The story starts in 1991 where Dean is angry because his dad won't talk to them about what he is doing so he is planning to leave and head out on his own. He figures that his dad will have to pay more attention to Sam once he's gone. Then we jump back to 1982 where the hunter H takes John, Dean and Sam to Harvelle's bar. Dean and Sam stay with Ellen while John goes out on a hunt with H and Ichi. They track down what they think is a Heeler but John is unwilling to shoot to kill and it gets away. Ichi shoots it in the leg and goes after it. They hear gunshots and Ichi comes back. On the way home "H" figures out that Ichi is not Ichi but really the shapeshifter (that looked like a Heeler because he was copying one) that they were tracking. He makes John kill it but Dean walks out during the shooting. After this John takes the boys to stay with some friends for a while. Dean refuses to talk to him when he leaves. John writes in his notebook about how he had to leave the boys because now they had seen the unspeakable things he was dealing with but he would be back for them. Until then he hoped that Dean would be strong enough to look after Sam. Then we jump forward to 1991 and Dean decides to break his father's rules and read the journal before he leaves. He reads what his father wrote when he left them and he decides to stay and watch over Sam.

Plot details indexed by the Grand Comics Database (CC BY-SA).