Thanks so much for your wonderful feedback. It means so much! I can't believe season 12 starts tomorrow! Longest. Hiatus. Ever!


Chapter 6

At night, she drifts through the bunker like an apparition, pale and hollow, trapped between a life that left her behind a realm she doesn't understand.

Her hand is pressed firmly over her heart, fingers nudging against the ridge of her collarbone. It's been there so long, moisture slicks the palm.

On November 2, 1983, a mother relished in a quick shower, put on a nightgown and nursed her fussy son who wasn't hungry. She cuddled him then, head positioned just above her heart and his oddly long body draped over her belly. He was content to gaze up at her with magically blue-gold eyes and sputter and coo, fighting sleep as if it were a violent siege. She remembers every minutes of that night, tracing a beautiful Sam's face with her finger, trying to track the changes her in little boy that seemed to pile up by the day. Breathing in his scent of power and Baby Magic and love.

She hadn't known what was coming, a broken promise, an evisceration and a garbled last glimpse at her beloved husband her baby boy.

Anxiety wells up in her like the crashing of a swell on a beach, she presses down further on her skin until Mary knows there will be bluish half-moons there the next day. But it's the place where her children sought comfort and warmth. It's the last place she held her Sammy.

Just like the shiny and slick new world with pocket-sized portable phones and Star Trek computer, Mary doesn't recognize those fully grown men with battle scars and haunted eyes as her sons. She cannot find the bubbles of light that Dean used to emanate without even speaking. She cannot reconcile that the battered man with too-long hair and John's eyes is her son.

She cannot exist in a world without her husband.

Mary wonders the bunker, hand still affixed over her heart, past Dean's room, idly exploring. At the end of the hall, she finds a bedroom that's been commandeered for storage. She slips inside, silently weaving through the rows of boxes and piled with dusty, unorganized junk. She rifles through a bit of it, finding mostly hunting paraphernalia and a few mementos. Most people have attics filled with dusty soccer trophies, art projects and sports equipment. But her sons have rusted guns, broken EMF meters and a dungeon stockpiled with weapons and ward lock boxes.

Mary has conquered her denial and shock and gleefully embraced anger. She kicks the boxes full of junk until it topples over and the contents scatter, and momentarily contemplates dragging them outside for a massive bonfire.

Something in the closet gleams dully in the light of the hall. She drops a box of car parts to inspect it. The closet's contents are both mundane and yet bizarrely reverent—a dozen or so rumpled and patched shirts and sweaters neatly hung and placed inside so precisely that it feels wrong to disturb them. Her fingers trail over the soft cotton until it hits slick leather.

With a gasp, she slides the shirts back revealing John's beloved leather jacket, more battered than she remembers but intact. She pulls it off the hanger and presses it to her nose. It smells of his cologne and gunpowder. "How could you do this to them, John?" She whispers. "How?"

But she supposes John would probably ask her the same thing.

Even though she had fruitlessly tried during their marriage, she had never been able about her family's business or the reason why she always protective charm bracelets ("My mom gave me this, babe. I'll never take it off.") or how both of her parents had died on the same day ("The cops said it looks like a home invasion or a robbery gone wrong. There're no leads"). And now, she'd missed decades of her children's lives, Dean's first heartbreak and Sammy's first steps. Sam has no recollection of her, while Dean's are all viewed through a golden prism of sainthood. Mary can't decide which one is worse.

She hangs the jacket back up, stowing the memories with it. Dean, who was mastering lid-less cups when she died now has an affinity for whiskey from the bottle, and she decides to tap into his stash so she can finally get some real sleep.

En route to the kitchen, she hears Dean—a near permanent fixture at Sam's side—talking in low, placid tones. She peers into the room, hoping not to disturb them, and watches him pacify Sam. The list of Sam's injuries is dauntingly long, but Dean had nodded at the doctor like his little brother was simply diagnosed with a cold. It was a jarring glimpse at her sons' lives as hunters, and she desperately wanted to hear the anything to contrary.

It's always a relief to find Sam conscious and lucid since he spent nearly four days sedated or in a deep healing sleep. And now that he is, his eyes are fixed on Dean, and her eldest, who's all stone and steel, melts at the attention.

"I'm gonna get a complex if you keep lookin' at me like I'm a steak, Sammy. I'm all right, I promise," Dean says softly. "How're you doin'?"

