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“Get out,” Dean snarls.
The threatening effect is somewhat muted by the fact that he’s slurring his words. Cas eyes the empty bottle of whiskey at the foot of his bed as he steps into the room anyway.
“No. You’re drunk,” he informs Dean shortly.
Dean throws his hands in the air. “So?”
So, I’m not having a conversation with you when you’re like this , Cas thinks, but doesn’t say. Instead, he crosses the room in a few quick strides and presses two fingers to Dean’s forehead. He protests and tries to move away, but Cas doesn’t let up until he’s flushed the alcohol from his system.
He debates leaving the vestiges of a hangover headache behind, but they’ve all been through a lot today.
“I told you to get out,” Dean says once the light fades.
There was a time, Cas thinks, that he would have slunk out of the room like a whipped dog at that. Instead, he crosses his arms.
“And I told you no.”
They glare at each other for a moment.
“Haven’t you done enough today?”
Cas know that quiet, casual cruelty is one of Dean’s most common responses to grief. The words don’t dig as deep as they’re meant to.
“I know you’re upset,” Cas begins.
“No shit, Cas.”
He turns his back to Cas and stares accusingly at the wall instead. Cas knows it’s an accusing glare by the familiar set of his shoulders.
“Mary was--”
“You don’t get to talk about her.”
Cas almost takes a step back at the force in his words. An old instinct.
“You’re the reason she’s dead.”
For the first time in a long time, electricity crackles in the air around him. The single lightbulb that still functions in Dean’s lamp flickers.
“No, I’m not.”
He reins himself in and the air stills, like the quiet aftershocks of lightning. Only one of them can be angry right now.
“We all knew that something was wrong with Jack,” Cas continues quietly. “But we all let our love for--”
“I don’t love him,” Dean snaps.
Cas shakes his head. “You know that’s not true.”
After all, it had been a combination of the Winchesters’ desperation and his own that drove him to accept the Empty’s deal. Cas considers for a moment ripping that ugly secret from his chest, but that won’t help anyone. Not right now.
“He killed her.”
Cas doesn’t say that they’ve all done something horrible under the influence of a power that was not their own. Sam and the demon blood. Himself and the Purgatory souls. Dean and the Mark.
“I know.”
And to his surprise, the hard shell around Dean utterly shatters at the words. Dean’s breath hitches once, twice before he folds forward, burying his face in his palms. Cas hovers for a moment, unsure of if it’s better to stay or go.
Screw better. He knows what he wants to do, and for now that’s enough.
So instead of fleeing the room and finding Sam, whose grief is usually easier to manage, he sits on the edge of Dean’s bed.
“Dean.”
And instead of pushing him away, Dean folds into his chest like he belongs there. Cas waits a moment before wrapping his arms around him as tightly as he can, as if he can squeeze the pain away.
They both pretend not to hear the first quiet sob.
They stay like that for a long time.
Sam aches.
It’s not often that he can feel each and every one of the centuries his soul has lived bearing down on him. But right now, they crush his lungs together, squeeze every last drop of air from his windpipe.
He’s old and weary. And he’s so, so very tired of making mistakes.
When he’d met golden eyes in a nursery—a story as old as he is, played in reverse—he’d seen a mirror. An opportunity to take a soul just as darkened by Lucifer’s shadow as his own and mold into something better.
When he’d met Lucifer’s leftovers in a church—another rhyme, an echo of Lilith in the convent—he’d seen a shell. An opportunity to take the broken pieces Lucifer left behind and rebuild them into something new.
Jack and Nick played equal parts in Mary’s second death. And Sam? He just played the fool again.
Mary told him that he was a good man on her very last day on Earth. Sam wonders if, in the Heaven that he doesn’t think will ever make Mary Winchester truly happy, she still thinks that. Probably not. Perspective is important.
He finds himself standing at her door, hand raised as if to knock, the lump in his throat doing every bit as much as the guilt in his chest to stop him from breathing. Finally, he turns the knob and walks inside.
His clothes still smell like smoke. It mixes with the scent of her perfume. He’d always found that little habit odd—hunters usually end up smelling like the guts of the things they kill. Not much point to perfume. Sam wonders if it’s the same kind she wore when he and Dean were kids. Probably not.
She’s half-packed, ready to go at a moment’s notice. She never stayed long.
Sam sinks on wobbly legs on to the bed. There are two books on her nightstand—a dog-eared Vonnegut she’d stolen from Dean, published two years after her original death, and a familiar journal. Sam holds his breath as he picks it up.
After Dad died, Sam had flipped these pages until they’d worn thin under his fingers, looking for some sort of answer. He does the same now, but there’s one difference.
A new page.
Two of them, actually. One labelled for Dean, and the other—Sam’s heart stutters in his chest when he sees his name in a careful loopy scrawl that looks almost like his own.
