have you seen dean winchester?

when anna gets there it’s hell. she sees john’s anger and she matches it. she doubles it. she sees his fury and she turns it righteous and she’s screaming with her true voice and john’s bleeding from the ears and crying blood and she slashes at his face with her angel blade and cuts him from cheek to forehead and he doesn’t even know what hit him. one minute he’s standing over his dead wife’s body and the next he’s pinned to the ceiling and this angel is going to kill him. she’s in his head too - replaying scenes of death and destruction from the war mixed in with mary in her wedding dress. the first time he split mary’s lip. mary in the hospital bed with dean in her arms. the time he threw mary down the stairs. mary with child. the first time he strangled mary. mary mother mary. mary dead mary. he can’t focus through the pain - the cut on his face burns like fire and he’s held to the ceiling by anna and the screams couldn’t get louder and then they do. anna loses focus on john and he falls to the floor and there’s burning blue white pure light and wing flashes and angel blades clashing and then john is burning. the room is filled with smoke but it’s. otherwise empty. anna’s gone. whatever came and took her is gone. and there’s just fire. john runs out of his room with mary and leaves her body behind and finds dean in sam’s nursery with him , hiding from the noise and crying and he tells dean to run. and they run. sam still in deans arms even though john’s there to carry them both.

john throws himself into hunting. not to avenge mary but for his own revenge. against the angel that dared to interfere. against the angel that left him scarred. against the angel that he tells sam and dean killed their mother. he keeps his boys close for a minute while he’s on the run from the law bc of the whole. strangled his wife and burnt the house down thing. there’s no I Need To Protect My Kids From Monsters delusion. really - he knows they need to be protected from him, actually, especially so young - so as soon as he meets bobbyandrufus he dumps the boys at the salvage yard for as normal of a childhood as two mostly retired hunters can give ‘em.

sam is actually really into the lore from a young age. he never knew his mom - not really - so he throws himself into learning as much about their family line and angels / the supernatural as possible. he digs into bobby’s stuff all the time , “helps out” with research even tho he’s soooo little. he asks so many questions.

dean doesn’t give a fucKkkkk about that. he’s enrolled in school and loves it. he’s playing sports. he’s making friends. he’s living his best little boy life. until he’s 12 and john deems dean old enough to enlist into john’s war on heaven. deans pissy at first because. this isn’t his life, where’s sammy why can’t he finish the school year . but john makes sure he knows the stakes. makes sure dean knows this is about killing that angel that burned down their family home and scarred john and sent them running. and dean is like yes. we have to avenge mom. and john is like ???? OH. oh yeah. oh yeah her too. this is about your mother obviously yeah. the angel that killed mom. since i didn’t do that that’d be crazy.

and for four years - dean and sam are separated while john trains him. and thinking about the little dean that leaves bobby’s house with a little suitcase waving goodbye to sam. and how different dean is when they come back four years later for sam. and how resentful of being left out and behind and deserted sam would feel. how he doesn’t even recognize the soldier their father turned dean into. they know not to ask about mom because john gets mad but they don’t start picking up on how Off it all is until they’re older.

canon timeline picks back up. john hunting with kids in tow. obviously no azazel , no psychic sam, - focus on anna and angels. for the most part he never encounters any bc john is shit at hunting. but once sam fucks off to college (major in theology!) he and dean stay in touch behind john’s back. sam is doing research for dean - they start picking up that john is hiding shit from them. stanford era dean hunting alone, but calling on sam for help tracking down anna. he finally figures out how to summon her