MRS WINCHESTER

JANUARY 2025

She met him in a bar. She'd been stood up by a date and was just about to leave when, as she turned back to pick up her handbag, she noticed him sitting by himself in the corner. Dishevelled hair. Shoulders slumped. A glass of whiskey on the table and by the look of him, this was far from his first that evening.

She wasn't in the habit of approaching strange and possibly-alcoholic men in bars, but something about this guy's pathetic appearance stirred sympathy in her. In fact, it was more than pathetic – this man looked like he would crumble into dust at any second.

The eyes that gazed up at her were blank and lifeless. The look of a man who had nothing left to live for and was just going through the motions. His face was grey and haggard, his whole profile giving off such an air of misery that she almost felt suicidal just standing there. She wanted to leave, forget she'd ever laid eyes on the poor sap. She was urging herself to do just that, but something overrode what the voice in her head was yelling at her – and she sat down beside him. That was how, on a cold and dreary night in January, Bethany Ashford was introduced to Sam Winchester.

She got the whole story that night. She never asked him what made him open up like that. It could have been the booze – there were several more drinks that night – or maybe Sam was just depressed and tired enough to not care if anyone thought he was crazy – but after ten minutes of stilted conversation, he slapped his hands down on the table, knocked back the double whiskey he had just ordered and started talking. Cynically. Furiously. Heartbreakingly. Brokenly.

If it had been anyone else in the bar hearing all that, they would have snorted, maybe shaken their heads sadly, and left, thinking him too drunk or just plain nuts. But as it happened, Bethany Ashford was already well aware that there were more things in heaven and earth than were dreamt of in human philosophy. She could even picture the brother that Sam described with such love and heartache, because it had been a twenty-four-year-old Dean Winchester who had rescued her from a vampire when she was twelve years old. Not something you forget about in a hurry – or at all.

She learned that it had been sixteen months since Dean had died, killed in a fight with one of the creatures from whom he had saved her. His little brother had been carrying the torch since then, killing any monster he could find, but with a special hatred for vampires in particular. This – along with the drinking – was what kept him getting up each day, because he readily admitted that he didn't really want to live, that he had no reason to now that Dean was gone. The hunting was not a reason to live, but a mission to fill up his time while he fought the urge to die – his brother had ordered him to keep fighting and he was doing his best, though he wasn't sure how much longer he could keep it up. He found himself hoping he would end up getting killed on one of his hunts, because he didn't want to be here any more – not without his Dean.

But at least now he didn't have to be so completely alone. For whatever had drawn Beth Ashford to Sam Winchester in the first place, had planted a flame inside of her, something small and flickering, but an undeniable flame. She asked him out on a date. Four nights later, they met in that same bar and…

FEBRUARY 2027

Beth Ashford became Mrs Bethany Winchester. The wedding was a small affair. Beth didn't have a large family and Sam's were all dead. Some of his remaining friends were able to make it, although she had been highly disconcerted to discover that one of them was a werewolf. It had taken a lot of reassurances to (mostly) convince her that this Garth character was harmless, but when she finally met him, she couldn't help but like him. She had some questions about the fellow in the beige trench coat who just seemed to appear out of nowhere as she was walking down the aisle, but she couldn't exactly raise them at that point. Later, she saw her new husband give an excited yell and rush over to give the guy a hug, at which point she discovered that this was the angel Sam had told her about. Not that she had a chance to get to know him – Castiel had taken a brief break from whatever it was that angels spent their time doing and had to return. Clutching Sam's shoulder, he told her husband that he would not have missed this for the world, adding just before he left, "And you can be certain that I will be keeping a close watch on the child."

Confused, she asked, "What child?"

