Disclaimer: Don't own.

A/N: …have mommy issues. Small spoilers for the Pilot and Home. Let me know what you think.

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I

Sam fell out of love with the memory of their mother when he was twelve. Because Mary Winchester was never really his memory to begin with. His mother in the recollection of others, by blood—eyes, Dean told him once, hopped up on painkillers and antibiotics, like hers—but it was never really enough.

(Was it supposed to be?)

II

He was the bad son.

He knew it beyond a shadow of a doubt by the time he turned seventeen, when he was too busy fighting Dad over details, when he started using his mother's memory against him.

Do you think Mom would have wanted this for us? It all rings in his head later, years and years after the fact—the sound of the words forcefully sharp and painfully adolescent. His father's visible wince the first time their used. The tightening in Dean's shoulders that stayed for days. Guilt is funny that way.

III

"It's okay Sammy," Dean used to say when they were little, when Dad went away on his first hunts, leaving them with strangers they would later grow to call family (because trust and faith go deeper than blood), "Mommy's watching over him. Us too. Promise."

So it made sense then, that Mom was never really a person for Sam, occupying instead the world of idol and purpose. Maybe it even explained why he was always envious of Dean and his ability to think of their mother outside of the context of revenge.

IV

Mom's dead and she's not coming back.

It was a fact.

A truth.

Unchangeable.

Dean's anger startled him—because it was directed at him, because it was real, as real as his brother's fist, shaking where they clenched fistfuls of fabric—"Don't." And there was softness there, steely and broken, but soft nonetheless. His brother's gaping wound, "Don't talk about her like that."

(But Sam didn't think he knew any other way.)

V

She came out of the fire the same way he always dreamed it engulfed her, bit by bit.

"Sam." It was his name and his mother's voice and the too things had never gone together in his life. "I'm sorry." She said, and her eyes were his eyes, sad and lonely, the eyes that looked aback at him from mirrors after nightmares. Then she was gone, a blaze of heat, back to the fire.

And she was a memory again. His own.

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End.