Just moments ago, I was pinned to the ceiling in Sammy's room, burning to a crisp. Damn, that hurt. And now...where the hell am I?

Mary struggled to calm down, to realize that she wasn't dead, after all. She stared at the dimly familiar man in front of her, half-listening to his rough voice detailing bits and pieces of her life, her heritage, while she tried to keep from shivering from the chill breeze filtering through her nightgown. Her shivering also came from the abrupt change in her life, and what this stranger was telling her. She began to focus more, really listening.

I...died?

John raised the boys to be Hunters?! Oh, God, no! Please, no!...John?! My John?!

She gasped at the thought, crushed it down, and focused harder, searching this tall, muscular man's face as he kept speaking, strangely gentle. He called her "Mom". How could any of this be possible? She moved closer, trying to see any resemblance. Oh, yes, there were hints. The voice - it was like listening to her Uncle Harry, before he died. The way he stood, moved his hands, talked - flashes of her father, of John peeked through. She shivered again, tallying up the resemblances, the story, her knowledge of the supernatural from when she was hunting.

She stepped forward, putting a tentative hand on this stranger's shoulder, peering deep into his face, and said softly, wonder in her voice, "Dean?"

How can this be my little boy? My brave tow-headed Dean? The one who wanted the crusts cut off his sandwiches? Who told me everything was going to be okay, that he loved me, when John and I had that fight? How can this be?!

A small flame of anger at the universe sprouted in her, for taking his childhood, his youth, all those years, away from her. She had to accept it: yes, this was Dean. Yes, some thirty years had passed while she was...God knew where.

She just had to make the best of it.


Her head spun as she followed...Dean...down the concrete steps and through the door. Demons. Angels. Sammy - Sammy?! My sweet little baby boy?! - with psychic powers. Lucifer rising. God. God?! And he had a sister?!

Then she stopped and peered out over the railing into the huge Art Deco style room beneath her. Dean waved his hand at it and said something about the "Men Of Letters". What?!

"Men of Letters? But that's just a myth!" she protested, following him down the stairs.

Apparently not.

All this incredible heap of information was becoming too much for her to take.

Then an incredibly handsome man just...appeared...shouted, "Dean!", threw his arms around...Dean's...shoulders and hugged him as if his life depended on it. Dean gave her a slightly embarrassed shrug, hugged him back, and nonchalantly told her he was an angel.

No harp, no wings, no glow. Angel. Right. She filed it away. Her head was getting stuffed.

Then: blood on the floor. A...phone call? From that little flat box? Sam gone. Dean using a tiny computer to "hack into the webcams", whatever that meant. And then they were trooping off through this luxurious bunker-like structure to an...indoor garage?!

At which point, thank god, there was something she recognized, though it was a shock: John's car, in sparkling condition, obviously well taken care of. With a sigh of relief at seeing it, recognizing it, she moved forward, trailing a hand along the hood, peering into the driver's window, then into the back seat. The corners of her mouth twitched up in a secret smile as she leaned forward, remembering all those times with John...

Dean peered in from the opposite side, still talking about "Baby". He glanced across the backseat of the car at her, and she suddenly grinned as a look of shock and horror spread across it.

Hah! Oh, yes, maybe he really is my son, after all! No stranger would look that horrified at realizing John and I spent many happy hours making out in that backseat!

She stifled a giggle and stood back up.


They had tracked down the veterinarian who removed the bullet from Sam's leg. She had to think of it as if this were a strange adult they were talking about, or else she'd have the screaming heebie-jeebies: this was her baby boy they were talking about! They were getting closer. She and the angel followed Dean as he drew his gun, knocked on the door, pushed the vet back into his office and started questioning him.

She watched. Old reflexes were surging back up, old habits, her ability to see telltale hesitations, attempts by a person to throw a Hunter off the trail. Dean was about to tie things up, frustrated at the lack of information, and something about the way the muscles around the vet's eyes relaxed as Dean stood down pinged at her.

She and the angel spoke at the same time. "Hurt him."


Mary sat in the backseat of the Impala, legs out, staring down at her hands as if she didn't recognize them.

A human. I killed a human.

She turned the hands over, noting dully that there was no blood.

She had killed monsters before, years ago, when she was a teen, before she met John and realized that, yes, there might be a way out of the world of hunting.

But she had never killed a human.

It didn't feel any different, physically.

But, there it was: instinctively, without hesitating, when the stocky Englishwoman with the scarred face had been about to shoot Dean...my son, the thought flitted through her brain...she had slid up behind her, moving on tiptoes, bracing herself, and jammed the strange blade between the woman's shoulders.

She flipped her hands over again. They didn't look any different. Just hands. Hands that had held John, had wiped jelly off her toddler's face, had swaddled baby Sam's body in warm blankets.

My hands.

So many years of peaceful living. A home, a family, a normal life. No violence. No creepy things in the night. No overarching need to "protect humanity". No fear. No disguises. Just a life. Then she had walked past her baby boy's room into a nightmare. John was downstairs, not in Sammy's room. Then the screaming fear had come crashing over her like a wave, the realization that there was a stranger hovering over her baby, and she was running, running, running...

And now, hours later, here she was.

A shadow fell across her, and Dean's voice came as if from a distance: "Are you okay?"

She glanced up at him, looked back down at her hands. A stranger's hands.

"No," she answered in a small voice.