Disclaimer: I don't own Supernatural.

Author's Note Part One: A new story? Yes! This plot was given to me by the lovely M.J. Ellsworth (I'm posting only the most important part of the prompt as an extended summary and to avoid buffering my word count too much):

"John always taught the boys to leave ordinary crime to the police, but when you're a cocky 19-year-old, the temptation to play hero is always there. When children start to go missing, Dean can't help but snoop around, despite his father's assertion that the kidnappers are human. Little does Dean know, the more he digs, the more attention he attracts to his family... and to his little brother."

She's given me the sandbox, and now I'm going to enjoy playing in it and hopefully do justice to a great prompt.

Amy.

He didn't know her last name, and probably never would. In a way, that lack of knowledge made him feel like he was disrespecting her. She killed her own mother to protect him, but he barely knew anything about her aside from her name and their shared dislike of being forced into a lifestyle they didn't want. He still saw the scene play out so clearly in his mind that he wondered if he'd ever be able to forget it.

And his family would know even less because he couldn't tell them about her. Not if he wanted to spare her from being hunted by people who only saw black and white when it came to the supernatural. Since she was not human, her sacrifice would mean nothing to his family.

The cover story formed itself in the minds of John and Dean. They were hunting a kitsune. It found out they were hunting it. It fled without leaving a trace behind for them to follow. Now they just needed to keep an eye on the news of the nearby areas to see whether or not it's smart enough to lay low, or if they get to continue that particular hunt.

Sam hadn't had to open his mouth at all. As far as they knew, he never came anywhere close to a kitsune. He did research, and then hung out with some girl (after asking Dean for some tips, a fact which he had a feeling he would not be allowed to forget).

While John and Dean left the town simply with the empty feeling of an unfinished hunt, Sam left the town weighed with the guilt that he was the reason that one of the few people who truly understood him no longer had a mother, regardless of how good or bad the relationship between Amy and her mother had been. She was completely on her own in a world that wanted her dead. It gave Sam the kind of guilt that was deep and suffocating. Tangible, almost.

"I can practically hear your angst, Sammy," Dean said.

Sam pulled his eyes away from the drab landscape passing by the window to glare, half-heartedly, at Dean. "It's 'Sam'," he corrected.

"Whatever," Dean said. "Look, I get that you had some girl you were interested in—and I guess she might have been interested in you, too—but you knew going into that town that we weren't gonna be stayin' long."

The only comfort from getting this lecture from Dean while in the car was that their dad wasn't there to hear it. He wasn't there to delve into another rant about vengeance and how normal wasn't an option while the thing that killed Mary was out in the world somewhere. Ever since he was gifted the Impala, Dean sat behind the wheel with Sam in the passenger seat and followed their dad's truck from hunt to hunt.

"I know, Dean."

Let Dean chalk it up to classic teen angst. It was easier than explaining that he made friends with one of the kitsune (it didn't feel right calling her a monster) they were supposed to kill. It was easier than having them know that he was Sam Winchester: kid only really understood by non-humans.

"It's easier to learn to not make any real connections. Hurts less when you have to break them," Dean said, every word the definition of sincere.

"I know, Dean."

Sam doubted that Dean ever managed to make real connections at any of their stops over the years. He'd certainly never witnessed something like that. Dean was all attitude and charm, able to face whatever the world threw at him by himself, if need be. As long as he had his family, he didn't need a connection with anyone else. And since he was always with his family, how could he know what it felt like to break connections?

He never had to watch someone kill their only family member to save him.

If Sam showed little interest in talking things out with his brother, Dean would stop trying to get him to talk. So when Dean reached over and turned up the volume of the radio, Sam knew their almost conversation was over. It was a relief, but that wasn't the way Dean would see it.

And Sam knew Dean wished he could stay in one place for awhile and have something normal. Something to hold onto. But that just wasn't their life. Other people lived in bliss, ignorant of the creatures who lurked in the dark. They needed hunters to protect them before they knew they needed protection.

