Lar ||| Supernatural

Hand Me Downs
by Lar

EMAIL: HERE
RATING: PG
PAIRING: John Winchester, gen
DISCLAIMER: Kripke, you magificent bastard, they are all yours.
SUMMARY: We are made of memories and legacies.
A/N: for wolfling, who prompted with "John Winchester, legacy in the positive sense."

---

John Winchester's daddy wasn't the kind of man to sit down and have a warm and emotionally bonding kind of talk. In fact most times John can't remember much of anything his dad ever said to him that wasn't about how to fix a truck or use a tool the way it was supposed to be done. His daddy was a quiet man, but strong in the way some men just are. There's no bragging, no reason to flaunt that strength, it was always just a part of him like his green eyes and the way his hair grew in a swirl on the back of his head. John can remember seeing that odd little whorl of black hair when his daddy would sit at night and drowse in the chair after supper.

When he was older, off doing his duty for his country, off earning himself a few scars and a first hand exposure to things he swears his kids are never going to have to see themselves, he thinks about his daddy and how proud the man was of him for joining up. Not that he'd say so, of course. But his mother told him so, and John knew his mother wouldn't lie, not with her baby boy about to go off and face a bunch of men trying to kill him.

"He's so proud of you," she'd whispered against his ear as she hugged him. "He loves you so much, John and he's about to burst from wantin' to brag on you. Don't you ever forget that."

---

Tonight, years later, John thinks about his daddy as he sits in a hospital room and watches his own son struggle to breathe one more time. He barely feels his own hurts, barely feels the broken bone in his arm or the ruined muscle in his leg where the bullet torn him up. All he can feel is the weight of ever breath Dean takes, and he thinks that maybe this is how his own daddy felt every single night he was gone. He thought about his mother's parting words but he thinks that he never understood what she was really trying to tell him, and now he does.

This is what being a father means. You will feel every hurt your children feel; you will fear for them every moment of the day and night whether they are under your roof or a thousand miles away from it; you will wish and pray and bargain with God and anyone or anything else that you have to in order to keep them breathing, safe, happy. You will love them more than you can ever say. And you will come to understand that they won't know this themselves until they're the ones feeling those same things.

John lets his head drop back against the chair. It's cold in here and his son is dying.

He lets that sink in -- his son is dying.

The respirator makes another harsh noise and covers the sound of John's whispered prayers for help. Who he's praying to right now even John can't say, but he feels the connection come full circle with his own father and knows the man made his own whispers in the dark of another room and made his own bargains in exchange for John's safety.

-end


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