Chapter Forty-Nine: In Which the Winchesters are Legacies

"All I'm saying is that Palpatine totally made a deal to switch Anakin's life for Padme's because there's no way a woman like that would lose the will to—what?"

Sam gestured again, silencing Dean with a wave of his hand. He could have sworn he'd heard a thumping noise coming from outside the motel room, but it was coming from the closet, not the door. Before he had time to register what was going on, the door flew open and a man about Dean's height tumbled out of the closet and into the room. The Winchesters just stared at him.

"You know, I was much less dramatic than that," Dean commented.

Sam could see the exact moment that the joke registered in his mother's mind. (It was the exact same moment that he questioned what he could have possibly done to deserve a family that thought a joke that weak was funny.)

With both of them dissolving into silent laughter, it was up to Sam to make sure that the man didn't mean to attack them. Judging by the fact that he was too preoccupied with brushing off his suit to threaten them, he probably wasn't going to be much of a danger.

"Which one of you is John Winchester?'

That was enough to sober them up. Mom was the first to speak. "None of us. I'm his wife, and these two are his kids."

The man gave them the once-over, clearly trying to decide whether or not she could be believed. Sam nodded, hoping to lend a little credibility to her story. He couldn't imagine why someone as…unusual as this guy would be looking for Dad, especially seeing as he'd been dead almost thirty years. As far as Sam knew, Dad hadn't known anything about the hunting world at all.

"His wife?" he said at last. "What year is this?"

Affronted, Mom crossed her arms. "Who are you, anyway?"

But Sam noticed what she hadn't in the midst of being offended. "Wait, what do you mean, what year is this?"

Before anyone could clear anything up, the door rattled and burst open again. This time, a red haired woman in a silver dress stood framed in the doorway, painted lips lifted in a smirk.

That never meant anything good.

"Josie!" he gasped.

The woman smirked. "Not anymore."

"Go!" the man ordered.

He didn't have to tell Sam twice. Just as he started making a break for the door (mourning the loss of the flannel he'd left laying on one of the beds), the woman jerked her hand and all four occupants of the room slammed into a different wall.

Pop! Sam gritted his teeth sympathetically as Mom stifled a small moan as her shoulder moved out of place yet again. The man, on the opposite wall from Sam, wriggled in place ineffectively.

"Abaddon, your quarrel is with me. Not them."

She raised an eyebrow. "You were the one that went running to them, sweetheart. It's their quarrel now."

She emphasized her point by slamming them all into the wall again. Sam very narrowly avoided whacking his head by nearly giving himself whiplash instead, and Mom gave another small grunt of pain.

"Hand it over, Henry."

"We don't even know what this quarrel is," Dean said.

Sam wanted to agree, but he was too concerned with reaching for Ruby's knife, which just so happened to be laying on the bed nearest to him. If he could just stretch—there! When Abaddon turned her attention to Henry, Sam peeled himself off the wall and jumped for her.

The knife sank easily into her chest, but the reddish-gold light that usually flashed as a demon died didn't appear. She glanced down at the knife with the same kind of annoyance Sam would have shot at Dean if he'd tried to poke him with a toothpick.

"Well, now, that wasn't very nice."

Regardless of whether or not it had killed her, it had at least distracted her. Sam yanked the knife back and took off for the door, hard on Mom's heels.

/

As soon as Mary's heartrate turned to normal, she turned to the man, riding beside her in the back seat. He looked a little green, as if he'd never done sixty on a highway before. (Well, the speed limit was sixty. Dean was probably pushing seventy-five in their effort to get away from whatever on Earth Abaddon was.)

"How do you know John?"

She impressed herself immensely by keeping her voice steady.

"I'm—well, I'm his father, but the version of John I know is significantly younger."

Is. Mary bit down hard on her lip, but the man didn't appear to notice. She took the opportunity to scrutinize him. The man she'd known as John's father had actually been his stepdad, and according to John, he was one heck of a better man. His dad had run off when he was fairly young, not leaving a single trace.

