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Mary Sandra Campbell was born on the 5th of December in 1954 in Lawrence, Kansas.
Different from most children, she grew up knowing that all the monsters they were afraid of? All those things going bump in the night? Yeah, they were all real. Or, well. Most of them were, anyway.
But she didn’t grow up afraid. Just like she learned that the sky was blue, she learned that both of her parents would always have her back, that they’d do everything in their power to keep her safe. She grew up knowing that even though her parents would always give their all, they were still just people, and people could get hurt, people could get killed. Therefore, Mary grew up learning how to protect and rely on herself. While other children learned to ride a bike, she learned how to shoot a rifle. Instead of drawing stickmen, she trained wielding a knife.
Mary Campbell was raised a hunter, and she was great at what she did. But it wasn’t what she wanted out of life.
Then, she met John.
John Eric Winchester was wonderful. He was kind, and loving, and so wonderfully, refreshingly normal. A Vietnam War veteran working as a mechanic, and while at first she could not stand his guts, she eventually fell in love with him. Looking back, it was hard to understand why she hadn’t liked him right from the start. It stung that her father didn’t approve of their relationship, but it couldn’t all be sunshine and roses.
She never told John about her being a hunter, and when they got married, Mary swore to herself that she would leave the hunting life behind. Finally, after she had longed for it for years.
Most of all, Mary wanted to give her children a happy, normal life. No monsters worse than disliked teachers and the odd schoolyard bully. The belief that their parents were there to stay, that they were safe, that they could rely on her and John no matter what.
Mary wanted her children to grow up safe and loved and blissfully oblivious. And she promised them, her Dean-o, and later, her Sammy, too. Promised them she’d do anything to protect them. That she’d keep them safe. They would never have to be afraid.
The last thing Mary ever wanted was for her sons to be raised as hunters, like she was.
But Mary had made a mistake, an inevitable mistake, a fatal mistake, an essential mistake. Years before her sons were born, she’d granted a demon permission to enter her home in ten years, if only he brought John back to life.
The demon made good on his word. John lived, their sons were born, and ten years later, Mary paid the price. Azazel popped by for a visit. And so, on the 2nd of November 1983, Mary Winchester died at the age of twenty-nine in Lawrence, Kansas, stuck to the ceiling with a slit stomach and burning alive. The last thing she ever saw, before the flames got her eyes, was her baby boy. Her Sammy.
She died.
And then, there’d been heaven. She’d been in heaven—despite her demon deal.
In heaven, everything had been good. Everything had been perfect. She was at home, living a normal life, surrounded by her loving husband, her John, and her sweet boys. Baby Sammy and four-year-old Dean with his blindingly bright smile. She’d been content, and happy. So happy. Forever happy.
In heaven, everything had been heaven.
Then, thirty-three years later, she came to in the middle of a park at night, with no memory of her death and her blissful time in heaven. One minute she was at home, putting her little boys to bed, and the next she was standing outside, wearing nothing but her thin nightgown, getting called ‘Mom’ by a stranger older than herself. A stranger claiming to be her eldest, Dean.
As it turned out, the stranger wasn’t lying. He truly was her son, he truly was Dean. And then she met Sam, and meeting her baby Sammy all grown up was even more of a gut punch. Hard to believe that that gorgeous man with his easy charm, dirty mouth and boyish grin was once her little boy; even harder to believe that the roughed up, tortured giant of a man used to be the baby she cradled to sleep just hours ago.
Her whole life, ripped away from her just like that. Her husband dead, her baby boys all grown up—Dean thirty-seven and Sam thirty-three—both of them older than her now. She had missed all of their childhood, had never gotten to be a mother to them. They were strangers. And the only person who might have been able to soothe her hurt, who would have known her despite the time passed, her lover, was dead and gone. Murdered by the same demon that had killed her just yesterday, all those years ago.
It was worse than death. Worse than anything Mary could have ever imagined, worse than any pain she had ever endured before.
She was staying with them at the bunker. They called it their home. Said they were Legacies, that their grandfather, John’s dad, had been a Man of Letters. John had never known.
