Author's note: This idea has been spinning in my head for awhile now. I wanted to explore the truth about the Winchesters'. This universe may show up again, as I think it credit's a sequel, but no guarantees. Enjoy.
Disclaimer: Not mine, don't sue.
Where the Empty Roads Lead
"Forgive me, Father, for I have sinned."
His name was Luke, and he was tall, and strong, and goddamn it, he was there, which was more than could be said for her husband.
Three weeks to the day, they owned one car, and John used it. He disappeared to his job, from ex-military to mechanic, disappeared again when he thought Mary wasn't watching. She wanted him to look at houses. She dug her heels in for those times, waiting, ignoring. Her mom had told her he was bad news, after all that free sex with those foreign girls, they have trouble settling down.
Three weeks, and she borrowed her mom's car one evening. Outside the house, where the windows were warmly lit, and you knew, even though you'd never passed the threshold, what room was the bedroom. There was John's car, and here was Mary, outside, watching the two figures at the window. She bit her lip.
She left an hour later, and John came home two hours later, and she didn't say anything.
Marriage could survive anything.
She met him on the way to church. To get there from the house, she had to turn down an alleyway that led to a parking lot. Across the parking lot, onto the main sidewalk, and main intersection, then down another alley and she was at the back of the church. Same route home.
John had finally decided on a house. He had a pay raise given him by his boss. He had come home in the evening, and had kissed her, smiling, and she couldn't help but laugh,
"Must have sold your soul to the devil."
John had smiled, in that way of his. They'd had a feast, and he had bought the house. And did it really matter he hadn't consulted her, because they were moving forward for once.
The phone calls started after they moved into their new home. Mary would slip downstairs to grab the only phone, placed strategically in the kitchen, to find no one on the other line. At night time, she would make John answer the phone calls, and there would be several minutes of waiting in the dark bedroom for him to come upstairs.
He said, "Wrong number." Even though they both knew it was a lie.
John dealt with it to the best of his abilities. He changed their number and left it unlisted. It stopped the calls for a while. Just long enough for both of them to slowly relax into each other, developing the routine of the happy couple.
John even came to church with her a few times, though he sat silently and refused to sing any of the hymns. They walked back through the parking lot, and occasionally, she would see Luke, dressed in his paint splattered clothing, working, doing whatever it was he did. He would smile and wave.
John always waved back.
Two months later, and Mary was alone in the house when Lillith showed up. Mary had invited her in before she even knew who she was talking to.
"He's great in bed." Lillith said, smiling politely and sipping the tea Mary had made her. "So passionate, wouldn't you agree?"
Mary didn't tell John about the visit. Shortly afterwards the phone calls started up again, but only Mary ever answered them.
Then came the night where John came home drunk. It was the first time, but Mary had always been good at seeing the future. She knew it wouldn't be the last time. He stumbled through the door, trying to be quiet. She helped him like the good little wife, up to bed.
It was three o'clock in the morning when she woke up to find him gone from beside her. She went down the hallway, following the only light. She found him in the room that was supposed to be the nursery, a gun cradled in his hand.
She said, "John."
And he started to cry, holding the gun to him like a child. Mary went over to him, and hugged him, but in her mind she was trying to remember if he'd ever told her he owned a gun.
Luke stopped her on her way back home from church the following Sunday. He was smiling like he always smiled, and doing what he always did.
"I'm free, Mary." He said, kissed her cheek, and started to gather up what consisted of his gear.
John didn't mention the incident in the nursery. She couldn't find a way to bring it up without starting an argument. They moved through their days. Several months later, Mary realized they hadn't received the phone calls since that night. She stayed up late, waiting for John to finish his overtime.
Then, unable to wait anymore, she went out, and Luke was waiting there, smiling. They broke into the church.
"You knew I was coming back." She whispered to him.
"I've always been good at seeing the future," he answered, removing her bra. "One of the perks." He squeezed her breast hard, and she gasped.
When she got home, John was there, waiting.
She insisted on taking Dean to church, but John fought her. She wanted her son baptized, but John refused. The arguments were hot and made Dean cry. She took him anyway, but her son didn't do church well. Eventually she was forced to leave him in John's care.
