May 2005 came fast.
Adam watched the calendar like a sniper behind glass. He tracked Sam and Dean's movement through obscure local papers, word-of-mouth hunter forums, and radio chatter. Small towns. Murders. Fires. He could see the pattern forming: the boys were on the move.
Just like in the show.
Jessica was gone. Sam was back in. John was still missing.
But Adam knew better—John wasn't lost. He was setting the board. Getting closer to Azazel, pushing his sons into place. The trap was baited, and Adam had to play his part.
From outside the spotlight.
Adam's wall map had grown more complex—red pins tracking confirmed sightings of Sam and Dean, blue pins for John's suspected locations, yellow for demonic omens.
"They're in Colorado," he murmured, adding another pin. A shape-shifter case, from what he could piece together. "Moving east."
Professor Reed leaned against his doorframe, arms crossed. "You're obsessing again."
"It's not obsession. It's surveillance." Adam didn't look up from the map. "And it's necessary."
"You've barely slept in days."
"I'll sleep when it's over."
Reed sighed. "And when will that be, exactly?"
Adam had no answer. The truth was, even if he prevented the crash and John's deal, the war would continue. Azazel had been planning for decades. The yellow-eyed demon wouldn't just give up.
But at least they'd have more time. All of them.
"Soon," he said finally. "One way or another."
________________________________________
June–August 2005
Adam stayed off-grid. No credit card use. No phone tied to his name. He moved through the Midwest like a ghost—watching, listening, never interfering directly.
He was always one town over.
At a diner in Nebraska, he sat two booths down from Dean without ever being seen.
The moment still burned in his memory—Dean hunched over a plate of pie, phone pressed to his ear, talking in that low, urgent tone that meant he was arguing with Sam. So close that Adam could smell the leather of his jacket, could see the bags under his eyes that spoke of too many sleepless nights.
All it would have taken was standing up. Walking over. Saying hello.
But that would have changed everything. Set off alarms. Altered the timeline in ways Adam couldn't control.
So he sat there, hood pulled low, and watched his brother from behind a laminated menu until Dean threw some bills on the table and walked out.
In Kansas, he stayed in a motel Sam checked into the day after.
The clerk had been chatty. "Tall guy checked out this morning. FBI, he said. Looking into those weird animal attacks."
Adam had nodded, paid cash, and taken the same room.
That night, he'd run his fingers over the table where Sam had likely spread out research.
He passed like wind through the lives of his family, careful never to touch.
It killed him not to reach out. But he knew what was at stake.
Azazel couldn't know about him.
He wasn't supposed to exist. And that was his greatest weapon.
"You're stretching yourself too thin," Roy told him during a rare check-in call. "Whatever you're chasing, it's consuming you."
"I'm fine," Adam replied automatically.
"You're not. But you won't stop either." Roy's voice carried the gruff concern of someone who recognized self-destruction when he saw it. "Just... be careful. Whatever game you're playing, it's bigger than you think."
Adam almost laughed at that. Roy had no idea how big the game really was.
________________________________________
September 2005
He found the driver.
Middle-aged, divorced, quiet. Worked out of a company in Sioux Falls. But Adam had already confirmed the possession. The man wasn't in control anymore.
The demon had been careful—quiet, subtle, no signs of violence yet. Just waiting. For that final moment on the highway. To crush the Impala, break the boys, and push John over the edge.
Adam tailed the truck driver for three days. He learned the man's name was Thomas Miller. Before possession, he'd been an ordinary guy—two kids he rarely saw, a small apartment with bills piled on the counter, a drinking habit that was just shy of problematic.
Now he moved with the subtly wrong gait of someone with a passenger at the controls. His eyes occasionally flashed black when he thought no one was looking. He took routes that made no logical sense—detours past churches and cemeteries, as if scouting locations.
Adam watched the man from a distance. Learned his route. Timed his shifts.
The trap was nearly set.
The hardest part was knowing the man inside was still alive. Still conscious. Still suffering.
This wasn't like the skinwalker Adam had killed—a monster in human form. This was a human being, hijacked by a demon. Adam had to save him while executing his plan.
No pressure.
