This is a disclaimer.
AN: For the flashfic prompt: resurrect a character. FYI, I really REALLY didn't wanna do this. It was montisello's fault. Seriously. You wanna complain, see her. Call it an AU future!fic for the (ares and artemis) 'verse. Not that you have to read that to understand this. I hope.
And rebuild all your ruins
It wasn't the first time Mary Winchester had woken up in hospital, and she doubted it would be the last, especially considering that lately she'd been privately entertaining the notion of trying for a girl now they had two boys; but it was the first time in a long while John hadn't been at her bedside when she woke.
"No one came in with you, ma'am," the nurse said, looking almost frightened, when Mary asked for her husband.
Why in the hell not? Where was the bastard?
Please, God, not hurt. Don't let him be hurt.
The doctor informed her kindly that he couldn't see much wrong with her other than exhaustion, malnutrition, and the cut across her forehead, but he was fairly confident that she wasn't even concussed. Might have a scar, though. Very, very sorry for that. Not too disfiguring, though.
From that remark Mary deduced he hadn't been the one to examine her. After all, a scar across her forehead that would be mostly hidden by her hair was nothing compared to one or two of the others she'd picked up.
Perk One of being a hunter: things that would have other women running screaming for the plastic surgeon didn't bother Mary in the slightest.
Question remained, where was her husband? And the boys... but of course John wouldn't let them out of his sight if a demon – or anything else – were responsible for her current state. He'd leave her a message, so she'd know where to find them, and hide.
So. Mary struggled out of the confining blankets on the narrow hospital bed and padded barefoot to the chair piled with what she presumed were her clothes. She didn't remember them, but there wasn't anyone else in the room they could belong to. Jeans, a t-shirt, brand-new Chucks, simple black cotton multi-pack underwear that hadn't been removed from its packaging.
What?
Mary stood there turning the plastic bundle over and over in her hands for a long time, straining her memory. It was all such a blur! John, the house in Lawrence, Dean running around the front lawn with a balloon, Sammy's birth, standing at the window feeding him while John and Dean shovelled early snow off the drive outside, Halloween, cooking, putting up shelves in the nursery...
She couldn't fit any of it into a consecutive timeline, much less figure out what the hell had happened before she turned up here in the hospital.
Cold fear was beginning to creep through her body, fingers icy, hands trembling. Where were the boys? Was John even alive? What had happened to her?
By the time the door opened, she was about ready to panic now, thanks very much.
Two FBI agents walked in. Those suits were as good as a uniform.
"Ma'am? I'm sorry to burst in on you like this... I'm Agent Hendrickson, FBI. This is Agent Reid. We need to ask you some questions."
Mary sat down on the bed, wrapped the covers around herself. "Sure. Go ahead."
Hendrickson smiled at her, trying to be reassuring. He didn't succeed much; Mary thought he was more used to being the bad-ass than interrogating frightened, half-naked young women.
She could make that easier on him, no problem.
"What does the FBI want with me?"
"Well, first of all, your name, ma'am," Hendrickson said.
Like being punched in the gut.
"My name?"
"You do remember it?"
"Yes, of course," she snapped. "But... but... look. How was I – how did I get here?"
The agents exchanged a look. "You were found in the park, ma'am," Reid said gently. "By a passer-by, unconscious. In a nightdress, apparently. The initial assumption was that you'd been the victim of a sexual assault, but the doctors say that apart from your forehead and one or two bruises you have no real injuries, no other scars..."
No other scars? Mary twitched the blankets a bit to look down at her left knee, the burn scar there that was the relic of a poltergeist in Maine... but the skin was smooth and unbroken as it had been at sixteen.
Jesus fuck. She'd had that scar since long before she met John; if she could remember him, but not have any scars... she clenched her hands into the blankets to stop them shaking.
Think, girl. Think. She needed an alias. Mary Winchester wouldn't do, not until she could figure out what was happening. That went for Mary Roberts as well; and Ria Colt was a bit on the conspicuous side. Besides, half the demons in Hell knew her by that name; knew her as the last living descendant of Samuel Colt himself.
"Alex West," she told them. "I'm Alex West."
John's closest friend – almost brother – who'd died in Vietnam. Not a name any demon would know; not a name any hunter after Azazel's Chosen would recognise. Not a name that would make these two blink twice.
But if John ever came across it, he'd know it was her.
"Well, Ms. West," Hendrickson said. "It's like this. When the hospital tried to ID you, after you were brought in, they got the local authorities to run a DNA match in case you were – already in the system –"
"A known prostitute or drug user, you mean," Mary said calmly. Too bad, boys. She wasn't so easy to categorise. The last time she'd touched any recreational drugs was at Mike Reeves' party back in '71, and when he turned it into an all-you-can-get free-for-all bad crack buffet, had come off them for good.
They hadn't been all that much fun in the first place.
"Considering where and how you were found it wasn't an unreasonable assumption," Hendrickson said. Mary nodded, a touch apologetically; the man was right, after all.
"Anyway. They did, in fact, find a match with certain samples in our files – a partial match; indicating close relationship to a certain – well, felons who are currently under investigation by the Bureau. The case was only opened a few weeks ago, so of course it's perfectly possible that you don't know anything that could help us. However..."
"Who are these felons?"