"Hang on, you're the deadbeat?"

The man's face fell. "I can assure you,—"

"Mary."

"—Mary, I'm no such thing. Look, I'm very sorry to have bothered you. Just take me to him, and we can sort this out and I'll get out of your hair once and for all."

Mary caught sight of the boys checking the rearview mirror to catch sight of their grandfather.

"We can't take you to John," Mary said quietly, not quite looking at him. He wasn't going to be happy when he learned the truth. "He's been dead about thirty years."

He just stared at her. "But…you're his wife? That means—"

Mary could see the moment everything clicked, when he realized just how young John would have had to have been when he died.

"Am—am I still alive?"

Mary shrugged. "No clue. You ran off when he was a kid."

If there was some sort of rule about not telling time travelers about their futures, she had probably smashed it into pieces, but Mary didn't care. Henry Winchester had left his wife—whom Mary had never particularly cared for, but felt defensive of at the moment—and his young son without a single warning.

At the words, Henry's face slumped, but Mary's sympathy was very limited.

"How?" Henry choked on the word. "How did he-?"

"House fire." She didn't feel like disclosing any details, nor did Henry deserve to know anything about his son's life or death.

"What're you here for?" Dean asked, quick to steer the conversation back into less emotional waters.

Henry reached into his pocket. "This."

It certainly didn't look like much, but Mary had learned over the years that old guns could shoot down demons and hunks of rocks could have hidden depths.

"What is it?" Sam asked.

"The best hope humanity has to protect itself."

Mary squinted down at the box, finally taking in the sigil on the front. It twigged something in her memory—creeping down the stairs in her nightgown as a kid to overhear an argument between her father and a dark-suited man—a page of her mother's notebook covered in her neat box letters—a solemn toast led by her parents, Mary copying along with a glass of juice. Everything fell into place.

"You've got to be kidding me." A slightly hysteric laugh escaped her. "You're one of them? John was a legacy?"

"Not officially, yet. Once I get back, yes. Though I might have to—" Henry winced "—restart the thing on my own, I'm afraid. At least the American chapter."

She'd been wrong all along. She hadn't dragged John into the hunting world. The one thing in her life she'd thought was untainted by it had had one foot in already.

"Legacy?" Sam swiveled around in his seat. "What sort of legacy?"

Mary had a feeling that Henry wanted to answer this one, but she beat him to it. "The Men of Letters. A bunch of stuck-up geeks who'd rather stick their noses in a book than get their hands dirty like the rest of us."

Her father had absolutely hated them, and while her mother had admitted they had their uses at times, she'd disliked them, too. The Men of Letters had lacked the common sense they'd been born with, too busy trying to catalogue a new curse to realize it was affecting them already. And they were the ones to criticize hunters.

"If by getting their hands dirty you mean fumbling around like imbeciles in the dark when there's a light switch three inches from their moronic faces, then yes, that's fairly accurate." He turned to the boys. "Hunters simply put what's in the dark down. We try to unravel it, so it can be stopped for good."

Sam seemed to be warming up to the idea, so Mary jumped in again. "We only ever fumbled because someone wouldn't let us inside their super-secret boys' club."

"We were initiating a woman, same time as me. Josie."

"Ah, yes, the one you let get possessed by a demon. Classy."

Sam intervened before they could come to blows. (Mary wasn't concerned: she knew she'd win.)

"What do you mean, restart?"

Henry flinched again. "Ah, yes. Well, my chapter appeared to have been destroyed by that demon, Abaddon."

"And what's in the box?"

He frowned. "I don't really know."

Mary rolled her eyes.

