A/n: No, but the ending of 12x03 actually killed me. Thankfully, an excuse to fic it came up with the Beta Branch's "Music Shuffle Challenge"! My songs were:

Thunderstruck – AC/DC
Still Pretty – Kyle Dixon & Michael Stien (Stranger Things soundtrack/instrumental)
Whistle Stop – Disney/Robin Hood
We Didn't Start The Fire – Billy Joel
Something in the Water – Jealous Girlfriends (Grey's soundtrack)
(+ bonus: Goodbye Stranger - Supertramp)

Goodbye Stranger

i. in the middle of a railroad track / i looked round / and i knew there was no turning back

Help.

Mary laid down the plates and settled into the chair between her boys. The wood creaked and little Dean almost knocked his juice over in his haste to get at the fresh piece of pie.

"Careful," she said with a laugh, and moved the cup out of his way. Dean devoured the pie and grinned up at her, cherry smeared on his chin.

Mary leaned forward and wiped the food away. She tenderly stroked her thumb across Dean's cheek.

The walls shook.

She glanced over her shoulder, but nothing was amiss. Something cold passed over her and she shivered. Mary swivelled in her seat – John didn't notice, just stabbed his fork down into his pie.

"Mm," he said and moaned with his mouth full of sticky, squishy red cherries. His eyes sparkled at her. "You make the best pie known to man, hon."

Help.

Baby Sammy gleefully tossed some Cheerios from his high chair.

"Sammy," Mary chided softly. Lately, this had became his favorite game: putting food on the floor and watching his parents scramble for it.

She leaned down to scoop up the discarded cereal, and gasped at the sudden feeling of chilled fingers closing around her arm. Mary tensed, and the lights flickered. If she didn't know better, she'd have thought a ghost had somehow made its way into her perfect pocket of Heaven.

"John?"

He ruffled Dean's hair and Dean giggled, bursting with joy at whatever silly joke John had just told him.

Help.

The fingers pulled.

Mary's breath left her chest. She tumbled out of the kitchen, away from John, away from her Sammy and her Dean. She fell and spun and Heaven spooled out before her, a flash of white thread, a flare of light and color, disappearing into the distance. Swallowed by darkness, enveloped by the night sky and a sea of stars, gone in an instant or a thousand years.

She reached out, but she was intangible, smoke, stardust, nothing at all.

Help.

When Mary opens her eyes, the cold air hits her and encircles her. She startles, her breath rushes back into her lungs, and her hands shake.

A voice whispers through the wind but Mary can't understand it. Trees surround her, casting terrible deep shadows. She spins, her heart clattering against her ribs. Where am I, where am I, what's happening?

The streetlamp is too bright and she shields her eyes. The grass underfoot is sharp and damp so she looks for her shoes, but there's nothing but empty park space. A plane buzzes overhead, distant yet sounding so loud and sudden, she claps her hands over her ears. Sensation assaults her every sense, harsh and disorienting.

"Help," she says, her voice raspy. She tries again, shivering in the cold. In a nightgown. In the nightgown –

The nursery. The crib. Sam. John.

"Help me!" she cries out in earnest. She died – she was in the house, with the demon, and then then on ceiling, blood, pain, fire – she died – what is happening –

A man fumbles through the bushes, dressed in denim and a dark blue jacket. She backs up a step, frightened and horribly alone. Her memories of Heaven fragment and splinter and she latches onto them, desperate for some sort of anchor. The man stops when he sees her and Mary's throat tightens with fear. He stares.

"Mom?"

ii. it was always burning since the world's been turning

The thing with Mary being back is that Dean's caught smack in the middle of it being the best thing that's ever happened to him and the worst, which is really saying something.

Ever since he was a kid, since that day the house burnt down, he's treasured the memory of her. Soft smiles and warm kisses planted on the crown of his head, the way she tucked him into bed and made him pie, the way her mouth tightened when she was being stern. Those precious moments he could remember, collected from the haze of being so young, and gently pressed into a book of untouchable memories. He holds onto those pieces from before it was all gone and he sat on the hood of the Impala, leaning into John, watching the house go up in flames, a chilly breeze cutting through his old pajamas.