________________________________________
October 2005
Adam returned to the crash site ahead of schedule. Buried final wards beneath the gravel. Laid out salt lines hidden in storm grates. Hid his forged "angel feather" beneath a roadside shrine across from the curve where the crash would happen.
The weather turned cold early that year. The air had a sharp, clean quality that made his breath visible as he worked through the night. His fingers grew numb as he carefully packed soil over the last of his preparations.
Everything had to be perfect. The wards needed to activate at the right moment—after the exorcism, but before any demonic cleanup crew could arrive. The evidence had to suggest angelic intervention without being too obvious.
A careful balance. A deadly game.
Two days before the finale, he intercepted the truck.
He didn't attack. He followed it to a rest stop just outside Mitchell.
The truck driver pulled in around midnight, the parking lot nearly empty except for a few long-haul semis whose drivers were catching sleep in their cabs. Adam watched from his stolen sedan as Thomas Miller stepped out, stretching with exaggerated movements that seemed designed to show off how completely normal and human he was.
There, he struck.
Adam approached silently from behind, holy water ready in one hand, modified demon trap drawn on a cloth in the other. When the possessed man sensed him and turned, Adam was already in motion.
The exorcism was brutal and fast—Latin shouted under breath, a carved sigil bomb tossed under the truck's chassis. Light erupted. The demon screamed. Smoke poured from the driver's mouth.
The flash of light was blinding, just as they'd designed it—bright enough to mimic the searing brilliance described in angelic encounters, but not so bright that it would attract too much attention. The high-pitched tone that accompanied it was almost beyond human hearing—painful, pure, otherworldly.
And then—silence.
Thomas Miller collapsed like a puppet with cut strings. Adam caught him before he hit the ground, lowering him carefully to the asphalt. The man was alive, breathing steadily, but unconscious—his body and mind overwhelmed by the trauma of possession and forced exorcism.
Adam didn't kill it. He let it go.
But not before branding it—with a holy mark designed to mimic angelic wrath. When that demon reported back, it would remember wings and light and pain it couldn't explain.
"Azazel will think Heaven's watching," Adam whispered, staring into the trees. "Let him."
He wiped his blade clean and walked away.
Before leaving, Adam made an anonymous call to 911, reporting a man collapsed at the rest stop. Thomas Miller would wake up with no memory of the past week, but he would wake up. One more life saved, even if the man would never know it.
Adam disappeared into the night, heart hammering in his chest. Phase one complete. Now he just had to wait and see if his plan worked—if the demon would report back to Azazel with tales of angelic interference, if the yellow-eyed demon would adjust his timeline in response.
If the crash would never happen.
________________________________________
John Winchester's POV
John knew what was supposed to happen.
He'd seen it in a dream. Or a vision. Or something more like a warning—one of those things you wake from with your heart racing and your hand on a weapon.
They were supposed to be hit. Dean crushed. Sam bloodied. And him? Pushed into a corner, desperate enough to make that deal.
But it didn't happen.
The truck never came.
They rolled into Bobby's salvage yard on fumes, the Impala coughing like an old man with pneumonia, but intact. Whole.
It was wrong. And it was right. And John didn't trust either.
Later that night, he sat outside with his shotgun across his lap, staring into the woods, cigarette burning low. There was something he wasn't seeing—something watching them, maybe even protecting them. Not God. That ship had sailed.
But something.
He didn't like it.
The hair on the back of his neck had been standing up for weeks. That sixth sense that had kept him alive through Vietnam and twenty years of hunting was screaming that they were being watched.
Followed.
"You planning on sharing that?" Bobby asked, stepping onto the porch with two glasses and a bottle of whiskey.
John didn't take his eyes off the tree line. "Something's off, Bobby."
"You mean besides the fact you boys showed up on my doorstep instead of being roadkill? Because from where I'm standing, that counts as a win."
John accepted the glass Bobby offered, still scanning the darkness. "We should have been hit. I saw it."
"In one of your dreams?" Bobby's tone was carefully neutral.
"Vision. Premonition. Whatever you want to call it." John took a long swallow of whiskey. "We were supposed to be ambushed on that stretch of road. The fact we weren't means someone—or something—interfered."
"And that's... bad?"
"It's unknown. And unknown is always dangerous."
