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Chapter Text

While Bobby and Cas dragged chairs in from the library and other places, Sam and Dean went to the kitchen to get snacks.

"What do you think it's going to show?" Dean asked while grabbing some cups from the cabinet.

Sam shrugged while getting drinks from the fridge. "I don't know. It could show everything."

Dean just nodded; that's what he was afraid of. They drew their attention back to gathering everything.

When they entered the Dean cave, everyone was seated, and the timer on the tv had 2 minutes left.

Cas helped hand out the drinks and snacks. When they finished, the three sat down in time for the 'show' to begin as the screen went black.

A house appeared on screen, one that many people in the room recognized. At the bottom of the screen appeared the date, 'Lawrence, Kansas, 22 years ago.'

"No," Dean whispered. It couldn't be this night. Why did it have to be this night?

Cas, sensing his unease, grabbed Dean's hand and gave it a tight squeeze.

Sam leaned forward; he was intrigued. He'd heard about this night a lot from his brother, his dad, and Bobby, but to actually  see  it was something else entirely.

The camera followed Mary as she walked into a dark room carrying 4-year-old Dean. "Come on, let's say good night to your brother." She flicked on the light switch revealing the room to be baby Sam's nursery.

"Aww, you guys were so cute as little kids!" Charlie exclaimed, wrapping her arms around Sam's left bicep, seeing as he was the closest to her.

Dean's blush at Charlie's proclamation deepened when Cas leaned over to whisper "you're still super cute."

Mary set Dean down on the ground so he could climb onto the crib. The boy leaned over and placed a small kiss on Sammy's head. "'Night, Sam."

"My God, my voice was so high."

"Most 4-year-old boy's voices are, Dean," Jody explained with a small smirk. It was weird but nice seeing her boys so carefree and happy. It didn't happen all that often.

Mary also leaned over and placed a kiss on Sam's head. "Goodnight, love."

"Hey, Dean," a voice called out from behind the small family. The camera turned to show a young John Winchester standing in the doorway.

"Daddy!" Dean yelled, hopping off the crib and running toward his father.

"Hey, buddy," John smiled as he scooped his eldest into his arms.

It was odd to see John with a smile on his face. Sam couldn't ever remember a time when John smiled at one of them.

He felt a pang of jealousy knowing that he'd been cheated out of his father's smile.

"So what do you think? You think Sammy's ready to toss around a football yet?" John asked."

Dean shook his head, laughing, "no, Daddy." 

John shook his head, agreeing with his son.

Mary passed the two on her way out of the room, "you got him?"

John nodded, holding Dean closer to him. "I got him." John then walked up to Sam's crib. "Sweet dreams, Sam." John flicked off the lights as he and Dean left the room.

The camera then focused on Sam's baseball-themed mobile as it began to spin on its own. The camera then moved to the clock on the wall as it stopped and the nightlight flickered.

Dean tightened his grip on Cas's hand; he knew what was coming, and he really didn't want to see it, but he knew he had to. He couldn't make himself turn to look at his parents. If he had to guess, they were holding on to each other. 

The camera shows Mary asleep in bed, the baby monitor on the nightstand beside her flickering. Strange noises began to sound from the machine, stirring Mary from her sleep. 

"John?" Mary asked as she turned on the light on the nightstand. She turned over and noticed that she was in bed alone.

"Don't get out of bed, don't get out of bed," Dean repeated over and over, fully knowing that it wasn't going to change anything.

Mary made her way to Sam's nursery, stopping when she noticed a silhouetted figure standing before his crib. "Is he hungry?"

The man just turned around, "shh."

"All right." Mary turned to head further down the hallway. She stopped when she noticed the hallway light flickering. As she tapped it, the flickering stopped. 

Mary also noticed flickering emanating from downstairs. As she investigated, she was shocked to find John asleep in the armchair in front of the tv.

Gasps could be heard echoing around the room and people realized what was about to happen. 

Mary turned around and dashed back up the stairs and into the nursery. "Sammy! Sammy!" She froze as she entered the room.

Back downstairs, John was startled awake at the sound of Mary's scream.

Both Sam and Dean flinched at the sound of Mary's scream, but for different reasons; Sam because loud sounds trigger his PTSD and Dean because it hurt to relive his Mother's death, to hear the same scream he heard when he was 4-years-old and in the next room over. It had taken Dean years to get over the sound of Mary's screams. They'd haunted his mind day and night. 

"Mary!" John rushed into the room but came to a stop when he realized nothing was wrong. When he noticed Sam was awake in his crib, John walked over. "Hey, Sammy. You ok?"

Suddenly, something dark dripped onto Sam's pillow beside his head. Confused, John dabbed the drop with his fingers. Two more landed on the back of his hand. They looked like blood. When John looked up, he collapsed to the ground.

Mary was sprawled across the ceiling, the stomach of her nightgown red with blood, staring at John and struggling to breathe.

"No! Mary!"

Mary burst into flames, the fire spreading across the ceiling with the flames licking the walls. 

Dean leaned over and buried his face into Cas's shoulder, not caring who saw. Cas hooked one arm around Dean's shoulder and placed his free hand on the back of Dean's head, holding him close.

As Sam began to wail, John was reminded he wasn't alone and he scooped the baby up into his arms before running out of the room. 

Suddenly, little Dean came to investigate the sounds. "Daddy!"

John turned to look at his eldest son, shoving Dean into his arms. "Take your brother outside as fast as you can and don't look back! Now, Dean, go!" Dean turned and ran while John turned to look back to the nursery. "Mary! No!" 

Mary at that point had been completely swallowed by the flames, barely able to be seen.

The camera changed to show Dean running outside with little Sam in his arms. John rushed into the scene, scooping both his boys into his arms, and kept running. "I gotcha." 

Fire exploded out of Sammy's nursery window.

When the fire consumed the house, Dean flinched, hard. Cas just tightened his grip. Dean hid it well, but Sam and Cas knew of his deep-seated fear of fire. During a salt and burn, Dean would try his best to not look at the fire; and when he would grill, he would stand as far away as he could while still being able to reach it easily. It was something they both tried to help him overcome, and they'd made some progress, but it was something he still struggled with.

As firefighters tried to stop the fire, the camera showed John sitting on the hood of his car, Sam in his lap while Dean sits on the Impala beside him. 

The screen went black for a second before the words 'Stanford University, Present day' appeared on screen. The date, October 31, 2005, followed.

"Not so present," Crowley stated, causing Rowena to smack him in the arm.

Dean, who was much calmer at that point, let out a small chuckle.

Crowley gave a quick smile to his mother, proud of cheering up his best friend at least a little bit.

Somebody's bedroom is shown with no one on the screen.

"Sam!" A lady yelled from the other room. She walked in wearing a sexy nurse costume while adjusting her hat. The dresser she's standing beside holds a framed picture of Mary and John, the same one on Mary's nightstand.

"Get a move on, would you?" She asked. "We were supposed to be there fifteen minutes ago."

"Sam, being late? I never thought the day would come," Charlie pretended to faint into Sam's arms, who was rolling his eyes with a smile on his face.

"Yeah, yeah, laugh it up," Sam said, sitting Charlie upright in her spot. "I didn't like Halloween all that much. Still don't like it that much." At that, Sam's eyes darkened, probably remembering what happened a few days later.

"C'mon, you used to love Halloween as a kid. All the different costumes I had to make for you." Dean mentioned.

"Well, yeah, that was before my life became a horror movie."

Dean went quiet. He still regretted having to tell Sam about what their Dad did, what Dean ended up doing.

Sam, practically hearing Dean's thoughts, grabbed Dean's hand. "I don't blame you. I would've found out eventually. As much as you wanted me to, I wasn't going to stay an innocent little kid forever."

Dean, not knowing what else to say, just nodded. "Yeah, I know."

The lady walked off, shouting Sam's name.

The tall and lanky form of Sam peeked around the corner. His shaggy hair was in his eyes, and he was clean-shaven. He was also wearing three shirts and jeans, definitely not a costume.

"Nice costume, Moose. Are you a homeless person?" Crowley quipped.

Sam just responded by rolling his eyes. As much as they hated to admit it, Crowley had become just as much family as Charlie and Kevin had, maybe even more. Despite their rough start and the many betrayals through the years, Crowley had almost always come through for them in the end, establishing a spot in their dysfunctional family. 

"Do I have to?" Sam asked.

"Yes! It'll be fun." Jess frowned when she saw Sam not wearing a costume. "And where's your costume?"

Sam just ducked his head and laughed. "You know how I feel about Halloween."

The scene switches to a bar decorated for Halloween. Everyone's spread out wearing different costumes.

Jess raised a glass as their friend Luis, who dressed as a ghoul, came up to the table Sam and Jess were sitting. Sam hadn't changed.

"So here's to Sam and his awesome LSAT victory," Jess announced.

"All right, all right, it's not that big a deal," Sam mumbled loud enough for them all to hear as they all clinked their glasses.

"Yeah, he acts all humble. But he scored a 174," Jess said.

Luis looked at Jess, "Is that good?"

Jess nodded, taking a sip of her drink, "scary good."

"Holy shit," Jody whispered.

"Would you look at that, my baby brother's a genius," Dean announced, a wide smile splitting his face.

"Ooh, what if there was a lore-based ACT? Imagine the scores you two would get compared to other hunters," Charlie effused, turning to talk to Kevin about creating one to share with the Hunter network.

"Both of your scores would be off the charts," Bobby chimed in, smiling when Dean blushed and ducked his head. 

"It wouldn't be fair to any other hunter except Bobby and Jody."

One look at Sam and Dean could tell the cogs were spinning. "Maybe not, but that would give us a general idea as to what the average hunter knows, then allow us to teach them. We could be way more efficient this way."

While the group was talking about the Hunter test, John and Mary were watching from the outside. Both of them had been dead longer than anyone else in the room. Neither of them knew how to feel about the little family their sons had built for themselves. John was especially not happy at how close Dean and the angel seemed to be, but he couldn't do anything with everyone else there.

Mary, on the other hand, was sad. She had missed most of her boys' lives, and seeing her boys in the hunting life hurt. That was exactly what she was trying to avoid. She was scared to see how their lives had turned out.

"So there you go. You are a first-round draft pick. You can go to any law school you want!" Luis said, sitting down next to Sam.

"Actually, I got an interview here. Monday. If it goes okay I think I got a shot at a full ride next year."

"Way to go, son!" Bobby cheered. 

Sam blushed and ducked his head as Dean patted his back. 

Mary smacked John in the arm when she saw John's glare. John had spent many hours telling Bobby that those boys weren't his son's, they were his.

"Hey, it's gonna go great," Jess said.

"It better," Sam mumbled.

"How does it feel to be the golden boy of your family?" Luis asked. 

"Ah, they don't know."

"Oh, no, I would be gloating! Why not?"

Sam let out a small laugh. "Because we're not exactly the Brady's."

"And I'm not exactly the Huxtables. More shots?"

"Yeah, well the Huxtables weren't exactly the Huxtables," Dean mumbled as he ducked his head. He missed the way that Cas and Sam looked at each other over his head.

