This is a disclaimer.
What is written
Mary couldn't ever remember being in this much pain. Not even during labour, for God's sake. Every movement, however slight, seemed to tear new rips in her stomach and pull the skin away from her bones; if she sat up and looked down, she'd find gaping flaps of flesh hanging open on either side of her belly. She forced her eyes open, blinking at the sudden light, wet her lips - or tried to. Her mouth was bone-dry, and her throat ached.
Right. Let's take this one step at a time.
She was alive. That much was obvious from the pain she was in. She was lying on her back. Mattress? Likely. Not her mattress, though; not her bed, the bed she shared with John. The bed she'd woken up in when Sammy had cried -
Oh, good God. Sammy! Dean!
Sitting up was the biggest mistake she'd ever made in her life.
The next time she swam into consciousness, John was there by her bed, holding her hand and talking softly. She couldn't focus; her thoughts shuffled along at the speed of Boris Karloff in a mummy costume, and Mary was almost convinced she'd been wrapped in cotton wool at some point.
Hmm. Drugs. Super.
John's voice. John's warm gravelly voice, his accent, his intonation. John's voice.
"... boys are gonna be fine. Sammy's got some scarring on his arm, his left one, but the docs say it'll heal well. Dean's equal parts worried about you and pissed that his bedroom caught fire and he lost all his toys..."
Mary summoned every ounce of concentration and willpower she had, and squeezed his fingers.
"Mary? Mary, can you hear me, love?"
She slid back into sleep as he bent over her, stubble quickly becoming beard, rings under his eyes looking as if they'd been stamped there, worried and hopeful.
They took her off the drugs a few days later, and she regretted it instantly, pain lancing through her, practically immobilising her. She got morphine, of course, but it had nowhere near the effects of those sedatives.
"No more sudden movements, OK?" John said, and Mary laughed, hoarse and sore. "I'll do my best."That was the first day she saw the boys. Sammy's arm was bandaged still; he was quiet and solemn in his Dad's arms as Mary gingerly bent over to kiss him. Dean was worse, pale and wide-eyed. He clung to her hand tightly and said next to nothing; but John told her afterwards that night was the first since the fire that he hadn't had nightmares.
The doctor – Mary was too tired and drugged-up to remember his name – was quiet, sorrowful, apologetic.
"I truly am sorry, Mrs. Winchester. The wound went too deep – you'll carry a scar always, and it seems – well, it's unlikely you'll be able to bear another child."
"We were stoppin' at two anyway," John said, trying to comfort her, reassure her. Mary bit her lip, twined her fingers through his.
"Well. You know. There will always be a part of me that – that wants half-a-dozen of your babies."
John kissed her, forcing back a hot swoop of grief in his stomach. Mary twisted her fingers into his hard, all the real contact they could have right then, and suddenly anger overtook her grief and, yes, disappointment.
"I don't like other people making my choices for me," she whispered fiercely.
The doctor slipped out after that, wondering what the hell she meant by 'other people'.
"Did you see him? The man with yellow eyes?"
Very early in the morning. Dawn light drifting through the blinds on the window; John was lying alongside her now, cradling her carefully against him.
"No," he said quietly. "I saw you - I saw you on-"
"The wall. My head hit the ceiling before I - before I fell."
"How can you be so calm about it? You mighta died. If you hadn't shouted at me on the stairs - if I hadn't been so close behind you -"
She turned her head against his shoulder, breathed him in, hands curling tightly in his shirt. He gripped her tight as he dared, mindful of her injury.
"I know him," she told his shoulder. "I've seen him before. In my nightmares, when I was a kid, back home in England."
"A man with yellow eyes," John repeated, soft and slow, and suddenly Mary felt a tremor of nervousness run through her.
"You – you do believe me? I'm not going crazy?"
John kissed her forehead. "I believe you. I saw you fall, d'you remember? I caught you. Something did that to you, love. Something – Jesus. Some thing."