/

They'd managed to track down the last remaining Man of Letters, but the visitor's hour at his nursing home wasn't for a little while, so they'd hunkered down in a motel to wait. Henry had entertained himself for a good fifteen minutes on Mary's phone, simply sliding his finger back and forth across the screen, watching the apps move with him. Mary sat trying to read one of the books they'd salvaged from Bobby's that she was pretty sure mentioned time travel at some point, but she kept catching glimpses of Henry out of the corner of her eye and thinking she saw John.

"Hey, Mom, we're gonna go grab some grub, maybe something that won't make Gramps sick. If it takes a while, we'll head out to the home."

The diner they'd stopped in a few hours back had stuck Henry in the bathroom for a solid hour. Before Mary could protest that she could easily go get it herself, the boys were out of the room. With a clink, the motel room door closed behind them.

Mary determinedly avoided Henry's eyes as long as she reasonably could. When she finally looked up again, her lungs constricted—for a moment she saw John looking back at her.

"How did he really die?"

She'd been afraid of that question. "A demon."

Henry closed his eyes, hands clenching into fists.

"Was it after John?" Henry looked pained. "It was me, wasn't it? Abaddon left—traveled here—and a couple of demons decided they would finish her job. I made you and my grandsons into hunters."

Part of Mary was content to let him think that it was his fault, but it wrestled with her conscience and lost. She laced her fingers and stared down at them as she spoke, voice surprisingly even.

"A demon went after my family—my hunter family. John got caught in the crossfire." There was a sharp intake of breath, but Mary plowed on, relentless. "Azazel, his name was. But he didn't get me. He offered me a deal. In ten years, he'd be allowed entrance to my house and in exchange he'd bring John back. I accepted."

Henry got up from his seat on the edge of the bed and did a lap around the room, refusing to look at her.

"I bought him ten years, but Azazel made good on his promise. He came to our house for—for Sam."

If she'd thought Henry had looked ill before, it was nothing compared to now. The speed of his pacing increased, and his hands began to worry.

"I was checking the sigils on the door. John was the one to hear him in the nursery." She dropped Henry's gaze again. "John—well. He went to Vietn—I guess you don't know—he went to war. He thought I'd never been in a fight, so he went up there alone."

Henry's hands convulsed. "And?"

"The fire started just as I got back inside. I got into the nursery, but it was too late. Dean carried Sam out of the house."

Mary didn't wear short sleeved shirts. The burns had faded significantly since she'd shot Azazel, but she still didn't like the reminder. Silently, she rolled up first one sleeve, then the other.

"I tried to save your son."

Henry stopped his frantic pacing. He walked over, and with a quick "May I?" examined her arms.

When she'd dropped the boys off at Bobby's less than forty-eight hours after what she would simply refer to as "the fire" for twenty years, the burns had been red-raw and blistering. Bobby had demanded that she get it checked out, but the doctors didn't know how to treat demonic fire burns. As time had passed, they'd softened to pink. When Azazel had finally died for good, they'd faded to white. Henry handled her carefully, afraid she would snap.

"He died because of me."

He released her arm, shoving his hands deep in his pockets. Mary watched him carefully. What on Earth were they going to do with him? It was clear he didn't belong here.

"What if..?" Henry's face lit up. "What if we redid the spell? Went back, saved the Men of Letters? I'd be able to warn John, teach him everything he needs to survive."

Mary couldn't deny that she was tempted, but her common sense won out. "Henry, this is going to be a little difficult to understand, but we stopped the apocalypse. We can't undo that."

Henry looked ready to argue, but before he could open his mouth, her phone rang. He jumped violently and handed it over for her to answer once he decided he couldn't work the buttons. Mary clicked the green button and held it up to her ear.

"Sam? Did you talk to—"

"Try again, sweetheart."

Mary's heart plunged to somewhere around her knees. "Abaddon."

Henry's head whipped up so fast that Mary was surprised he hadn't cracked his neck. He squeezed next to Mary, trying to listen to the conversation. Mary's knuckles whitened around the phone.

"Why do you have my son's phone?"

