John couldn't stop staring at her, his throat tight enough that he couldn't even think about talking despite all the questions he had. Why had she lied? Why hadn't she tried to talk to him? What happened to her all these years? Had she always been a demon?

Mary.

She looked tense, as if she was ready to sprint out of the booth and run away. She looked just like he remembered her, still so young and beautiful while he could feel each and every wrinkle and the spreading grey hair.

But wasn't that a demon? They don't age, they don't grow older. Their vessels remained in stasis that kept them looking just like it had once it had been possessed.

But Mary, according to everyone who knew enough, wasn't possessed, she was the demon. That she had always been a demon, never possessed but taken to hell.

Fourteen. That age, it made his stomach clench and bile rise in the back of his throat. A deal made at four years old and taken to hell at fourteen. As a hunters child Mary should've known the whole process, known what a deal with a demon entailed.

Four years old and fourteen years old.

She wasn't speaking, just half glaring at him with an unreadable guarded expression. When it was clear that he wasn't going to, he wasn't able to, speak she gave a snort.

"Well?" she demanded. "You've tracked me all this way, might as well get it all out."

John blinked at that, mesmerized by the sound of her voice, he hadn't heard it in ages and just hearing it just now, made him remember more of her, things he had forgotten. The slight accent to her voice that he could never place, just how low it got when she was barely restraining herself in anger.

"What?" he managed to get out.

"Don't what me, you're the one that tracked me down here." she half snapped at him. "You're the one that found me."

"I...I didn't know you were here." he said weakly. "I don't even know where here is."

The dirty look she shot him made him flinch back slightly, leaning back into his seat.

"I'm not an idiot." she said. "I might've been dead for years but I'm not an idiot." when she saw the lack of recognition on his face she gave a snort, rolling her eyes. "We're home."

Home. The more he thought about it, the more sense it made. He hadn't had a set destination in mind, just drove and drove for hours, uncaring of where he ended up. But in the end, all roads lead home.

Lawrence, Kansas.

Home.

"I didn't know where I was going, I was just driving." he whispered, unable to tear his eyes away from her, barely daring to blink. "But...you're here."

Mary's eyes narrowed. "I'm doing a bit of traveling, thought about getting my bearings back here." she said. "So you didn't track me down?"

"I didn't even know where you were." he whispered, voice breaking. His hand slowly raised and reached for her, making her flinch and move back out of his reach.

"Don't touch me." she lowly warned him. "I'm not in a mood to play around with."

Reluctantly he pulled back, watching her take a deep breath. She tugged at her jacket's sleeves, pulling them down more, and let her head move up to let his eyes meet hers.

He really had forgotten just how beautiful she was. His memories had done no justice to her whatsoever.

"Why didn't you tell me?" he whispered, watching her tense up even more. "Why didn't you just...tell me?"

Mary raised an eyebrow at him. "I didn't even know that you were a hunter." she said. "And I was just supposed to tell you that I was a demon?"

"Better to have told me than seeing Dean with black eyes." John said quietly. "I thought the worst, I thought a demon got to him."

"He's half, the black eyes are his." Mary said tensely. "And so is Sam."

John looked around the bar at that, a part of him hoping to catch a glimpse of the boys, the men, and couldn't name the emotion that spread through him when he couldn't. "Where..."

"Somewhere else." Mary told him, shaking her head. "I'm traveling alone for now."

So this wasn't Sam's promised talk.

"What about being pregnant, you didn't tell me anything about that either." John managed to get out. He never truly imagined that he'd be able to talk to her again, much less after he learned that she had died, but even during those nights when he played with that fantasy, he had a mess of questions to ask.

He couldn't think straight, couldn't really wrap his mind around the fact that she was here, alive and in front of him. So he just let out the first words he could find and hope that he didn't make a fool out of himself.

Mary raised an eyebrow at that question. "Because I didn't know." she told him. "I didn't realize that I was pregnant, I wasn't expecting it and therefore didn't realize the signs until they happened. And that wasn't until Dean and I were on the run, it's why I went back to Hell."

"With a kid and one on the way."

"Oh yes, better to remain on earth where we were being hunted." Mary said rolling her eyes at him. "You have no idea what you did, putting our images out like that. I had to kill people to keep Dean safe, I had to kill hunters, humans, whomever. Until I finally went to the safety of Hell."

Safety of hell, it sounded like an oxymoron all on itself.

Mary snorted, reading his expression easily. "Safety of Hell all depends on who you are and where your rank is." she told him. "I'm pretty high up."

That was disturbing all on its own. He wasn't sure what demons rankings were or how they were obtained, but he had to imagine that it was in sin and torture. And if Mary was high up enough to consider hell a place of safety, that had to mean that she was a very powerful demon.

He never really did know her, did he.

But that all came back around to the fact that maybe...Mary didn't know how to be a human. She had been four years old when she made the deal, fourteen when the devil came to collect. He'd seen people in the middle of their deals and they went off the edge, throwing themselves into a hedonist lifestyle. Already damned all they could do was enjoy the last dredges of humanity that they had left.

And Mary had been fourteen years old.

"How...how did it happen?" he managed to ask. She looked up at him, she had been looking off to the side at something else. "How'd you turn into a demon?"

"Just like every other demon." Mary said with a shrug. "Get sent to Hell. Be tortured until you finally break and start torturing others instead. After some time and realizing certain emotions you slowly get turned until you're a demon completely."

"So...you. You tortured souls." John asked, voice breaking. "You..."

Mary stared at him and then her eyes narrowed before they suddenly flicked to black. "Wipe that look off of your face." she hissed at him. "You have two choices down there, either be tortured or do the torturing. I was fourteen years old when I was dragged down. Fourteen. Years. Old. I was a child."

She turned away from him. "So wipe that judgmental, critical look off of your face. I did what I had to do. Hell is Hell for a reason, everyone is there because they deserve it."

"You sold your soul to save your father, did you deserve to go to hell because of that?" he demanded.

Mary glanced at him, eyes still black. "Yes." she said simply. "Because I knew what I was doing. I knew what a demon deal meant and what would happen. I took it anyway, to save my dad."

She scoffed then. "Wish I didn't do it now, after everything he did and what happened to me because of him."

"What do you mean?"

"He killed me." she said simply. "He had a knife that could kill demons. When I would come to earth I would sometimes check in on him, mom died a bit ago so I was sometimes worried about him, so I'd keep my distance and just look at him. One time was all it took to catch me in a devils trap."

"And he killed you." John said softly. "Did he know that it was really you?"

"I tried to tell him. tried to convince him, but he either didn't care or didn't believe me." Mary said with a shrug. "And now...I want to find him again. I want to convince him that it's me, and kill him once he realizes it."

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