Mary hears the rustle of covers and peers in the crack of the of the door to see Dean moving from the edge of Sam's bed to the floor, so Sam, who's perched on the edge, won't have to twist to look at him. She slinks back into the shadows, and listens. "Same shit, different day, Dean."

"Don't gimme that crap."

"It's the truth. I've done this before, remember? In a boat, in a cage. In factory. On a stage."

"If you want to make me not worry about you, talkin' like freakin' Dr. Seuss ain't the way to go."

"I don't know what to tell you-"

"Start with what happened."

They're too engrossed in their conversation to notice her, so steals as many glances as she can. The harshness of their tones and tone is the inverse to their body language. Sam holds himself tightly, still in a great deal of pain, but he is bowed towards Dean, like a light-starved tree. His bare and bandaged foot brushes against the bump of Dean's bended knee. "I can't..."

"Sammy...Mom says you won't even look at her. You're not eating. You're not talking. You're not hobbling around this bunker making me drag your ass back to bed. I'm scared for you, man. Let me help."

Sam shakes his head so his hair falls in his face. The fingers of his casted arm are balled into a bloated fist and from what Mary can see from Sam's eyes, the ones that remind her so much of John's, they fall anguished and aimless. His next few breaths are strained and sharp, like the hiss of pneumatic hinges. This has happened a few times in her presence, too. Sam gone vacant and swaying, and it was obvious he's somewhere else entirely like he is now. It terrifies her. Dean, who seems to play his emotions close to the vest, clearly feels the same way. Dean holds his breath as he watches Sam drift.

The fugue lasts for a few seconds. He's on his knees the next moment, hands hovering but not touching.

Sam blinks, dazed, and stares at the room like he's never seen it before.

It's Sam who latches onto Dean's shirt like an anchor. "Sammy...Sam, hey? Are you with me?"

Sam nods, chin trembling. "Need to lay down," he whispers.

Dean is already arranging the pillows and helping him slide back. Once he's settled, Dean waits. The silence compels Sam to speak. "...it's just a lot, Dean. I worked so hard to deal with everything, ya know, and they...kicked it all up and shoved my face in it. I can't deal with...Mary," Sam says. Mary slinks back against the wall, swallowing down the pain it causes. Sam has never once called her "Mom." " …that's your thing," Sam whispers.

"She's our mother."

Sam laughs humorlessly. "I don't even know what that means, man."

Sam's voice is rocks dragging against tree bark, and lifeless as if the will had been bled out of him. And Mary finds this audible agony more nauseating than her son's broken body. She didn't want to know if John had re-married because she couldn't imagine another woman raising her boys, but knowing that Sam had been mother-less, sensing his palpable loneliness, is worse than the fire.

"Maybe...um...what if we got you some help? Cas could heal you and wipe the memories-"

Sam glowers at Dean sharply, lip twisting in disgust. "Fuck Castiel."

"Sammy..."

"He's not welcome in this bunker, and he's certainly never coming near me again." Dean sputters to interrupt, but Sam is emphatic and irate. "He, more than anyone, knew what I went through in The Cage, but he still set him free. I could've accepted it if it had worked, but it didn't do anything."

"I get it, Sammy. I do." There's a rattle of springs, the shift of covers. "We're gonna go slow, okay? Lots of sleep, some Netflix binges, and no hunting. Just really easy for now. How's that sound?"

Sam grunts.

"Calm down, man, you're gonna hurt yourself," Dean deadpans. Mary peers back into the room, and sees Dean sitting in a chair beside the bed. "You're eating when you wake up. You're already too skinny," Dean says, fussing with his pillows. "Close your eyes. Think of hot lady lawyers or the Library of Congress."

Dean gently places his hand on Sam's chest, skin-to-skin, with a pressure that whitens the bed of his nails. The gesture is so poignant and so sweet, she's greeted with images of Dean scaling Sammy's crib to nap with him so he'd be safe from monsters. And she's assaulted with the notion that Dean might've raised Sam, too. And that he's homesick for that innocent little baby just like she is.

"I'm here, Sammy. Bunker's re-warded, locks are changed and the perimeter alarm is workin' again, and big brother's armed to the teeth. You're safer than the Queen. Girly-er too."

Mary's fairly certain the gesture Sam makes with his middle finger still means the same thing in 2016 as it did in the '80s. She smiles. Dean seems proud, too, and when Sam closes his eyes, he starts humming a wistful tune she knows all too well. "Yesterday" by the Beatles.