"He was there for Sam," Mary whispered. "He was standing over his crib."
"We'll find out what the fuck is goin' on. I promise."
A week later, she came home – well, sort of.
"Like I said, there wasn't much to salvage," John said, almost apologetically, as they made their way up the stairs to the new apartment. "Soot and water pretty much ruined what hadn't burned."
"John –" Mary stopped to catch her breath, press a hand against the bandages winding around her waist like a hideous belt – "John, as long as you're there, and the boys, I couldn't give a damn."
He pressed a kiss into the hair above her temple, hand in the small of her back steadying her as he opened the front door. The babysitter slipped out unnoticed as Mary, ignoring her husband's protests, sank to her knees in the doorway to wrap her arms around their oldest son.
Dean was as warm and wriggly in her arms as ever, but more clingy; the few times she'd seen him at the hospital, she hadn't been able to hug him at all, and dull discomfort in her abdomen or no, she was perfectly happy to spend the next hour crouched on the floor like this, just holding him.
Then Sammy cried, and Dean tugged her up, laughing. "Come see our room, Mommy. Sammy and me got one to share, and Daddy says –"
"Daddy says be gentle with your Mom, kiddo," John said firmly. "She's still a bit hurt."
Dean looked up, bottom lip caught between his teeth. "I didn't hurt you, did I?"
"Dean," she said, "hugging you is worth all the hurts in the world, my darling boy."
The only thing better than the way his face lit up at her words was Sammy's warmth cradled against her again, snuggly and smelling of baby powder and milk and summer days. He gurgled up at her like she'd never been away, and waved a tiny fist at her enthusiastically. Mary held him tight, remembering the awful fear that had torn through her when she'd seen the stranger in his room with him. Dean was yawning on the couch beside her, head on her shoulder, and soon both the boys were fast asleep, snuggled against their Mommy.
John carried them both to bed, slow and careful not to wake them. Mary could hear him murmur a 'good night', tuck Dean in, snap the dim nightlight on. Then he was back with her, taking Dean's place and shifting them so that they were lying the length of the couch, her body tucked between him and the back of it, half on top of him.
Mary pressed her face into his the curve of his shoulder and neck in a gesture almost as old as their relationship, and breathed in the smell of home.
"Tell me about the nightmares," he said, a breath of air across the top of her head.
She shivered. "You first. Tell me what happened when I – after he –"
"You fell," he told her, soft and slow. "I mean, I was right behind you – heard you shout something – then, when I got inside the room, you were already – well, you know. I didn't see anything else... maybe it left because I crashed in when I did. You fell, and I caught you – you'd passed out by then, you were bleeding, but at the same time, exactly the same time, as I caught you the room went up. Started just behind Sam's crib –"
"You left me," she said.
John drew her closer, nodded wordlessly. Mary clung to him, unable to imagine being faced with the agony of that choice: to save her son from a fire that had come out of nowhere or help her husband before he bled to death in her arms.
"I gave Sammy to Dean," John continued. "Told him to get outta the house. Then I went back, carried you out."
"And the house exploded?"
"Sam's nursery sure did. Not just the windows, but most of the wall and roof over it, too."
"We weren't supposed to get out alive," Mary murmured. "He threw a tantrum."
John twisted awkwardly so he could see her face. "Why d'you say that?"
She shrugged sleepily. "I don't know. It just feels... it just feels true. I was supposed to die, and you saved me."
He chuckled hoarsely. "I love you." Simple statement of fact, explanation, sacred vow.
"There's a parallel universe out there where I died," Mary whispered; she didn't know why the thought took hold of her the way it did, but there were goosebumps running up her arms and a cold pit opening in her stomach. Under her scars.
John tangled a hand in her hair and pulled her head up to his, kissed her properly for the first time in over a month, lingering taste of curry when she parted her lips and welcomed him in with a little moan. He shifted a bit so that they were facing each other, gathered her tight against him, one hand at her back, the other drifting down her leg as they kissed, light brush over her knee and then back up to settle just beneath her ass, curling his big hand around her too-skinny thigh.