"I'm sorry," Sam whispered in his ear, but Dean just shook his head.

"It's fine." Sam gave him a look, not quite believing that, but let it go anyway.

"No," Sam and Jess spoke at the same time.

Luis just shrugged and went up to the bar anyway.

Jess turned to look at Sam. "No, seriously. I'm proud of you. And you're gonna knock 'em dead on Monday, and you're gonna get that full ride. I know it. "

"What would I do without you?" Sam asked with pure and unadulterated love in his eyes.

Jess shrugged. "Crash and burn," she smiled as she pulled him in for a kiss.

Sam blushed as a couple of people (namely Dean and Charlie) gave loud wolf whistles.

"That's my boy!" Dean shouted as he threw his arm around his little brother's shoulders.

"Shut up, Jerk," Sam smirked as he lightly shoved his older brother off of him.

"Bitch," Dean smirked back.

Unbeknownst to them, Cas and Bobby were pretending to ignore the looks John and Mary were throwing at their sons. Especially the glare from John toward Cas and Dean.

They were back at Sam and Jess's apartment, both of them asleep back to back in bed.

Sam opened his eyes when he heard the sound of a window opening come from somewhere within the apartment. He got out of bed and made his way toward where the sound came from, the living room.

The living room window was open, which had been closed before he and Jess went to bed.

Sam heard the footsteps before he saw the shadow creep past the beaded curtain at the end of the hall. 

When the man entered the room, Sam lunged forward and grabbed the man at the shoulder. The man knocked Sam's arm away and aimed a strike at him, but he ducked. The man grabbed Sam's arm, swung him around, and shoved him back. Sam kicked and was blocked, then pushed back into another room. The man elbowed Sam in the face; Sam kicked at his head. The man ducked and swung and Sam blocked. The man knocked Sam down and pinned him to the floor, one hand at Sam's neck and the other holding Sam's wrist.

"Whoa, that was awesome! You gotta teach me that some time, Dean," Charlie begged. And well, Dean had never been able to say no to anyone's puppy-dog face.

"Fine," Dean relented.

"Yay!" Charlie got up from her seat and plopped herself down in Dean's lap, wrapping her arms around his neck. 

Dean rolled his eyes but buried a smile in the crook of her neck as he wrapped his arms around her waist. He knew what she was doing, but he didn't care. Charlie learned very early on that he was extremely touch-starved, that he craved even the most platonic physical affection. There were many times when Cas was out doing something for days or weeks at a time where Charlie would come by the Bunker, and they'd cuddle (platonically, of course) and watch movies all day long.

She knew the beginning of this episode was rough for him, so she was comforting him in one of the most effective ways she knew: physical touch, a reminder that everything was fine, and that nothing would go wrong.

Besides Cas, Charlie was the only one that knew that he was touch-starved. He was afraid of what Bobby would think of him (even though he knew logically that there was no way in Hell Bobby would ever judge him for it), and he had to stay strong for Sammy. Nothing came before him, not even his own trauma.

"Whoa, easy there tiger," the man said, a smile on his face.

Sam let out a hard breath. "Dean?"

Dean just laughed.

"You scared the crap out of me!"

"That's 'cause you're out of practice."

Sam then proceeded to grab Dean's hand and yanked him, slamming his heel into Dean's back and Dean to the floor.

"Or not."

Sam tapped Dean twice on the shoulder where he was holding him.

"Alright, get off of me," Dean said.

Sam rolled to his feet and pulled Dean up. "What the hell are you doing here?"

"Well, I was looking for a beer," Dean explained, placing his hands on Sam's shoulders, shaking once, then letting go. 

Sam didn't budge. "What the hell are you doing here?" he repeated.

"Ok. All right. We gotta talk."

"Uh, the phone?" Sam suggested.

"If I'd'a called, would you have picked up?" Dean asked instead.

Sam went to apologize again but was stopped by a hand in the air, the universal sign for 'shut up.'

Dean was right, though. At that time, Sam wanted nothing to do with his old life, including his older brother. Dean had called a few times a couple of weeks after Sam had left, but after a combination of Sam either ignoring him or answering as concisely as possible, Dean had stopped calling altogether. The last time he called was on Sam's birthday in his first year at Stanford.

Sam had later found out that John had left him soon after, and Dean's self-harm and suicidal tendencies had skyrocketed; he'd nearly lost his brother a multitude of times in the span of 3-years. And to think that no one would've even known until possibly months after still shook Sam to his core.

That must've been a living hell to his older brother; to think that the kid he'd raised, the one he sacrificed everything for daily, hated him, wanted nothing to do with him.

And Dean still, after all these years, would do anything and everything to make sure his brother was safe. Even sell his soul and suffer eternal damnation to save him.

His brother was a hero, and Dean was the only one that didn't believe it.

"With all the time you boys spend together, you'd think you've never spent a night away from the other," Jody said.

"Oh trust me, I'd go insane if I had to spend the rest of eternity with him and his rabbit food and his shaggy hair and puppy dog eyes," Dean exaggerated. 

Sam just rolled his eyes and smacked his brother in the arm. "Bitch."

"Jerk," Dean shot back, a shit-eating grin on his face.

Before Sam could answer, Jess walked in and turned on the light. She was wearing short shorts and a cropped Smurfs shirt; her favorite pj's.

"Sam?"

Both boys turned to look at her. 

"Jess. Hey. Dean, this is my girlfriend, Jessica," Sam introduced.

"Wait, your brother, Dean?" Jess asked, smiling as Sam nodded his head.

Dean grinned and moved closer. "Oh, I love the Smurfs. Ya know, I gotta tell ya. You're completely out of my brother's league."

As if just noticing what she was wearing, she looked down at her shirt. "Just let me put something on." She turned to go, but Dean's voice stopped her.

"No, no, no, I wouldn't dream of it. Seriously."

"There is something seriously wrong with you," Sam said, shaking his head at Dean.

His brother just smiled and tightened his grip on Charlie. "Don't you know it!"

On the other side of Dean, Cas grabbed Dean's hand that was resting on Charlie's legs. "And I love you for it," Cas kissed his knuckles.

Charlie giggled and Dean blushed and buried his face in her hair while Cas sat there with a self-satisfied smirk on his face. 

The angel turned around when he felt a heavy hand land on his shoulder. He found Bobby sitting there with a small smile on his face. Just past Bobby, however, sat John with a barely contained glare pointed right at him. Mary was too busy watching the screen to notice.

"Just ignore him," Bobby whispered in his ear.

"I intend to," Cas stated, then turned his attention back to the screen.

Dean went back over to Sam without taking his eyes off Jess. Sam watched him, his expression stony.

"Anyway, I gotta borrow your boyfriend here, talk about some private family business," Dean announced. "But, uh, nice meeting you."

"No." Sam went over to Jess and put an arm around her. "No, whatever you want to say, you can say it in front of her.

"Okay." Dean turned to look at them both straight on. "Um. Dad hasn't been home in a few days."

"So he's working overtime on a Miller Time shift. He'll stumble back in sooner or later," Sam dismissed. 

"And what's that supposed to mean?" John demanded, not liking the implications of that sentence.

Dean attempted to stop Sam from continuing, but it fell flat. 

"It means you spent more of our childhood at the bottom of a bottle than being our father."

John shot out of his seat, Sam quickly following. Charlie, Kevin, and Claire being the fastest in the group dashed to stand between the two.

"Get out of my way," John ground out.

"Not unless you swear not to start a fight," Kevin insisted.

When John reluctantly nodded a minute later, everyone sat back down in their rightful spots, meaning Charlie was no longer sitting in Dean's lap.

Dean ducked his head and looked back up. "Dad's on a hunting trip. And he hasn't been home in a few days.

Sam's expression didn't change while he took this in. Jess glanced up at him. "Jess, excuse us. We have to go outside."

The camera cut to Sam and Dean heading downstairs outside. Sam has put on jeans and a hoodie.

"I mean, come on. You can't just break in, middle of the night, and expect me to hit the road with you," Sam groused.

"You're not hearing me, Sammy. Dad's missing. I need you to help me find him."

"You remember the poltergeist in Amherst? Or the Devil's Gates in Clifton? He was missing then, too. He's always missing, and he's always fine."

"Wait, he didn't check in during a hunt?" Claire asked. 

Dean shook his head. "He'd do two or three hunts before coming to get us from whatever motel we were staying at."

Nearly everyone glared at John, but he wasn't paying attention. He was too busy glowering at Dean, who was watching the screen.

Dean stopped and turned around. Sam stopped too.

"Not for this long. Now are you gonna come with me or not?"

"I'm not."

"Why not?"

"I swore I was done hunting. For good," Sam explained.

"Come on. It wasn't easy, but it wasn't that bad," Dean said as he started downstairs again. 

Sam followed, "Yeah? When I told Dad I was scared of the thing in my closet, he gave me a .45."

"You did what?!" Mary bellowed, glaring at John.

John, for once in his life, looked afraid. "He needed to face his fear."

It was clear Mary wanted to say something else, but her anger was overwhelming. Instead, she just turned back to the tv.

Meanwhile, the teens (including Sam, Dean, and Charlie) were trying to stifle their laughter at John's fear.

Dean stopped at the door to the outside. "Well, what was he supposed to do?"

"He was supposed to go into your closet and show you there was nothing there," Kevin muttered under his breath, quiet enough that John didn't hear it.

Claire, however, wasn't as reserved as Kevin. "Man, I'm messed up, but even I know that's wrong."

That one hit Dean pretty hard, and Cas could tell. He turned back to see Jody smack Claire in the arm. Turning back to look at Dean, he found the hunter slouching a bit further down in his seat, though his face gave nothing away. Cas began to rub circles on the back of Dean's hand with his thumb. The angel found he was successful when he saw Dean gave a small smile his way.

"I was nine years old! He was supposed to say, don't be afraid of the dark," Sam snapped.

"Don't be afraid of the dark? Are you kidding me? Of course you should be afraid of the dark. You know what's out there."

Sam sighed. "Yeah, I know, but still. The way we grew up, after Mom was killed, and Dad's obsession to find the thing that killed her."

Dean turned to glance outside.

"But we still haven't found the damn thing. So we kill everything we  can  find."

"We save a lot of people doing it, too," Dean countered.

"Yeah, we do," Dean cheered, raising a hand for his little brother to high-five, which he did.

Sam paused. "You think Mom would have wanted this for us?"

"No, I didn't. I never wanted this for you boys," Mary lamented. "I tried so hard to make sure you didn't end up here."

Both brothers turned to look at their mom. It was still weird for both of them to have her back, but watching the show was giving them time to get used to it.

"We know, Mom," Sam said, quirking his lips into a quick smile before turning back around. 

Dean didn't know what to say, so he just gave a small smile before following his brother.

"Wait, what do you mean you didn't want them to end up here? You knew about the life?" John asked.

