Still not making any money here...

AN: I meant to post the Ares and Artemis series in chronological order, but my muse had other ideas. And we all know what happens anyway, so what the heck.

Mars was originally the Roman god of spring and fertility; only later did he become the god of battles as well – unlike the Greek god Ares, who was always a war deity.

Mars

Late September. As of now, Anno Domini 1982, Mary Winchester's favourite time of year. Not that she was going to tell John that. Consistency in details had never been one of her great virtues; her husband would undoubtedly be able to name three separate occasions over the last year or so when she had named three completely different seasons as her favourites. Ah well. Variety was the spice of life, right?

Autumn air always smelled so clean and fresh after the pressing heat of summer, and she took a deep breath of it as she climbed out of her baby car. Her uncle Ben had given it to her when she'd graduated high school. It had been a close call… but she wasn't going to think about those times now. Now she was picking Dean up from pre-school. And avoiding the ever-present uptight soccer moms already standing on the lawn gossiping. Whenever she arrived the whispers would die down briefly and then start up again, faster than before. The Winchesters had moved to Lawrence only a couple years ago, and the tongue-wagging still hadn't stopped.

That was the boonies for you, Mary guessed.

Didn't help that Mary and John had kept themselves to themselves for the most part, making few friends and concentrating mainly on renovating their house and raising their son. Nor had either of them ever set foot in the local church… the Reverend had not been impressed when he'd dropped by their first week in town to invite them to the services.

With what they'd both been through in the last few years, neither of them had much use for faith.

And there was the bell, kids pouring out of the doors towards their mothers. She'd made it a habit to arrive only just on time, so she didn't have to talk to any of them. They were just too nosy, these Stepford wives, and there was too much of her and John's life together that they really didn't need to find out about. Not talking to them was easier than lying about it.

So where did you two meet? …Oh, a demon gave us these psychic powers when we were babies and took us to a ghost town to kill each other in this wacked-out competition for the honour of bringing about the Apocalypse… we imprisoned him in this magic amulet just before we moved here, though.

Mary peered around the lawn, looking for a small, laughing, blonde bundle of energy. What she saw, however, was a little boy wearing a thoughtful frown and chewing distractedly on his lower lip. He climbed into her arms without even saying hello and burrowed into John's leather jacket.

Then he surfaced again, still frowning. "You're wearing Daddy's jacket," he announced, puzzled.

"Hello to you too," Mary said drily. "Have a bad day?"

Dean shrugged his little shoulders. "I want Anubis," he said, sounding almost tearful.

Impossible. Dean never cried. Mary wasn't sure he knew how. An upset Dean was a very rare – and therefore very serious – thing indeed.

"Anubis?" she repeated. "Why, love? I thought it was King Arthur's day to come have lunch with Daddy and me?"

Dean grimaced slightly, but didn't answer.

She set him down on the roof of the Impala and crossed her arms over her chest. "Alright. Out with it. What's happened, do I need to go and yell at Miss Kessler?"

Finally, a giggle. A rather half-hearted one, true, but a giggle nonetheless. Miss Kessler had once suggested to Mary that the jackal-headed Ancient Egyptian god of the dead was not an appropriate deity to name her sons stuffed puppy after, and Mary had been furious. "He can name his toys after whichever damn deity from any pantheon he bloody well likes," she'd snapped at the woman. "At least it's not some infantile rubbish like Fluffy or Spot!"

Mary had never been able to see the point in babying children. Simplifying was one thing, treating them like idiots was another. John hadn't been any help, either; he'd found the whole incident hilarious.

Dean kicked his heels gently against the Impala's window and pulled another face. Mary waited patiently. Pushing him into things was always a mistake; he'd tell her when he wanted to. Finally he looked up at her and said, "Its Jeff Grogan's Great Uncle Horace."

Mary blinked. Whatever she had been expecting, Jeff Grogan's Great Uncle Horace was not it. A sudden suspicion began to form in her mind. "OK," she said, drawing the syllables out. "What about him?"

"Jeff says he walks 'round his house at night clanking things."

"Clanking things? Well, it's unusual but it is his house, I guess."

"Jeff says he's dead."

Uh-oh. This was one conversation she had rather been dreading. How did you explain to your three-year-old that ghost stories were real? That there were things in the dark that would hurt him if they could, and that Mommy and Daddy had only met because one of the most awful ones…

Simple. You don't.

"Well, that's impolite," Mary said. "Dean, I want you to remember in future that walking around clanking things after you've been decently buried is extremely rude, even if it is in your own house, and I don't ever want to catch you at it, alright?"