Mary raked a hand through his hair, holding his mouth to hers, pressing up against him till there was barely room for a breath of air between them, heat coiling inside her at his touch and taste and the slow lick of his tongue into her mouth. She wanted skin-on-skin and ohgodplease and her nails raking down his back while he sucked bruises into her neck and ran his hand heavy and possessive down her body with a sudden desperation that didn't surprise her in the least.
She'd nearly died. They'd nearly lost this for good, this heat, this passion between them. This perfection.
But then John's hand wound its way under her shirt, caressing warm skin Johnyesmore before encountering the bandages, and he stopped, pulled back, hands smoothing through her hair, cupping her face even as she reached up to take his mouth back.
"Mary – Mary, you're still hurt..."
Mary let out a hiss of pure frustration, tangled round him, leg curled over his thigh. It took quite a bit of concentration to unwrap her hand from his bicep, from his bare flesh. "Right. That's it. No touching till those things come off for good. I can't stand this."
The bastard laughed at her. She'd kill him tomorrow, after he'd carried her to bed and helped her get her clothes off and gone to clean up the kitchen and taken Dean to preschool and fed Sammy and... yeah. Maybe not. Maybe.
Every time Mary left the apartment – for groceries, for doctor's check-ups, for Dean's pre-school – she had to stop herself peering deep into the eyes of everyone she met, searching for a glint of yellow.
There was an itch between her shoulder-blades, an unease in her stomach, a bad taste in her mouth. She felt restless, edgy, tense, even feverish. She felt... expectant. As if she were standing in the doorway of a darkened room, waiting for permission to enter.
She learned to let Dean go all over again, reluctantly, and he her; but Sammy was never out of her sight.
Christmas was a rather paltry affair by Winchester standards, only a small tree, no other decorations, and worst of all to Mary, no open fire. But Dean at least was delighted to get even some of his toys 'back', scattering ripped paper across the whole apartment, never once standing still till each of his packages had been thoroughly mauled.
He still had nightmares, still woke shaking and sweating with fear, calling for Mary, was still reluctant sometimes to go anywhere without her; but compared to a month ago, he was almost back to normal.
Sammy slept most of the morning next to his new teddy bear while John cooked breakfast and Dean and Mary sipped huge mugs of hot chocolate and coffee respectively, flipping through the TV channels and giggling together. Then they all watched movies and trekked downstairs to play in the snow for a few hours in the afternoon.
Strange, not having their own garden anymore, having to walk two flights of stairs just to get outside, not having two floors or two bathrooms or a roomy, sunlit kitchen.
Dean fell asleep on his Dad's shoulder as John carried him back inside, worn out with snowmen and jumping in drifts, and later that night, Mary slowly and carefully unwound the bandages from around her waist, revealing that perfectly straight gash across her stomach, scar tissue pink and new and vivid in the dim light.
John wrapped his hands around her hips, heavy and rough, fingertips pressing into her flesh (and she's become so thin, so terribly thin, all the rounded curves he loved just melted away), wet mouth stinging a little on raw new skin. They made love tender and careful despite the urgency burning in Mary's blood, gleaming in John's eyes, caresses more gentle, movements slower, aching and languorous. Kisses just as fierce. Afterwards, lying wrapped in his arms, boneless and sated, his heartbeat under her cheek, she felt as if her whole world had been off-kilter for weeks, and had just now slid, quietly and unobtrusively, back into place. Back where it belonged.
Missouri Mosely was not the sort of woman to beat around the bush. Any bush.
"I can help you with that problem of yours," she announced when Mary opened the apartment door to her in early January.
"You mean our current lack of hot water, or the fact that I've just realised I forgot to clean the coffee machine?" Mary quipped.
