The day Castiel gripped Dean Winchester tight and raised him from Perdition, John Winchester went to sleep in Heaven with his arm around Mary.

He woke up standing over his son in Flagstaff, Arizona.

"I'm sorry," Dean was saying, curled against the wall with his arms wrapped over his stomach. "I fucked up, I'm sorry, I'm sorry-"

"What the hell," John breathed, taking in his surroundings. This was most definitely not one of his favorite memories.

Dean seemed to take that as a warning. He shuts up.

John swallowed down the bile in his throat.

Dean had screwed up, Sam had gone missing, and Dean had needed to learn his lesson.

John wasn't proud of this scene, but he said what he had to. Acting out the memories got you through them and he wanted out of this one.

"Letting a striga get to him wasn't good enough, huh? You wanted to make sure he signed his own death warrant?"

Dean's flinch made the old fury flare up in John. John restricted himself to hauling his son up by the jacket and shoving him into the wall.

"We're gonna find him," John told Dean. "And once we do, I'll finish with you."

Dean nodded with his eyes on the ground. John could already see the black eye swelling.

"Put some ice on that," John barked. He had no idea what was going on, but he was still a dad, damn it. "And get in the car."

Usually driving got him out of the memories. This time it didn't. John didn't dare allow himself to believe this was really a second chance, though.

Just to test the limits of what he could do, John drove to the place he'd found Sam first.

Sam was in the same decrepit shack he'd been in last time. Dean saw Sam's face peer through the window and was out of the car before John even parked.

John turned the car off and approached his sons. Dean was hugging Sam, murmuring, "Sammy, Sammy, Sammy."

"Get in the car," John said.

Neither of his sons argued. Dean slid into the backseat by Sam, though, in a silent act of mutiny.

The drive back to the hotel was silent.

"What the hell were you thinking?" John asked, staring down Sam. "You could have been-"

"What?" Sam demanded. "Killed? Eaten? Or maybe I could have been, I don't know, happy? Free? 'Cause that's what you're really afraid of, isn't it?"

John backhanded Sam across the face. Sam staggered against the bed. There was shock and fear on his face.

John stepped forward. Absently, he contemplated how easily he fell back into the moment. This didn't feel like a memory anymore. This felt real.

Some things hadn't changed, though, because Dean shoved his way in front of his brother. Dean's eye was swollen enough that John wouldn't be able to send him to school for days, but his shoulders were set.

"No," was all Dean said. John took in the fear and the utter certainty on his son's face and turned away.

"I told you to ice that eye," John said.

Sam locked himself in the bathroom for two hours. John pretended not to hear him crying.

Dean sat with his back to the bathroom door and held a bag of peas to his eye.

John sat at the table and cleaned his guns.

He'd changed something. He didn't know what that meant, only that this couldn't be Heaven. There's no fire or pain, so this couldn't be Hell.

That meant…

"Oh, shit," John whispered.

This was real.

Second chance.

John began correcting his mistakes. The hunts he had missed, the people he had died- he could fix all of it, and he did.

The largest mistakes were the ones he had made with his sons, though. He set about correcting those immediately.

John stopped letting Dean go out on his own and forbade Sam to go to soccer practice. Dean didn't argue. Sam did.

If John hadn't known what lay in the future for his sons, the dull resignation in Dean's eyes and the furious resentment in Sam's would probably have made him relent.

John did know what would happen if he didn't protect them, though. He didn't take back his orders and he ignored Sam's pointed silence.

John didn't like it, but he had liked watching Dean get sent to Hell even less.

He was doing what was necessary. If they hated him, so be it.

John wasn't there to be their friend. He was there to prepare them for the world, and the world was full of things that were going to tear his sons apart.

Sam ran away only one more time. It was about a month after Flagstaff.

This hadn't happened the first time around, but John had a pretty good idea of where to look. John found Sam sitting in the bus stop. Sam came with him without arguing.

John ran into Sam when the kid saw Dean and stopped dead in the doorway.

"Dean?" Sam asked. His voice trembled.

"Hey, Sammy," Dean said. Dean's voice came out slurred. John shouldn't have gone for his face. People saw Dean's face.

"Did you do this?" Sam demanded, staring at John with his small fists balled.

"S'okay, Sammy," Dean said. "I'm fine. And I fucked up."

"Language," John said. He shoved past Sam and opened the fridge. He twisted off the cap of a beer bottle and took a deep swig. "Sam, your brother didn't keep an eye on you and insisted it was his fault, so he got reminded why it's important to do his job."

Sam's mouth opened and closed.

"Sammy," Dean murmured. "Leave it."

Sam shot John a venomous glare and moved to sit by Dean on the bed. John took a drink and let it slide.

John tried not to move the kids around too much to make up for the new restrictions. It didn't seem to matter. Dean's shoulders never got less tense and Sam's eyes never got less angry.

They did what he asked them to, though. That was all he could ask, although sometimes John wished he could turn Sam's anger into obedience. Dean was imperfect but at least he listened. It was becoming increasingly clear to John that the only reason Sam listened was because Dean suffered if he didn't.

Dean listened because he knew he was meant to hunt. The only problem John had with Dean's behavior was that he always placed himself between John and Sam.

John turned Dean and Sam into the kind of codependent that meant Sam could never leave Dean. It wouldn't matter about Sam's school if he was too scared of what would happen to Dean to consider leaving.

Dean had never needed any incentives to stay with Sam.

By the time Dean turned eighteen, both of John's sons were excellent shots and fighters. Dean was a better hunter and fighter than Sam by virtue of sheer size, but Sam would catch up soon. They could pick locks and handcuffs, kill a man in numerous ways, and they were as well versed in the lore as John was.

John was proud of them.

John told Dean that he might have to kill Sam on his eighteenth birthday.

John was taken aback by the sheer blankness of his son's face.

Dean stood up.

"Sammy, pack our bags," Dean called into the other room.

Sam poked his head around the doorway and glared. "Don't call me…"

Sam seems to pick up on Dean's mood. He vanishes into the other room. John hears Sam start packing.

"What do you think you're doing, Dean?" John demands.

Dean looked at him. For the first time, John saw no obedience in his eldest son's face.

"I'm leaving."

John stood up, his mind whirling. "No, you're not."

"Yes," Dean said, "We are."

John drew back his fist.

Dean pulled a gun on him.

"What the fuck do you think you're doing, Dean," John whispered. "You put that down right now or you'll spend the next week pissing blood."

Dean thumbed the safety off. "We're leaving, Dad. And we're not coming back."

"You need to be strong. You need to stay with me. You need me to save you."

Sam lugged his and Dean's duffels into the kitchen and froze.

"Far as I can tell, we've never needed you," Dean said. John would have called his tone conversational if not for the gun pointed at his chest. "Now get out of the way."

John, numb with disbelief, moved.

Dean ushered Sam out the door first. He never takes the gun off of John. John is obscurely proud at the flawless technique.

Dean slid into the driver's seat of the Impala. Sam tossed their bags in the backseat and got into the passenger seat.

John stared after the Impala's tail lights.

A few days later, he had a few too many, fell asleep at the wheel of his truck, and drifted into the path of an oncoming semi.

John woke up standing over his son in Flagstaff, Arizona.