JOHN WINCHESTER

Hesitantly does DJ slowly put down his uncle's gun and lie it down on the desk, not knowing exactly what to think of the situation yet but hearing that the weapon was essentially completely useless he didn't feel the need to wave it around.

"Had I known I was going to be expecting visitors today I would have grabbed my gun with the salt rounds, next time I'll just have it with me at all times thanks for giving me the idea." Somehow the last few months of hunting suddenly felt less safe, though who on earth would expect to randomly have ghosts appear in their motel rooms? Well maybe he should have expected it with his track record but he wasn't going to admit that out loud.

A notebook and pen. John might not have been here on purpose, but he knows for a fact that he still has free will, and he wasn't about to go straight into teaching a class on his life. From the looks of it, DJ probably knew a lot about it anyway. While he's half tempted to obfuscate a bit; leave out his name, mess around, there was something more prominent about this situation that he wants to get to. And to get to that conversation quicker, he had to shoot straight and narrow.

"John Winchester. And seeing how you have my journal, I think you've already got a pretty good idea of who I am and what I did. I'm guessin' you got that from your dad?" He wanted his sons out of the hunting life, and it's so very clear to him that Sam eventually got that wish granted. Because this kid seemed .. fresh, new to all of this. Still pouring over those books like his life depended on them. It's a familiar setting. He knows it well. So the question was - why was DJ doing this?

Pouring over old books and case files had become a new normal for him, the smell of dusty tomes and old leather were something familiar from his many years in the archives of the libraries at Stanford that had carried over into his hunting life. His latest read was a tad more personal than just any old library book, the worn hunting journal of the Winchester family had been his guide in his new life and had been providing him with insight needed to do the job.

Anyone in the Archival Sciences courses that DJ took back in college would have given this an extremely poor grade for its rampant disorganization, cryptic messaging and not to mention the lack of structure or context with anything that had been scrawled down into it. This must have been what it was like to be in the Da Vinci Code, though DJ was no master of symbology that would be required to crack whatever meaning lay within the strange notes.

DJ lets his head fall against the table top as the young hunter lets out a groan, exhaustion and frustration taking over as the two empty cans of redbull next to him meant that a third would be needed in order to work later into the night and figure out the information needed for his current case. It was times like this he wished that the people who left this information were there to help him with it, being a hunter without any aid or assistance was an undertaking that he wasn't expecting to be as taxing as it was. At least his dad had Dean and their own father, experience in the field and research done by other hunters.

Good reaction time. Didn't necessarily do as good with the demand, but the fact that DJ hadn't shot at him? Good self control. John had learned early on in his life that you didn't startle someone with a weapon, or someone who had a military background - and that carried over to his hunting life too. But hey, he wasn't exactly alive, now, was he? As real as he felt to himself, John was switched on enough to know that an ordinary bullet would go straight through him. Which meant, for the first time in a long, long time, he saw the funny side to this situation.

John didn't move; not at all phased by DJ's reaction or the weapon pointed in his direction. "Unless you're using salt rounds in there, I don't think that gun's going to do much good." He gives DJ a look. John isn't here on purpose. His presence here was because of DJ, and while John had never really heard of anything like this in his time alive, that didn't mean he was shocked. Not much of anything shocked him anymore. But the question: what's going on here? Yeah, John wants to know the answer to that, too. His gaze shifted off his grandson, and to the journal that lay on the table.

"Dad's gonna kill me." Emmett said, panic taking over his body. "I should go. I should leave. That's a good idea. Right? Right? He'll won't hesitate with this." More panic. Crippling panic. Panic attack. More panic when he hears footsteps approche. Please don't be Dad. Please don't be Dad. He begged silently in his head.

He had been tempted to let him go.

John had been quick to piece things together once he realised Emmett had left. And after a lot of thinking, he realised one very important thing. He didn't have it in him to kill his son. He had gone back and forth repeatedly on this topic, but that was the sum of it.

But John also knows that Emmett posed a danger to everything and everyone, not only the general public, but from the knowledge he held? About being a hunter, about their family? Letting him go put them all at risk, too, Sammy, Dean- he can't do nothing; John can't ignore this.

So when he walks through the door, it's with the reassurance of a plan. And the hope that who ... what he saw, was still his son.