The first thing that Dean thinks when he sees her in that park is that he doesn't believe it – he's seen too much crap to think it's really his own mother, Mary, right there. It's too easy, too weird. Shifter. Demon. Hallucination. He doesn't care what Amara said about giving him what he needs, it isn't this, it can't be.

That feeling hasn't exactly gone away, even a couple weeks later when they've checked her out as thoroughly as they can. She's real, she's really here, and yeah, she's still Mary Winchester.

His mother.

Dean stands in the doorway of the bunker's kitchen while Mary gets herself a cup of coffee. He has the urge to cross the room in two strides and hug her tight, because he's missed out on like thirty years of her loving embraces and he's never stopped craving her presence. He untucks those precious moments from his childhood in his mind, sifts through them, feels their glow and their warmth.

But he's not the little boy she left behind.

His heart falters then, his fond smile dissolves. He doesn't want to think about what he is instead, what he has become. He's something else – a man, maybe, but a man who's seen and done too much. He's full of scars and blood, regret and guilt. The radiant memories of Mary slip back into their book and out march the terrible, terrible things he's done.

He couldn't save Sam in time. The deal. The hellhounds. Breaking the seal. He couldn't save Sam. Jo, Ellen, Bobby. Kevin – Gadreel. Demon. He couldn't save Sam, again, again, again. He let the Darkness free.

Dean backs up and leaves before she catches sight of him.

He can't face her, can't sit beside her and explain who he is, how badly he's screwed up, time and time again. He can't tell her how he wakes up reminding himself he's saved people, how he's made a difference, and goes to sleep wondering if any of it really matters in the end. He can't expose his wretched, wrecked soul and expect her to still stick around.

She keeps asking him what happened, what changed. Everything, he doesn't say. She wants to know what she missed. He doesn't have any answer he can tell her – not really.

I died, he thinks. I killed Death.

He shuts the door to his bedroom and settles on his bed. He's so incredibly damaged; he's been broken and cobbled together a thousand times, and how the hell is he supposed to explain that? And he's killed and hurt Sam and been a demon and… the list is damn endless.

Not to mention, he can't give her details about how Dad raised them. They weren't supposed to be hunters, John wasn't supposed to fall apart at the seams. They weren't supposed to get dragged around the country, dirt poor and learning how to shoot and steal before they hit junior high. He can't sit his mother down and say he left us and mean it in more ways than one.

Dean gets that John was broken too, had no one to patch him up, and dealt the only way he could. Understands now more than ever how once you start hunting you can't really stop – and he doesn't think about Lisa and Ben, he doesn't, doesn't, doesn't.

But how the hell can he explain that to Mary? The bare bones of it had been bad enough, as they sat on that park bench together. It had gutted Dean to watch Mary wipe the tears from her eyes upon hearing John was gone. He'd had ten years to work through his grief. She left him in Heaven just a couple weeks ago.

Dean buries his face in his hands. If he told her absolutely everything, she wouldn't look at him like her long lost son anymore. Her soft features would crumble with horror, she'd back away, and he wouldn't blame her for a second. He's very aware of how shitty he is, how he gets through every day by burying his dark deeds and getting on with the family business. Every tick for the good will never outweigh the bad he's done, but it'll help him sleep most nights.

But she's his mother, she's Mary, and she's soft smiles and warm embraces and tender caresses. If he ruined that by dumping his crap on her, if she couldn't look at him with love and warmth, he knows he'd shatter. Her and her love are too precious for him to mess up – though he figures he'll find a way to screw it up anyways. He always does.

He's not worthy of her love anymore, he thinks, but he still can't bring himself to lay out that truth. It'll come out eventually – he always wrecks whatever he touches – but if he can just pretend for a little while...