It all made sense. It was noble and something to be proud of, but those thoughts were never enough to pull Sam out of the burdens that job brought with it. This particular job was heavier, and it was one of the rare troubles that he couldn't share with Dean. It was one of the times that he wished he could only see black and white like his father and brother, but simultaneously glad that he couldn't because it would have resulted in the murder of an innocent girl.

How was he supposed to juggle this for the rest of his life? Weren't most supernatural creatures merely victims of circumstance in the end, the way so many hunters were?

"Where are we headed?" he asked. John hadn't shared any new hunt details with him, mostly silent since he found out the kitsune escaped him. Sam wasn't really sure why he asked in the first place. It didn't matter where they go, and he'd already been to most of the states after fifteen years of constant moving anyway.

"Massachusetts," Dean said. He kept his tone light, but Sam could see that he still wanting to ask questions that he couldn't answer. "Caleb called in for some back-up with a few witches, and we were the lucky ones within a day's drive of him. He thought there was just one, but he got himself caught up in a whole coven of them. Strong, too."

"Great. I love witches," Sam said with a roll of his eyes.

Dean chuckled. "You don't gotta do anything, Sammy. Caleb has all the knowledge, he just wants some help for when he goes in for the kill. Just in case they have some tricks up their sleeves, which they mostly likely do."

"Oh."

They didn't speak much more after that. As much as he disliked hunting, being excluded from a hunt after participating in most of them in some way for a few years now left him unsettled.

Sure, he trusted Caleb to do the research properly and follow through with the hunt, but it nagged at him and left an inexplainable pit in his stomach. Alarm bells warning him of danger.

Maybe he could fool himself into believing it's just his imagination this time.

They settled in a motel after nightfall, cheap as indicated by the way it reeked of cigarettes and piss. The yellow paint was half-peeled off of the walls, and it may have been white at one point in time. The pathetic kitchenette was more mold than tiled floors and appliances that maybe worked every third try. One look at the matted, stained shag carpet (who still had shag carpet?) covering the rest of the room was enough to dissuade him from removing his shoes. Ever.

He glanced at Dean and found that he stared at the carpet like something was about to crawl out of it at any moment.

He didn't look forward to seeing the state of the bathroom.

Sam knew that his dad wasn't planning on sticking around when he got one room instead of two (the normal since Sam and Dean grew too old to share one of the two beds).

Despite having driven all day, his dad headed out almost immediately after getting the room with a few last minute reminders (Sam referred to them as 'orders') and a comment that he should have reception on his phone this time since the hunt with Caleb was nearby.

Of course he would have reception. Most modern witches lived in cities, among people (whom they may or may not practice a little black magic on from time to time), but Sam didn't bother to point it out.

He also didn't point out the humor that Caleb would find a witch hunt so close to Salem, but he wasn't feeling very humorous lately.

And then it was just Sam and Dean, as was the case so often through their lives.

Sam didn't delude himself into thinking Dean would be in the motel room for more than another hour. After earning his GED, he started frequenting bars when their dad didn't need his help. He was only nineteen, but a young female bartender and a little patented Dean Winchester charm meant that drinks would be served all night and Dean wouldn't be back until morning. Sometimes he brought back money from hustling. Most times he only brought back the stench of alcohol and cheap perfume along with too-bright lipstick stains.

"Are you watching the rest of the paint peel off or something?" Dean asked.

He waved his hand in front of Sam's face, only for it to be swatted away. Sam hadn't even noticed that he'd been just staring at the wall, but what else did he really have to do? The hunt was researched already and his assistance in carrying it out was unneeded. His dad figured they wouldn't stay long enough to warrant enrolling him in a local school. The TV played more static than it did shows.

And then Dean was hovering over him, a little concern hidden behind his cocky, self-assured demeanor. "Dude, you okay, Sammy?"

Sam rolled his eyes. He hadn't meant to get swept away in his thoughts twice in such quick succession. "It's 'Sam'," he corrected, "and I'm fine."

Dean held his hands up in mock surrender. "Alright, then. If you're fine, I'm heading to the bar," he said.

Sam shrugged. "Do whatever you want, Dean."

Dean headed to the door, but stopped and looked at Sam before leaving, words clearly on the tip of his tongue. But whatever he wanted to say, he swallowed back because he left the motel room without another sound.

