It had been a long conversation. A long, uncomfortable conversation, full of awkward, guilty pauses as tiny bombshells, long suppressed under the weight of issues more akin to nuclear warheads, made Mary's eyes pop. Dean winced each time he saw it happen. It wasn't as though he had forgotten, or even accepted, most of the crap that had happened or that they had done in the past thirty years. When you start needing a comparative system for apocalypses (apocalypsen? apocalypsi?), he figured, you have to start prioritizing your remorse.

Mary hadn't had time to build up a tolerance for all of it. That was why she kept getting caught up in details.

"So, vessels," she said, shaking her head and lowering her eyes. "Your father and I – we were a plan? All to create you boys, so that you could be worn. By angels."

"Yeah, basically," Dean said, shifting uncomfortably, "but their plan didn't work, so there's that, anyway."

"Because angels need permission to possess humans."

"That's right."

"And you and Sam would never have said yes," she said firmly. There was a long pause as Dean tried to think of a way to respond that wouldn't end with his being – grounded? Spanked? Those missing years of mothering were making his head spin as he tried to adjust, and he found himself needing to remind himself that no matter how old she looked, he wasn't a little boy anymore. The heavy silence hinted at his response well enough.

"Dean, did you say yes?" she said, leaning forward across the kitchen table, fire glinting in her eyes.

"No! I mean…okay, I almost did, when I thought it was either that or Lucifer wins and destroys everything, but I didn't!" Please don't ask, please don't ask…

"And your brother?"

Crap. "Um. Well, okay, it wasn't like that. Wasn't like what you're thinking." Mary closed her eyes and made a thin, high noise that sounded like a tired wail, and Dean decided more whiskey was needed for this talk.

"So, Sam was possessed by Satan." Mary was now staring into her glass, and Dean was beginning to get a little antsy; he didn't want to move on in the recap until she was with him, but she'd just repeated that statement three, now four, times, and it didn't seem to be settling any better for repetition.

"Yes, but Sam took control," he reiterated, as he had done each time. "We didn't have a whole lot of options left, and we needed Lucifer back in his box. He wasn't going voluntarily, so Sam pretty much trapped him by letting him in. And it all worked out, pretty much."

After a long moment, in which Dean truly began to worry that he'd already managed to break his mom, Mary sighed heavily and drank deeply. "But he's back now."

"Hmmm?" For a moment, Dean panicked, wondering how Mary had somehow jumped ahead and guessed at how they'd managed to release Lucifer from the cage to fight the Darkness.

"You got Sam out of the cage," she said, nodding. "So there was no apocalypse, and Sam was fine."

"Yes!" Dean said in relief. "Yeah, fine! He was…well, pretty much fine!"

"Pretty much?" Her eyes narrowed.

"Yeah, okay. It just…it took multiple trips, is all." Dean was scrambling, trying to think of an explanation that didn't contain the words "torture," "soulless," or "psychotic break." "You know how sometimes when you take a trip, the airport loses your luggage temporarily, and your suitcase has to catch up with you later?" From the expression on her face, his brilliant analogy fell flat.

"Okay," Mary said, handing her glass back to Dean for another refill. For a recently dead woman, she seemed to have an impressive liquor tolerance. "So let's recap. You're alive, unpossessed. Sam's alive, unpossessed, but having been inhabited by an archangel. Your father is gone, because he made a deal with a demon, but he helped you kill that demon afterward?"

"You make it sound so weird."

"I'm just wrapping my head around it."

They sat in silence, processing what had been discussed so far. Mary gazed into the amber drink, shock having melted into something more complicated. Without looking up, she said quietly, "If I hadn't made that deal…if I hadn't let the demon bring your father back…"

"Don't go down that road," Dean said firmly. "For one thing, there were too many parties with too much invested in the whole situation to let it all go to waste because you said no. If you hadn't agreed then, they'd have found a way to get what they wanted, and it would probably have been worse and bloodier. And feeling guilty isn't going to change anything at this point." She had no way to know that he was the poster child for pointless guilt, and he hoped she'd just accept his words on that point.

"The demon had already killed my parents and your father. We could have called it a day."

"I was there, you remember. The whole reason the angels sent me there was to show me that 'destiny can't be changed,' or some crap."