Mary gave John an incredulous look. "Did I know about the life? I grew up a hunter, and I managed to get out. I never wanted them to become hunters and I never told you because I thought it'd freak you out and I didn't want to risk you wanting to become a hunter, but I guess that didn't matter," she ranted. When she finished, she crossed her arms and fell back against her seat.

John widened his eyes and was in shock. Not only had his wife been a hunter, but she came from a family of hunters. He didn't know what to think and just stared at the screen.

Dean rolled his eyes and slammed the door open.

The camera then changed to show Sam and Dean walking down the stairs to the parking lot.

"The weapon training, and melting the silver into bullets? Man, Dean, we were raised like warriors," Sam continued.

They crossed the parking lot to the Impala, the same car the small family was sitting on after escaping the fire in the beginning.

"So what are you gonna do? You're just gonna live some normal, apple pie life? Is that it?" Dean scoffed.

"No. Not normal. Safe," Sam corrected.

"And that's why you ran away," Dean accused as he looked away.

Dean released his hold on Cas's hand to rest his elbow on his lap, placing his chin on his fist. He always hated thinking about that night; it was one of the worst of his life. The beating he'd received that night from John nearly rivaled Alistair's torture. Though Cas had originally erased all his scars after dragging his ass outta the pit, including his self-harm ones, he’d asked Cas to return them, and the angel obliged. Not only did he just like the look of them, but he liked the story they told, that he’d been through all this shit and survived. They were a part of him.

"I was just going to college. It was Dad who said if I was gonna go I should stay gone. And that's what I'm doing."

"You weren't supposed to listen," Dean whispered, though both Cas and Sam heard him anyway.

"Yeah, well, Dad's in real trouble right now. If he's not dead already. I can feel it."

Sam was silent.

"I can't do this alone."

"Yes you can," Sam retorted.

Dean looked down. "Yeah, well, I don't want to."

Sam sighed and looked down, thinking, then up.

"What was he hunting?" He asked.

Dean opened the trunk of the Impala, then the spare-tire compartment. It's their arsenal. He propped the compartment open with a shotgun and dug through the clutter.

"That's a lot of stuff," Kevin said.

"Yeah, that was before we knew about angels and demons. You should see it now," Dean bragged. He loved his car, sue him.

"All right, let's see, where the hell did I put that thing?"

"So when Dad left, why didn't you go with him?" Sam asked.

"I was working my own gig. This, uh, voodoo thing, down in New Orleans," Dean responded.

"Dad let you go on a hunting trip by yourself?" Sam was surprised.

Dean looked over at Sam. "I'm twenty-six, dude."

"Well, you look like a baby. So, therefore, you're a baby," Jody joked.

Sam broke out into laughter at Dean's slack-jawed expression. "Holy shit, Jody. That was good!"

"I'm not letting you off easy, mister. You're even younger, so you're more of a baby than he is," the Sheriff retorted.

Sam stopped laughing and glared at Jody while Dean stuck his tongue out at his little brother. When Sam saw, he jabbed his brother in the ribs. It escalated quickly into them rolling around on the floor wrestling.

Bobby leaned forward in his seat toward Cas. "Should we stop them?"

Cas smiled, then shook his head. "No. They need this."

Bobby nodded and sat back to enjoy the sight of his boys being boys for the first time in a long time.

When the brothers were finally done, they sat back down in their seats, thankfully without bruises, and the show continued.

Dean pulled some papers out of a folder. "All right, here we go. So Dad was checking out this two-lane blacktop just outside of Jericho, California. About a month ago, this guy."

Dean handed one of the papers to SAM.

"They found his car, but he vanished. Completely MIA," Dean finished. The paper was a printout of an article from the Jericho Herald, headlined "Centennial Highway Disappearance" and dated Sept. 19th 2005; it has a man's picture, captioned "Andrew Carey MISSING". 

Sam read it and glanced up. "So maybe he was kidnapped."

"Yeah. Well, here's another one in April." Dean tossed down another Jericho Herald  article for each date he mentioned.

"Another one in December 'oh-four, 'oh-three, 'ninety-eight, 'ninety-two, ten of them over the past twenty years."

Dean took the article back from Sam and picked up the rest of the stack, putting them back in the folder. "All men, all the same five-mile stretch of road." He pulled a bag out of another part of the arsenal. "It started happening more and more, so Dad went to go dig around. That was about three weeks ago. I hadn't heard from him since, which is bad enough."

Dean grabbed a handheld tape recorder. "Then I get this voicemail yesterday."

He pressed play. The recording was staticky and the signal was clearly breaking up. "Dean...something big is starting to happen...I need to try and figure out what's going on. It may... Be very careful, Dean. We're all in danger," John's voice rang through the phone.

"Well that's not ominous at all," Kevin muttered.

Dean pressed stop.

"You know there's EVP on that?" Sam asked.

"Not bad, Sammy. Kinda like riding a bike, isn't it?"

Sam shook his head.

"All right. I slowed the message down, I ran it through a gold wave, took out the hiss, and this is what I got," Dean explained. He pressed play again.

"I can never go home..." A woman's voice whispered through the phone.

Dean pressed stop on the recording once again.

"Creepy," Claire whispered.

"Never go home," Sam repeated.

Dean dropped the recorder and put down the shotgun, standing up straight and shut the trunk, leaning back on it.

"You know, in almost two years I've never bothered you, never asked you for a thing," Dean lamented.

"The only other time you've spent nearly that amount of time apart was when we were in Purgatory," Cas commented.

"You went to PURGATORY?!" John bellowed. 

"Yeah? But I didn't mean to, Cas and I just got caught in the blast of exploding dick," Dean snickered under his breath, trying to explain himself while also making it out to be less of a deal than it was. It worked, seeing as everyone who knew what happened began to chuckle.

Sam looked away and sighed, then looked back. "All right. I'll go. I'll help you find him."

Dean nodded, a small smile on his face.

"But I have to get back first thing Monday. Just wait here."

Sam turned to go back to the apartment. He turned back when Dean spoke.

"What's first thing Monday?"

"I have this...I have an interview," Sam explained.

"What, a job interview? Skip it."

"It's a law school interview, and it's my whole future on a plate."

"Law school?" Dean smirked.

"So we got a deal or not?"

Dean said nothing, just looked down at the ground.

"What school were you applying to?" Jody asked.

"I don't remember, it's been too long," Sam responded.

"Why is it hard to imagine Sam as a lawyer?" Kevin probed.

"Probably because he's been Hunting for so long. It's hard to imagine him doing anything else," Charlie explained.

"That's fair," Claire added.

"I'm right here, you know," Sam asserted with a small smile on his face.

"We know, we just don't care," Charlie slowly drawled out, trying to keep from laughing.

Sam just rolled his eyes and looked back at the screen.

Back in the apartment, Sam was packing a duffel bag. He pulled out a large hook-shaped knife and slid it inside. Jess came into the room.

"What the hell do you need that for?" Claire asked, having never seen a weapon like that before.

"It's good for hooking things and cutting through bone. I don't remember what it's called, but it was pretty useful," Sam explained.

"Man, I haven't seen that thing in years. I didn't even know you had it," Dean chuckled.

"Wait, you're taking off?" Jess asked. Sam paused his packing and looked up. "Is this about your dad? Is he all right?"

"Yeah. You know, just a little family drama," Sam said. He went over to the dresser and turned on the lamp atop it.

"Your brother said he was on some kind of hunting trip." Jess sat on the bed. 

Sam rummaged in one of the drawers and came out with a couple of shirts, which went in the duffel. "Oh, yeah, he's just deer hunting up at the cabin, he's probably got Jim, Jack, and José along with him. I'm just going to go bring him back."

Before John could start protesting, he froze when he saw everyone glaring at him. He didn’t want to fight right now, but he knew he wouldn’t be able to keep his mouth shut long.

"What about the interview?" Jess asked.

"I'll make the interview. This is only for a couple days," Sam said. He went around the bed. 

Jess got up and followed. "Sam, I mean, please." Sam stopped and turned. "Just stop for a second. You sure you're okay?"

Sam laughed a little. "I'm fine."

"It's just...you won't even talk about your family. And now you're taking off in the middle of the night to spend a weekend with them? And with Monday coming up, which is kind of a huge deal."

"Hey, who wouldn't leave in the middle of the night with me?" Dean asked, a smirk lighting up his face.

Sam leaned over toward his brother. "I will smack you."

Before Dean could say anything back, Cas leaned over on the other side of him. "Don't encourage him."

Dean placed a hand over his heart in mock hurt. "You wound me."

Cas rolled his eyes and placed a quick kiss on Dean's lips.

The hunter smiled, "all better."

The angel just patted his hand and looked back at the screen.

"Hey. Everything's going to be okay. I will be back in time, I promise." Sam kissed her on the cheek and left.

"At least tell me where you're going," Jess called as he disappeared.

"You didn't even tell her where she was going?" Jody asked, using her slightly disappointed 'mom' voice. Nearly everyone in the room knew it well.

Sam shrugged. "I didn't think it mattered."

The screen read "Jericho, California." 

Music was playing in the background as a young guy was driving down the highway, talking on his cell phone.

"Amy, I can't come over tonight. Because I've got work in the morning, that's why. ...Yeah, okay, I miss it and my dad's gonna have my ass."

Suddenly a high-pitched whine sound from nowhere. The guy looked over and saw a woman in a white dress on the side of the road. She was moving as though dancing; she flickered, and for a moment she was gone.

"Hey, ah, Amy, let me call you back?" The guy tried several times to turn off the radio, which was flickering. Nothing happened. He pulled up next to the lady, whose dress was torn in several places, and stopped, leaning across the shotgun seat.

"Car trouble or something?" He asked.

After a long pause, the woman spoke, "Take me home?"

"Just not gonna question her flickering in and out of existence? No, we just gonna ignore that?" 

"Kevin, you should know that when a guy sees a pretty woman, it doesn't matter if she's a ghost, a demon, whatever. As long as she's not trying to kill him, they don't care."

"And how would you know, Dean?" Cas drawled out, throwing a side glance Dean's way.

"Umm, because I'm a guy?" A minute of silence passed. "I love you," Dean tried.

"I know."

Charlie gasped from the other side of Sam. "Did you just Han Solo him?"

Dean chortled. "I guess he did."

"I actually understand that reference."

The woman's voice is the same one from John's voicemail. 

The guy opened the passenger door. "Sure, get in."

The woman, who was barefoot, climbed in and closed the door.

"So, where do you live?" The guy asked, trying to start up a conversation.

"At the end of Breckenridge Road," She told him.

He nodded. "You coming from a Halloween party or something?"

The lady's dress was very low-cut. The guy noticed, stared, and looked away, laughing nervously.

"You know, a girl like you really shouldn't be alone out here."

"Yeah, cause then she'd run into weirdos like you," Claire mumbled under her breath.

She looked at him mournfully, seductively, and pulled her skirt up over her thigh. "I'm with you."

"Ahh yes, because that explains everything."

He looked away. The woman took his chin and turned his face towards her.

"Do you think I'm pretty?"

He nodded, eyes stuck on her cleavage.

