Tag to 12x01. 3 different perspectives with a few of the same ideas.

These Names We Call in Hope of an Answer

Mom mom mom mom mom mom mom mom.

He won't stop saying it. Can't stop saying it. Begins every sentence directed at the woman standing in front of him with a word he hasn't been able to call anyone in over thirty years. Though it's more like seventy if he counts Hell (and Hell counts, Hell always counts and there are days he wakes up and feels those four extra decades weighing on his skin and wonders why he doesn't see the face of an old man staring back at him in the mirror, wonders how his bones don't creak and cease to bend).

Mom mom mom mom mom.

She's here, she's really here, and she's so beautiful it almost stops his heart. He doesn't want to take his eyes off her for fear she'll disappear all over again. Or worse, he'll wake from this Djinn's dream with a needle in his neck and a frantic little brother screaming in his ear and a hole in his gut that can't be filled (again, again, all over again).

Dean watches his mother's eyes (mom mom mom mom mom) and he sees pain there. Recognizes it because he can find it in his own reflection more often than not. Dad always said it but Dean never really knew for sure because it had been so long…but John was right, he was so, so right: they have the same eyes, he and his mom. And isn't that crazy? That Dean can see a little of himself in her after all this time and all these long and lonely years without her, as she looks up at him without a smile on her face.

Mary watches him, too, he knows.

And it scares him.

There is so much to worry about so fast because Sam is missing and there's blood on the floor in the bunker and then Cas is there and Mary is watching him and what if she doesn't like what she sees? What if, after all this time trying to be good, to save people and hunt things and take care of Sammy (always, always Sammy), what if he hasn't made her proud at all?

What if she's disappointed?

Dean smiles sadly and tries to explain thirty years of pain in all the time they don't have. He rubs a hand along his forehead and knows he's doing a terrible job of it (even though he's sparing her most of it, he swears, just sticking to the highlights of this latest disaster and of course, Dad, who is so long ago for him but far, far too recent for her and he sees her eyes shine and thinks that's where Sam gets that puppy dog look and mom mom mom mom mom).

Dean feels a lump forming at the base of his throat as he talks because he looks at Mary and he wonders if she'll ever really know her sons now. They've been through so much together, the two of them (so goddamn much) and she missed it. She missed all of it, and the worst part is that Dean doesn't even have the luxury of worrying about it for very long at all because of that blood on the floor and the fact that the bunker is empty and it was Sam's blood and they have to get him back.

Dean throws the Impala into gear and spins onto the road, Cas beside him and Mary (mom mom mom) staring hard out the window at the memories probably flying past her head. And he's so grateful she has yet to disappear because he was only four years old but he's missed this, he's missed it so much and the steering wheel slides easily against his palms and the road has a direction now and he's going to bring his brother home and then they'll figure everything else out.

I'm coming, Sammy. We're all coming for you.

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Dean Dean Dean Dean Dean Dean Dean.

He won't stop thinking it. Can't stop thinking it. There is a hole in his leg where the bullet went in and then got plucked out (violently, unpracticed, shaking hands, and Dean would've done it better. Gentler), and there is a pounding in his head from whatever substance has been pumped into his bloodstream and probably from the freezing cold shower hitting his scalp for over an hour before that (or however long it had been, Sam has no way of knowing) but all Sam can think is that it doesn't matter, none of it matters because Dean is dead and there's no bringing him back this time.

God, he aches.

It's deeper than bone deep and it is all-encompassing, and he thinks that's maybe part of what gives him the strength to keep telling these English (oh he's sorry, British) Men of Letters to go screw themselves. Because he's got nothing left to lose, so why make life any less difficult for anyone else? Especially the people currently in the process of torturing him.

Sam has seen the Devil and he knows every shimmering facet of unimaginable pain there is, but he still screams as layers of skin are seared away by fire because everything just always hurts and he wishes he knew someone was coming for him but Dean Dean Dean Dean Dean is dead and there's not even a body left to bury this time. And even if there was, he wouldn't be getting out of here anytime soon to go dig a grave. Sam screams his agony again, though he's not sure whether or not the flame is still licking at his heel.

They'll come back for more, Sam knows. Just like he knows his answer will stay the same. Let them come back soon, a sick part of his mind thinks. Because at least the torture distracts from the other stuff. The stuff that really hurts.

Nothing left to lose, Sam thinks as he mourns his brother from inside the confines of his pulsing head.

Nothing left.

Nothing.

If no one else, Sam at least hopes Death is coming for him from beyond a grave of ashes.

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John John John John John John John John John.

He's gone.

There are about a million other things happening, not the least of which is that she's come back to life after thirty-three years and she's here and she's talking to her used-to-be-four-year-old son, Dean. And he is tall and beautiful and he is looking at her like she is the sun but there is something not quite hidden in his eyes that she does not wish to know and even through this, through all of this, she just misses John.

She is alive again.

Somehow, miraculously, impossibly. And her sons are all grown up. They are hunters now: friends of angels, warriors hardened by even more of those things she doesn't think she can handle knowing about, things she did everything in her power to keep from happening to them (her beautiful little boys) and if only she could see John's face, could ask him to explain it all to her...only then does she think that maybe all of this might start to make even a little bit of sense. But he's gone, has been gone a long time according to Dean (who is still looking at her as if she is a mirage, as if she will shatter if he holds her too tightly) and she misses John and she misses her Dean, the one she knows, with a sharp and agonizing tug of her heart—so violent that she feels off-kilter inside her skin; a body that hasn't truly belonged to her in three decades.

"Mom?"

Dean repeats it like a question and the answer to all of the ones he's had for so many years and like the sweetest word he'll ever say, falling over his tongue like honey stuck to the roof of his mouth; sweet nectar rushing out into the thick air between them on a worried exhale.

He needs me, she realizes, and how strange it is, because she looks at him and sees so much strength, skin thicker than steel and muscles pulling and straining to fight against the world. But it's the eyes, the eyes that hold the little boy she used to know, and even after all this time and all these years left alone, he needs her. And so does Sam.

Mary sits on worn leather in a car she imagined to be long gone and watches this new world roll past her window, all full of tiny computers and even smaller cell-phones, and she wonders if there is space for her here, an empty place she can squeeze into and mold around herself. Because she's missed out on so much, and she wonders how she'll ever make it up to them or if they'll even want her to.

She wonders if she should've come back to them at all.

I wrote this a few days after 12x01 aired and never actually posted it, and then I kind of forgot about it until 12x03 when some of the ideas here kind of seemed to align with what happened. And don't talk to me about that last scene of 12x03. Or actually…please do. Reviews are also amazing.

Thanks for reading!