When Dean's pulled himself together, he hitches on a smile and goes back to the kitchen like nothing's wrong. He's a master at that, by now. Mary's smile in return is sunshine and warmth, it washes him in her glow. For a minute, it coats the roiling darkness inside him, covers it up, lets him pretend everything's okay.

If he can fake it long enough, some part of him thinks, then it really will be okay. His mother, shining and golden and precious, can heal his broken bits and she'll never have to know how unworthy of that he truly is.

iii. reminiscin' this 'n' that / and havin' such a good time

Sam doesn't have his own memories of Mary. What he has are stories Dean told him, the very occasional one from John, and the things Sam's made up in his mind over the years.

When he was a kid, he'd take those stories from Dean and expand them in his mind at bedtime like it'd been the two of them instead of just Dean. Like: Mary took them both to the park and watched them play on the monkey bars; she let them both stay up too late watching The A-Team even though they were definitely too young for it; she let them have Fruit Loops instead of Cheerios for breakfast on Saturday mornings.

He pictured what it was like to have a mom, like the kids he met at all the schools over the years. Packed lunches, getting picked up from school, a gentle kiss on the head that would have him squirming in embarrassment. He wondered how his life would've been with her in it, what it might've been like if she'd never died in the nursery that night (and sometimes, when he was especially pissed at John, wished it'd been him instead of her).

Somewhere in his teens, he gave up on the fantasies and stuck to the facts: he had no mom, never had. She was a nice smile in a faded photograph and the reason for John's life choices – and his and Dean's, by proxy. He almost resented her, in a lot of ways, for dying and letting this (motels, ghosts, canned beans on a hot plate, fake last name) be his life. He knew it wasn't fair to blame her, but sometimes he couldn't help it. He wasn't like Dean and he didn't take to hunting like he was "supposed" to.

By the time he was an adult, Sam had moved himself away from all of that. He didn't think about it much – his life was his life, and even when he tried to change it, it always came back to hunting. It's just the way it was, and he was all right with that finally. And no matter what, he'd always have Dean, and that was all the family he ever needed.

Didn't stop him from passing by storefronts around the holidays and seeing moms with their little kids and getting a pang of sadness in the gut. Didn't stop him from looking at those faded photos and wondering what she really had been like. Didn't stop him from still thinking, from time to time, about her and all the what ifs that went with it.

(Certainly didn't stop him from having bouts of patented Winchester guilt about him being the cause of her death. If he hadn't been born, she wouldn't have died in the first place, of that he was sure.)

So seeing her pass Dean a slice of pie and call them "her boys" fills Sam's chest up in a way he couldn't have predicted. He doesn't know what to call the emotion, but it's maybe something like excitement and nerves and something else altogether.

For the first time in his life, he has a mom.

Mary's a stranger to Sam in pretty much every way, but they're blood, and that means something in this family. He wants to get to know her – fill out those fantasies from his childhood, put real memories in place of his imagined ones. He doesn't know where to start, how to start, but he's open to trying.

Her embrace is exactly as warm and wonderful as he knew it would be.

iv. and it's all you can do to keep your head above it

Mary can't find her footing.

She's always been stable, even in a world of monsters and ghosts and crazy things that go bump in the night. John steadied her even more, and when they had two beautiful boys, Mary's world was complete. Not always perfect, but complete.

In Heaven, it was perfect. Gauzy and flawless, full of smiles and laughter. Not once an ache or ounce of sadness or fear. John with his smooth kisses and sweet optimism, her little Dean giggling and pushing around toy cars, and baby Sammy gurgling in her arms. Perfect and endless and all hers, laced through every tangible part of her.

But now it's chaos and cold and dark, and opening her eyes on Earth. The world is frigid and sharp, full of shadow and harsh angles, everything's all wrong, and had it always been so loud? And it's shock and confusion, because how, and why is she here, and she needs to get back to her boys and John, her boys need her, and –

And then… these men are, somehow, her boys.

Late at night, Mary walks through the bunker. She hasn't slept well since she arrived. There's too much pinging around her head and she's never been so out of place in her entire life. The feeling gnaws on her bones and she can't banish it. Not by throwing herself into hunting, not by force of will, nothing.