All of this, it was so surreal.
It was a nightmare.
It was a nightmare, only Mary wouldn’t wake up. And she could not fall asleep either.
Instead of futilely trying to sleep, Mary got up and started exploring the bunker.
At heart, she was still a hunter. No matter what she wanted to tell herself, that’s what she had been raised to be. And she’d been uprooted, ripped from her time and her life, ripped from everything she knew and had instead been planted here.
Her first instinct was to understand. She’d asked questions, and a lot of them. Not enough yet, it would never be enough, not when she had missed thirty-three years, but it had to be enough for today. They… Her boys—her boys, they needed to sleep, after all they’d gone through today.
It was still hard, nearly impossible, in fact, to believe that those men were her sons.
As Mary was standing barefoot in the corridor of a secret bunker—the Men of Letters Bunker, containing the knowledge, secrets and collected artifacts of the Men of Letters—listening to her adult sons’ hushed voices through the thick bathroom door, she wondered how she had gotten here. How they had gotten here.
Those were her boys in there, her baby boys. Sam and Dean, who she’d promised to protect forever, with her life, who she’d wanted to have a normal life and a happy childhood. Her baby, her little boy.
Just a little more than a day ago now, she’d put them to bed. And here they were, now.
Hunters, the both of them. Disillusioned, scarred adults. No wives, no homes, no children. And John was dead.
John, her sweet, kind, normal John, who had raised them to be something she had never even wanted any of them knowing about. John, who had shown her boys that the world was as dangerous a place as all the stories made it out to be and who had taught them how to kill. John, who had her sons growing up isolated and in a life that had been the very last thing she had ever wanted for them.
Did he know, Mary wondered, frozen in front of the bathroom, feeling like a Peeping Tom, like an invader. Did he know?
A few minutes ago, she had almost had a run-in with Sam and Dean, had stepped back into the corridor she’d been about to exit just in time to remain unseen when they had passed her by. They had been too preoccupied to notice her, and she was too exhausted for any more conversation tonight. It had served her just right.
Nevertheless, she’d decided to follow them.
Mary had just been curios. Where were they going in the middle of the night? What was going on? Sam and Dean didn’t seem alarmed, so this wasn’t an emergency. But if it wasn’t that, then what was it?
Mary had just been curious. She had missed her sons’ whole lives. All she wanted was to see what they were like, with each other, unobserved. When they didn’t need to be careful of her, when they didn’t try so hard.
Mary had just been curious.
Now, she kind of wished she’d stepped into their way, or even better, just gone back to bed.
Dean had pulled Sam into the bathroom, and all too soon, there’d been the sound of the bathtub being filled. For all but a minute after them entering, Mary had thought that maybe Dean was looking Sam over again, checking for wounds. That angel friend of theirs, Castiel, he’d healed Sam. But she understood the need to make sure again and again all too well. Then, there’d been the rushing of water, and yeah. She should have just left then.
“You’re supposed to be in here with me. Have you forgotten?”
Mary was still not used to their voices, deep and low and all man, but she thought it was Sam that had spoken. His words were innocent enough, but they still made her feel a little uneasy. She’d never had any siblings, so she couldn’t know for sure, but as far as she knew, adult brothers didn’t still bathe together.
“That’s gonna be a tight squeeze. Sure you want me to join you? What if I accidentally kick you?” This had to be Dean, if the previous voice belonged to Sam. For a moment, neither of them said anything. Then, Sam asked, “Better?”
“You sure?”
Water splashed.
“Bitch.”
“Relax, jerk.”
There was another, longer silence. Mary held her breath and strained her ears. She felt queasy, trying to listen in on their conversation. Whatever they were doing in there—bathing, just washing up—it felt intimate. Too intimate. It felt like something not meant for her, not meant for anyone but the two of them.
Sam and Dean were talking almost too quietly for Mary to catch what they were saying. Their murmuring sounded so careful. Like there was a bubble around them that would burst if they spoke too loudly.
