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When the car died in the middle of the road, in the middle of a bridge, in the middle of nowhere, Mary expected a demon. She didn’t expect a Reaper, or to know that Reaper. She’d never known Reapers made deals, so she especially didn’t expect to hear her sons had made one.
“Why would you--”
“We were already dead,” Dean said, low and aching, as deeply hollow as she felt being in this modern world, everything changed and gone except the one thing she’d hated. “Being locked in that cell with nothing--I’ve been to Hell. This was worse.”
“At least this way,” Sam added, open and earnest, pleading, like this should be a decision she should understand, “one of us gets to keep fighting.”
As if a world where she had to watch one of her boys die, when she’d been brought back to life against her will, was anything she would or could accept.
Castiel found the protest she couldn’t put to words, too busy looking for the lie, hoping for it, in two pairs of hazel eyes; sickly wondering if they’d already decided which Winchester son wouldn’t be walking away tonight.
Over the thick beat of her heart, Mary heard Billie shoot the angel down. “We made a pact,” she said, “bound in blood. If you break that, there’s consequences. On a cosmic scale. So who’s it going to be?”
Sam? Her baby boy, who she remembered holding in her arms like it was yesterday, so warm and soft and happy; who’d grown into a sweet, reserved man, both generous and kind, patient and loving; who, in odd moments, reminded her so much of John it hurt.
Or Dean? Her little man, who’d grown up so fast and been so excited to be a big brother; who’d been, according to John, looking after Sam and protecting him his whole life; who had become so much the man she’d ever hoped he would be, loving and steady and strong. So strong.
They exchanged a look, her boys, words forming on both their lips. She hadn’t known them long, not really, but she thought she knew them well enough to know they’d fight for it, for the right to get struck down, and she couldn’t do that. She couldn’t listen to that. Couldn’t allow it.
And, God forgive her, but she could make this sacrifice and return to John.
Pulling her gun, she turned her back on her boys, putting them behind her, protecting them as she’d failed to do more than thirty years before. As she’d never thought she’d have the chance to do again. As she’d never get to do again.
“Me,” she said, and stood firm when her boys protested, stood firm when they moved to stop her and Billie stopped them with a gesture, stared the Reaper down and claimed this sacrifice as her right. “You said come midnight a Winchester dies? I’m a Winchester.”
She was the only Winchester who would die here tonight. She would make sure of it. It just made it easier, Billie agreeing with her.
Easier, until she heard Sam and Dean, both so stoic until that moment, and her heart clenched--hurt for them all the more, because no matter how much she loved them and missed them, her heart still yearned for John, to be back where she was meant to be. She closed her eyes against the tears that flooded them.
“I love you,” she told them, because she wanted them to know, because it was true, because she hadn’t gotten to tell them the first time. Because it was the good-bye they deserved, no matter how little they deserved to be forced to say it again.
Then Castiel made it all for naught.
*
Mary had grown up in this life. She knew its ins and outs, the toll it took and the price it demanded. She’d never wanted it for herself, and for damned sure never wanted it for her kids. She ached for what it had already taken from her sons.
The worst part was that she couldn’t even blame John, no matter how much she hated the choices he’d made, because he never would have had to make those choices if she hadn’t first made hers and brought him back.
That didn’t stop her from wishing he could have found a different way. A better way.
Castiel thought the world needed the Winchesters. Mary thought the world needed fewer monsters. No one on that little road in the middle of nowhere had a plan to make that happen. But she knew someone who did.
And they’d already helped her protect her sons once. They’d help her do it for good.