You don't belong anymore, she thinks. This is not your home.

Mary passes by Sam's room, then Dean's. Both of their doors are shut, lights off, and she pads quietly past, hoping she doesn't wake them.

How her sweet, innocent boys became these hulking, scarred men is still a mystery to her. Of course, she can see John in each of them: the way Dean scowls and barks out demands when he's pissed, the way Sam can sit there and research leads and lore for hours on end with only coffee for a companion, the car .

She can recognize the shape of Dean's face and Sammy's eyes and know it's them. Some part of her accepts this has happened, insane as it is, and that she's been ripped from Heaven to be with her real sons, back down on Earth. But it's all still so off and there's so much she doesn't know. Mary wants to fill in all the blanks, but she's afraid to as well, and can't put her finger on why.

She stops in the library and settles into a chair, tugging the blanket from her room tighter around her shoulders. She has trouble staying warm these days and she doesn't know if it's because the bunker really is chilly (and Dean and Sam are used to it) or if she's used to never feeling any temperature at all.

Mary hears movement and turns her head. Dean shuffles by, hair sticking up funny, on his way to the kitchen for something to eat. He doesn't notice Mary, sitting in the darkened library, and she swallows with relief, then hunches with guilt. She shouldn't feel so disconnected and unsure – she's their mother. She shouldn't have to struggle to talk to them.

But Mary has no idea what the hell they've gone through and that's a big part of the problem. Dean tells her some things, but he's completely evasive about others. There's some sort of incredible pain in his eyes and the urge to protect him, to fix it, keeps surging in her veins. But she has no right to – she's been dead for almost his whole life.

And Mary doesn't want to ask Sam what they've had to do to survive all these years, not yet, because in her mind, he's still so young and so innocent. He's her baby Sammy and she wants to hold him close and shield him from the world's horrors. It's absolutely ridiculous, because he's like a foot and a half taller than her, he's as battle-scarred as Dean. He's fought in the ugly trenches of a hunter's life and she wasn't there, she was never there.

All Mary has is John's journal, which is a special torture in itself. She has his words and notes, honest and clinical, scratched out over half a lifetime between worn leather covers. It's his bestiary of sorts, for a world he was never, ever supposed to be a part of, and Mary aches, because he should be here.

Mary skims her fingers through the pages and that pain pulses through her in merciless waves. Indescribable heartache, so acute, so deep, she's drowning in it. John's gone and their boys are so very weary and she's left to pick up the pieces.

But pieces of what?

It's not like they need her – they're more than capable. They're adults, they're full-fledged hunters, who carry out jobs as easily as getting dressed. The familiarity in the way they move and talk is striking, effortless.

Case. Suit up. So get this. Salt and burn.

It's wonderful to watch in some ways, knowing they've accomplished so much and become so close. Yet it only drives home how much she doesn't belong here. She didn't raise them, she didn't do anything except leave a hole, and even if it's still there, she's not capable of filling it anymore.

The pieces scattered on the floor are all hers. Mary closes the journal and shuts her eyes.

She can't find her footing here and it's killing her.

v. (still pretty)

Dean doesn't remember the fine lines around her eyes and mouth, but they must've been there, because he doubts she aged while she was in Heaven. Maybe being back on Earth, the years caught up to her in a rush. Maybe the dark circles are from the lack of sleep – he hears her shuffling around the bunker most nights and can never decide if he should go talk to her or not.

Space, Sam keeps telling Dean. Give her space.

Dean studies her as she tries to figure out how to open the internet on Sam's laptop. He'll give her all the space she needs, he'll give her anything she wants. He just needs her to be here.

Mary huffs in frustration. "How do you work this damn thing?"

He tears his attention away from tracing over her face. He's already shown her four times, but he doesn't mind showing her again. Dean leans over and takes control of the mouse, smirking a little.

"Guess they didn't have these back when you were hunting, huh?" he says.

