later, reliving it as he stood outside Singer Salvage Yard, fuming all over again as that guilt and hurt and shame and anger crushed him beneath his father's heel.

He spun and slammed his good hand against the side of an old sedan. He hit the flat of his palm against the metal again and again until that wasn't good enough and he switched to fists. The first hit stung. By the third he couldn't feel his hand anymore. When he started leaving blood splattered across the metal and glass, he finally pulled back.

Having a broken arm and a broken hand and no angel to magically heal him wasn't something he could afford right now. Dean flexed his fingers. The knuckles ached and stung, blood welling up sluggishly, but nothing felt broken. Small favors, he supposed.

"You done beating up my cars, boy?"

Dean didn't have to turn to know Bobby had followed him out. He was hardly surprised. The hunter flicked his wrist several times, dispersing the gathering blood across his knuckles.

"Sorry, Bobby."

"S'not me you gotta apologize to," the older man countered, though there was no heat in his scolding.

"Don't," Dean whispered, head hung. "Just don't."

"Didn't come out here to fight, kid." Bobby uncrossed his arms with a heavy sigh and moved over to the car Dean had unleashed on. He settled against the passenger door, clear of the splattered blood and new dents. "Got enough of that in my house as is."

Dean's shoulders sagged at the added guilt. Bobby didn't deserve all this shoved on him. He'd always been family, and a damn good friend to them. Dean knew he couldn't do this without him, knew cutting him loose to keep him out of the shitstorm to come wasn't an option (the old man would never allow such a thing to happen). But damn, he'd never meant to bring this down on Bobby's house.

"I'm sorry," he mumbled for the second time in a span of minutes.

"Hell, it's hardly your fault, Dean." Bobby cocked his head to the side forgivingly. "We both know you're father's a stubborn SOB. Sam and him are more alike than either of 'em care to admit."

The kid chuckled, but it was a dry and bitter sound. "Yeah. They're both gonna throw themselves in front of this and die fighting it."

Bobby suddenly stilled, shell shock silencing him as if slapped, and Dean immediately realized what he said.

"No, they won't," he quickly corrected, and then had to correct again, "Dad…Dad does."

Which Bobby already knew, but they both were aware of the large gaps missing in the story Dean had told. Bobby could really only hazard at what those gaps were.

Dean cleared his throat. "Sammy will be, uh…"

He took a deep, painful breath as he realized no, no Sammy would not be fine. None of them would be fine. Why did he think he could do this all over again?

"You know the last thing he said to me?"

If the abrupt change of topic was jarring, Bobby didn't let it show. He didn't know John's final words, but he could hazard a guess and it made his stomach twist and his chest ache. "Something to do with saving or killing those kids?"

"Yeah," Dean whispered as he moved over to the car. He settled his chest against the back door, covering the evidence of his outrage. Bowing his head until the cold metal of the car roof met his forehead, he confessed, "Sam. His own son."

The old man beside him sucked air through his teeth in a sharp inhale of shock and, worse, pain. It wasn't that that the news was all that surprising given the conversation that had gone down in the house, but it still hurt to think John Winchester could want Sammy dead. Worse, that he asked Dean to do it.

Bobby had always watched John Winchester with an air of distaste and regret when it came to how he raised his boys. The older hunter had tried to be a force of good in their life, a pillar of support and love, in comparison to the military expectations of their demanding father. Even given John's harshness with his boys and his cold distance in raising them, Bobby would never have thought the man could kill one of his boys. Or expect his sons to kill each other. It was wrong on so many levels, and Bobby was beginning to see the edges of this cold, hard Dean in a new light.

He swallowed harshly at the thought that filtered through his mind, guilt immediately flooding him afterward for even thinking it.

'Did you?'

The old man bit his tongue and didn't dare ask. Not only for the damage it would do to Dean, but because he damn well knew Sam lived another ten years, long enough to die in a graveyard fighting God's sister.

How could he even think such a thing? Damn, he was no better than that bastard currently holed up in his house.

"Just the fact that he'd ask me to do that." Dean mumbled the words against the roof of the car when Bobby failed to say anything in response. Silence always had been one of his biggest weaknesses. "That he even thought I could… What- What kind of dad asks his kid to do that?"

Bobby could hear the thickness in the kid's words well enough to know there were tears painting the top of the junker right now. He didn't mention it, just crossed his arms and tilted his head back to stare at the stars.

"Not a very good one," was his gruff reply. He didn't bother hiding his own anger and self-loathing in the statement. "Dean, I know you love him. Realizing your parents got faults – hell, even the good ones – it ain't easy."

And yeah, he was so not thinking of his own drunken bastard of an old man right now.

"But…Family don't end with blood, boy. You got…You boys got more than one daddy. You should know that."

The words trailed off quietly at the end, as if this staunch, grumpy man was almost embarrassed to mutter them. Dean lifted his head off the rusted roof of the car to stare at the hunter that would always be more of a father to him than John Winchester ever would.

He didn't stop to think, knowing he might back out if his brain was given time to admit just how sentimental and touchy this exchange was getting. Instead, he reached out and took what he so desperately needed, pulling Bobby into a crushing hug. He held on far longer than two men hugging ever should, but for one of the few times in his life, he told that voice in his head to shut it and he didn't let go.

When they finally pulled apart, Bobby quirked an eyebrow. Dean sniffed, in a very manly fashion of course, and wiped at his face with his good arm, careful to avoid the sluggishly bleeding cuts across his knuckles.

Bobby, eyebrow still raised, cracked a half smile. "That enough man talk for one evening?"