Dean stuck his tongue out at her. Back to normal then.

"Mrs. Kessler says there aren't any ghosts."

"But…?"

"Jeff swears there are. He says he's seen him. So's most everyone in his whole fam'ly. She said he's a liar, but he sweared, Mommy."

"Swore," Mary corrected absently.

"But who's right?" Dean insisted.

Faced with those bright, trusting hazel-green eyes, she just couldn't lie to him. Besides, wasn't it better he should know than live in ignorance?

"Dean… oh heck. Listen to me very carefully, alright? There are… there are bad things in the world, OK? Things that hurt people – evil things. I won't tell you any different. I'm not going to lie to you, love. But there are good things too. Good people. My mom used to tell me this, and it's something I've always believed: there's a balance in the world. She said that everything bad is made up for somehow, somewhere else, by something good."

Dean's brow was furrowed in thought, drinking in what she said.

"So whenever someone does something good, they make up, in a way, for something bad that's happened somewhere else. You understand?"

"Like what angels do?"

Damn that Reverend. This was all complicated enough without him dropping by the school and filling Dean's head with even more new ideas.

"Yeah, you could say that. Only it's people, see? People doing good things, and being a little bit like angels all on their own. Everyone can, if they try hard enough, you know."

Those green eyes widened. "Even me?"

Mary laughed. "Especially you. My darling boy, you are both going to shine brighter than the sun. I promise you that."

"What about you and Daddy?"

"Already do. At least, your Dad does. He's the best, most selfless person I know. I can get a bit selfish and obsessed sometimes. And here's the most important thing you need to remember: We will always look after you, I promise. No bad thing is ever going to get to you while your Dad and I are here. So there you have it, love: Angels, watching over you."

"So Miss Kessler was lying?"

Mary bit back a laugh. "No, my darling boy, she wasn't. She just doesn't know better. It's not her fault."

"But you and I and Daddy know better, right?"

"Yes, we do. Shall we leave it at that? And one other thing. Don't say anything to Miss Kessler."

"She doesn't like you," Dean smirked.

"She doesn't like anybody. Ready to go have lunch with Daddy? I've got some important news for him."

"Good important?"

Mary smiled, her hand brushing absently against her tummy. "Yes, love. Very good."

"Good. What about Jeff's Uncle, though?"

Mary's rather dreamy smile widened into a grin. "I'm sure Daddy and I can manage to stop him clanking things."

"You realise, of course, that if anyone catches us at this, we're going to have to move," John said several days later. It was around quarter to two on Saturday morning, and he was standing over Great Uncle Horace's open grave, holding a book of matches.

"No one's going to catch us," Mary said confidently. "What would anyone in Stepford be doing out here at this time of night?"

She was leaning against the poor man's headstone, black trousers and jumper melding into the night, smirking at him.

"What are you doing out here at this time of night is a better question," her husband told her. "You should be in bed."

"I'm not an invalid!" she protested. "Besides, when I was pregnant with Dean-"

"-I would have rather gone back to Cold Oak by myself than let you risk yourself and him like that," John cut across her. The thought of what Azazel would have done to her if he'd known of her pregnancy still gave him nightmares.

"That's why I didn't tell you until it was all over," Mary said dryly. "You'd be dead right now if I hadn't been there, and there wouldn't be any Baby. And this time, you won't even let me help you dig." Despite her indignant words, her hands drifted to her abdomen in a protective gesture John remembered from the first time around. Another child! It made him want to whoop delightedly, sing and dance, compose hymns of praise.

Well, maybe not exactly that, but still. That was the general principle.

He settled for pulling her into his embrace, her back pressed against his chest, her head tucked under his chin, as the flames whooshed up into the night in front of them. She sighed contentedly.

"Eventually, we're going to have to tell Dean everything, you know," she said quietly. "He can't live in ignorance forever. What if he grows up and develops our abilities?"

"Not yet though. Not for a long time yet," John said, equally soft. "We don't even have our abilities anymore. If binding Azazel neutralized them, I doubt Dean – or the baby – will have any."

"Still," Mary insisted. "What if it's in the blood? Genetics, you know?"

"Cross that bridge when we come to it," John said. "For now, he's just a little boy, who doesn't need to know anything more about our world than that we'll always protect him from it."

"Beautifully put, Johnny," she teased. He kissed her temple, laughing, hands linking with hers over her abdomen, glancing across at the Impala sitting a few yards away, where Dean slept in a nest of blankets in the back seat.