Bobby settled into the chair beside him. "You ever consider that maybe, just maybe, you got lucky for once? That the universe cut you a break?"
John snorted. "You know better than that."
"Yeah," Bobby sighed. "I do."
They sat in silence for a while, the night settling around them like a blanket. In the distance, an owl called, the sound echoing across the salvage yard.
"I checked the route," Bobby finally said. "Found something interesting at that intersection."
John's attention sharpened. "What?"
"Symbols. Not our usual fare. Carved into trees, hidden under loose gravel. One looked..." Bobby hesitated. "One looked Enochian."
"Angel script?" John frowned. "That doesn't make sense."
"None of it makes sense. But someone went to a lot of trouble to mark that spot."
"To protect us? Or trap us?"
Bobby shrugged. "Either way, it worked. You're here, not in a hospital. Or worse."
John stared into the darkness, unease coiling in his gut. He didn't believe in guardian angels. Never had. Whatever had intervened had its own agenda, its own game plan.
And that made it dangerous.
________________________________________
Dean's POV
Dean had been waiting for something to go wrong.
The tension in the air had been building for days—like the world itself was holding its breath. He'd watched the road like a hawk during their last stretch, feeling like something was coming.
Then nothing did.
It left a pit in his stomach.
He sat in the Impala long after they got to Bobby's, fingers drumming the wheel. No crash. No demon ambush. No roadside bloodbath.
He didn't know why that unsettled him more.
Maybe because his entire life had taught him one lesson: when you expect the worst and it doesn't come, it's just gathering strength to hit you harder later.
He glanced over at Sam, who was pacing, phone in hand, trying to trace leads on Azazel.
"Does this feel... off to you?" Dean muttered.
Sam stopped. "Yeah. Like something changed."
They both looked out into the dark.
Dean tightened his grip on the steering wheel.
"Whatever it was—we weren't alone out there."
Sam frowned. "You think someone's following us?"
"Or something." Dean opened the glove compartment, checking that his gun was still loaded with the consecrated iron rounds he'd prepared earlier. "Dad's been jumpier than usual. Keeps staring into the woods like he's expecting company."
"Could be the demon."
"Could be." Dean wasn't convinced. "But if it was Azazel, why not finish the job? Why let us get here in one piece?"
Sam had no answer for that. He just stood there, tall frame silhouetted against the salvage yard's security lights, looking younger and more vulnerable than his size suggested.
Dean felt that familiar surge of protectiveness. Whatever was out there—whatever had spared them or was stalking them—he'd face it head-on before he let it get to Sam.
Or to their father, who was carrying burdens Dean could only guess at.
"Get some sleep," Dean told his brother. "I'll take first watch."
Sam hesitated, then nodded. "Wake me in four hours."
"Yeah, yeah." Dean had no intention of waking Sam. Let the kid sleep. Dean would protect them all, like he always had.
He settled deeper into the Impala's seat, gun now resting on his thigh, eyes scanning the darkness beyond Bobby's fence.
Something had changed the game. And Dean Winchester didn't like playing when he didn't know the rules.
________________________________________
Sam's POV
Sam felt it the moment they passed that curve.
It was subtle, like a shift in pressure, a tingle behind the eyes. He'd crossed plenty of cursed ground, walked into plenty of haunted houses—but this?
This was different.
This felt holy.
Like someone had walked through just before them, dragging light in their wake.
Later, when he searched the roadside on instinct, he found a half-burned symbol beneath a cross nailed to a fencepost. One he didn't recognize.
Not demon. Not human.
He touched it.
The air felt warm. Comforting. And terrifying.
"What the hell is going on?" he whispered.
He had no idea he'd just stepped through someone else's war zone—one built to save him.
Back at Bobby's, Sam couldn't shake the feeling. He tried to focus on research, on finding Azazel, on making sense of his visions. But his mind kept returning to that symbol, to the strange warmth that had emanated from it.
He slipped out after midnight, when Dean had finally crashed on Bobby's couch and their father was holed up in one of the spare bedrooms. He needed space to think, to process.
The salvage yard was eerily quiet at night, the moonlight casting strange shadows among the stacked cars. Sam found a relatively clear spot and sat on the hood of an old Chevelle, staring up at the stars.
"What am I missing?" he murmured to the night sky.