"Girl," Missouri said, eyes narrowing angrily, "that mouth of yours is gonna get you into some bad trouble one day if you ain't careful."
Mary grinned. "I know. It got me John."
Missouri guffawed. "Didn't it just. You gonna let me in yet?"
"Depends. You gonna tell me your name?"
"Missouri Mosely. I'm a psychic."
"So you should also be able to tell me what problem it is you think I have just by looking at me, right?"
This time, there was no mistaking the calm hostility in Mary's voice. Missouri caught herself short of a smile; perhaps they'd make it after all, this family. Perhaps they were strong enough.
"Honey," she said, voice soft and gentle, "the night your house burned down... there was something there, wasn't there? A presence. Something that tried to hurt your family."
Mary stepped back and gestured for her to come inside, silent and pale.
John was home within twenty minutes of Mary's quiet phone call. Sammy was peacefully asleep – he did that much more than Dean ever had, just lay there and floated off into dreamland, perfectly content. Missouri stood over him for a few long moments as John came in, took his coat off.
"Is everything OK? What's happened?"
"Everything's fine. Missouri, she – she knows about – the night of the fire."
"Knows," John repeated flatly, turning to her.
"Knows, Jonathan Edward Winchester. You have heard of psychics, right? I can tell you what you need to do to protect your family. And maybe all the world."
Mary's hand was on John's arm, fingers digging tight into the skin just above his elbow. "Win," she said, and he looked over at her, eyes meeting, silent conversation that not even Missouri, with all her gifts, could follow.
"OK," he said quietly, and sat down.
"Better be quick," Mary said. "Dean finishes preschool in two hours."
Missouri took her at her word. "You saw somethin'," she said without preamble. "In the house, that night. You saw somethin' that shouldn't have been possible – somethin' that shouldn't have been there."
Mary might as well have been sitting on John's lap, they were so close, and her hands twisted into his when she spoke. "There was a man with yellow eyes in Sammy's nursery," she said. "I saw him from behind – thought it was John. Then I realised he was still downstairs, and... he flung me across the room, Missouri. I ran to Sammy's crib, and he flung me across the room and lifted me against the wall. He tore me open without ever even touching me. The only thing I remember after that is John catching me; then..."
Missouri fought down an urge to reach across the rather rickety coffee table and take the girl's hands in hers, lend her some kind of comfort. At the same time, she couldn't help but admire how steady Mary's voice was, how calm and rational.
Oh yes. These two could handle it.
"Well, it's like this," she said. "I can pick up on people's emotions, their feelin's. Can tell what they're thinking of if we're close enough, if their emotions are strong enough. Now, I've been by your house since the fire – reckon most everybody in town's driven by to gawp at it – and when I did, I had a sense... a sense of evil. Pure evil. Tell the truth, it scared me a little."
It was John who spoke first. "Evil as in... look. This might sound crazy, but I don't think that there was a man in Sammy's nursery – no," catching hold of Mary's wrist as she pulled back from him, hurt and disbelieving, " – no, love, I believe you. But I don't think what you saw – I don't think what you saw was human."
Missouri was never sure if the look he gave her then was a plea for backup or for denial; but the man was smarter then she'd given him credit for. It made her feel a bit guilty, that she'd assumed he'd be the difficult one, the... well, not to put too fine a point on it, the dumb one.
"John's right, Mary," she said quietly. "There was no he in Sammy's nursery. There was an it. My guess is, a demon. Just a guess, mind you; I'm not qualified for anythin' else. But not many things have power like that."
"A demon," Mary whispered.
Missouri sat in silence, watched her absorb it, turn the idea over in her mind.
"What else is real?" John asked at last. Missouri met his eyes unflinching. "I wish I didn't have to tell you this," she said. "But... everything."
The day after their talk with Missouri went by in a blur for John. He worked solely on autopilot, using only about a quarter of his brain to talk to people. The other three were occupied with replaying yesterday's conversation, turning it over and over in his mind.