May 13th, 2016
Dear Sam,
I don’t know if anyone ever told you this, but you were a NICU baby. I didn’t even get to hold you before they were bundling you up and rushing you out the door. I told Dean that you were so eager to greet the world that you came a whole month early. He probably doesn’t remember.
Those first few days were so scary. Instead of taking you home, I did laps around the hospital. When there were visiting hours, your dad and I would stand there and just stare at you. I’d place my hand flat against the glass and pray that you’d be out soon.
It was a whole two weeks before they sent us home with you. Your dad had to pry you out of my arms to put you down for that first night.
I guess I should get to why I’m telling you this story.
You scared me, Sammy. From the very first moment of your life, you scared me.
And you scare me now. Not because of anything you’ve done. But because of what I did to you.
When I died, I guess whatever the angels did to me to make me forget my deal evaporated. That’s why I was a ghost, I think. My unfinished business was you, Sam. I gave you up to Azazel in exchange for your father’s life. I traded you. How could you possibly forgive me for that?
But then, you came in today and gave me this book and a hug I needed more than you could ever know, so maybe you already have.
All I know is this. I’m going to try. Sam, it’s going to take a while, and I’m so sorry for that. But I can’t wait to see the man that you’ve become. I can already tell that I have so much to be proud of.
Love,
Mom
Sam folds the letter once, twice. Sets it in the breast pocket of his shirt as he gets to his feet.
Three years with Mary Winchester was never going to be enough. But all Sam knows is this. He’s going to do everything in his power to make sure her pride wasn’t misplaced.
Mary’s eyes snap open to the familiar library of the bunker, but dread pools in her stomach, anyway.
“Jack?”
Maybe he just blasted her here. Maybe the cold feeling spreading under her skin is just fear. Maybe she isn’t--
“Hello, Mary.”
She almost can’t bring herself to turn and look, but she does. The cold feeling intensifies at the sight of Billie leaning against one of the bookcases.
“I burned again,” Mary whispers, her voice distant and echoey, ghostly even to her own ears.
“Technically,” Billie says, tipping her head back, “you exploded. Atoms scattered all over God’s green Earth. I thought it’d take forever to piece you together to reap you properly, but you did it for me. You’re full of surprises, Mary Winchester.”
Her ears are ringing, somehow, despite the fact that she doesn’t have a corporeal body with ears to ring.
“Put me back.”
It’s a childish demand, but she can’t stop it. Amara had plucked her from Heaven over thirty years after her death. Surely this, a few minutes, is easier.
“What’s dead is dead,” Billie says.
It’s not unkind, but it’s not gentle, either. Mary clenches her fists at her sides and the bookshelves tremble in the wind she accidentally generates.
“Not for them.” There’s a slightly hysteric note in her voice that she can’t hide. “I watched Lucifer stab Castiel. Vampires ripped out Sam’s throat. You told Dean that his story would end with Michael ending everything, and now Michael’s dead!”
Billie shrugs. “Stories can be rewritten.”
Mary wants to beat her with incorporeal fists, to scream until her not-throat gives out, to knock every bookshelf to the ground with great gusts of frustration and loss.
“Then let me rewrite mine!”
This is her second chance, and Mary can’t stand the thought that it’s over. It’s not fair.
“You got three years.”
She really doesn’t want to cry, but a sob builds up in her chest anyway.
“It wasn’t enough time.”
Billie doesn’t really do sympathy, Mary can tell, but her face softens at least a little.
“That’s what you told me last time. Do you remember?”
Mary shakes her head, anger draining away to be replaced by exhaustion.
“I was the reaper who came to you in Lawrence.” Billie smiles at the memory, not cruel but amused. “If I remember correctly, you tried to punch me.”
Well, it sure sounded like her.
“Azazel tried to burn up your soul, too, but he failed. He always was a little unimaginative. I enjoyed tossing him into the Empty.”
The memory strikes like a punch to the gut. Mary nearly doubles over with the force of it, her mind struggling to accommodate a second death.
“I asked if you wanted to stay.”
Mary nods. “I remember.”
They’d been standing in the smoking ruins of Sammy’s nursery. Mary had still been in pain--if Billie is telling the truth, her soul must have still been charred.
“Why did you?”
“I had unfinished business.” Mary turns her back to Billie, the memories creeping back. “I had to warn John. Azazel did something to Sam. But he never came back.”
She’d tried desperately to get to her own funeral, but she’d been tied to the house. And then John had bundled the boys into the Impala and never looked back.
“And now?”
She wants to stay that she still does, but the truth is, she’s so very tired. She’s sick of walking a world that forgot her a long time ago. She’s tired of her wedding ring like a rock around her neck. Done with being lost.
“Just one thing.”
She gathers her energy together. It takes every ounce of strength to carve her initials next to the boys’ on the table.
When she finishes, she levels her gaze on Billie again.
“Tell me that they’re going to be okay.”
Billie shakes her head. “I’m a reaper, not a fortune teller.”
Mary closes her eyes, reopens them. “I don’t want to go.”
But when Billie extends her hand, she takes it anyway.