She took time off work with no intention of going back. Dean watched her from his crib. In the parking lot, on her way to church, Luke would smile at her and wave.
John went to work, and sometimes he would work late. And Mary would put Dean to bed, and sit at the kitchen table waiting for him. They lived between words, reading the pointlessness of their conversations. He would come home, and she would smile.
"How was your day?"
"Hard. You wouldn't believe this car that was brought into the shop."
"That bad?"
"Where's Dean?"
"Asleep."
"I should take him in, Mike wants to meet him."
"A garage is no place for a baby, John."
They moved up to bed, John always stopping outside the child's room. He would stand there for hours leaving Mary to go to sleep by herself. She would shut her eyes in the dark and think about the image of John cradling the gun like a child.
The night in the church, Luke had told her, "I've always been good at seeing the future."
Mary had wanted to say, "So am I."
Her name was Lillith and she had violet eyes, even though John doubted that was possible.
He had met her years, and no matter how many times he encountered her, she always stayed the same. She left before he met Mary, and returned two years after they were happily married. John had never been good at saying no, which was probably for the best where Lillith was concerned.
After Dean was born, she insisted on meeting him. When Mary went to church, alone, John would put Dean in his stroller and take him to the park. Lillith would be waiting on a bench. She would smile at Dean, sweeping him into her arms, while the baby gurgled happily. They would sit for a bit, Dean settled comfortably on Lillith's lap, before making their way to a small apartment nearby. They made love in the room adjacent to Dean's makeshift crib.
He would be back at home five minutes before Mary with Dean fast asleep in his cradle. Occasionally, Mary would watch him after she came home, trying to gauge him. Most of the time, she simply smiled.
And if he was breaking all those vows, well, he was already damned, so what did it matter?
Dean's first birthday came and passed uneventfully. John and Mary settled on a book, something that would help him learn. Mary had dreams of university and houses with white picket fences for her son. John just couldn't afford anything fancy. Selling your soul, he had thought once, had its perks, now he wasn't so sure.
The book was a Doctor Seuss story, Oh, The Places You'll Go. Mary baked a small cake and wrote on it, if imperfectly, happy birthday Dean in icing. There was one candle. John had to blow it out. Dean clapped his hands merrily. They went to the park as a family, but Lillith wasn't there to see. When they got back, John and Mary read to Dean from the book. They put him to bed.
They lay together that night, Mary with her hand on John's chest, and John's arm over her shoulder.
"This is how it should be." She said.
"Yeah, it really is, isn't it?"
In the nursery, Dean slept fitfully.
Three weeks after, John looked up and met his son's eyes. He pushed himself straight up in Lillith's bed. Lillith merely smiled. She waved at Dean and held out her arms.
"A sweet boy, really, John." Dean crawled across the floor, and she reached over the side of the bed and lifted him to her bare breasts. "So smart. Strong too."
John turned his face away. "We should go."
"Why? Mary won't be back for awhile. She has a surprise for you and Dean. Something I'm sure you'll really love."
John reached out to take his son from her, but she turned away from him. Standing up, she moved across the bedroom, cooing softly to Dean who looked so peaceful in her arms.
"You know, I think he likes me." She grinned, lowering her face into Dean's. "Almost as much as you do, John. Maybe more."
He sat still in bed, waiting. But there was nothing more to come. She returned Dean to him gently. She didn't try to stop him from leaving.
Back at the house, Mary came home late. She had a surprise for them, she'd won them, she said. In a raffle, baseball tickets. They could go as a family. John had always enjoyed watching baseball. He took her into his arms, hugging her and kissing her. She smiled.
John worked hard. He saw his own garage in the future. He saved up the money, and read the paper, looking for a good place to open up shop.
"You have to find some place strategic," He told Mary.
She smiled, "I love it when you go all military." And she really didn't.
Dean said his first word, and John wasn't surprised when it turned out to be "No." He took his first steps too. Mary had called him at the garage to give him the news. He had smiled, and Mike had been kind enough to give him the rest of the day off. He went home and watched Dean take those staggering steps. He laughed, and his son laughed, and Mary laughed.
He was so happy he called it off with Lillith. And to his surprise, it was quiet.
