Mary Winchester loves her boys.
How could she not? They're hers, despite the necessary distance thirty-plus years paint down. Sam's hair, longer than she'd let him grow it if she still had any say at all in what he does, is the exact same shade of coffee-black that peeked out of the top of the blue blanket when she held him for the first time. The same color as John's. When Dean smiles, behind the laugh lines and crow's feet and decades of grief, it's just like when he was a toddler. He'd smile up at her like that and she knew dozens of girls would break their hearts on that grin before he was even out of high school. From what Sam's told her, she was right.
They're not what she wanted. And maybe she's mad about that when she shouldn't be, and maybe she can feel it, that they're mad at her in the same way for things that weren't her fault. Plus a few things that were. But they're good, and she's thrown herself away for them, and they're her boys, and Mary loves them.
She will disembowel and decapitate anybody who says otherwise before they even know they're dead.
In the hours after the pearl shatters and John vanishes, Mary...feels a lot of things.
With how much time she spent dead, it makes sense her body recognizes that as her natural state. She has to think hard, often, about her beating heart and billowing lungs, and there are still some times when she feels like a ghost, like lightbulbs will pop around her and glass will frost over if she gets mad enough.
Tonight's one of those. She drifts through the bunker and doesn't touch anything because she's afraid she'll pass right through, doesn't look down at her feet because she's afraid they won't be touching the ground. She doesn't speak to Sam, or Dean, or Castiel, or Jack. The dead don't get to contact the living whenever they want.
Mary doesn't hate her boys.
John was an old wound, a bone callus that only hurt early on cold mornings or when a storm was rolling in. Now it's been rebroken and she can already feel it healing crooked.
She sees Sam and Dean as she floats. In the kitchen, then the entryway, the library, Sam's room, Dean's room. They stay close, they touch. We don't hug. Sure they don't. But hands brush and knees knock. Temples kiss. She doubts they even realize they're doing it, this leaning on each other. She doubts they realize the burden of this loss is lighter for them because they have two to bear it and she only has herself.
Of course they lean on each other. Castiel's mentioned their special bond to her, Jack picked up on it when his heart was still shot through with Grace, and even Mary sees it, though she can't read the names written on their insides. Soulmates. It's a word that's also been applied to her and John. She's sure that if she opened herself up, his name would be carved into her depths.
They've gotten oh-so-good at cleaning up their self-made messes over the years, her boys. Sometimes, they tear the world up at the roots to stay together. Sometimes, one of them damns everyone else to keep the other. But it's always okay. They always figure it out, her clever, tragic boys. There's always another way. Tonight, they fixed things once again. Mary understood. Understands. She's so, so proud.
They take the world they saved for the thousandth time for granted, and so does Mary.
Mary doesn't hate her boys. She doesn't hate Sam and Dean. She can't allow that and John, watching her burn thirty-five years and change ago, waking up alone sixteen years ago, dying thirteen, he wouldn't allow it, either. They're theirs.
But what's coursing through Mary's veins right now, what's making her wish she could shake her boys until their eyes fill with blood, what's building a raw scream of Why didn't I get to choose? Why can't I be selfish? Why's it only different when it's one of you?! in her tight throat...
It doesn't feel much like love, either.