"God, yes." Dean laughed as he finished making himself semi presentable and the older hunter stood awkwardly by, pretending his boy wasn't falling apart and pulling himself back together. "Thanks, Bobby."

"Anytime, ya idjit." The hunter turned his gaze towards the house, which seemed quiet and almost peaceful in the night, with yellow light filtering out through several windows. "You should tell Sam."

Dean immediately cast a weary look his way.

"You should tell the kid all of it, if ya ask me." Bobby gave a pointed look of his own, knowing Dean was unlikely to follow that advice, even given freely. "But if nothin' else, you should tell him about yer dad."

Green eyes darted away, flickering to the lit windows of the kitchen. Bobby was right. Dean knew he was. With how things were going this time around, he doubted they'd be able to save John Winchester. The man was hell bent as ever to throw himself on the grenade that was the yellow eyed demon.

Even if they managed to avoid all of it – if they kept the Colt away from John, and John away from Azazel. If they kept the demon from possessing their dad, from beating the crap out of Dean, from getting in that car without knowing the truck waiting to ram them off the road. Even if they avoided it all, Dean had a sick feeling in his stomach that it wouldn't be enough.

John was going to keep finding other grenades, it was only a matter of time.

"I don't know," he finally confessed.

"Sam's gonna figure it out, son." At the skewed look Dean sent his way, Bobby just shrugged. "He's not an idiot."

"Yeah, but time travel, Bobby?"

The old hunter shrugged again. Dean should know better than to underestimate his little brother. "I'm just saying. If he finds out after that you knew and didn't tell him…"

"I know," Dean immediately responded, eager to stop thinking about the entire train of thought. "I just…I don't know how much I can tell him."

"Why not all of it?"

The younger hunter just shook his head.

"This got something to do with that dream angel of yers telling you yer changing too much?"

"I don't know, Bobby!" Dean spun away from the house and his kid brother somewhere inside. "Cas wasn't exactly clear on that, you know."

And damn it, he didn't even know if it was Cas.

"What if I change too much?" He glanced back over almost hesitantly at Bobby, and once more the man could see just how lost Dean was in all of this. "What if he's right? If I change too much and the demons start noticing something's up, that I know what's going to happen…"

"Then they go left instead of right," Bobby finished quietly, realization forming more firmly now in the pit of his stomach. He tilted his head back up to the sky once more, ignoring the heavy sigh that settled in his chest like dread.

"Exactly. We lose the only advantage we have here."

Bobby did let that out that sigh, despite it. "Balls."

Dean huffed a laugh, but there wasn't much funny about the situation at all.

-o-o-o-

By the time Dean and Bobby returned to the house, the old hunter eventually grousing at Dean to suck it up and quit hiding out in the yard, John had retired to the couch in the darkened den and Sam was milling about in the room the boys shared upstairs.

The two brothers didn't say much once Dean joined him. Sam had questions but no idea how to frame them, and Dean just wanted to sleep and not think about the weight of the world for a couple of hours.

They turned in with nothing but a quick 'night' to each other.

-o-o-o-

He wasn't sure what woke him, he only knew that one moment he was peacefully asleep and the next he was up and aware that something wasn't right. Sam glanced to his brother's bed. Dean was still out, snoring lightly, good arm thrown over the side of the mattress and broken arm strapped to his chest.

Wetting the roof of his dry mouth, Sam rubbed the sleep from his eyes as he checked the room for whatever had woken him. He stood between the beds, bare feet on cold wood floors. The door to the hallway was partially cracked, but he couldn't remember what state it had been in before collapsing into bed several hours earlier. There weren't any sounds through the house to suggest what woke him up. Still, he knew better than to ignore his instinct. Pulling the hunting knife from under his pillow, he quietly slid out of their shared room and took to the stairs.

The answer came to him at the same time as his feet hit the landing, providing him a glimpse into the den. He'd probably never know if it was his brain or his eyes that supplied the information first, but he supposed it didn't matter. The reason he was awake in the middle of the night was staring him in the face, no longer a mystery.

The couch in Bobby's den was empty, the blanket tossed to the side and John's go bag missing from the floor beside it.

-o-o-o-

When Dean woke to his brother's voice, not urgent in the way that meant they were under attack in the middle of the night but still rushed and definitely angry, the older Winchester already knew. He sat upright as the words spilled out of Sam's mouth, but he already knew.

Dad was gone.

In a flurry of motion, Dean kicked off the sheets and blankets on his bed, moving over to the left of the door where they'd dropped their bags. He rifled through shirts and pants, throwing articles and weapons onto the bed. Sam watched him, knowing what he was looking for and fearing the same thing Dean did.

"It's not here," the older Winchester finally, stoically, reported. Sam closed his eyes. Dean let out a primal, frustrated scream, slamming his hands into the overturned duffle of clothes. "The bastard took the damn Colt!"

-o-o-o-

John Winchester drove sullenly away from the Singer house, fingers tight on the wheel of his truck. The roads were dark, the moon already set for the night and the stars flickering brightly in the velvet sky. There weren't a lot of street lights along the outskirts Bobby where lived. The yellow and white lines of the road were illuminated only by his passing headlights.

The hunter glanced to the passenger seat and the revolver sitting on the old leather.

He'd had to do it. It was the right call, even if stealing from his boys and leaving them in the middle of the night felt low, even for him. But he couldn't let his children get tangled up in this, especially not now. Not with the effects of blood starting to show in his youngest, and his oldest questioning his every command.

John didn't have the extra bandwidth to keep his boys safe, not this time. He needed every ounce of his focus on the demon and the hunt to come.

They wouldn't thank him for it – they never had – but he was going to keep his boys safe.