“—clean me up?” Sam.
Mary didn’t catch the next few sentences exchanged between them, but somehow, she didn’t feel like she needed to.
“It’s my job. Taking care of you.” Dean, this time, and his words made her chest constrict, drove tears to her eyes. Mary swallowed around the lump in her throat and refused to let them spill.
My job. Taking care of you.
No. No, it wasn’t. It was—had been—Mary’s job. It had been her job, and it had been John’s. They were Sam’s parents, and they were supposed to care for him. They were supposed to protect him. But there’d been no doubt in Dean’s voice when he spoke the words, not the faintest hint of it. This was his truth, and it was a truth of his heart. This was as ingrained in Dean’s soul as hunting was in Mary’s.
John was dead, and Mary had never, as far as Sam could recall, been a mother to the boy. The man. And with John out and hunting nearly all the time, seeking to avenge her death—
Before Mary’s eyes flashed a row of images, dingy motel rooms and two young boys left all alone, huddled together on the bed, eating fast food, watching TV, bathing.
Dean has been his mother, Mary realized, he’s been Sam’s father. He’s been much more than a brother to him. He’s had to be so much more. So much more than the child he should have been.
The thought made her nauseous.
Mary shuffled her feet, carefully quiet, thinking about the fact that she should leave. She should return to the room she had been given and try to get at least a little sleep. It would be the morally correct, the respectful thing to do. The right thing. But Mary had always been too curious for her own good, her parents had reminded her of that again and again, and so she stayed. Instead of getting up and leaving, she kept listening to the quiet sounds of water sloshing around and the low, unintelligible murmurs of her sons speaking to each other.
It was peaceful. Intimate. And it should have registered as beautiful. Because despite everything, her sons had each other. They were taking care of each other, they had made the best of a terrible situation. But for some reason, all it did was make Mary feel sick.
The quiet gasps and low moans were what finally got her brain caught up on what her gut had been trying to tell her ever since she’d first heard the faucet running, since she’d wondered about adult men squeezing into tiny bathtubs together, about brothers sharing baths in the middle of the night.
All of a sudden, Mary felt cold, inside and out, the realization bringing with it a physical reaction so intense that, for a moment, it was all she could register. Her chest constricted painfully, her breath caught. It felt like everything was standing still, like the world had stopped spinning.
Incest.
The word burned itself into Mary’s mind like a brand, something impossible to forget, impossible to ignore. Like condemnation.
Mary’s hands were shaking.
“Gotta wash your pretty princess-hair, Sammy. ’n your stupid face.”
Dean’s gravely voice sounded so soft, so gentle. He sounded like he was talking to a young child. Mary’s stomach lurched.
This was all her fault, wasn’t it? Her fault, and John’s. They had made them this.
Abnormal. Twisted. Perverted.
In there were her boys, Sammy and Dean-o, her babies, and they had become everything she had never wanted them to be.
Hunters. Killers. Incestuous.
Mary was breathing again, but now she was breathing too fast and shallow, almost hyperventilating. Her heart was racing, and her cold, bare feet were still, cursedly, stuck to the floor. She wanted to run. She wanted to flee. All Mary wanted was to close her eyes and forget, return to her time, her life.
I want my boys back, Mary thought, no longer able to hold back the tears. I want John back.
And then, unbidden, Did he know? Did John know about this? Did he allow it?
“Come on, let’s get you to bed.”
The rustling of clothes, footsteps nearing the door.
Finally, with the thread of being discovered hanging over her head, Mary found the power to uproot her feet and leave. Her steps were as quick and quiet as always, all seasoned hunter, her ears sharp and her mind attentive despite her distress. This was uncharted territory, she was surrounded by strangers, and she had to get back to safety.
How long has this been going on?
She felt dirty.
Mary didn’t sleep that night. She tossed and turned and listened to the noises of the bunker. Listened for sounds coming from the corridor, from the room closest to hers, for any signs of Dean returning to bed. But his room remained unoccupied all night.
She didn’t wonder about where her son might be spending his night instead.
Mary knew.