Throughout the show we've heard about seminal moments in the lives of Sam and Dean, and we've seen some portrayed in flashbacks. It is fascinating to contemplate the scenes we've never witnessed, and many of us write our own versions of what might have happened to form the characters of Winchester brothers. This is a collection of scenes, one per chapter, set almost exclusively pre-series, that feature those seminal moments from the viewpoints of Sam and Dean as well as some of the people most important in their early lives. It begins, of course, with John.

A Life Hard-Lived

He sat upon the hood of the Impala staring blankly into the darkness, into the raw emptiness of a slow-building grief. He'd expended all he had on getting his boys out of the burning house in that first terrible moment of comprehension. His heart denied what his eyes saw, but his gut knew. He'd been in battle. He'd taken fire, he'd killed . . . he had learned, in the jungles of Vietnam, to trust what he saw, because lives depended on it.

His sons survived because he trusted what he saw: an explosion of flames as all-encompassing as napalm raining from the skies. His sons survived because he pulled Sammy from his crib, thrust him into Dean's arms.

"Take your brother outside as fast as you can and don't look back! Now, Dean, go!"

He'd known it was hopeless when he'd seen Mary. Someone—some thing—had slashed her abdomen, had somehow suspended her from the ceiling.

His heart denied it. His eyes, and his gut, knew.

She was lost. Utterly lost.

He could not deny his sons a father when they'd already lost their mother. And so he ran from the house, scooped up Dean and baby Sammy, fled across the street to neighbors who had already called the fire department.

The steel beneath him was warm. As the flames yet billowed from the house, so did heat. John had witnessed a house fire when he was young, remembered standing with others watching the firefighters battle the flames. But this was different. This was incendiary heat, not merely wood burning down. The nursery was gone.

Sammy, in his arms. Dean snugged tight beside him.

His sons were motherless.

He felt hollow and empty, but grief was building. It climbed inexorably from chest to his throat, squatted within it, threatened to choke him. Threatened to explode from him in wracking sobs, in tears, in a harrowing wail of denial and disbelief.

He'd seen men, friends, killed in Vietnam. That was a bitter grief, but that, too, was war. This was . . . this was hell of a different sort.

Not just a fire. Not a 'tragic house fire,' as news reports would claim it. Not when he knew what he'd seen.

He trusted himself as he trusted no man. You learned that in war. Trust first in yourself, in order to survive. Because men performed heroic deeds to save one another in battle, but men were also terrified, and survival of the self was paramount, always.

He was ten years removed from Vietnam, but you don't forget war. You don't forget what it does to you, how it remakes you, how it rips your heart out, shreds it, thrusts it back into your body and sends you home again, dead or alive. Even when you're alive, you remember how it felt. You remember trying to live again, to be normal again.

Mary had made him feel normal. Had taught him what it was like to be gentle again, and kind, and tolerant, and loving. She had reminded him of what he'd been before he went to war. Most of all, she made him want to be a good father to his sons, to the two boys she'd carried in her womb.

Dean, his beautiful blond, green-eyed boy, so very like Mary. And little Sammy, six months old this very night, the night his mother died. Who knew yet what he might be? He had John's dark hair, but as yet was too young to have character in his face, the features of his parents. Sammy might be anything, might be anyone.

Dean, at nearly five, was already on the road to being infinitely Dean. He had Mary's tender heart, John knew; he saw it in how he took on the role of big brother, as protector, as if born to it. Hell, he wanted to hold the baby whenever he could. He was changing Sammy's diapers. He'd even offered to feed him, though his mother, laughing, explained that Sammy wouldn't be eating the way Dean did, yet, from a bowl, or plate; from a fork or spoon. Mommy would feed him a while longer.

Christ. Mary was dead.

He knew what he'd seen. It wasn't right. It wasn't normal.

People didn't die pinned to a ceiling. People didn't burst into flames while pinned to a ceiling.

Mary had seen something in the nursery. Something had terrified her.

Sammy, all wrapped up in blankets that smelled of smoke and burning flesh, stirred. John held him more tightly against his chest, cradled him snuggly in the crook of his arm. The other he put out to curve around his eldest, to draw him closer.

He looked down at Dean and saw how the boy's eyes were wide, so very wide, and fixed upon the house. The flames lived in those eyes.

Mary's eyes.

"I'll find it," John promised his sons. Promised Mary's sons. "I'll find what did it. No matter what it takes. No matter how long it takes. No matter what I have to do. Because we're Winchesters, the three of us . . . we are Winchesters, and we never give up. Ever."

Holding Mary's sons, he promised her, too.

I was a soldier, once. I can be a soldier again.

From across the street, perched upon the Impala, John stared up at the flames in the room where his wife died.

I can be whatever it takes.

Because that's how you win wars.

How you defeat the enemy.

Be tougher. Harder. Smarter.

For Mary. For my boys.