The angel gave her an odd look. "The child that you're carrying, of course." Then he was gone…

OCTOBER 2027

Once they found out they were having a son, the name was inevitable. Beth didn't even bother to come up with a suggestion of her own. She knew there was only one name that Sam would accept. When Dean Robert Winchester came into the world on a rainy autumn morning, Beth felt her heart was going to burst with joy. But even more than her own delight in becoming a mother, she felt happiest for Sam – he had another Dean in his life, someone who could never, ever take the place of his brother, but another Dean on whom he could shower love and care. He couldn't have Dean Number One back – at least not yet – but this was the next best thing…

INTERLUDE

When his son was born, Sam stopped hunting – mostly. Now that he had a son, he wanted to make sure that he was in his child's life as much as he could be. That meant not getting killed by monsters, as would surely happen one day if he kept the family business up. His baby boy needed a father figure in his life and Sam was determined that it would be him. Everything he knew about being a father he had learned from Dean and Bobby, so him being a parent became another way to honour those he loved.

So – he was out of the hunting life. Mostly. For the first five years, he took a complete break but then, very occasionally, when something local popped up that seemed relatively easy to deal with, he would take on the case. All those times that he had been told there was no breaking away from the life of a hunter – it was true. Hunting might be on the very periphery of his life now, something he did a couple of times a year, if that, but it was still a part of who he was. There was no getting away from that. And if he was honest with himself, Sam didn't want to get away from it, hadn't for a long time. He had accepted years ago that "once a hunter, always a hunter" and he was happy with that…

2042

Over the years, Beth and Sam had slipped into a comfortable life together. They genuinely loved one another and enjoyed each other's company. They felt at ease with one another and she certainly couldn't have asked for a better father to her son.

And yet…

Beth had known from the beginning that she wasn't the love of Sam's life, because the love of his life had died hunting vampires. And that was okay, or so she had thought at the time. She could accept herself (and Little Dean) as being close seconds.

And for a number of years, she did just that. Accepted that while Sam deeply, deeply cared for her, she was never going to hold the place in his heart that his older brother did. She knew all about the bond the brothers had, she knew the kind of relationship she was getting into. It was fine, she kept telling herself. It was fine. Really.

Until it wasn't.

Eventually, she realised that she needed and wanted to be the love of someone's life and that someone was never going to be Sam. She had a warm, cosy existence with her husband, but that was all. It would never quite have the profundity that she wished for.

So gradually, they drifted apart. It took a few years and they had both seen the writing on the wall before they finally separated when Little Dean was fourteen. It was totally amicable; Beth didn't bear Sam any ill will. He had done nothing wrong. She had willingly entered into a marriage with a man she knew was never going to be able to love her as much as she wanted him to. She knew the score. She had agreed to the terms. That she had been wrong about her capacity to make do with it was just one of those things.

They had joint custody of their son. Sam had the boy for his sixteenth birthday and when Beth picked him up a few days later, she discovered that they had spent part of the day in the tattoo parlour, as her son proudly showed off the anti-possession symbol. If it had been her, she wasn't sure she would have agreed to it, but she saw the logic in Little Dean getting one.

JULY 2056

The phone call came. From her son, letting her know that her ex-husband had finally slipped peacefully away. Little Dean had been by his father's side the entire time. She broke down. She had known it was coming, and they were long divorced, but she still loved Sam. He was one of the best human beings she had known.

She didn't just weep for Sam's death. She wept for his life – all the pain and tragedy he had been through since his infanthood. His dysfunctional childhood and complicated relationship with his father. All the suffering from his years of hunting and battling. The trauma and heartbreak of losing the one person who had always stood by him, the one person who had devoted his life to protecting him, the one person he loved above all others. And the constant, nagging pain of living without his brother all these years.

Sam had been content, she knew that. And happy, generally. But he had never, could never reach total, complete, peak happiness. Not with his brother missing. Sam's one shot at utter, pure happiness had ended the day Dean had died in the barn.

But now it was over. Sam – the man who had hurting one way or another for his entire life – was finally free. Through her tears, she realised that Sam had finally found the total complete, peak happiness that had eluded him all these years.

He was back with the love of his life.