Mom Voice

POST TIME AFTER TIME AFTER TIME

Chronos dead, Dean back in the right decade, the Hunt over, and the bottle of good Scotch that Bobby won from Rufus sitting empty beside three plastic cups on the rusted patio table in the front room of the abandoned house, Sam finally went upstairs to crash on his bedroll.

"You boys don't listen to your bodies much," Jodie Mills commented, reclined on the hardwood floor against a stack of boxes from one of Bobby's storage lockers. She'd been going through his papers, reading his precise script, memorizing lore and trying to put the puzzle of Bobby Singer's life together piece by piece. The fact that half of what she was reading wasn't in English didn't make it easy, though.

"What?" Dean replied, tying the laces of his boots, having finally changed back into his usual modern clothes.

"You live off drive-thru, drink too much, don't sleep—Sam was dead on his feet, but he found your message and just kept going."

Dean shrugged. "Welcome to life as a Hunter," he said, his voice thick with exhaustion, a slight buzz from the good Scotch, and heavy thoughts left over from his time-travelling adventure. Not to mention Chronos' prediction of their futures, of black ooze everywhere. More Leviathans. Hardly a revelation, but having it confirmed was more disheartening than he'd thought it would be.

"No, I get pushing yourself. Wasn't always a Sheriff in Sioux Falls. Started out on the Force in Omaha. Ten years, pushin' myself to prove I could keep up with the boys. Another eight letting Sean raise our son while I worked a Federal task force. Didn't move back to Sioux Falls until Owen got sick. I spent the better part of my life pushing myself to stay awake just a little longer, to chase down a suspect just a little faster, to take down a sparring partner twice my size, bigger, if only to prove that I could. You two… you go beyond that."

"I didn't know," Dean said softly.

"What?"

"That your kid… he'd be, what? Sam's age?"

"Closer to yours," Jodie said. "He'll always be eight years old, though. The cancer saw to that. When that spell brought him back… I thought, for a second, that it was a miracle. But the truth was, even before he killed Sean… that Owen wasn't my son. My son was the boy with limitless energy, who loved flying kites in the park and finger painting on the walls. What that spell brought back was the kid who was in so much pain from the tumours, and sick from the chemo—the ghost in the withered shell of my son."

She swallowed hard, and Dean shifted uncomfortably. He'd never had to deal with long-term dying. Other than the clock on his deal—which he had a finite end date for from the start—he'd never had to experience death as a long, drawn-out series of events. In his world, death was swift and bloody. The thought of someone he loved dying in slow motion from something he couldn't fight was unthinkable.

Downing the dregs of her cup of scotch, Jody snapped the book she'd been studying closed. "Alright, kid, I've officially gotten maudlin. So, do I need to use my Mom Voice on you, too, or are you going to go to bed on your own?"

Dean let out a bitter chuckle. "Don't tell me you tried to use your Mom Voice on Sammy."

"Yeah, so?"

"Sam was only six months old when our mom died. He… he never heard the Mom Voice."

Jody let out a soft gasp, either because she was shocked by the news, or because she'd known and forgotten about the tragic tale of Mary Winchester. Either way, Dean was tired enough and had had enough to drink that he kept talking.

"He got orders from our dad, instructions from me… other than a few other Hunters, it was just the three of us. Not even, really. As soon as I was old enough, dad stopped trying to find people to watch us while he went out on a Hunt. I was in charge of Sammy—I was maybe eight or nine the first time he left us for a week in some no-tell-motel in Middle America, Sam only four or so. If we were in the area, dad would leave us with Bobby, or Father Murphy, or Caleb, but most of the time it was just me.

"Our mom… she had an excellent Mom Voice. Even before she had us…" he trailed off, remembering young Mary Campbell taking a strip off him as he tried to off Yellow Eyes before he got his claws in the Winchester family, remembering a barely pregnant Mary Winchester demanding answers in the family cabin while they painted sigils to keep Anna from her, remembering the hazy childhood memories of being told it was bath time or to clean up his toys before dinner or that one time she was furious with him for bringing a family of frogs in from the back yard and letting them lose in the living room.

Dean's eyes burned with tears, the way they always did when he let himself remember—really remember—his mom. He shook away the memories, casting them back into the locked box in his memory where he stored the good memories.