Sam sank onto the bed. Usually he relished in the short periods of solitude allowed him, but this time he found himself glancing at the door far too often. He felt trapped in a game of waiting, but he had no idea what he was waiting for. How long until his dad or brother strolled in with news of their kitsune reappearing? Would Amy be able to lay low well enough to avoid detection? Would she go far enough away?

Would death end up being her thanks for killing her own mother to save Sam?

Dean scoped out every local bar he found, but he must have picked the wrong night because where were the female bartenders? Did they exist here? How else would he get a drink in this town? Why did he keep procrastinating on upgrading to a new fake ID that listed him as twenty-one?

How else would he find something distracting enough to take his mind off of the other questions running through his mind about more important topics? Like, what was up with Sam lately? He barely complained about leaving the last town. In fact, he seemed anxious to get out of the place. But if it wasn't moving again that bothered him, what was it?

Life in general?

Maybe it was nothing, just a bad grade on an assignment or he lost his favorite pair of socks somewhere between all of the moving around.

Dean couldn't even fool himself with that one, it just wasn't Sam.

And Dean found himself wondering if maybe it was Sam now. He was getting older and Dean went off on his own more often now that Sam could mostly take care of himself (though Dean would never relinquish the entire job description for caretaker). They still spent a lot of time in each other's company, but not really keeping each other company. Dean wanted the hunt. He loved the feel of adrenaline pouring through his veins and the knowledge that his actions saved people.

Sam wanted… Sam wanted anything except the hunt. It wasn't that he didn't see the value in what they did, Dean knew he understood the importance. He just wanted to choose his own path, not have one forced upon him like hunting had been. And he still pulled through when they needed him. His enthusiasm for hunting faded shortly after he was allowed to join them regularly on hunts, but he researched, trained, and killed when it was asked of him. The problem was the lifestyle associated with it (Dean was about ninety-nine percent sure that was the problem), but Dean still hated Sullen Sam Mode.

He parked the Impala back at the motel and sat, debating whether or not he wanted to go back in yet. Every time he thought he figured out Sam, he changed again. Usually he at least pried an 'I'm just sick of moving so much' out of the kid, but this time Sam barely spoke to him. Not to mention the random spacing out he started doing lately (that freaked him out the most and oh God, what if he was having absence seizures?). John gave him the fix-him look before leaving, and Dean planned to do just that anyway.

If only Sam could make that easy for him for once.

Despite the light filling their motel room signaling life, Sam was dead to the world. Dean rolled his eyes. Gone for maybe an hour and a half, and Sam went to bed.

A sweep of the room and Dean didn't blame him. The TV garbled out static gibberish and Sam had no homework or research to do. He couldn't legally drive yet, at the young age of fifteen. Town was big and kind of close, but not close enough for him to want to take the time walking to and from in the middle of the night (and Sam hadn't been the type to seek out company lately anyway) and getting a motel room in the town was probably more expensive—albeit nicer—than the one they ended up in.

All the kid really had left to do was sleep, and that made a knot of guilt form in Dean's gut. He could have at least offered to take Sam with him into town, let him wander a bit and get some fresh air (something Dean felt the need for after spending less than ten minutes in the room, let alone the nearly two hours Sam had been in there). But at the same time, Dean needed a moment to clear his own head before he started figuring out how he was going to get through to Sam this time. It didn't help to start thinking that with nothing else to do, Sam probably mulled over whatever depressing thoughts were floating in his head in the time before he fell asleep.

Dean got himself ready for bed and turned out the light, wondering what it was that bothered Sam so much, but that he couldn't share with him.

In the morning, Dean left to get some breakfast and returned to find the TV working, its picture more-or-less clear, and the news turned on.

"How'd ya fix it?" Dean asked, kicking the door shut with his heel.

Sam glanced over at him and shrugged. He gestured at the antenna atop the boxy TV. "Messed with those."

"Huh," Dean said. Given the awkward, bent shape of the antenna, he didn't think any amount of fiddling would bring decent reception.