"Ms. West, does the name Winchester mean anything to you?"
OK, there was no way her DNA was a match for John's or Katie's. Just no way. That was – that would be – eew. No.
Close relationship. Well, the boys, obviously, but felons? Dean was four. Sammy couldn't even sit up on his own yet. What, they'd been killing people with their minds?
Since when could they match up people's DNA in databases, anyhow?
"No," she said, voice admirably steady. "No, it doesn't. I mean, they were rifle-makers, right? Last century. But no, I've never met or been related to anyone by that name."
"What about these photos?"
Calm down, Mary. Breathe. In, out. That's it. Concentrate. These are meant to be the boys? No way. No fucking way.
But... John's eyes, John's messy dark hair, John's smile. Her own jaw, her nose, her long quick hands.
Her eyes. Blond hair, darker than hers, but still. John's face, his shoulders, his cheekbones, a smirk that was all hers. Dean. Dean and Sam.
Oh God, he was wearing the Key.
It glinted up at her from the photo, seeming to shine with a light all its own, a heavy golden pendant lying innocently against her sons' chest, but Mary knew better. If John had given the Key to Dean...
Azazel was free. There was no other explanation. And therefore...
Man standing over Sammy's crib, flickering lights, John asleep in his favourite armchair, mad dash up the stairs, why hadn't she called out to him? Why had she gone bolting up the stairs like that, without pause for thought?
Yellow eyes in the darkness, familiar and terrifying.
She was dead. She'd died. Right there in Sam's nursery, not ten feet from her six-month-old son, before her husband's very eyes. She'd died. She'd been... resurrected?
Sonovabitch.
Her jaw was clenched so tightly it hurt, fury churning in her gut, burning all her fear away. He'd come for her son, marked her baby, laid the same curse on Sam that his parents carried.
She'd see him destroyed for it.
Hendrickson was still talking, going on about father's whereabouts unknown and white supremist ideology.
"And the fact that this file says most of Dean's victims have been blonde Aryan girls isn't disproving that last theory at all?" Mary cut in, peripherally aware her voice had dropped an octave, hardened, sharpened. She didn't care.
"I –" Hendrickson said. "The point has been made, Ms. West –"
"Shut up," Mary said, and there it was, right under the surface, just begging to be let loose, all that power, boiling through her blood. She let it rise up into her voice and used it.
"Tell me where I am, and what year it is."
"Chicago. Northwestern University's Medical Centre. It's 2006."
"Right. Here's what you're going to do. You're going to head outside, tell the nurses I've been discharged, and go on back to your pokey offices in Washington or New York or where-the-fuck-ever, and you're going to find yourselves a nice little serial killer to hunt and never think about the Winchesters again. Understand?"
"Yes, of course," Hendrickson murmured as Reid said, "We'll do that, at once."
"First leave all the money you've got on you on the table," Mary added. "Then get out, and forget you ever saw me."
Another glazed chorus of assent as the two agents unloaded at least two hundred bucks onto the table Mary had indicated – what did they need all that cash for? – and then left without a backwards glance.
Mary got out of bed and started to dress. The underwear, straight from the plastic, was a little scratchy, stiff and smelling of shop and strangers, and Mary felt a rush of homesickness. She wanted the warm fruity smell of her own soap and the soft snug feel of clothes so old they were moulded to her body; she wanted to wrap herself into one of John's old shirts and breathe him in with every movement, every breath. She wanted Sammy's warm milky baby-smell and Dean's usually far grubbier one, jam and mud and grass, and the leatheroilguns smell of her Impala.
She wanted.
It would have to wait, dammit. There were only three people in the world who'd ever seen Mary Winchester cry in earnest: her Mom and Dad, both long dead, and John. She would not make the nurse peering anxiously into her room the fourth. She would not.
2006. Dean was twenty-seven. Sam was twenty-three. John and she were – (fifty-two) OK, not thinking about that.
Cool breeze outside, tugging at her long hair. They hadn't supplied a tie for it. Talk about inconsiderate.
Why Chicago? Why not Lawrence? Why not home?
Think. Think. What would John do – what had he done – after his wife had been killed by a fucking Grigori?
Run. Take the boys and run, hide them from the hunters, from the demons, make sure they grew up knowing what was out there and how to fight it. Make sure they could defend themselves when Cold Oak came around, as it would eventually.
Exactly what she would have done; exactly what now made it impossible for her to find them.
Super.
She'd been walking for twenty minutes now, options and possibilities chasing through her head, always the question why Chicago? pulling at her, demanding attention.
There was a node here, she was sure. After the... incident... in Florida, she and John had made a point of staying away from them. Maybe that was it? After all, Dan had suggested a kinship between their abilities and the energy – the evil – that accumulated at nodes.
She was standing on a corner trying to decide which direction to head in next, and where to get coffee, when the headlines of a local newspaper caught her eye, screaming at her from the newsstand across the street.
Manhunt Continues for Stealth Killer. Second Murder in Two Months!
Picture of the latest victim included.
Mary felt a slow smirk stretching her mouth as she read. The descriptions of the girl's death sounded like – exactly like – the bodies she and John had found in Cold Oak, the kids torn apart by the demons trapped there.
So maybe she was in Chicago because John was already here.
Somehow, Mary liked that theory a lot better.