"I don't know why we can't just use the phone, like everybody else." Mary crosses her arms over her chest.

Dean chuckles. "Everybody else does this too. It's a brand new world, Mom."

"I know," she says in reply. It's so sad and so empty, like she's lost everything in a blink, and Dean straightens, trying not to feel the way her voice slices his gut.

He wants to tell her he's right here, he's been here the whole time, but he doesn't know how to reach out to her.

Space, space, space, he tells himself and backs up to let her fight with the computer some more.

They're practically the same age now, which is weird as hell, but she's still his mom. In fact, he thinks, if they're getting technical, he's actually older by a lot and that weirds him out even more, so he doesn't let himself think about. Just takes a step back and takes a breath.

She's got a right to be sad, and confused, and everything else, he knows that. He doesn't expect things to just pick up where they left off, because he's not four years old anymore. He gets that she's struggling.

But it still kills him to see her unhappy and know it's his fault. Amara ripped her out of Heaven for him.

"I'll uh, I'll be in the kitchen if you need me," he says. He's desperate to close the distance between them but he tells himself space, give her space, and goes to get himself a cup of coffee, just for something to do.

Mary considers her reflection. She doesn't remember looking this tired, but she hasn't been sleeping well at all since coming to Earth. She wishes she could suss out a specific reason, but figures being yanked out of Heaven is reason enough.

The porcelain sink is cool under her fingers and oddly grounding. She curls her fingers tight around the edges and looks herself in the eye, searching, but she doesn't know what she's searching for. She doesn't know anything these days, it feels like. And John's not around to steady her.

Thoughts and memories tangle up inside, some from life, some from Heaven. The Heaven ones are fading faster each day and while the logical part of her tells her not to miss those boys, she can't wrap her mind around that. She's afraid to lose all three of them while knowing she's already lost them, both in Heaven and on Earth. The thought of it makes her want to curl up on the bathroom floor and cry until she has nothing left.

And she's trying, God, is she trying. But nothing's working. You don't belong here is consuming her and she wants to see her yellow kitchen in the white house in Lawrence. She wants to stick her fingers in little Dean's cute blond hair and she needs to hold baby Sammy to her chest and rock him to sleep. Every cell in her earth-bound body cries out for John's arms to slip around her waist and coax her to bed.

She blinks at her reflection. John always liked her hair long. John, apparently, is long gone.

Mary reaches for the scissors and snips away a strand of hair, watching it float and tumble into the sink. Each piece she cuts away is a little easier, leaves her feeling a little lighter, and a little more more steady. It's a small thing, but it's something she can control. Something that's hers. Something she understands.

As the last chunk of hair lands, Mary exhales a shuddering breath and tears spring to her eyes.

+i. goodbye stranger

Mary wipes away the blood from her face with an old blue washcloth. Her limbs are stiff and bruised and admittedly, maybe she shouldn't have thrown herself into hunting quite so hard. She sighs and settles down on the edge of the tub.

You don't belong here was especially loud today, ringing in her ears and banging against her ribs. She can feel the decision coming from miles away, like a thunderstorm that she's been watching brew on the horizon, edging ever closer. It's ugly and cold, but she needs to weather it. It's the only thing she's been truly certain about since she fell into that park.

If she's ever going to be a part of Sam and Dean's lives properly, she has to let go of Heaven. She has to figure out who she is, how to navigate this world, and how to exist all over again. Only then, can she come back to them and really learn who they are, who they've become, and how.

Mary washes her hands and bandages up her wrist. It stings from the beating she took back at the shack, but it's a strange, welcome sort of pain. It says I'm alive. As she wanders back to her bedroom to gather her extremely meagre belongings (some borrowed clothes, a borrowed knife; she'll get John's journal from the library), her thoughts swirl back to her sons.