He distributed breakfast from a grease-stained brown paper bag and sat on his bed, more interested in food than the weather report. But then the weather report was over and pictures of children appeared on the screen, their name and age listed below. Most of them were around ten to thirteen years of age, a couple older and a couple younger.

The anchor asked for any information on the children shown to be reported to the police, who could be contacted through the phone number at the bottom of the screen.

"Huh," Dean said again, now more interested in the news than food (though that didn't stop him from dutifully eating bite after bite).

He pulled out his phone and dialed his dad's number. Past experiences led him to expect no answer, in which case he would leave a voicemail. But after the third ring, John did answer.

"What is it, Dean?"

He sounded tired and Dean wondered if him and Caleb spent the night working out the details of whatever plan they concocted.

"There are a lot of missing children from this area," Dean said. "I was wondering if it might be our kind of thing."

John's voice was muffled and distant for a second, then he said, "No. No, it's not, Dean. And Caleb says 'hi'."

"How do you know it's not our thing, Dad? Those kids could be in trouble and we might be able to help them!"

"Dean, I was looking into it before Caleb even called with his witch hunt. I thought it might be something, too, but there's not a speck of supernatural in the story of their disappearances. Just humans. Piece of shit humans, but humans. Leave it alone. Let the police handle it, Dean."

"But Dad we could still help them. They're just kids," Dean said. He glanced at Sam as he said it, still just a kid.

"Dean, I'm too tired to argue with you right now," he said, warning clear in his tone. "Just leave it. I know you want to help and you can hunt, but the things you hunt follow patterns. Humans are sometimes more dangerous. You never know what to expect from them."

John hung up, but at least he wouldn't hear Dean's silent refusal to say 'yes, sir' when he couldn't accept the order his father tried to give. He couldn't understand his father's adamance about leaving this case alone, and how could there be nothing strange about that many kids going missing from the area?

They're just kids.

Why would humans need to kidnap that many of them?

Something wasn't adding up and he suspected that his dad knew more than he let on, but Dean knew that he got as much information from his dad as he likely would on the topic. 'Leave it alone'.

Dean snorted a laugh and tossed his phone onto the bed behind him and looked at Sam. Like John could actually expect him to leave a mass kidnapping case alone. "Up for a little hunt of our own?" he asked.

"The missing kids?" Sam asked. "Why? I could hear Dad from over here. He doesn't think it's our thing."

"Kids, Sam. Kids are in danger. Half of our motto is 'saving people'."

Sam looked back at the TV, and Dean wondered if he'd be alone on this hunt. Working together could help him get through to Sam. Show him that he could trust Dean with whatever was eating at him.

"We could look into it," he said, reluctance clear in his tone, "but we'd have to report what we find to the police."

"What? Why?"

Sam gave him a pointed are-you-serious look. "Dean, we can't handle it the way we usually do. There'd be too many witnesses with all the kidnapped kids and how would you explain them all suddenly being freed and their kidnappers just vanishing? You know we can't go and get ourselves on the news, which is exactly what they'd want if some vigilante showed up out of nowhere and finds a group of kids who've been missing for however long," he said. "We don't know if they're even still…"

Alive?

"Depends on what we find," Dean said. He was unnerved by how similar Sam's logic in his argument was to what their dad would say. Neither of them noticed that they probably argued so much because they were too alike, but Dean saw it.

Having something to do helped dull his guilt, but Sam still wasn't sure about looking for missing children who were kidnapped by humans. Sure, he wanted the kids to be found and safe, but one of their dad's rules was that they don't kill humans. If Dean found the kidnappers, Sam knew that they would either leave on the verge of death, or not leave at all.

He took his role as protector seriously, like the burden of responsibility for every innocent soul rested upon his shoulders.

Sam really didn't want to argue otherwise right now, didn't want to bring up that he wasn't so sure he could tell the difference between monster and innocent anymore. So he decided to humor Dean. Let him play hero and try to find the missing kids.

The librarian seemed a little skeptical when they asked for newspaper articles about any missing persons under the age of eighteen throughout the town's history, but Sam's research-paper-for-school excuse worked nine out of ten times at libraries.