Age of two and a half, almost three, when Dean disappeared in the park, John had only turned his back for a minute. He freaked, like any parent would. His voice called out, hoarse to his own ears. Several parents looked up. None of them offered to help. Two and a half, little legs shuffling in the run of toddler's over park grass and Dean could not have gotten very far. John watched the people. Watched the children, called his son's name some more, then stopped.
He stood still for a moment, started walking. Lillith's apartment was dark and empty. He didn't bother to ask the neighbor. If John thought he was freaking before he had been wrong. He went back to the park, but no one was there.
She was waiting back at his place, seated in the nursery, in the rocking chair John had built for Mary while she'd been pregnant, holding Dean.
"You're fascinating to watch. What exactly did they teach you in the military?"
John didn't even try to enter the room. He just stood, waiting for the sounds of Mary coming home from church.
She said, "I like him. Wonder what he will be like when he's older." She smiled sweetly, "Probably more like his father."
Dean's third birthday and none of them really know what to get a boy his age. John set up a University fund for Dean that year. His plans for his own shop died the year before. Mary did the shopping. She came home with some clothes and toys. She wrapped the gifts but they both put their names on the card. Dean was excited and happy. Mary baked him a cake again, and her writing, done in icing, had gotten better in two years. They stood apart as their son unwrapped his gifts, and afterwards Mary went out for a walk with Dean while John cleaned up.
He put the rest of the cake in the fridge where it would sit forgotten until it went bad. He put the gifts in Dean's room. In the garage, he looked at the schematics for a bed for his son, and didn't think about the gun hidden above his head.
When Mary came back later, she had made another purchase. She held it out to John that evening as they lay in bed, him on his side, and she on hers. It was a bible, fancy, with black leather binding, gold lettering, and a red ribbon book mark from which a small gold cross dangled.
She said, "I really want this for him."
"What?"
"This. A religion. I want him to be a practicing Catholic, even if you're not."
"You tried bringing him to church once." John said, and didn't miss the way she didn't meet his eyes. "He doesn't do church well."
"No," she said, but held the bible tighter.
She made him place a crucifix in Dean's room. She still went to church, and Dean still stayed home, and John could feel it building every time he fucked Lillith. Mary wasn't looking at him at night, and he was missing her during the day.
He wanted to ask somebody just how far gone they were.
There was one day, when John came home early from work, a bouquet of flowers under one arm. Mary was surprised. For a moment, standing in their dismal little kitchen, she just stared at him as though unsure what she was seeing. Then her eyes fell on the flowers, and she smiled. Genuinely smiled. The shadows John had watched growing in her eyes slipped away, and they were the young couple again, no secrets between them.
He held them out. She took them, hugged him.
He whispered, "I love you, Mary."
And she laughed at the way his breath tickled her ear.
Dean was somewhere else, playing, while Mary and John, for the first time in a long time came together in the sheer joy of a moment.
John thought, who cares if you're damned?
Marriage could survive anything.
What Dean will remember is vague at best. He will remember a woman, his mother, how she smelled, how she read to him. He won't remember the crucifix hanging over his door, later Sam's door after Dean is moved out of the nursery.
The times his dad and mom would smile at each other minus all the times they didn't even bother to look.
Sam, small and helpless in his cradle the night their mother died.
Sometimes, though, Dean will dream about another woman, vague, unpleasant, but intensely appealing. She will beckon, and he will go to her, and then he will wake up in a motel room, covered in sweat, not quite sure what he was dreaming about. And there will be times, before Dean saves Sam from a burning apartment in California, that he will ask his dad about his dreams.
John will tell him all they are, are dreams, and dreams can't hurt you.
Twenty-two years after the death of his mother, Dean will find himself in a church in Lawrence, Kansas. He has no memories of the place, and as far as he is aware, never attended a mass.
He's not quite sure what he is looking for. He slips into a confessional booth, jokingly says, Forgive me, Father, for I have sinned, and finds himself disappointed when no one answers. He slips out of the booth, and then let's himself out the back door, almost walking into a man working behind the church.
"Sorry, man"
The man shrugs it off, and as Dean's walking away, smiles at him and waves.