"Uh...huh."

"Real subtle there, buddy boy. You have a girlfriend."

"Will you come home with me?"

"Um. Hell yeah." He drove off.

They pulled up to an old abandoned house at the end of a road. The woman stared at it sadly.

"Yeah, this place doesn't really scream 'homely'."

"Come on. You don't live here."

"I can never go home."

"What are you talking about? Nobody even lives here. Where do you live?" He turned and noticed she was gone. He checked the back seat, also empty, and got out of the car, nervous.

"What the hell, man? Vanishing girl? Just get out of there," Dean called out, ignoring the fact that it was his past and the people on screen couldn't hear him.

"That's good. Joke's over, okay? You want me to leave?"

Troy looked around: no signs of life except crickets. He walked toward the house. "Hello? Hello?"

There was a picture of the Lady and two kids inside the house and it was covered in dust.

Troy peered through the hole in the screen door. A bird flew at his face, scaring him into falling over. He yelled, leaped to his feet, and ran back to the car. He got in and drove off.

"There's no way that's the end of that."

Somewhere on Centennial Highway, Troy looked behind him. No one was there; then he checked in the rearview mirror. The woman was in the back seat. Troy yelled again and drove straight through a "Bridge Closed" sign, stopping about halfway across the bridge. He screamed, and blood spattered the windows.

"What did she even do to him?" Claire asked.

"I have no clue," Jody told her.

It's November 1, 2005. The Impala is parked in front of a pump at a gas station. "Ramblin' Man" by the Allman Brothers was playing in the background.

Dean came out of the store, his arms loaded up with junk food.

"Dean, how you're still alive from all that junk food is a miracle," Jody said with a smile on her face.

"Technically, I didn't even make it to 30," Dean corrected without thinking. When it hit him what he said, he looked around the room and saw various degrees of shock, confusion, and grief. He wasn't surprised when he turned to his boyfriend and found a small smile on his face.

"Fuck," he whispered. "I'm sorry."

Cas just grabbed his hand and squeezed.

"At least none of your 100+ deaths were due to your eating habits," Kevin noted. 

"Well, I did die of a taco once."

Sam covered half his face and leaned back in his seat, loudly groaning. He smiled when he peaked between his fingers and saw Dean giggling and Cas smiling down at him.

Sam was sitting shotgun with the door open, rifling through a box of Dean's tapes.

"Hey!" Dean shouted. Sam leaned out the door and looked at him. "You want breakfast?

"No, thanks," Sam called out, turning back to look through the box. "So how'd you pay for that stuff? You and Dad still running credit card scams?"

"Could you have said that any louder?" Claire asked.

"Yeah, well, hunting ain't exactly a pro ball career," Dean said as he put the nozzle back on the pump. "Besides, all we do is apply. It's not our fault they send us the cards."

"Yeah? And what names did you write on the application this time?" Sam asked as he swung his legs back inside the car and closed the door.

"Uh, Burt Aframian." Dean got into the driver's seat and put his soda and chips down. "And his son Hector. Scored two cards out of the deal," he said as closed the door.

"That sounds about right. I swear, man, you've gotta update your cassette tape collection," Sam said as he threw a tape back in the box on his lap. It was filled with at least a dozen cassettes; some had album art while others had hand-labeled.

"Why?

"Well, for one, they're cassette tapes. And two," Sam held up a tape for every band he named, "Black Sabbath? Motorhead? Metallica?"

Dean grabbed the Metallic tape from his brother's hand and took off its case.

"It's the greatest hits of mullet rock," Sam told him.

"They're the greatest hits of rock," Dean corrected.

Mary smiled at the thought of her eldest son listening to all the songs she and John used to dance to. Actually, the more she thought about it, she was pretty sure he was also wearing John's leather jacket, too. And driving Baby, which was also considered John's car. As she looked over at her husband, she wondered just how her boys had been raised, and why Dean was practically copying his father.

"Well, house rules, Sammy," Dean started as he popped the tape in the cassette deck, "driver picks the music, shotgun shuts his cakehole." Dean dropped the Metallica case back in the box of tapes and started the engine.

"You know, Sammy is a chubby twelve-year-old."

"You will always be Sammy to me," Dean chortled with a smirk.

"Does that mean I'll always be a chubby twelve-year-old to you or just a child in general?"

Just to mess with him, Dean said "both" and winked. He laughed at his brother's glare. Then he gripped his arm where Sam slugged him.

"You suck."

Dean just threw his arm around his little brother's shoulders and Sam rested his head back on his older brother's left shoulder. "You'll always be my little kid to me." 

Everyone ignored the fact that Dean called Sam his kid, everyone except John and Mary. They both looked over at them in confusion and shock. What the hell?

John had to keep himself from saying anything. Since when was Sam Dean's son? It's not like Dean raised the kid. He would've said something, but he knew that he would've been shut down by Bobby and maybe the cop.

While that was going through John's head, Mary was thinking about what else could've happened to make Dean call Sam his son. She was beginning to see a pattern, and it didn't sit well with her.

"Back in Black" by AC/DC began to play.

"It's Sam, okay?"

Dean cupped a hand around his ear and leaned closer to his brother. "Sorry, I can't hear you, the music's too loud."

Sam rolled his eyes as Dean drove off.

On the highway, they drove past a sign that said "JERICHO 7".

Talking on the phone, Sam said "thank you" before closing it.

"All right. So, there's no one matching Dad at the hospital or morgue. So that's something, I guess."

Dean glanced over at Sam, then back at the road. On the bridge ahead of them, there were two police cars and several officers.

"Check it out," Dean said.

Sam leaned forward for a closer look.

Dean pulled over. Both brothers stared at all the officers for a minute before Dean cut the engine. Dean leaned across Sam and opened the glove compartment, pulling out a box full of ID cards with his and JOHN's faces: visible ones include FBI and DEA. He picked one out and grinned at Sam, who stared at him.

"Holy shit, look at that one badge! You had long hair, Dean?!" Charlie asked, pointing to one of the badges where Dean indeed had hair as long as Sam's.

Sam, Charlie, Claire, Kevin, Jody, and even Bobby began to laugh.

"Ha-ha, very fun. Yes I had long hair. The chicks dug it," Dean boasted, a smug smile on his face.

Sam looked at Dean with one of the most 'that's bullshit' faces he'd had in a while. "Oh yeah, how many dates did you get during that time?"

Dean opened his mouth to answer but paused, then after a few seconds, looked up to think. When he didn't answer, Sam began to laugh again.

That snapped him out of his trance and he jabbed Sam in the ribs. "Shut up, bitch."

"Jerk."

Cas smiled at seeing the two brothers getting along. After everything with the Mark and Dean being a demon, they'd kind of drifted apart. It was nice to see them just being themselves, even if they were acting like toddlers. 

"Let's go," Dean said as he got out of the car.

On the bridge, the lead deputy, Deputy Jaffe, leaned over the railing to yell down to two men in wetsuits who were poking around the river.

"You guys find anything?"

"No! Nothing!" One of them called back up.

Jaffe turned back to the car in the middle of the bridge. It turned out to be Troy's from the night before, all the blood gone from the windows. Another deputy, Deputy Hein, was at the driver's side looking around inside the car.

"No sign of struggle, no footprints, no fingerprints. Spotless. It's almost too clean," Hein announced.

Sam and Dean walked into the crime scene like they belonged there, which in a way, they did.

"So, this kid Troy. He's dating your daughter, isn't he?" Jaffe asked.

"Yeah."

"How's Amy doing?"

"She's putting up missing posters downtown."

"You fellas had another one like this just last month, didn't you?" Dean asked once they finally reached the car.

Jaffe looked up when Dean started talking and straightened up to talk to him. "And who are you?"

Dean flashed his badge. "Federal marshals."

"You two are a little young for marshals, aren't you?"

"Both of you break the regulations for most of the agencies you pretend to be from," Jody whispered, Claire giving her a weird look.

Dean laughed. "Thanks, that's awfully kind of you." He headed over to the car. "You did have another one just like this, correct?"

"Yeah, that's right. About a mile up the road. There've been others before that," Jaffe explained.

"So, this victim, you knew him?" Sam asked.

The deputy nodded. "Town like this, everybody knows everybody."

Dean circled the car, looking around, "any connection between the victims, besides that they're all men?"

"No. Not so far as we can tell."

"So what's the theory?" Sam questioned as he made his way over to Dean.

"Honestly, we don't know. Serial murder? Kidnapping ring?"

"Really? Kidnapping ring? That's the best they could do?" Jody scoffed. She'd had conversations with officers who came up with ridiculous stories for cases that they were stuck on.

"Well, that is exactly the kind of crack police work I'd expect out of you guys," Dean said, letting out a small grunt as Sam stomped on Dean's foot.

"Thank you for your time." Sam started to walk away and Dean followed. "Gentlemen."

Jaffe watched them go. 

When they were out of earshot, Dean smacked Sam on the back of the head.

Multiple people had to cover their mouths to keep from laughing.

"Ow! What was that for?" Sam yelped as he cupped the back of his head.

"Why'd you have to step on my foot?"

"Why do you have to talk to the police like that?"

Dean looked at Sam and moved to stand in front of him, forcing Sam to stop in his place. "Come on. They don't really know what's going on. We're all alone on this. I mean, if we're going to find Dad we've got to get to the bottom of this thing ourselves."

Sam cleared his throat and looked over Dean's shoulder. Said brother turned around to see Sheriff Pierce and two FBI agents.

"Can I help you boys?" The sheriff asked.

"No, sir, we were just leaving," Dean said.

As the FBI agents walked past Dean, he nodded at each of them. "Agent Mulder. Agent Scully."

"You really can't keep your mouth shut, can you boy?"

"You know me, Bobby gotta say what's on my mind or I'll explode."

"Yes I do. I know that all too well."

John furrowed his eyebrows at that. He hadn't known that at all. When the boys were younger, Sam was the one who was constantly talking. Now that he thought back on it, John couldn't remember Dean talking much when he was younger, only to Sam.

What else didn't he know about his boys?

The sheriff turned to watch the two boys as they walked past him.

Back in town, the marquee on the Highland Movie Theater reads:

EMERGENCY TOWN HALL MEETING|SUNDAY 8 PM|BE SAFE OUT THERE

A young woman was tacking up posters with the victim's face and the caption "MISSING TROY SQUIRE". Dean and Sam approached.

"I'll bet you that's her," Dean noted.

"Yeah."

The two brothers walked up to the lady.

"You must be Amy," Dean started.

"Yeah," she confirmed.

"Yeah, Troy told us about you. We're his uncles. I'm Dean, this is Sammy," the oldest brother explained.

"He never mentioned you to me," Amy said walked away.

"How the hell do you guys get away with some of the covers you pull?"

"If you're confident enough, you can get away with anything."

Sam and Dean followed after her.

"Well, that's Troy, I guess. We're not around much, we're up in Modesto," Dean agreed.

"So, we're looking for him too, and we're kinda asking around."

Another lady came up to Amy and put a hand on her arm. "Hey, are you okay?"