Dean sat across from him, sifting through articles with focus that Sam rarely saw from his brother during the research stages of a hunt.

Within a couple of hours, they both had neat little stacks of clippings set aside, despite Dean's complaints that the library could do a better job sorting their newspapers.

"There was a string of children disappearances about seventy-five years ago, but all of them were found dead a matter of days after they went missing," Dean said, spreading out the stack he separated from the majority.

Sam looked at the stack he spread on the table in front of him. "So about six months ago, kids started going missing at an alarming rate," Sam said. "Two or three each month, sometimes more. At first, they weren't given more than the usual amount of attention, but it kept happening. A few months in and the stories start bringing in the possibility of devil worship and sacrifices."

"And?"

Sam met Dean's eyes and gave a small shake of his head. "The children still haven't been found. They're just gone."

Dean's clippings rejoined the pile of dismissed newspapers, but he pocketed the ones Sam picked out. It wasn't much to go on, but there were names and that was more than they had when they walked into the library.

"Do you really think the families are going to be willing to talk to you about their missing kids?" Sam asked. "You can't pass for a fed or reporter like Dad. What are you going to tell them?"

"I can pass for a fed."

"Wasn't you trying to pass as a fed exactly what ruined that werewolf case a few months ago? Almost got yourself arrested."

"Dude, that had nothing to do with my appearance. I look old enough to be a fed."

"Dean."

"If you have a better idea, Sammy, I'm all ears."

Sam shrugged. "It's 'Sam'. Let's just work with the clippings for now. They have all the 'last seen here' information. Maybe we can find some pattern or connections."

"You know," Dean said, "if it is devil worship, that kind of makes it our kind of thing. Even if the people doing it are human."

Sam felt the beginning of a headache nearing. When their dad dismissed a case as nothing, that meant a lot. He was a man who chased after cases because a single sentence screamed to him something wasn't right. Why couldn't Dean leave it alone and let the police do their job?

Never thought I'd want to let the police do their job.

"I don't know, Dean. Doesn't something just feel wrong about this?"

"About what? Helping people?" Dean asked. Dean sighed and ran his hand down his face. Sam saw the anger he fought to keep in check and the exhausted confusion he tried to hide every time he looked at Sam. "Look, I don't know what's been bothering you since we left the last town, and you clearly aren't about to talk to me about it, but we have a chance to save some people here. That's what we do, Sam. We're heroes."

Sam knew that he hadn't been making Dean's life very easy lately. The constantly growing tension between John and him made Dean nervous, and they all waited for the moment when the tension would give way to arguments and fighting. His 'attitude' (John's words, not his) about the life and having to move so much was always left to Dean to sort out. He knew the look their dad gave Dean before he left always meant 'take care of it', but Dean would've placed the responsibility of handling Sam's unhappiness on his own shoulder without any orders because no matter how old Sam was, he still labeled himself as his primary caregiver. He made it his job to handle anything Sam threw at him to keep Sam happy and healthy (or as happy as he could get these days and as healthy as their lifestyle allowed).

Sam appreciated it. He really did. He knew how much of Dean's life having to take care of him took away, and had he ever given Dean anything in return for it?

So he rubbed at his forehead in a poor attempt to drive the growing pain away and shook his head. "Fine," Sam said. "We'll look into it."

Dean flash him a bright grin, and Sam almost felt like he'd given Dean some gift he had always been waiting for, even if a promise to help look into a case of missing children didn't seem like a good gift at all.

Dean re-boxed the assortment of newspapers scattered across the library table and announced he was starving. He scooped up the box to drop off with the librarian before they left for lunch. Sam followed. While he hadn't been all that hungry lately, he would just make his own life harder if Dean didn't see him at least trying to eat (he firmly believed that Dean would hold him down and force feed him if he felt it was necessary).

Neither of them felt the set of eyes focused their backs from a man at a nearby library table, pretending to be busy, as he watched them leave.

Author's Note Part Two: I hope that you've enjoyed the start. Leave a review and let me know how I'm doing. Follow to stick around for what happens next. Favorite to keep it marked on your account forever and ever. And thank you for even just giving the first chapter a try and reading it!