Dean is hard to read – sometimes she thinks he'll hug her but he cracks a joke and backs away from her, uncomfortable. Sometimes he looks like he has something so important to tell her, but he never does. He pinwheels between being overprotective and afraid to push her on anything, even something as trivial as what kind of eggs he can make for her. The way he says "Mom" is caught somewhere between scared he's doing something wrong and desperate for the word to sound normal on his tongue.

Sam's different. He doesn't treat her like glass, but he's hesitant and tentative, like he really has no idea how the hell to act around her, but he's determined to find the right way. He offers conversation, literally an offering, where she doesn't have to take him up on it but he's always relieved when she does. He watches her a lot, afraid she might disappear, and his naked hope that she's here to stay is written on his face all the time.

She doesn't want to leave them, but she can't fit here until she does.

Mary finds Dean in the library and can't fully explain what happened at the shack, with the child and the ghost. She tries, but Dean's quick to reassure her that everything's okay.

"You're home now," he says.

This isn't your home. You don't belong here.

"No," she murmurs. She's not seeking reassurance, she's trying to find a way to set her decision down at his feet and walk away. Mary drags in a shaky breath because here it comes, here's the moment where she breaks her son's heart. "I'm not."

Dean's brow furrows. Sam comes into the room behind her.

And she tries to explain, she tries to spread out her thoughts, help them see how she can't yet reconcile them with what she lost. She wants them to know she's trying and she just needs to step away and figure it out on her own, without having to navigate Sam's careful yearning and Dean's complexities. But she was ripped from Heaven, and she can't just get over that with a handful of forced hunting trips and two men who share her blood. Not yet.

"Every moment I spend with you, reminds me of every moment I lost with them." She wishes her voice was steadier.

This isn't home, you don't belong here… The storm keeps raging but she stands in the middle of it. I know, she thinks, her gaze lingering on John's journal, sitting closed on the table.

"I have to go."

She can't look at them when she says it, terrified of what she'll see. But she has to, she has to own this choice, so she sucks in a shaky breath and raises her eyes to Sam, first. He's hurt, chest rising and falling faster than normal, like she's punched him in the gut. She can see him struggle to accept the blow, and his shock pierces her heart.

"I'm sorry," she says. Her heart clenches, because she shouldn't be hurting them like this – they're still her boys. "I'm so, so sorry."

She turns to Dean then, and that's even worse than watching Sam. He's nodding, eyes downcast, like he'd known this was coming all along. She can feel the hurt and anger pouring off of him in waves, burning her skin and flooding her chest with hot guilt. But this still isn't her home and she can't fully describe how much she's not ready for it to be.

Dean steps back to avoid her intended embrace and he still won't look at her – whether he can't or won't, she's not sure, but it cuts her all the same. The silent refusal slices deeper than she'd have guessed it could.

Sam hugs her, at least, and his shock and hurt has softened, if only a little. His arms wrap around her, snug and warm, hanging on for just a moment, and she can hear his heart where she presses her head to his chest. Real, grounding, her son.

"I love you," she says. "I love you both."

Dean gives another terse nod, head down, jaw muscle jumping. Like he doesn't believe her, like he knows she's never coming back, and he should have expected it – deserves it.

Mary wants to cup her hand on his cheek, bring his green eyes up to hers, and promise that this isn't his fault. This is all on her – this is her picking up the pieces of her life and learning how to be alive again. But he's folding sharp pain around himself and closing off and he still won't look at her, and Mary doesn't think she could reach him if she tried.

She has to turn away, or she'll stand there all day until he lets himself finally crumble, and she can't figure her life out if she's watching him fall apart. Mary scoops up John's journal and gives Sam's arm a gentle squeeze to say I'll be back and she means it.

With each step up the bunker stairs, the storm roars inside. Guilt, relief, nerves, uncertainty, hope. She shoves open the door and inhales a deep breath of chilly air.

You don't belong here quiets. It unfurls from her bones with each passing second, spooling out into smoke, into stardust and nothing at all. She glances in the rearview mirror just as the bunker disappears completely amongst the trees and she allows herself a small smile.

You'll be back home soon.

-end-

A/n: Thanks for reading. Feedback is love!