She'd been ripped from their lives by circumstance, tragedy and her own cowardice, but maybe she wasn't forgotten.

And now she has a second chance.

She heads into the kitchen and pours of two cups coffee instead of booze and heads back into the Sam's room. She offers it to Dean and joins him, glad to see Sam's already asleep. In that moment, during a sugary sip of Dean's cheap Columbian roast, Mary knows that it's time to stop dwelling in her own grief, so she can be a mother to two grown men who desperately need it.

"Two questions: what's Sam's favorite food? And does that...interweb-thingie have recipes?"

-SPN-

Sam is livewire, triggered by every shift in the wind or errant sound. There's a logical part of him that understands the science of it, that his body is protecting him from future violence but it doesn't make the constant red-alert any less real or debilitating.

Sam crouches on the floor between his bed and his nightstand and clutches his phone, trying to ignore the thunderous swoosh of water rushing through aged pipes.

The phone vibrates in his grip and he frantically checks the message. "ETA 30 minutes."

Sam hobbles about the room dumping medical supplies, boxers, painkillers and hoodies into a bag. He snags his one crutch and hopes to slip out while Dean is in the shower and Mary is asleep.

His anxiety is only worsening, and despite the fact that he's been home for almost two weeks, he's not any more stable than when he was lying half-dead in a grave. The flashbacks drag him back to that barn to relive those horrors in IMAX HD. Sometimes the memories are tangled together or Lucifer in Toni's pants suit and sensible heels or the comely Brit with Lucifer's grace.

Sam shouldn't be bearing weight on his leg, but he does anyway. The strap of the bag presses into bruises and stitches in his chest and shoulder, but he swallows it down and turns to leave.

Dean looms in the doorway, half in shadow, toothbrush hanging out of his mouth. His eyes, a gleaming lime in the light flicker to Sam's untied sneakers and the bag on his shoulder. "Tell me you're friggin' sleep-walkin'?"

Adrenaline floods his bloodstream, and he replays Dean's words a few times to make sure he heard him correctly. Did he mean to sound so menacing? He backs up and changes his grip on the crutch just in case he needs a weapon. "I need to go...for a while."

Dean's face is expressionless. "You're not even supposed to be out of bed, so I don't know why you think up for travel."

Sam takes a step forward but Dean doesn't yield. "Dean, please." His heart starts to race. He abandons the backpack and clears his throat with difficulty. "Jody's dad has a lake house just a few hours from here, and she's giving me a ride."

"Well, what about Mom. She's tryin' really hard, man..."

"And she'll be here when I get back. For once, Dean, stop fighting me! I can't...I need to go."

Dean flings his toothbrush into the garbage and starts yelling. Water from his hair has stained the crew neck of his t-shirt a dingy gray and Sam shudders as his skin puckers with goosebumps and he tastes the foul earth of unfiltered water...

Footsteps splat against the waterlogged floor. Sam processes arcs of light and dark but is too depleted to move or speak. "If he's as dangerous as they say, how do we know he's out?" an accented voice mutters oddly close to his left ear.

He's uncuffed and dumped onto the floor. "That's 'ow." Smoke-stained laughter roils over his head. "You'll never make it in this gig if you're scared of your own shadow." Large hands roam his body, unbuttoning his pants. Antiseptic is an acrid tingle in his nostrils. "Just do what they say, and you'll be fine. They say, 'keep 'im alive,' so we'll do our best." There's another pinch of a syringe in his buttocks.

"Bloody hell, his eyes are open."

"All the shit they're givin' him is fryin' his brain like bacon. I reckon we'll have to dig the grave tomorrow. Ne'er seen a bloke last this long. But watch," And he's cruelly kicked, but it only registers as detached pressure under his arm pit. "Give it a whack. Gotta get used to the grisly stuff. It's a lot easier when they don't squeal."

A boot crunches down near a shoulderblade, forcing out a grunt of arm as Sam flops awkwardly on his stomach, face mashed into musty gray cotton. Water leeches into the fabric, blackening it before dribbling into his mouth. His teeth scrapes against it when he's kicked again.

"'S not so bad, I guess."

Sam reels back, gulping air. Sweat drips from his pores, snaking down his back and beads on his upper lip. Dean's voice is all treble and bass. "...not what I meant. Look, I know you're hurting but why do you always do this? Why do you shut me out?"