"I'm sure your kid jumped at your Mom Voice. I know I did when my mom pulled hers out," Dean said, his voice soft and fragile. "She didn't do it often. Things with her and dad were… rarely calm. They'd fight, and he'd take off for a day, two, a week—about a year before Sammy was born, he disappeared for over a month. I still don't know where he'd go," he said.

He'd frowned all the times John had told Sam stories of their happy family. There were, of course, good times, but the bad outweighed the good by a large margin. Until she died, all Dean could rely on was his mom. After she died, all Dean could rely on was himself—which was scary enough for a four year old to deal with, but on top of that he also carried the awareness that he was also the only thing that Sammy could rely on.

"I tried to be good for her, to make up for him not being around," Dean said.

"That's a lot of pressure for a little boy to carry," Jody said gently, clearly aware of how rare it was for Dean to open up like he was, and how much he needed to.

Dean let out a mirthless chuckle at that—for all the pressure he put on himself (being the perfect son for his mom, being the perfect soldier for his dad, being mother and father and brother and friend and protector and bully to Sam) that wasn't anything compared to the pressure the universe dropped on him.

"Mom was… she was a caretaker type. Was at her best when she was problem solving. 'Cept, the problems of a four-year-old? Pretty simple to solve in the grand scheme of things. Especially for someone like her," Dean said, remembering how, initially, finding out that Mary had grown up a Hunter had been a revelation, but, as time went on and he saw her in action, he started to remember things. Things that seemed innocent enough at the time, but made perfect sense in the context of Mary having grown up Hunting.

Like how, when he'd been afraid of the monster under his bed, she'd given him a squirt gun and told him that the water in it was special, from God and His angels, and would get rid of any monsters that came near him.

Like how the garage was always stocked with road salt, and the pantry had large boxes of all different types of salt tucked behind dried pasta and jars of homemade jam.

He remembered how his heart broke when Mary Campbell said, "I wanna get out. This job, this life, I hate it. I want a family, I wanna be safe. You know the worst thing I can think of? The very worst thing? Is for my children to be raised into this like I was. No, I won't let it happen." Eventually telling her that her worst nightmare would come true had been the absolute hardest thing that Dean had ever done.

The things she had done when he was little were benign, simple ways to protect him. Giving a scared little boy the tools to conquer his fears while handing a brightly coloured toy filled with Holy Water to get rid of monsters. Having something on hand for the worst case scenario—something that had other, completely non-supernatural uses, like keeping the driveway and sidewalk clear, like baking and cooking and making Play-Doh from scratch. And then she died, and the thing that Mary feared the most came true. John raised her children as Hunters—and with even less stability than Mary had had, growing up with her parents in their house in Lawrence.

Feeling too close to breaking down, Dean sat up and clenched his jaw. He barely knew Jody Mills, and he'd already shared more about his mom with her than he had with anyone, including Sam. It made him feel naked, and not in the fun way.

Jody was adept at reading cues, and all the signals that Dean was sending out read that he had reached his limit. So she checked her watch and said, "Don't suppose you boys have got an extra bedroll for me to bunk down in for the night."

"Take mine," Dean said, knowing he wasn't going to get any sleep after his trip to the forties and everything that had gone on since he got back. "There's a couple blankets in the car I can use," he added before she could protest, which was true, though he'd be just as fine with a jacket thrown over his torso if he did manage to sleep.

"Thanks," Jody said softly, giving his shoulder a squeeze as she walked past him toward the stairs.

"Hey, Sheriff?" Dean said before she left the room. Jody stopped and turned to face Dean. "Thanks. For pulling out your Mom Voice on Sammy. Even if it didn't work." He gestured vaguely with one hand. "He needs it."

"So do you, kiddo," Jody replied. Then, in her best Mom Voice, she added, "Now get some sleep, young man."

Dean smiled. She wasn't his mom, but she was a good reminder of her.

And, he thought as he forced himself to slip out to the piece of crap car they were driving to get the blankets from the trunk, she was probably right about him needing the Mom Voice.

This started forever ago as a paragraph on Jody threatening Sam with her Mom Voice and the look on Sam's face that (I, at least, thought) looked confused by the concept. That led to me remembering my mom's Mom Voice, and how much I miss it since she died. And, while I had over twenty-five years with my mom, and Dean didn't even get five, I started weaving this little tale.

So, this goes out to all the moms out there. Thanks for everything.