"Yeah."

"You mind if we ask you a couple questions?" Sam asked.

Another poster that said MISSING TROY SQUIRE flapped in the breeze.

The four of them are sitting in a booth in a diner, Sam and Dean sitting opposite Amy and her friend.

"I was on the phone with Troy. He was driving home. He said he would call me right back, and...he never did."

"He didn't say anything strange, or out of the ordinary?" Sam suggested.

Amy shook her head. "No. Nothing I can remember."

"I like your necklace," Sam pointed out.

"That came out of nowhere."

Amy held the pendant she was wearing, a pentagram in a circle, and looked down at it. "Troy gave it to me. Mostly to scare my parents—"Amy laughed, "—with all that devil stuff."

Sam laughed a little and looked down, then up. Dean looked over at him.

"Actually, it means just the opposite. A pentagram is protection against evil. Really powerful. I mean, if you believe in that kind of thing," Sam corrected.

"Okay. Thank you, Unsolved Mysteries," Dean added as he took his arm off the back of Sam's seat and leaned forward. "Here's the deal, ladies. The way Troy disappeared, something's not right. So if you've heard anything..."

Amy and her friend looked at each other.

"What is it?" Dean asked.

"Well, it's just... I mean, with all these guys going missing, people talk," the friend remarked.

"What do they talk about?" The boys asked at the same time.

"God, it's always so creepy when you guys do that," Kevin said.

Taking a quick glance at each other, they looked back at Kevin, "do what?"

"GAHH!"

"It's kind of this local legend. This one girl? She got murdered out on Centennial, like decades ago."

Dean looked at Sam, who watched the friend attentively, nodding.

"Well, supposedly she's still out there."

Sam nodded.

"She hitchhikes, and whoever picks her up? Well, they disappear forever."

Sam and Dean looked at each other, thinking the same thing.

"Kinda sounds like a vengeful spirit to me," Bobby observed.

"That's what I was thinking. But what would she be attatched to?" Jody added.

"There's probably like a piece of hair or a speck of blood still on the bridge," Claire replied.

In the library, a web browser was open to the archive search page for the Jericho Herald. The words "Female Murder Hitchhiking" were typed into the search box. Dean clicked GO; the screen saying there was "(0) Result". Dean replaces "Hitchhiking" with "Centennial Highway" and got the same response. Sam was sitting next to him, watching.

"Let me try."

Dean smacked Sam's hand. "I got it."

Sam shoved Dean's chair out of the way and took over.

"Dude!" Dean barked as he hit Sam in the shoulder. "You're such a control freak."

"Dude, have you met yourself? I'm not even allowed to touch the Impala's trunk unless we're on a hunt," Sam called out in disbelief.

"Well, in case you haven't noticed, I'm the only one keeping this place running. I do the laundry, I cook the meals when we have time, I do the dishes," Dean shot back.

"And I'm grateful for that. I'd definitely be dead without you. I'm just saying that you can't get off calling me a control freak."

"Damn, Dean, you sound like a housewife," Claire giggled, Charlie and Kevin beginning to laugh with her when Dean glared back at her. 

"Well, you should see the amount of control I have in the bed," Dean said, throwing in a wink to try and gain back some of his bad-boy reputation.

"Dean Winchester!" Jody and Bobby yelled back at him. He flinched, immediately regretting what he'd said the second it came out of his mouth, but he was too proud to take it back.

Sadly, Cas loved making fun of him when he saw the chance. "What are you talking about, Dean? I seem to remember you being a bottom last I checked."

Sam broke out into a coughing fit while then teens began laughing. Dean's eyes widened as his face burned a bright, bright red. "Dude! What the fuck?!"

"That's not surprising at all, really," Crowley noted. His mother giggled beside him while Dean glared, before looking back at his angel.

Cas just looked at him with what Dean called his "dom eyebrow" (not that he'd ever tell him that). 

"Ok, boys, knock it off. We don't need to know all the kinky shit you guys do in bed," Jody announced, trying to get everyone to stop talking and get back to the show. Bobby sighed, knowing that she just made it worse.

"JODY!!" The brothers yelled out, both incredibly embarrassed. The teens just laughed even harder with Claire falling out of her chair.

"No, no, continue. I'm sure the angel would love to talk about how he-"

"Ok!" Dean cut the witch off. He crossed his arms across his chest and leaned back in his seat, pulling his legs up to his chest to rest on the seat. "I hate all of you."

Cas rested his hand on Dean's knees. "No you don't."

Dean didn't say anything, just glared at him for a second before glancing back at the screen.

"So angry spirits are born out of violent death, right?" Sam suggested.

"Yeah."

"Well, maybe it's not murder."

Sam replaced "Murder" with "Suicide" and found an article entitled "Suicide on Centennial". Dean glanced at Sam as he opened the article, dated April 25, 1981.

"This was 1981. Constance Welch, twenty-four years old, jumps off Sylvania Bridge, drowns in the river," Sam explained

There was a picture of Constance; it was the woman who killed Troy.

"Does it say why she did it?"

"Yeah."

"What?"

"An hour before they found her, she calls 911. Apparently her two little kids are in the bathtub. She leaves them alone for a minute, and when she comes back, they aren't breathing. Both die."

At that point, everyone had finally calmed down and was paying attention.

Both Jody and Dean knew what it felt like to lose a child (even if Dean's situations weren't conventional); Dean subconsciously gripped Sam's hand and Jody did the same with Claire.

Dean raised an eyebrow in disbelief. "Hm."

The article had a picture of Joseph, Constance's husband, next to a picture of Sylvania Bridge; it was the place Troy died.

"'Our babies were gone, and Constance just couldn't bear it,' said husband Joseph Welch," Sam read from the article.

"The bridge look familiar to you?"

Sam and Dean walked along the bridge at night, then stopped to lean on the railing and looked down at the river.

"So this is where Constance took the swan dive," Dean noted.

"Tact, Dean, tact."

"What?"

"So you think Dad would have been here?" Sam asked as he looked over at Dean.

"Well, he's chasing the same story and we're chasing him." Dean continued walking and Sam followed.

"Okay, so now what?"

"Now we keep digging until we find him. Might take a while."

Sam stopped, "Dean, I told you, I've gotta get back by Monday—"

Dean turned around, "Monday. Right. The interview."

"Yeah."

"Yeah, I forgot. You're really serious about this, aren't you? You think you're just going to become some lawyer? Marry your girl?"

"Maybe. Why not?"

"Does Jessica know the truth about you? I mean, does she know about the things you've done?"

Sam stepped closer. "No, and she's not ever going to know."

"Well, that's healthy. You can pretend all you want, Sammy. But sooner or later you're going to have to face up to who you really are."

"Sam," Bobby began.

"I know, I know. I loved her and I just wanted to do whatever it took to keep her out of the life. I knew that if I told her, she'd either leave me or she'd want to be a hunter. I couldn't stand the thought."

No one bothered saying anything, knowing he was probably right. He did know Jess the best after all.

Dean turned around and kept walking. Sam began to follow.

"And who's that?"

"You're one of us."

"That makes us sound like a cult," Charlie said.

"I mean, we kinda are," Kevin, Sam, Claire, and Dean all said at once.

"Holy shit," Jody whispered to herself.

Mary and John didn't know what to think. They'd both died over a decade ago (Mary over 2 decades), they didn't know how kids think, let alone how to feel over the fact that their 30+ kids get along with them so well.

Sam hurried to get in front of Dean. "No. I'm not like you. This is not going to be my life."

"You have a responsibility to—"

"To Dad? And his crusade? If it weren't for pictures I wouldn't even know what Mom looks like. And what difference would it make? Even if we do find the thing that killed her, Mom's gone. And she isn't coming back."

Dean grabbed Sam by the collar and shoved him up against the railing of the bridge. "Don't talk about her like that!"

"I'm sorry, Sam."

Sam scoffed. "Dude, that was literally over a decade ago. I don't care anymore."

"Still, I-"

Sam shut him up by planting his hand over his big brother's mouth, quickly pulling it back and wiping it across Dean's jeans after he licked his hand.

"Eww, that's gross, man! C'mon!"

Dean just laughed. Though he quickly stopped when Cas pulled out the 'dom brow'.

Mary lightly smiled at seeing her boys getting along. She may not have known all that they went through, but she could tell that they hadn't had a lot of time to just be themselves. She partially blamed John for that.

Looking over at the said man, Mary could see him still trying to contain himself after the 'control freak' comment and the following conversation. Granted, she was also a tad uncomfortable hearing about her son's sex life, it was still nice to see him being happy. She could tell something had been weighing on him. She had no intention of finding out what it was; she was still thinking about her 4-year-old and 6-month-old waiting for her back in Heaven. She preferred sitting in the back and not saying anything.

Dean released Sam and walked away. He saw Constance standing at the edge of the bridge.

"Sam," Dean called out.

Sam came over to stand next to his older brother. Constance was looking over at them, then stepped forward off the edge. Sam and Dean ran to the railing and looked over.

"Where'd she go?"

"I don't know."

Behind them, the Impala's engine started and its headlights came on. Sam and Dean turned to look.

"C'mon, why her? What did she do?"

"What the—"

"Who's driving your car?"

Dean pulled the keys out of his pocket and jingled them. Sam glanced at them. The car jerked into motion, heading straight for them. They turned and ran.

"Dean? Go! Go!"

The car was moving faster than they were; when it got too close, Sam and Dean dove over the railing. The car came to a halt and shut off.

"How did you not die?" Kevin asked.

"Because we're awesome," Dean smiled, crossing his arms against his chest and leaning back in his seat. Cas smiled and patted his boyfriend's leg.

"I'm not sure awesome is the right word to describe you two, Squirrel."

Sam managed to catch the edge of the bridge and was hanging on. He pulled himself up onto the bridge and looked around for his brother.

"Dean? Dean!"

"Dean, tell me you didn't."

Dean just rubbed the back of his neck, then gripped Cas's hand.

Below, a filthy and annoyed Dean crawled out of the water and onto the mud, panting. "What?"

"Hey! Are you all right?"

Dean held up one hand in an A-OK sign. "I'm super."

Sam let out a relieved laugh and scooted away from the edge.

"Son, how were you not killed? Jumping off that bridge is literally what killed her, and you got off without a scratch. How?"

Again, Dean rubbed the back of his neck with the hand not clutching Cas's. The angel could feel the hunter's discomfort and tightened his grip.

"Umm, I may or may not have broken a rib or two from that fall."

"WHAT?!" Nearly everyone yelled out.

"Why didn't you tell me?" Sam fumed.

"Well, it was just my ribs, so there wasn't anything you could've done. I wrapped them after my shower, so I was fine."

"You need a new definition of 'fine', ol monons (my heart)."

John may not have understood what the abomination called his son, but he could tell it was a term of endearment.

Now back on the bridge, Dean shut the hood of his car and leaned back on it.

"Your car all right?"

"Yeah, whatever she did to it, seems all right now. That Constance chick, what a bitch!"