By the time he headed home, his decision had been made.
I can put you in touch with people who can help you more.
Help us more how?
That depends on what you want to do with this knowledge.
I want to get some kind of control back over my life. I want to be able to protect my family. I want to know that the thing that attacked my wife and son isn't going to come back for them, or Dean; and that if it does, I can fight it.
Mary felt the same. He didn't need to ask her about that; it was a given. She'd never been one to lie back and let things happen to her, and she certainly wouldn't start that now the boys were so obviously in danger.
He found the kitchen table piled with books when he got into the apartment. Dean had his nose buried in Winnie-the-Pooh, Tigger firmly clamped under one arm, eyes narrowed and forehead wrinkled in concentration, biting on his bottom lip in a gesture he'd inherited from his mother.
Mary's reading material wasn't nearly so innocent. She sat opposite Dean, Sammy nestled in the crook of her arm, feeding him. Long fingers wrapped around the bottle, hair tied up in a messy bun at the back of her neck, reading glasses perched on the end of her nose. John tucked his hands into the pockets of his trousers and watched them in silence for a few minutes. If he hadn't been able to see quite clearly that his wife was reading up on the origins and powers of succubi, it would have made a perfect family picture.
"You know, Win," Mary said without looking up, "I'm starting to think it was a very good thing Uncle Nick made Vicky and I learn to shoot properly when we came over here."
"To say the least," John said. "Where would I be now if you hadn't been there to kick the crap outta me on that firing range?"
She looked up at him then, smiling a little. "Oh, we woulda met. I'da brought my car in sometime, or you would've ended up in the ER with a broken arm, or we would've crashed our trolleys together in the supermarket one morning tryin' to get at the last bag of coffee beans –"
"Dad," Dean said a few moments later. "Dad... Mom, that's gross. Gross. Right, Sammy? Daaad! Come and see how far I've read today."
"The nightmares started right after my parents died," Mary said out of the blue that same night. They were in bed, covers pulled up around their shoulders against the chill. John barely dared to move, wrapped round her as he was – Mary would happily talk about her childhood in England, or about growing up here in the States, but the time in between, her parent's deaths and the weeks after, was way off limits.
Not that he blamed her. She'd been thirteen, a sheltered, loved, treasured little girl dumped into the real world in the worst possible way without anyone to help her, coping with her own grief while looking after her little sister. Then her uncle Nick had brought them back to Kansas with him, unwilling to stay in the country his sister had died in, adding the chore of finding her feet in a strange place to the burden of grief and responsibility for Vicky.
John would have thought it was the worst thing the man could have done, if it weren't for the fact that he would never have met her otherwise.
Mary shifted against him a bit, took his silence for the encouragement it was. "They weren't anything... anything special, they didn't involve, you know, ceilings and fires that came out of nowhere or anything. They were just... I kept seeing the crash. Over and over, the car sliding out of control and crashing into the ditch. Of course I hadn't seen it for real, I'd just... I'd try to climb down, to help, and I'd hear them... hear Mum calling me, and there was all this blood, and there was nothing I could do. Couldn't reach them, couldn't open the doors... The worst ones, Vicky would be in the car too, screaming for me, and I simply couldn't..."
It wasn't really possible for John to draw her any closer than she was, but he tried just the same. She carried on, quiet and broken. "There was always this man there. He stood by the road, you know, where the car had skidded off... he stood up there, and watched me try and climb, this man-shaped shadow that never moved... this man-shaped shadow with yellow eyes. Once or twice, I thought I saw him in real life, too... just standing there, watching me. Watching Vicky. Eventually, the dreams stopped, but God, I was always so terrified, John. So afraid that he was real, that he'd come for Vicky and me the way he'd come for Mum and Dad."
Long shuddering breath, bitter amusement in it. "And now he's come for Sam. Maybe even Dean, too. We'd never have known a thing about it if I hadn't run into the nursery, would we?"