"I guess it was a little much to ask for you to be pretty and smart, huh?"

Mary gritted her teeth.

"There's a processing plant on the way to the retirement home. If you want your boys back, you'll hand over Henry Winchester and the box and nobody gets hurt. Well—" She laughed. "—nobody except Henry, of course."

And with that, she ended the call.

Fifteen minutes later, the two of them were sitting in the Impala, Mary's foot so far on the accelerator that her foot was flat against the floor. Henry was grabbing so tightly to the car that Mary was pretty sure he'd shatter if they stopped abruptly.

"So what exactly is our game plan here?" Mary asked.

Henry shook his head. "Hand me over."

She almost slammed on the brakes then and there. "What?"

"If I carve a devil's trap into this bullet, you can pretend to hand me over and I can shoot her. Granted, it's a long shot, but if it doesn't work, at least you can get Sam and Dean out."

Of all the ridiculous plans that she had been a part of in the past few years, this was actually the best laid one she'd seen so far.

Mary's throat tightened again. "Henry, I can't ask you to do that."

"They're my grandsons."

And that was all the argument Henry would take. Mary tried to dissuade him for the remaining five minutes until they pulled up in front of the processing plant, but nothing she could say could change his mind.

"You'll have to cuff me. Or, at least, pretend to."

Mary agreed to cuff him. Together, they walked into the plant, Mary steering Henry along in front of her. They emerged into a large room, empty except for Abaddon and the boys. Mary bristled at the sight of the duct tape Abaddon had used to bind their hands in front of them. She knew from experience that ripping that off wasn't fun.

"Mom!"

Mary nudged Henry in the back with her gun. "Go on, then." And to Abaddon. "Send them over. No tricks."

The boys started closing the distance between them. Sam looked ready to pause and talk to Henry, but Dean gave him a little, awkward push with his bound hands and they kept trekking.

Mary reached forward and started peeling off the duct tape, ignoring the little "ow, ow, ow"s coming from Sam and the stream of swears coming from Dean. Just as she turned towards the door, praying Henry was going to act soon, the door slammed shut.

Oh no. Abaddon smirked. "Yeah, no. I'm not about to let two legacies and whatever you are go."

Whatever you are? Mary opened her mouth to ask what on earth she meant by that just as Abaddon plunged her hand into Henry's abdomen. All three Winchesters made an aborted move towards him as soon as Henry pulled the trigger.

Abaddon laughed. "Oh, you've got to be kidding me. Guess we're doing this the hard way."

She reached down for Henry's chin and tried to smoke out, but thanks to the bullet, she wasn't able to. Mary pulled the machete Dean had favored after Purgatory from her bag. Abaddon, to her satisfaction, eyed it much more warily than she ordinarily would have done.

"You know," she said conversationally, "I can't actually kill you. But I sure can make you wish you were dead."

With one long, practiced swing that had taken down what must have been hundreds of vampires, Mary knocked her head clean off her shoulders. It would do for now.

She dropped to her knees beside Henry just as the boys reached their sides.

"Are you all right?"

"We're fine," Dean replied, terse. "Is he-?"

Mary grappled for Henry's pulse, her fingers trembling. She hadn't found it by the time his eyes opened. They took a few blurry moments to focus on her face, then the boys.

"H-he would have loved you so much." This he directed at the boys, voice trembling. "So much."

Sam reached down to grip his hand and Henry returned the favor the best he could. Mary applied pressure to the wound Abaddon had made, but she knew it was too late. Henry, alive, would never rest until he found his way back to his son and John had grown up without him.

"I underestimated you all," Henry managed. "Hunters."

His breathing became even more ragged. Mary could tell he was just barely clinging, desperate to get the last few words out.

"He got lucky with you, Mary."

She smiled softly. "Thank you."

"The box. You have to take the box. Become the legacies you were meant to be."

Henry looked like he wanted to say more, but his head dropped back before he could.