"No one messes with my Baby, no one!"

"Yeah, of course you'd say that."

"What's that supposed to mean?"

"You're a lot like your father in that way." Everyone turned to look at Mary.

"What do you mean?" Dean hesitantly asked. He tried not to look at John

"Well, I remember how protective over the Impala John used to be. If there was so much a scratch on her, he'd do a full-on inspection to make sure nothing else was wrong," Mary told, reminiscing about the times John and her would go out on the open road with the windows down.

"Yeah, that sounds like him," Sam said. He remembered every time John would pop the hood and have Dean help him check the engine before leaving for a hunt.

They both knew that they had different memories of John, but Mary had no idea just how different they were.

"Well, she doesn't want us digging around, that's for sure. So where's the job go from here, genius?" Sam said as he settled on the hood next to Dean. 

Dean threw up his arms in frustration, then flicked mud off his hands. 

Sam sniffed, then looked at Dean. "You smell like a toilet."

Dean looked down at himself in disgust.

"That must've messed with you so bad, having to get into the car like that," Cas noted.

"Yeah. I think I spent like an hour scrubbing her seats afterward to make sure I got all of it out.

It's November 2, 2005.

In a motel, a VersaBank MasterCard in the name of Hector Aframian lands on a handwritten guest ledger.

"Oh, was that before you developed your rockstar alias pattern?" Charlie asked. 

"Nah, Dad chose the names. I only started using the rockstar alias when I was alone."

"Classic Squirrel. Becoming a rockstar the second he gets the chance."

"I'm sorry, you have a what?" John seethed. He'd trusted Dean was smart, only to learn that he'd had an easily identifiable pattern all these years.

Dean turned to look back at his parents and realized what he'd said. "Uh, I-uh-"

"It doesn't matter. Sure, it's easily identifiable, but we haven't been caught because of those names before. Let it go," Sam glowered, not wanting to start a fight right now.

Knowing what happened last time they nearly fought, John thought to stay quiet. But he was silently forming a plan on how to save his boys. As long as the angel, demon, and witch were there, everyone was in danger.

"One room, please."

Dean was standing at the motel check-in desk, still covered in muck, with Sam right behind him. 

The clerk picked up the card and looked at it. "You guys having a reunion or something?" He asked.

"What do you mean?"

"I had another guy, Burt Aframian. He came and bought out a room for the whole month."

Dean looked back at Sam.

"So, he planned on leaving halfway through and having you two to show up from the beginning," Claire said, forgetting that John was there in the room with them.

"Yes, I did. They needed to be there and I needed to leave enough evidence for the to figure it out," John explained, barely containing his anger. He didn't appreciate bratty teenagers challenging his authority.

Before Sam could say anything, Charlie spoke up, "Yeah, but you couldn't have finished the hunt and found another one to point them toward, or just not started this one at all? It's not like they needed the help. Sure, it made them solve the case faster, but still." Charlie then crossed her arms and fell back against her seat, mumbling, "granted they wouldn't have needed to go any faster if they'd been there from the beginning.”

The motel door to John's room swung open. Sam was on the other side, having just picked the lock. Sam hid the picks as he stood up. Dean was outside playing lookout, until Sam reached out of the room to grab his shoulder and yanked him inside. 

"Pffft. It's like you guys got turned into a cartoon," Charlie said as she tried to muffle her laugh.

"God, can you imagine being in Scooby Doo?" Dean imagined a wistful look in his eyes as he thought about Daphne and her perfect red hair.

"I'm sure my father could imagine; I don't see why you have to ask him," Cas said, his eyebrows drawn in confusion. Why would Dean ask his father about Scooby-Doo?

Dean began laughing, like full-on crying through each loud exhale of breath.

Multiple people throughout the room began laughing along, only because Dean was laughing.

When everyone calmed down, Rowena rubbed a hand over her chest to get her lungs working again. "My, they weren't kidding when they said laughter was conatgious."

"No, they were not," Dean said, resting a hand on his boyfriend's shoulder. "Don't ever change."

Cas squinted his eyes as he tilted his head. "You've told me that before."

Dean smiled, "I know, and I meant it. I love you just the way you are."

Cas smiled back, clasping Dean's hand in his own. "And I you."

"Blegh, you guys are so cute it's disgusting," Charlie announced, grabbing Sam's arm. "Make them stop."

"At least you don't have to be around them 24/7."

Crowley raised his hand. "I second that. Bloody hell, anytime Squirrel was away from the Angel for more than 20 minutes, he'd start talking about his "ocean blue eyes" and his "sexy ass voice" and it drove me nuts!"

Dean's face burned a vibrant red as he pulled his knees up to his chest and sank into his chair.

"Did you really say those things about me?" Cas asked, a small yet smug smile on his face.

"Shut up," Dean mumbled. "Pay attention to the show."

John was also glad that the subject was being changed. They're barely halfway through the first episode and he was doing everything in his power not to kill half the people in the room.

Bobby and Jody spared a glance at each other when they both noticed how tense John was and the glare being thrown toward both Cas and Crowley.

They had a feeling there might be some bloodshed once the episode finished.

Sam closed the door behind them and the brothers looked around. 

"Whoa," Sam said, surprised by the sight of the room.

Every wall had papers pinned to it: maps, newspaper clippings, pictures, notes. There were books on the desk and assorted junk on the floor and bed, including something with a hazardous-materials symbol.

Dean turned on the lamp by the bed and picked up a half-eaten hamburger sitting on the nightstand. Sam stepped over a line of salt on the floor as Dean sniffed the burger and recoiled.

"I don't think he's been here for a couple days at least," Dean determined, setting the burger back down.

"You could tell that just from the smell?" Claire asked.

"Shut up and watch the show." A minute passed. "Yes."

Sam fingered the salt on the floor and looked up.

"Salt, cats-eye shells...he was worried. Trying to keep something from coming in."

"What are cats-eye shells used for?" Charlie asked.

"They're usually used for protection," Rowena explained. "People believe that they ward off all forms of magic and make the user invisible."

Dean looked at the papers covering one wall.

"What have you got here?" Sam asked.

"Centennial Highway victims," Dean responded and Sam nodded. 

The victims seen on the wall included Mark somebody, William Durrell, Scott Nifong who disappeared in 1987 at age 25, and somebody Parks. Mark, Durrell, and Nifong are all white males, judging by the photos.

"I don't get it. I mean, different men, different jobs, ages, ethnicities. There's always a connection, right? What do these guys have in common?"

While Dean talked, Sam nodded and looked at the papers taped to the other walls. There was something about the Bell Witch, two people being burned alive, a skeletal person blowing a horn at several scared people with the note "MORTIS DANSE", a column about "Devils + Demons", another about "Sirens, Witches, the possessed", a wooden pentacle, and a note that says "Woman in White" above a printout of the  Jericho Herald  article on Constance's suicide.

Sam turned on another lamp. "Dad figured it out."

Dean turned to look. "What do you mean?"

"He found the same article we did. Constance Welch. She's a woman in white."

Dean looked at the photos of Constance's victims. "You sly dogs," Dean said as he turned back to Sam. "All right, so if we're dealing with a woman in white, Dad would have found the corpse and destroyed it."

"She might have another weakness."

"Well, Dad would want to make sure." Dean crossed the room toward Sam. "He'd dig her up. Does it say where she's buried?"

"No, not that I can tell. If I were Dad, though, I'd go ask her husband."

Sam tapped the picture of Joseph Welch. The caption said he was thirty; the article dated back to 1981, so he must be sixty-four. "If he's still alive." Sam went back to look at something else. 

Dean looked at the picture below the  Herald  article, of a woman in a white dress. "All right. Why don't you, uh, see if you can find an address, I'm gonna get cleaned up." 

Dean started to walk away, but Sam stopped and turned. "Hey, Dean?"

Dean stopped and turned back.

"What I said earlier, about Mom and Dad, I'm sorry."

Dean held up a hand. "No chick-flick moments."

"I thought you loved chick-flick moments, ol monons."

"I don't know what you're talking about."

"Uh-huh, 'course not.

Sam laughed and nodded. "All right. Jerk."

"Bitch."

Sam laughed again as Dean disappeared, presumably into the bathroom. Sam noticed something, his smile disappearing, and crossed over for a closer look. A rosary hung in front of a large mirror, and stuck into the mirror frame was a photo of John sitting on the hood of the Impala, next to a boy in a baseball cap who is presumably Dean and with a younger boy, presumably Sam, on John's lap. Sam took the photo off the mirror and held it, smiling sadly.

Later, Sam paced, holding his phone, and sat down on the bed. A voicemail message was playing.

"Hey, it's me, it's about ten-twenty Saturday night—"

Dean came out of the bathroom, no longer covered in mud and dirt, and grabbed his jacket. He shrugged it on one shoulder as he crossed the room.

"Hey, man. I'm starving, I'm gonna grab a little something to eat in that diner down the street. You want anything?"

"No."

"Aframian's buying," Dean said, shaking his fake credit card.

Sam shook his head. "Mm-mm."

Dean left the motel room and he got the jacket the rest of the way on as he crossed the lot. He looked over and saw a police car and the motel clerk was talking to Deputy Jaffe and Deputy Hein. The clerk then turned and pointed at Dean, who turned away and pulled out his cell phone.

"You just had to be snarky to them, didn't you?" Bobby grunted.

Dean just stuck his tongue out, like the mature 39-year-old he is.

Sam was still sitting on the bed listening to the message.

"So come home soon, okay? I love you."

The phone beeped. Sam looked at it and pressed a button, then put it back to his ear.

"What?" Sam grumbled.

Outside, the deputies were approaching Dean.

"Dude, five-oh, take off."

Sam stood up. "What about you?"

"Uh, they kinda spotted me. Go find Dad."

"Dean, the ever-loving, self-sacrificing idiot that he is," Jody declared.

"You know me!" Dean said, placing his hands under his chin to accentuate his smile.

Sam lightly smacked him in the arm, then turned to look at the Sherrif. "What do you mean?"

She gestured to the elder hunter. "We all know how fast you two are, Dean could've easily gotten out of there just fine. But he purposely got caught to make sure that Sam got out of there in time."

"Yeah, well that's the way he's always been. Take care of Sammy. Watch out for Sammy, boy."

Cas laid his arm across Dean's shoulder and pulled him close as Dean wrung his hands together, letting his head fall low as he laid back against his boyfriend. Looking over the hunter's head, Cas glared at Sam, and he had the modesty to look ashamed.

John moved to stand up, but Mary managed to grab his arm and pull him back down. "There's no point."

What did she mean?

Bobby and Cas shared another look. "Next time."

Cas nodded in agreement, then turned back to the tv.

Dean hung up the phone as the deputies approached. He turned and grinned at them.

"Problem, officers?"

"Where's your partner?"

"Partner? What, what partner?"

Jaffe glanced over his shoulder and jerked his thumb toward the motel room. Hein headed over there and Dean began to fidget.

Sam saw Hein approaching and darted away from the window.

"How did you even get out of there, Sam? There's only one door," Kevin said.