"Hey. We'll beat this. We'll find a way. Sam's our son. This man... this thing isn't getting him. Not now, not ever. All right?"
"What do you think we should do?"
"Whatever we have to. Move, for a start. Get out of Lawrence."
"Where to?" She still had her back to him; he was talking into her hair. It was easier like that.
"I've been thinking, and... the farm in Indiana is still mine. Sale hasn't gone through yet; I can call it off."
"The farm." She was silent for a while, thinking of John's parent's farm, the big old house tucked away in the woods, the acres of land. Of leaving Lawrence, abandoning their friends, selling John's share in the garage, quitting her job. Mary was already sure that she couldn't bear to live in their beloved house again; she'd never be free of the memories it now held even without going back there.
"It's a good place to bring up boys," her husband teased softly.
"Dean would love it," Mary agreed. "We could get him that dog."
Silence again, both of them picturing bringing their sons up in Indiana, in the house John himself had grown up in.
"Whatever we have to," Mary said at last, and finally turned to kiss him.
Minnesota in February was freezing. Mary hugged Sam close inside her heavy leather jacket as they crunched through the snow to the small church. Dean was stomping along in his new boots, looking grown-up and important, but not far enough from John's hand that he couldn't grab hold if he felt the need.
They'd read the books and spoken to Missouri and made all the preparations for the move, but so far, it had all been talk. Now, though... with this trip, in this place, it all began.
Mary wasn't sure what it was, exactly, but right now, the future seemed to stretch before her, a long dark road that wound through the woods, ominous and inescapable. Her restlessness was completely gone. From the moment Missouri had told her what was really out there in the dark, this path had become inevitable.
In a strange way, it felt like coming home; like remembering a decision long-since made and long-since forgotten. Like accepting a purpose that had been there always, waiting for her just out of sight until she was ready to take it up.
She hadn't mentioned any of this to John; it felt oddly private, something very personal, and that was ridiculous in and of itself, because half the time she couldn't tell anymore where she left off and he began, but there it was. The sense that somewhere in the upper regions of Creation, some Higher Being or other had snapped its fingers at Mary's decision and said to itself, "Done! And done! Excellent! Perfect! Just as I'd always planned it!"
That last thought in particular really pissed her off.
They came into the church towards the end of the service, took seats in the very back. Dean glared round balefully, his displeasure at not being allowed to play in the snow outside enunciated in his every movement – till Mary put Sammy on his lap. Nothing snapped Dean out of a bad mood faster than being asked to look after his little brother.
None of the Winchesters were particularly riveted by the service. Mary had given up on God long years ago, around the time her parents had died, although she'd taught Dean the same prayers her Mum and Dad had taught her and Vicky as children. John never bothered with any of it. He'd lost his faith in Vietnam. But Mary's glare kept him and Dean pinned in their seats and relatively still, while Sammy wriggled a bit, face scrunched-up and pissy.
He was gonna be a handful.
They stayed put as the service ended and the congregation began to file out, most of them staring unashamedly at the strangers, curious or surprised or cheerful or welcoming. Mary met their looks with a steady gaze that never failed to make people bugger off, awkward and embarrassed. John was watching the Pastor make his way towards them, studying the man intently.
If Mary leaned over now and put her hand on his leg, it would probably vibrate under her fingers, humming with tension and excitement like a live wire as Murphy drew level with them. She stood up, hand outstretched to shake.
"Pastor Murphy? I'm Mary Winchester."
Dark hair, nice smile, bright blue eyes that studied her carefully, took in everything about them all, watchful and wary.
"Well," he said. "You're not quite what I was expecting."
Mary's eyebrows rose.
"The children," he explained.
"They're kinda why we're here," John said as they shook hands, gripping hard, measuring each other up.
Murphy nodded at his words. "I see. Well, you'd better come back to the house with me... it's not far. And call me Jim, please."