His entire life, he'd been running from this—from hunting, from the family business, from the darkness that seemed to follow the Winchester name. He'd built a normal life at Stanford, found love with Jess, nearly escaped.
And then fire. Death. And he was right back where he started, chasing monsters with his brother and his enigmatic father.
Except something had changed. There was a new player on the board—one that left symbols of light, one that made the air hum with power.
One that might have saved their lives today.
Angel script, Bobby had called it. But angels weren't real—or if they were, they certainly weren't intervening in the lives of the Winchesters.
Were they?
Sam rubbed his temples, feeling the beginning of a headache. Too many questions, not enough answers. Story of his life.
But one thing was certain: whatever had happened on that road, it wasn't random. It wasn't coincidence.
It was deliberate.
And Sam Winchester was going to find out why.
________________________________________
Azazel's POV
Something had gone wrong.
Terribly wrong.
The crash hadn't happened. The driver he'd prepared—possessed—was exorcised in broad daylight. And the whispers that came back?
They were of wings.
The smell of burnt ozone. Enochian script. An angelic flare left behind.
But that didn't make sense.
There were no angels active yet. Not in this way. Not this soon.
He replayed his plan again and again, pacing in a dark church somewhere in Montana, steam rising from the holy water he refused to acknowledge.
Someone interfered. Something is watching his plan.
The scout demon he'd sent to possess the truck driver had returned terrified, babbling about blinding light and burning pain and the sensation of being forcibly ejected from its host by something it couldn't identify.
"It felt like... like being touched by Heaven," the lesser demon had whispered, still trembling. "But that's impossible. They're not supposed to be here yet."
Azazel had destroyed the messenger in a flash of rage. But the information remained, troubling and impossible to ignore.
Angels were neutral. Uninvolved. That was the deal—all part of the grand plan. They weren't supposed to interfere until the first seal was broken. Until the Righteous Man shed blood in Hell.
So what had happened?
He'd hoped to fast-track the Endgame—break John, ignite the boys, unleash the bloodline.
But now? Now he had to move slower.
Smarter.
He pulled out the photograph of his "Special Children." Sam. Jake. Ava. Others. But his fingers hesitated over one face that wasn't there.
Someone's missing.
A ghost in the deck.
A piece he hadn't accounted for. A Winchester he didn't know about? A celestial agent operating beyond its mandate? A wild card thrown in by forces he couldn't yet identify?
Whatever—whoever—it was, they had just become his primary concern.
Azazel grinned, eyes glowing yellow.
"Well then," he whispered. "Let's see who you are."
He folded the photograph carefully and tucked it away. The plan would need to be adjusted. John Winchester and his boys would have their reprieve—for now.
But the game was far from over.
It had just become more interesting.
________________________________________
Adam's POV
When the crash didn't happen, Adam knew it worked.
He'd been in position for days, camping in the woods near the fatal intersection, watching through binoculars. When the date passed with no sign of the Impala, he'd allowed himself a moment of cautious hope.
Then he tracked them to Bobby's.
Instead of getting T-boned, the Impala just limped into Bobby's yard with engine trouble. The final confrontation with the demon still came—but John never made the deal.
Not yet.
Adam had bought them time.
He stood in the tree line a mile away, watching smoke rise from Singer Salvage. He saw Dean pacing outside. Sam cleaning weapons on the hood of the car.
John was there too, drinking something strong from a chipped mug.
They were alive. All of them. Battered, stressed, exhausted—but alive. And without the devastating injuries that would have forced John's hand.
Adam watched them—the family he knew, but who didn't know him.
A family that, in another timeline, would have sacrificed everything. John would have traded his soul. Dean would eventually follow. Sam would be left alone, desperate. And Adam himself would be forgotten collateral damage, another Winchester son lost to the war.
But not this time.
This time, he'd changed the story.
And he turned away.
Back at his motel, he opened his journal and wrote two lines:
"Crash prevented. Deal delayed."
"Azazel's watching Heaven's shadow."
Then, on the last page, he scribbled one word and underlined it twice:
NEXT?
Because this was just the beginning. He'd bought them time, not victory. Azazel would regroup, adapt, find another way to push John into that corner.
And Adam needed to be ready.