"It's hard to miss a ten-foot moose," Crowley added.

"I don't even remember."

"So. Fake US Marshal. Fake credit cards. You got anything that's real?"

"My boobs," Dean grinned.

Sam groaned and dropped his head into his hands as Dean giggled, yes, giggled, into Cas's shoulder.

Cas smiled at the sound of his adorable hunter and ran his fingers through Dean's hair, causing him to snuggle closer to the angel.

Hein slammed Dean over the hood of the cop car.

"You have the right to remain silent—"

The rest of what he was saying was cut off when the camera changed to the Sheriff's office. Sheriff Pierce entered the room, carrying a box. He set the box on the table where Dean was sitting and went around the table to face Dean across it.

"So you want to give us your real name?" The sheriff began his interrogation.

"I told you, it's Nugent. Ted Nugent."

"I'm not sure you realize just how much trouble you're in here."

"We talkin', like, misdemeanor kind of trouble or, uh, squeal like a pig trouble?"

"You got the faces of ten missing persons taped to your wall."

Dean looked away, knowing how bad it looked.

"Along with a whole lot of Satanic mumbo-jumbo. Boy, you are officially a suspect."

"That makes sense. Because when the first one went missing in '82 I was three," Dean sassed back.

"I know you've got partners. One of 'em's an older guy. Maybe he started the whole thing. So tell me. Dean," the Sheriff tossed a brown leather-covered journal on the table, "this his?"

Dean stared at it, his eyes wide. The Sheriff sat on the edge of the table. He flipped through the journal: it was filled with newspaper clippings, notes, and pictures, just like what was on the walls of John's motel room.

"I thought that might be your name. See, I leafed through this. What little I could make out—I mean, it's nine kinds of crazy."

Dean leaned forward for a closer look at the journal he was rarely allowed to see growing up.

"But I found this, too."

He opened the journal to a page that reads "DEAN 35-111", circled, with nothing else on that page.

"Now. You're stayin' right here till you tell me exactly what the hell that means."

Dean stares down at the page, then looks up.

At the Welch house, Sam, seen through the chain-link covering a grimy glass window, knocked on the door the window was in. An old man opened it: it was Joseph Welch.

'Hi. Are you Joseph Welch?"

"Yeah."

On the driveway, Sam and Joseph were walking down the junk-filled driveway, Joseph holding the photo Sam found on John's motel room mirror.

"Yeah, he was older, but that's him," Joseph told him as he handed the photo back to Sam.

"He came by three or four days ago. Said he was a reporter."

"That's right. We're working on a story together."

"Well, I don't know what the hell kinda story you're working on. The questions he asked me?"

"About your wife Constance?"

"He asked me where she was buried."

"Yeah, that's a weird question if you don't understand our job, which most don't."

"And where is that again?"

'What, I gotta go through this twice?"

"It's fact-checking. If you don't mind."

"In a plot. Behind my old place over on Breckenridge."

"And why did you move?

"I'm not gonna live in the house where my children died."

Sam stopped walking and Joseph stopped too.

"Mr. Welch, did you ever marry again?"

"No way. Constance, she was the love of my life. Prettiest woman I ever known."

"So you had a happy marriage?"

Bobby leaned over next to Cas and Dean, "Pinch the boy for me, will ya?"

Dean smiled and nodded, sitting up to pinch his brother in the arm.

"Ow! What was that for?" Sam yelped, holding his arm and glaring at his brother.

Dean just jabbed his thumb Bobby's way.

"Boy, you don't just ask someone if they had a happy marriage, especially if you think it wasn't."

"Sorry, Bobby," Sam mumbled.

Joseph hesitated. "Definitely."

"Well, that should do it. Thanks for your time.

Sam turned toward the Impala and Joseph walked away. Sam waited a moment, then turned to look back up at Joseph.

"Mr. Welch, did you ever hear of a woman in white?"

Joseph turned around. "A what?"

"A woman in white. Or sometimes weeping woman?"

Joseph just stared.

"It's a ghost story. Well, it's more of a phenomenon, really." Sam started back toward Joseph. "Um, they're spirits. They've been sighted for hundreds of years, dozens of places, in Hawaii, Mexico, lately in Arizona, Indiana. All these are different women." Sam stopped in front of the man. "You understand. But all share the same story."

"Boy, I don't care much for nonsense."

Joseph walked away and Sam followed.

"See, when they were alive, their husbands were unfaithful to them."

Joseph stopped.

"And these women, basically suffering from temporary insanity, murdered their children."

Joseph turned around.

'Then once they realized what they had done, they took their own lives. So now their spirits are cursed, walking back roads, waterways. And if they find an unfaithful man, they kill him. And that man is never seen again."

"You think...you think that has something to do with...Constance? You smartass!"

"You tell me."

"I mean, maybe...maybe I made some mistakes. But no matter what I did, Constance, she never would have killed her own children. Now, you get the hell out of here! And you don't come back!"

Joseph's face shook, whether from anger or grief it was impossible to tell. After a long moment, he turned away and Sam sighed.

Back in the police station, it was night time, and Dean was still in the interrogation room.

"I don't know how many times I gotta tell you. It's my high school locker combo," Dean repeated for the hundredth time.

Sheriff Pierce was still interrogating Dean over the "DEAN 35-111" page.

"We gonna do this all night long?"

A Deputy lead into the room. "We just got a 911, shots fired over at Whiteford Road."

"You have to go to the bathroom?" The Sheriff asked Dean.

"No," he responded.

"Good." The Sheriff handcuffed Dean to the table and left.

Dean saw a paper clip poking out of the journal and pulled it out, looking at it. Moments later, as the Sheriff and Deputy were gearing up to leave, he was out of the cuffs. Dean watched through the window in the door and ducked out of sight as the Deputy approached the door, waiting for the perfect time to escape.

Later that night, Dean climbed down the fire escape, carrying John's journal.

On the highway, Sam was driving the Impala when his phone started to ring. He pulled it out and answered it. 

Dean was in a phone booth; his phone had been confiscated and he didn't take the time to steal it back.

"Fake 911 phone call? Sammy, I don't know, that's pretty illegal."

"Because anything you boys do is legal," Rowena noted.

"That's fair," Claire said. 

"You're welcome." Sam grinned.

"Listen, we gotta talk," Dean said.

"Tell me about it. So the husband  was  unfaithful. We  are  dealing with a woman in white. And she's buried behind her old house, so that should have been Dad's next stop."

"Sammy, would you shut up for a second?"

"I just can't figure out why Dad hasn't destroyed the corpse yet."

"Well, that's what I'm trying to tell you. He's gone. Dad left Jericho."

"What? How do you know?"

"I've got his journal."

"He doesn't go anywhere without that thing."

"Yeah, well, he did this time."

"What's it say?"

"Ah, the same old ex-Marine crap, when he wants to let us know where he's going."

"Coordinates. Where to?

"I'm not sure yet."

"I don't understand. I mean, what could be so important that Dad would just skip out in the middle of a job? Dean, what the hell is going on?"

Sam looked up and slammed the brake, dropping the phone: Constance appeared on the road in front of him. The car went right through her as Sam slammed on the brakes.

"Sam? Sam!" Dean yelled through the phone.

Inside the car, Sam was breathing hard. Constance was sitting in the back seat.

"Take me home." A minute passed. "Take me home!"

"No." Sam bit out.

Constance glared and the doors locked themselves. Sam struggled to reopen them. The gas pedal pressed down and the car began to drive itself. Sam tried to steer, but Constance was doing that too. Sam continued to try to get the door open. In the back seat, Constance flickered for a moment.

The car pulled up in front of Constance's house and stopped. The engine shut off and so did the lights.

"Don't do this," Sam begged.

Constance flickered and when she spoke, her voice was sad. "I can never go home."

"You're scared to go home," Sam realized.

Sam looked back and Constance wasn't there. He glanced around and looked back and found her in the shotgun seat. She climbed onto his lap, shoving him back against the seat hard enough to recline the seat. Sam struggled as she laid against his chest.

"Hold me. I'm so cold."

"You can't kill me. I'm not unfaithful. I've never been!"

"And I never will be."

"You fucking better not, or I'm gonna beat your ass."

"Shut up, Dean. Your knees hurt getting up from a chair; you can't do shit to me."

"BURN!!!" Charlie, Claire, and Kevin all yelled.

Dean gasped in mock hurt as he gripped his chest. "You take that back!"

Sam leaned forward toward his brother. "Make me," he challenged.

"That's it," Dean yelled before tackling his brother to the floor, and once again, they began rolling on the floor.

Cas looked back at Jody and Bobby and noticed small smiles on each of their faces. Then he looked back at Mary and John and was conflicted about what he saw.

Mary had a pensive smile on her face, probably imagining the two boys on the floor as her little ones back in Heaven.

John, on the other hand, was glaring right at Cas and the angel felt the smile slide off his face.

Cas didn't understand what he'd done wrong, but Dean had once explained to him that John had seen things in a black-and-white view; anything and everything that wasn't human was a monster, end of discussion. It was to be expected when he'd never met a friendly monster in person, but it still didn't explain why he wasn't even giving Cas a chance.

Cas didn't have a chance to think about it any longer because Dean had finished "fighting" with Sam and had sat back down, resting his head on Cas's shoulder and his legs in Sam's lap.

"You will be. Just hold me." Constance kissed Sam as he continued to struggle, reaching for the keys. She pulled back and disappears, a flash of something horrible behind her face as she vanished. 

Sam looked around for a moment, then yelled in pain and yanked his hoodie open. There were five new holes burned through the fabric, matching where Constance's fingers had buried into his chest and she flickered in front of him. 

"Damn, that looks painful. Did that leave scars?" Kevin asked.

Sam nodded his head. "They're really faint, but yeah." Sam unbuttoned the top two buttons of his flannel and pulled the collar down to show five extremely faint circles in the center of his chest. After a few seconds, he released the shirt and buttoned the buttons back up.

A gunshot went off, shattering the window and startling Constance. Dean approached, still firing at her. She glared at him and vanished, then reappeared, and Dean kept firing until she disappeared again. Sam managed to sit up and start the car.

"I'm taking you home," Sam muttered as he began to drive forward. Dean stared after the car as Sam smashed through the side of the house. 

"You'll be lucky to get out of there alive, and not because of the spirit," Cas mentioned, a small smirk on his face.

Dean just stuck his tongue out at his boyfriend while Sam chuckled beside him.

Dean hurried through the wreckage to the passenger side of the car. "Sam! Sam! You okay?" Dean called out.

"I think..."

"Can you move?"

"Yeah. Help me?"

Dean leaned through the window to give Sam a hand.

Constance picked up a large framed photograph seen when she brought Troy there: the woman in the photo was Constance and the children were presumably hers.

Dean helped Sam out of the car. "There you go," Dean mumbled as he closed the car door. 

They looked around and saw Constance and she looked up. She glared at them and threw the picture down. A bureau scooted toward Sam and Dean, pinning them against the car. The lights flickered as Constance looked around, scared. Water began to pour down the staircase and she went over. At the top were the boy and girl from the photograph. They held hands and spoke in chorus, "You've come home to us, Mommy." 