Sam rakes his hand through his hair, and battles the reflex to tear it out by the roots. "Why would I bother telling you anything when you never listen? I'm standing here white-knucklin' it trying to do what I need to do and you're fighting me. I'm tired, Dean. I'm so freakin' tired I'm tempted to go walk into traffic so I'm going to go get my head straight and I'll come back when I'm ready."

Dean crosses his arms. He's a hulk in the doorway, a lock and a barn door, trapping him. "You won't even tell me what happened, and you want me to let you walk out that door?"

"You don't want to know! You just want me to be magically okay so I can fall into this bullshit Hallmark family reunion. Mary's your miracle. She's not mine!"

"Our mother died for us...for you..."

Sam had been at war since he'd left that barn, possibly since the day he'd learned the truth about his mother's death. He'd been fed sainted stories about the great Mary Winchester and likened her to a Disney princess or Joan of Arc, sparkling and fleeting and so gallant that the world didn't deserve her. But the truth of it is, she's a down and dirty Winchester just like him and just like Samuel. So Sam stops fighting and embraces the rage that left him spurned as a teenager, made him lethal as a hunter, and is killing him now. "No, our mother made a deal with a demon and started this entire fuckin' mess!"

There's a tightness around Dean's face that usually comes before he punches someone. Dean had never mastered self-control, so Sam braces for it. Dean launches a fist into the door instead. The wood splinters and his knuckles tear on impact.

The blood lilts down the marred road in crimson streaks, and Sam's bewitched by it.

Ragged coughs shear through his lungs. Sam flounders in the half-light, leaning forward to choke out the wetness. Bile swirled with red blood stains joins the other unsavory stains on the lap of his jeans.

Dean rocks back and forth on the balls of his feet to burn off nervous energy. When he speaks again, it's with patronizing calm. "I want to know, Sammy. I just didn't want to push. I was trying to avoid…well…this!"

"If I tell you, will you let me leave? Here we go: Toni shot me in the library. The bullet was laced with a paralytic so taking me was a piece of pie. They chained me to a chair and questioned me. If I didn't answer, the burned, choked or stabbed me. When I didn't like the answer—and they never liked them—I got more of the same. When I passed out, they blasted me with water or doped me up, so I could keep going. It was really just a prolonged trial and execution rolled into one with drugs and waterboarding and electric shock and blowtorches tossed in for fun. So I figured, 'my brother's dead, why fight it?' And I was confronted with everything I'd done. Everything I worked so hard to forgive myself for. And even now, without wanting to be, I'm riddled with it. I'm stuck in that damn barn. I can still smell it...and it feel it," Sam says. His nose is running and he's shaking so hard he can barely stand, but he's empowered for the first time in weeks, and he can't stop if he tried. "But then I remembered what I didn't do: I never made a deal. I never sold my soul to the lowest bidder. But you did. Dad did. Mary did. So I'm sorry if I don't want to bake cookies with you and..."

"Mom." Dean gasps, interrupting Sam.

A striken Mary is pressed against the wall. Her expression mirrors the pale disgust etched into Dean's face. Sam leaps on the opportunity, limping towards the door. Dean flattens a hand over his chest, silently and gently halting his retreat.

Sam can't stomach the idea of violence, and Dean's exploiting that.

"We're just...talking. Can you give us a minute?"

Mary's regards Sam with wide, haunted eyes and a trembling chin. "Are you going somewhere?"

"I need to leave. I can't...I just need a break. Please," Sam confesses. He tosses out and "I'm sorry" even thought he doesn't mean it.

He's not sure what he expects from this woman he's supposed to love more than life but feels nothing for, but even he's thrown when she nudges Dean aside and takes his bag from his arm, slinging over her own. "Do you pack socks? I always forget socks."

Stunned, Sam just nods. "I'm a good packer."

Mary smiles, and Sam's once again clobbered with the fact that she's younger than him. "Good. Come on. I'll help you with the stairs."

Mary matches Sam's turtlish speed, hand on his elbow as he hobbles down the rounded halls. The walls are wobbling closer and closer together, threatening to blockade the hallway and them inside. "I can't breathe...help…"

"Yes, you can, Sammy. Look, we're at the stairs. Almost there." Mary flings the bag away, and wraps and arm around his waist and promises, "I'm stronger than I look. Lean on me, okay?"

