A Cry in the Night
The cry was soft, a whisper of a sound ghosting through the corridors of the bunker. Sam wouldn't have heard it, except for the soft pat of footsteps just outside his door. By the time he woke and rose to follow, all he saw was the white hem of a nightgown vanish around the corner.
He found her in the kitchen. She was wearing the old nightgown, the one Dean said she had come back in: the one she had died in. They had bought her new clothes, new everything. She didn't need to wear that one again. Yet here she was, dressed as she had been the night she died.
The night they lost her.
"Sam." There was a hesitation in her voice, a yearning left unsaid.
"Mom." The word was strange in his mouth, but he liked it. All of his life, he had watched other children with their mothers and wondered what it would be like. Dean knew. Dean would try to tell him. But it wasn't the same as having one. There was a feeling the whole world knew that Sam did not.
That Sam would never know. Because the woman in front of him had given birth to him but she hadn't raised him. The bond of a shared life had never formed between them. Meeting now, as adults, Sam had no illusions that it would be the same.
Still he loved her. Was so happy to have her here.
She didn't look happy to be here. Sam had seen the look in her eyes too many times to pretend it wasn't there. It was the look of a person who had just lost everything.
"Are you ok?" Sam asked.
"Yeah, I was just looking for something." Mary reached up and fetched a box of Epsom salt from the shelf and smiled up at Sam. "Found it."
"Salt? In the middle of the night? Mom, you know this place is warded. We're safe here."
"Yeah, I know. It's not-" Mary's eyes flicked away, and her arms wrapped around her chest. "It's not for that."
"Oh." Sam looked at the Epsom salt again. The stuff had multiple purposes as a home ready. "Are you sure you're ok?"
"I'm fine. I just can't sleep through the night yet." Mary looked at him again with an ironic smile. "Looks like you can't, either."
"Sometimes." Sam frowned, a ghost of a memory tickling at his thoughts. Something had woken him up. His name. "Mom, were you looking for me?"
Mary turned away. "No, not you." She fiddled with the box of salts. "Did you know you were still nursing when I died?"
"No. I didn't." No one talked about the night Mom died, or what life was like before it. Other children got to hear stories of the days before their own memories began to form. Sam did not. His early childhood was a blank, one neither Dean or Dad cared to flesh out for him. Sleep through the night. "Mom were you-"
"Epsom salt is supposed to help dry up your milk. I guess it might be good to start using it." There was a tremor in Mary's voice.
Sam swallowed hard against the sudden lump in his throat. She had been looking for him, but she hadn't been looking for him. She had been looking for the infant she had cared for for the past six months. The one that still didn't sleep through the night-which meant she didn't sleep through the night. That infant didn't need her anymore, so Mary was left alone, listening for a cry that would never come again.
Because the night they lost her, she had lost them, too.
"Mom, I-" Sam's words stuck in his throat. What to say? He couldn't make it better. He couldn't turn back time. Did she want her son as much as he had always wanted his mother?
The son that she couldn't get back, even though he was standing right in front of her.
Sam wrapped an arm around her shoulders. "I'm sorry."
Mary leaned into his embrace, and he felt moisture on his chest. "It's nothing that can be changed, Sam. I'll be alright."
Amara's gift to Dean. That was what she had called it. A way to say thank-you.
Did she fully understand what she had done?
Sam had seen people try to raise the dead before. It never ended well. Looking at his mother, holding her box of Epsom salts, he suddenly knew why. This woman was not going to heal their pain. No. Nothing could change or heal that loss now. But she had the potential to rip their family apart in new ways, to put them through trials they had never known before.
And he couldn't wish it away, not one bit of it.