July 2015:
Mary smiled around the kitchen, surveying the piles of food on the counter.
Maybe there was no more government, maybe the United States wasn't really a thing anymore, but...
Well no one could ever accuse the settlement of Medusa, Lebanon, Kansas, USA, population 20.5 plus two Hellhounds, of being un-patriotic. Ellen and Mary had put out 5 different fruit pies, Gabriel had made a brightly colored trifle, and Dean was outside with the grill, cooking up veggie burgers and rabbit, and their very own home-grown corn and squash and green beans.
The reason half of the meat was fake was that imitation meat stored a lot better than real meat, and they'd long since eaten their store-procured meats and had no means of procuring any new meat that would be edible other than the wild meat Benny brought back from his hunts—and most of that went only to Benny since he required it to survive. Veggie burgers and veggie dogs lasted at least twice as long so there were still some left, though they were mildly freezer-burned. Their little village was living an partially vegan life, having no access to cows for milk or animals for slaughter. What they could get was shelf-stable products such as soy and almond milk, certain frozen products, the vegetables and fruit they grew near the Reservoir, and other shelf-stable products like flour and jerky and canned goods.
Dean, John, Bobby, Cas and Jo had all been pretty miffed at the lack of steak and burgers and bacon, but were mollified with canned soups and beef jerky, and what little wild meat Benny would let them use.
Mary smiled to herself. She could just imagine John griping under his breath at the burgers blackening under Dean's watchful eye. He'd probably eat one just to make Sam happy, and he'd complain but Mary knew that he really didn't mind the taste so much as the idea of fake meat. Especially when Dean cooked it. Their boy could handle food surprisingly well considering no one had ever taught him.
She was so damn proud of those two.
Stopping the first apocalypse only to be thrown into a second apocalypse completely out of their realm to keep at bay, and surviving that, and helping their loved ones survive and dealing so well with everything God had thrown at them throughout their lives.
Strong young men.
Though, Mary guessed, Dean wasn't a young man anymore and even Sam was getting near middle age.
They would always be little boys in her heart though. Foul-mouthed, violent, sweet, strong, moronic little boys with smiles to light up the whole damn world.
She glanced at her charm bracelet, as she moved a strawberry pie to the table (Strawberries grew like weeds and she thanked the Lord every day for that.) There was a new charm on there. An anti-possession sigil Sam had made out of a tiny drawing, a piece of domed glass, and a metal backing. She grinned. "Mama's boys." Her voice was low, as she returned to the other pies—blueberry, apricot-raspberry, peach, and plum. (Vincent and Sam had spent a lot of time planting things in the past two years and they had a small farm on their hands. And everything grew amazingly well thanks to Gabriel's enchanted Reservoir.)
"Hey, Sweetcakes!"
Speak of the Devil.
"Yeah, Gabriel?" Mary smiled at the stout angel as he skipped into the kitchen.
He grinned right back at her, (and Mary could see why Sam liked to spend time with him. He was the perfect ray of sunlight for Sam's dreary thoughts!) and asked, "You seen my trifle?" He scanned over her shoulder.
"Other direction, hun." She nodded toward the counter just to his left, and he spun with a soft "oh."
Gabriel picked it up (it was a huge thing—strawberries, blueberries and peaches all mixed up with instant vanilla pudding and crumbled sugar cookies in a huge glass mixing bowl all done up to look pretty.) and winked at her with a "Thanks, Cupcake!" as he maneuvered out into the main area of the HQ.
Mary snorted to herself. That boy and his ridiculous nicknames. She thought they were kinda cute. Dean thought they were obnoxious. Sam acted like they annoyed him, but Mary had a feeling he liked having some nicknames just for him. Because Gabe occasionally recycled nicknames among most of the population, but the ones for Sam never got used on anyone else. She'd never heard him call anyone but Sam "Hot Stuff" or "Babycakes" or, her personal favorite, "Puddin' Pie." Never failed to make Mary giggle herself delirious, and it always got Gabe the best prissy glares.
Mary sighed happily.
It sucked that she only got this new chance at life because of the destruction of a large chunk of the world's population, but she really was glad to be alive again and fussing over her sons and husband, and baking pies and ganking rogue ghosts and scolding Crowley when he got a bit too handsy around Bobby.
She lived under the idea that they could all be much worse off, and she was content with how things were, for now.
She lifted an armful of potato salad and a watermelon and followed Gabriel's trail of fruit and chocolate wafting in from the outside, to join her family.