Sam doesn't want to, but he's still pathetically weak and hyperventilating so intensely that he's dizzy. They climb ever upward until finally the air that makes it in is fresh and green instead of stale and mildew.

The sunlight is blotted out by twists of frothy clouds. He gulps and jitters, shirking off the claustrophobia of the bunker and the onslaught of anxiety. Mary props him up on an overturned metal barrel. "I'm gonna go get your bag. Stay here and breathe, okay, baby?"

Sam coughs out his affirmation, and leans forward wheezing for air. He tries to focus on something else besides the misfiring memories in his brain, and gazes out at the warbling verdant of the trees that sound the bunker, particularly the fledgling tree a few feet away.

The leaves are bug-eaten and patchy from being planted late in the season just before an early cold snap. Sam had planted it for Charlie, and it's a gruesome irony that he couldn't even do that right. Mary stands nearby, clutching his travel bag. She says nothing as Sam regains his breath and composure. "Sorry…anxiety attack."

"They were called 'nervous breakdowns' in my day," Mary says awkwardly. "I-I hope I'm not the reason you're leaving, Sammy...Sam," she corrects.

"Not the biggest one. I just…things were pretty heavy before you came back," Sam explains. He can't remember a time when he wasn't burdened with the weight of the world.

"You can tell me anything you want, and I won't judge."

Every now and then, Sam actually lets himself wallow in how shitty his life is, and how he wishes he could be anything else, even that poor excuse for a memorial tree. "You won't look at me the same way I did."

Mary's suddenly in front of him. "Is that what you're scared of? Sam, you're my son. I love you. That's the one thing that will never change."

His lip trembles and he shakes his head in feverish despair. "Dad didn't."

"Look, baby, I don't know what happened after I was gone. I know things are beyond complicated, but there's nothing you can tell me that would change the way I feel about you. I made you, Sam. I carried you just under my heart."

Sam doesn't trust it. He's heard honeyed words of dedication, and he's seen them wither away without a second's explanation. So why not hasten the inevitable? "That's what the yellow-eyed demon did to me. He turned me into a vessel for devil—that's not a metaphor by the way—I mean, the actual devil. My whole purpose for living was to bring about the end of days."

Mary lifts her arms and gestures to the green pastures and sapphire sky. "Seems like you did a pretty bad job."

"But..."

Mary smiles sadly, suddenly standing in front of him. "Nothing, Sam. And you're forgetting one thing."

"What?"

Mary tips his chin up so he's looking directly at her. "None of it is your fault."

Stunned, his mouth falls agape.

For the Winchesters, love had always come with a pre-ordained set of rules and hefty price-tags violating them. As much as he loves Dean, there are still caveats to its reciprocation. In a world with monsters and devils, Zanna and angels, the fairytale had always been unconditional love.

Sam shakes his head, and tries to look anywhere but those beseeching blue eyes, tries to hide the panicked, wet cadence of his breath. "It's always my fault," he says into the breeze. Sam tries to stand up, but Mary hovers in front of him, hands on both of his shoulders. She holds face in both hands. "You need to hear this, so I'll keep saying it. None of it is your fault. Not Jessica's death, not Lucifer, not any of it. It's mine. You were just trying to live your life. I'm so proud of you for the choices you've made...for surviving it. If anyone expects more, even Dean, you send them to me, and I'll kick their ass."

With the smallest sigh, Sam's resolve splinters and he's crying. He presses his face into Mary's middle, wrapping his good arm around hug as visceral emotion pours of him. Sam's not sure what will happen an hour from now or even next week, but maybe this is the starting point for healing the wounds that hurt the most, not the broken arm and punctured lung, but the aching fissures in his soul, the voices in his head that constantly tell him he's not good enough or strong enough.

A car pulls up near the bunker, and honks tentatively.

Sam tries to pull back but Mary's just embraces him tighter and presses a kiss to the top of his head. "You're allowed to be angry at me if you need to. I can take it. Like I said, I'm stronger than I look."

Sam shakes his head abortively. "I still need to go."

Mary wipes his burning face clean with the tails of her sleeve. "The door's always open for you to come back," she says with a smile and rises to introduce herself to Jody and stow his bag in her truck.

Sam stands and lets the breeze wash over his face as something special and delicate blooms within. Sam's not sure what it is, but he thinks it's the joy of being a son, of having a mother.

And he finally realizes this is what he deserves.