"That's creepy," Claire whispered to Jody, who nodded in agreement.

Constance looked at them, distraught. Suddenly they were behind her; they embraced her tightly and she screamed, her image flickering. In a surge of energy, still screaming, Constance and the two children melted into a puddle on the floor. Sam and Dean shoved the bureau over and went to look at the spot where Constance and her children vanished.

"So this is where she drowned her kids," Dean noted.

Sam nodded. "That's why she could never go home. She was too scared to face them."

"You found her weak spot. Nice work, Sammy." He slapped his brother on the chest where he'd been injured and walked away. 

Sam laughed through the pain. "Yeah, I wish I could say the same for you. What were you thinking shooting Casper in the face, you freak?"

"I was trying to buy you time, jackass."

"Yeah, yeah."

"Hey. Saved your ass." Dean leaned over to look at the car. "I'll tell you another thing. If you screwed up my car?" Dean twisted around to look at Sam. "I'll kill you."

Sam laughed.

On the highway later that night, the Impala tore down the road; the right headlight was out.

Sam had the journal open to "DEAN 35-111" and a map open on his lap and was finding coordinates with a ruler, a flashlight tucked between chin and shoulder.

"You couldn't have stopped a dinner and found the location before hand?" Bobby asked.

Dean shook his head, not taking his eyes off the screen. "No, we had to get out of there as fast as we could."

Everyone glared at John, knowing that there was absolutely no reason to speed out of there except John's brainwashing.

"Okay, here's where Dad went. It's called Blackwater Ridge, Colorado."

Dean nodded. "Sounds charming. How far?"

"About six hundred miles."

"Hey, if we shag ass we could make it by morning."

Sam looked at him, hesitating. "Dean, I, um..."

Dean glanced at the road and back. "You're not going."

"It's not like it was a surprise. He did tell you beforehand, dearie," Rowena said.

"I know that, I just kinda forgot. It was nice to be with him again, just doing a pretty easy hunt."

"The interview's in like, ten hours. I gotta be there," Sam said.

Dean nodded, disappointed, and returned his attention to the road. "Yeah. Yeah, whatever." Dean glanced at Sam. "I'll take you home."

Sam turned the flashlight off and they drove on.

They pulled up in front of the apartment hours later, Dean still frowning. Sam got out and leaned over to look through the window. "Call me if you find him?"

Dean nodded.

"And maybe I can meet up with you later, huh?"

"Yeah, all right."

Sam patted the car door twice and turned away. 

"Would you have called me if you found him?" Sam asked.

Dean shook his head. "Probably not."

"Why not, darling?" Rowena asked.

Dean shrugged against Cas's shoulder. "We weren't close at the time. To be honest, it was a spur of the moment thing when I went to get him. I didn't even plan on calling him ever again after I dropped him off. I was mad I even went to get him because I didn't want to risk him getting back into the life."

"Well, I'm glad you came and got me. I don't even wanna know what would have happened to you if you'd been alone," Sam responded.

Cas, who had clearly started thinking about it, started rubbing circles into Dean's back before placing a kiss in his hair, tightening his grip on the hunter. Thought and images flashed through his head of what could've happened had Dean not gotten Sam from Stanford. 

"Well, you would've been dragged in anyway, right?" Charlie asked and Sam nodded.

"Wait, what do you mean you would've been dragged in anyway?" Mary questioned, upset about the fact that her youngest would've never been able to escape the life.

"You'll probably learn about it later."

Dean leaned toward the passenger door, one arm going over the back of the seat. "Sam?" He called out.

Sam turned back.

"You know, we made a hell of a team back there."

"Yeah."

Dean drove off. 

Sam watched him go and sighed. He let himself into the apartment. Everything was dark and quiet. "Jess?" He called out as he closed the door. "You home?"

Sam noticed a plate of chocolate chip cookies on the table, with a note that read "Missed you! Love you!", next to a National Geographic. He picked one up and ate it as he snuck into the bedroom, smiling. The shower was audibly running. Sam sat on the bed, shuts his eyes, and flopped onto his back.

Sam closed his eyes, knowing what was about to happen and not being able to witness it again. He hadn't realized he'd also tensed up until he felt arms wrap around his body. He sighed and buried his face into the crook of his brother's neck. He smiled when he felt a kiss on the top of his skull.

Mary was the only one in the room who didn't know what was going on, but judging from the morose looks spread across the room and the way Dean was holding his brother in his arms, she knew better than to ask. Even John looked upset.

Blood dripped onto Sam's forehead, one drop, then another; he flinched and opened his eyes. He gasped in horror: Jess was pinned to the ceiling, staring down at him and bleeding from the stomach.

"No!" He cried out.

Jess burst into flame; the fire spread across the ceiling.

Dean kicked the front door open.

"How did you know when to come back?" Jody asked.

"Because his Moose senses were tingling," Crowley drawled.

After glaring at Crowley for a few seconds, Dean turned to Jody. "I actually turned around and drove back the minute I thought he went in. I wanted to make sure he was ok before I never saw him again." 

Sam opened his eyes and looked up at his older brother, making sure not to glance at the screen. "Did you really? You never told me."

Dean nodded and smiled. It was a special smile, one reserved for Cas and Sam. "I did."

Sam smiled back before closing his eyes and burying his face back into Dean's chest.

"Sam!"

Sam raised one arm to shield his face. "Jess!"

Dean came running into the bedroom. "Sam! Sam!" He looked up and saw Jess.

"No! No!"

Dean grabbed Sam off the bed and bodily shoved him out the door, Sam struggling the entire way.

"Jess! Jess! No!" Sam wailed out one last time as flames engulfed the apartment.

Almost exactly like that night, a fire truck was parked outside the building, firemen and police keeping back gawkers. Dean looked on, then turned and walked back to his car. Sam was standing behind the open trunk, loading a shotgun. Dean looked at the trunk, then at Sam, whose face was set in a mask of desperate anger. Sam looked up, then sighed, nodded, and tossed the shotgun into the trunk.

"We got work to do," Sam declared as he shut the trunk.

Now that the episode was over, the screen went black once again before more words appeared.

"There will be a twenty-minute break before the next episode,” and like last time, a twenty-minute timer appeared on the screen; It started to count down.

Everyone got up and started walking around to stretch some muscles, then they began to form groups to talk before the next episode.

While Charlie, Sam, Kevin, and Bobby were talking about the Hunter SAT they mentioned earlier, Cas and Dean were still sitting on the couch cuddling.

Though their moment was ruined when John decided to step in front of the couple. "Can I speak to you for a minute?" John directed toward the Angel.

However, before the Angel could say anything, Dean spoke up. "No, whatever you have to say, you can say it in front of me as well." 

John glared, then nodded his head, drawing his lips into a thin line. "Fine. I know what you're doing, and you won't get away with it."

Castiel furrowed his eyebrows and threw a glance Dean's way before looking back at the eldest Hunter. "I don't know what you mean. What is it that I'm doing?"

Instead of answering, John just grabbed the lappels of Cas's jacket and picked him up, spinning him around and slamming him against the nearest wall. Which got everyone's attention.

"What the hell do you think you're doing?" Dean called out, trying to pry his father off his boyfriend.  

Cas was stock still, a calculating look in his eyes as he stared at the eldest Winchester. He didn't understand what John thought he was doing, but he had a feeling he was about to find out.

"I know that you and the witch and the demon are brainwashing my sons and everyone else in this room, and I won't have it."

"What the fuck, John?!" Sam yelled. Where the fuck did he get that idea?

"I don't know where or how you came to that conclusion, but you've misjudged me. I've done no such thing," the Angel calmly explained, trying to diffuse the situation.

John, however, didn't like that answer and slammed Cas back against the wall once more in an attempt to knock the wind out of him with no success.

Sam and Bobby ran forward to try and pull him off while Dean fell back against the couch. His chest began to tighten as his breathing slowed. He couldn't get air into his lungs and his vision began to blur and darken on the edges. He heard yelling but he couldn't tell what was being said. He felt hands on his back and arms and he tried to shrug them off, but they held on tight. After a minute, a hand on his back began rubbing in a circular motion. It was one he was familiar with and it calmed him down. 

When he finally calmed down and his vision returned to normal, he looked over to find Charlie sitting on the couch beside him. Everyone was looking at him with varying looks of pity and sadness. Not wanting to look at those looks anymore, he turned his attention to his boyfriend. 

Cas was still being held against the wall, though Dean realized that John wasn't focused on him anymore. He was focused on glaring at Dean. Probably calling him a failure (among other names) in his head.

With one look, Cas understood what Dean wanted him to do. He turned back to John, who was still focused on Dean, and shoved his hands off him. Rowena seemed to catch on and as soon as Cas was far enough away, with a flick of her wrist, John was pinned to the wall in Cas's stead. 

He began to struggle, "Hey, what the hell? Let me go!" He roared.

Bobby stalked up to John and promptly slapped him across the face.

"I get that you were heartbroken over Mary's death and you went into the life. Back then, yes, most hunters had a black-and-white view of things. But that didn't give you the right to abuse your children. And that certainly doesn't give you the right to push your black-and-white views on to them. Just because some of the people here aren't human, that doesn't mean they're evil."

At that last sentence, Crowley and Rowena took a glance at each other but decided not to say anything.

"I know first hand that everyone in this room had a part in saving the world at least once, maybe twice. And sure, maybe they weren't exactly on our side when we first met, but they've changed. They've redeemed themselves. And you'd do best to remember that." Bobby jabbed John in the sternum for effect. 

John glared at Bobby before turning his gaze toward his wife, hoping she'd stick up for him. Instead, she averted her gaze to the floor. He couldn't believe it. He went to speak but found that no noise came from his throat. 

Rowena gave a small smirk. "Just a little silencing charm. Should hold for a while." 

Everyone was very satisfied with John's justice and they moved to sit down, Rowena releasing him from the wall. Most of them smiled when they noticed Dean asleep on Cas's shoulder, exhausted from his panic attack earlier. 

John, incredibly perturbed he'd been bested, plopped down in his seat, his wife not making eye contact with him.

Sam took a picture of his brother sleeping on his angel before Cas shook Dean's shoulder, gently waking him up.

Dean slowly opened his eyes and looked around, but he didn't move, instead, wrapping his arms around the angel's waist and snuggling closer. Cas rolled his eyes and wrapped an arm around his hunter's shoulders, pulling him close. 

The countdown still had about 5 minutes left, but it suddenly sped up until it reached 0. The screen went black for a minute before words appeared. 

"Instead of watching your cases in order, we're watching the saddest and most important cases." 

Dean buried his head into Cas's shoulder and tightened his grip. There were plenty of things that he wanted to keep to himself, and he had a feeling that those were all going to appear in these episodes.

"However, there will be some fun episodes to lighten the mood everyone once in a while. So sit back, relax, and enjoy the show."

The screen went black once more for a moment before the next episode began to play.