"I don't believe that." It was a quick response, and she lifted her eyes to meet Dean's with certainty as she spoke.

"Good. Neither do I." He nodded. "So we take what we have, and we make it work. Believe me, we've all made some pretty bad decisions here, and sometimes you just don't know until you've come out on the other side. Which we're getting pretty good at doing, at least. And, hey, if it makes you feel any better, and it probably won't, we actually met once after that time, before I was born. Sam and I tried to stop the whole plan then, but a different angel reset it all and wiped your memories."

Her eyes widened slightly, then relaxed as she finally chuckled dryly. "Angels, demons, and Winchesters caught in the crossfire. I guess we never had a chance."

"Then I haven't been telling the story right."

Dean was carefully attempting to navigate his way through an explanation of purgatory and alpha monsters without mentioning the temporary resurrection of Mary's father (no point, he rationalized; it has nothing to do with not wanting to confess to killing him again) when he heard the bunker door open. Immediately jumping from his chair and pulling his gun from his waistband, Dean was momentarily amused to see his mother mirror his actions. Genetic on both sides, he supposed.

Before he could creep out of the kitchen, though, he heard a gravelly voice calling. "Sam! Are you still here? That woman –"

"Cas?" Dean ran out into the war room, forgetting all else in his haste to get to the angel. "Cas! Where's Sam?"

"Dean!" Castiel stood frozen on the steps, face pale, eyes huge. "You're alive!" Oh, right, Dean remembered. His reminiscing with Mary had almost made him forget that his own survival was not a widely known fact. He crossed the floor to the staircase, throwing his arms around Cas in what was both a confirmation of not being dead and an insurance plan in case of angelic collapse. Honestly, Cas didn't look well at all, even considering the shock.

"You okay, buddy? I'd say you look as if you'd seen a ghost, but you don't even blink at those."

"I…" Castiel fumbled for words, finally settling on, "I will be fine. Better than fine. You…" He paused again, then shook himself. "I am sorry. I am still weak from being banished."

"Banished?"

"Dean?"

Dean spun, trying to decide where to begin. Mary was staring at Cas, who was still staring at Dean after the swiftest of reactions at hearing a female voice. Dean almost missed noticing the glitter of an angel blade appearing and disappearing in Cas's hand as his piercing blue gaze had identified the third party in the room.

"Mom, this is Castiel," Dean said, finally deciding that simple introductions were the best point to start. "Cas, my mom."

"Mary Winchester," Castiel said, nodding politely but briefly.

"Dean has been telling me about you," she said. Castiel looked a little nervous, and Mary tried to reassure him. "You've taken care of my boys. Thank you."

"Yes. Well." Castiel winced, turning pleading eyes toward Dean. "Dean, we need to talk."

"Story of the day," Dean muttered.

"Great," he sighed. "Would the world stop turning if we got an afternoon off, free from things that want to kill us?"

"I begin to believe that could be true," Cas mused.

"All right," Mary said. In the explanation of Sam's abduction – which had necessarily included brief detours into the near-destruction of the sun, Dean's successful mediation effort between God and his sister, and discussion of which enemy groups were even still in play at this point – Mary had given up trying to get caught up. There was too much. It was all too much.

She stood and gazed at the two of them. "So. Dean. What was it you said before? We take what we have, make it work, and come out on the other side?" He nodded, eyes narrowing. "Then let's do it."

Dean and Cas exchanged glances. "Mom, are you sure – "

"I personally have had over thirty years' worth of afternoons off. Time to get back to work, I think." She suddenly grinned and winked, her confident expression looking so much like Dean that Castiel blinked. "Besides, I owe your brother a lecture for saying yes to the devil."

Missing scene, which I couldn't quite incorporate:

MARY: "So if Lucifer had Sam for a vessel, but Michael didn't get you to say yes, there was no way to have a battle, right?"

DEAN: "Well, the angels found a...workaround."

MARY: "A workaround? What's that supposed to mean?"

DEAN: "I was their top choice for a vessel, but, well, we found out that there was another option."

MARY: "..."

DEAN: "..."

MARY: "I see."

DEAN: "You were dead!"

MARY: "So where is this 'other option' now?"

DEAN: "..."

MARY: "Dean Winchester, if you tell me that you left a sibling in that cage..."

DEAN: "Sam left me in Purgatory!"