At the end of it, John stood looking over his unconscious sons as the heavy weight of defeat settled on him. One son down trying to do what John should have done within hours of his original arrival to Los Angeles, the other down because he'd lost all sense of reality. Every protective instinct in him pounded against that weight of defeat, because his whole life, even when the results had fallen short, he'd tried to keep his kids safe – and he hadn't, yet again.
But in knowing that even in his prime he couldn't have outmaneuvered an angel, it kept him from killing that goddamned demon while Sam was out and lying later by blaming it's disappearance on one of the powers. It would have been the perfect plan, what with how it had been yanked away and put back again recently, if not for Castiel standing there. Right now, he could have gotten rid of the angel too for stopping it, and not cared, but he didn't know enough to do that with ease like in dispatching a demon.
They'd lost the chance to kill the demon tonight, but John wasn't giving up the longterm chance yet.
"We'll manage," he said curtly, nodding to Claire.
Between the two of them, they could get the boys in the backseat and there'd be Bobby at the house to help after, once John called him and told him to get the bottom floor room ready. That small room tucked away behind the guest bedroom closet had been meant as a temporary safe room while construction plans were made for the future to add something belowground in the backyard, but John hadn't ever planned for it being used to keep someone with demon blood in.