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Sitting in the bunker, food on the table and beer in hand, both of her boys safe across the table, Mary Winchester finally had the time to think. She had been avoiding that, truth be told, avoiding thinkingabout anything too deeply, about coming back from the dead, John’s death, the stretch of decades she had missed, the ways she knew her boys had suffered while she was away… When Sam had been in danger she had had something to distract herself with, but now he was home safe and she was out of excuses.
Mary looked at the men across the table from her. At her sons. Her boys. She wasn’t sure she really had the right to call them that, to claim any of them. She knew that she loved them—with her whole heart she loved them, the feeling all consuming and almost painful in her chest. And she knew that the rage she had felt at seeming them chained and bleeding in that farmhouse basement had been the rage of a mother defending her young. But she hadn’t really been a mother to them, had she? Not really. She had been gone.
And in the meantime, John, her John, gentle, caring, John had raised them as soldiers.
Mary had grown up with hunters, and as such, had met her fair share of widows and widowers whose families had been lost to the supernatural. Many of them had been good enough people at heart, but Mary would have trusted very few of them with the care of a child, let alone her child. Her chest tightened at the thought that John had ended up like that. That her boys had been raised like that. Some part of her wanted to deny it, to believe that John had somehow been different, better. But try as she might, she knew she couldn’t ignore the evidence in front of her face. The way her sons exchanged somber glances when she mentioned their father, the way Sam flinched at any expected sound, how Dean would close off sometimes, face stony, retreating somewhere far away inside himself.
If only she had been there, her boys would have at least been prepared for the life they ended up in. She could have taught them the ropes, passed on the wisdom of generations of hunters. But then, if she had been alive, her boys wouldn’t have ended up hunters at all. The only family business they would have gone into was working at John’s garage, and even then, she couldn’t imagine either her or John pressuring them too. They would have been free.
And she was the reason that they weren’t.
Mary sighed, trying to ease the ache in her chest. The guilt that squeezed her heart like a vice.
She realized that she had been quiet for too long, Sam glancing at her with thinly veiled concern. She shot him what she hoped was a reassuring smile before leaning in, attempting to grasp where the conversation had flowed while she was lost in her thoughts. She must not have been gone for too long; Dean was still chuckling about some joke or another, either oblivious to her absence or choosing to ignore it for her sake. From what she knew of Dean as a child and what she learned about him as an adult, likely the latter.
“You look tired, Mom,” Sam said after a moment.
“Don’t feel like you have to stay up on our account,” Dean added, taking a lazy swig of his beer. “Actually, you should probably turn in too, Sam,” he added, glancing his brother’s direction. He didn’t mention why that was, none of them needing the reminder of the state Sam had been in when they found him.
Sam nodded. He knocked back the rest of his drink in one long pull before setting it down and leaning back to stretch. “Yeah, I could sleep for a week.” He glanced over to Dean, “Does Mom—”
“I’ve already got her set up in a room, don’t worry, I can be a good host. Got her clean towels and everything.”
“You know how to clean a towel? The wonders never cease!”
Dean threw a paper towel at his brother, Sam chuckling as he dodged, and Mary couldn’t keep the smile from her face. At least some part of her boys’ lives were normal then.
…
Later, Mary sat on the edge of the bed in the room Dean had set her up in. Her room if she wanted it to be. She had taken a shower, leaving her hair damp against her back, the water soaking through her robe to her skin. She tried to focus on the feel of the dampness, the way wet fabric stuck to her as she shifted, the gentle creaks and groans of the bunker around her, the distant sounds of her sons in the other rooms. Anything to keep her mind in the present.
If she let her mind wander, she knew that she wouldn’t like the places it went. Knew that she would hear the voice in the back of her mind whispering to her. Telling her that she would never be able to look at Sam and Dean without drowning in the cold, biting weight of her own failures. That they would only see the pain in her eyes when they should have seen love.
They didn’t deserve that. She would be failing them all over again.
But then maybe that was all she was good for. Failing the people around her. Maybe that was her place in the order of the world.
Sometime later, someone knocked at Mary’s door. She startled slightly.
“Yes?”
The door opened so cautiously, Mary knew it was Sam before she could see him. She had already noticed that he was the quieter of her two boys. More introspective. And she didn’t think it was only because of the ordeal he had just gone through. “Hey,” he said, flashing a hesitant smile.
“Hi,” Mary said, as cheerfully as she could manage. It was obvious that Sam was nervous around her; she didn’t blame him, but she hoped that he would start to relax soon.
“Sorry, I hope I didn’t wake you up. I… I uh… wanted to bring you this.” He lifted a cup to show her, placing it gently on the desk in front of her. Tea.
“Thank you,” Mary said, genuinely touched by the gesture. He had been through so much so recently and was still thinking of her.
“You’re welcome. I...I don’t know if you drink tea, but…”
“I do,” Mary said quickly, hoping to reassure him before he spiraled too far.
Sam smiled. “Good.” He hesitated a moment. “Um… and I wanted to say…if you ever want to talk, I know what its like to come back and not feel like you really… fit?”
He spoke casually, but Mary’s heart ached at what she heard in between his words.
“I just have so much about you boys to catch up on,” Mary said, trying to shift the topic just a little, take some of the weight of it off Sam’s shoulders. “Mother stuff. You know, first tooth, first crush...”
“Yeah…” Sam flashed an only somewhat awkward smile.
“I just have a lot of blanks to fill in…”
Sam’s eyes lit up. He reached for a book that had been resting under his arm, then held it out towards her, his hands almost reverent on the leather cover. “Dad’s journal,” he explained. “His writing, his words.”
Mary took the book from him, hands trembling slightly. She could almost feel John in the worn leather. Bittersweet grief shot through her like a hot knife.
“It helped me fill in some blanks… answer some questions I didn’t know I had. And it keeps him with us, sort of…”
“Thank you,” Mary managed to get out, throat tight with love and loss.
Sam nodded. “Well… Good night.”
“Dean said you got out of hunting,” Mary said suddenly, her voice working without her permission. She hadn’t meant to say it. Not really. The last thing she wanted to do was make Sam feel more uncomfortable around her.
Sam’s brow furrowed the slightest amount. Not like he was troubled by the question, but rather confused. Maybe wondering why Dean would have told her that. “Yeah…”
“And yet here you are…” Mary let the unspoken question linger in the air between them.
Sam shrugged, pausing to think, but Mary could already read the answer in his face. There was grief there. And pain and loss. But there was also love. Love for his father and brother. Love for her even though he couldn’t have possibly remembered her at six months old. “This is my family. My family hunts, you know? It’s what we do,” Sam finally said, his voice an odd mixture of resignation and acceptance in equal parts.
Mary nodded silently, throat too tight to speak. Family could be both a burden and a gift, couldn’t it?
She looked down at the journal in her hands, Sam lingering at the periphery of her vision.
“Mom?” he said finally. There was a quaver in his voice that grabbed her attention immediately. “For me… just uh… having you here? Fills in the biggest blank.”
Mary hugged him then, feeling the muscles in his back finally releasing their tension under her hands. He nearly melted into her, over six feet of man turning back into a boy in her arms. Mary had the sudden thought that in that moment her arms where the only things holding Sam together, that if she let go a moment too soon he would simply disintegrate and cease to exist.
You did this to him, the voice in the back of her head whispered. He is in pain because of you.
Mary pushed the voice down.
Yes, she thought, she had caused him pain. But in this moment she was also healing him. Maybe, just maybe, she could be what her boys needed her to be.
Later, lying in bed alone, the darkness around her creeping into her mind, Mary could only taste the lie in that thought.