Dance or Die (These Dreams are Forever)

[alexseanchai]

Fic title: Dance or Die (These Dreams are Forever)
Artist name:ryuutchi
Genre: het, femslash
Pairing: Mary/John, Mary/Ellen
Rating: NC-17
Warnings: Much character death. Also, brief rape scene.
Summary: Mary remembers. Mary lives. Everything changes. Everything stays the same.
Link to art: Art and mix
Notes: Thanks to neotoma and a beta who prefers to remain anonymous for their excellent work improving this fic. Any remaining suckage is entirely my fault for not listening to them. Thanks also to the mods of spn_j2_bigbang for running this crazy train.


It's dark and cool. Night, slight breeze. She has no weapons, none, not even her silver bracelet with its salt-filled locket. Well, she has herself; she is a weapon. She's wearing a long white nightgown and a pair of panties and nothing else.

She's standing on her own grave.

Mary Winchester. 1954 to 1983. In Loving Memory.

On November second, 1983, don't get out of bed. No matter what you hear, or what you see, promise me you won't get out of bed.

So Van Halen knew what he was talking about.

Mary wakes. She's in her own bed, and the baby monitor is making screeching noise and upset Sammy sounds. Mary turns on the light. "John?" Mary says.

The bed's empty except for Mary. Might mean he's already checking in on the baby. Might not. Wouldn't be the first time John woke from a nightmare of Vietnam and, rather than disturb Mary, went downstairs to watch TV. Won't be the last time. Mary gets up.

On November second, 1983...

That's today.

Mary hesitates a long moment, then gets back in bed.

The baby monitor keeps squealing. Sammy keeps crying. After only a few minutes, she can't take it anymore and she gets up. John's in the hallway when she gets to the door, heading into Sammy's room, so Mary goes to investigate the flickering light instead. Electrical malfunctions signal spirit activity, says her mother's voice in her head. (Some people's mother voices provide parenting advice.) With the baby monitor and the lamp acting up simultaneously, there might be something to worry about. But a few taps on the lamp steady the light, so Mary doesn't worry about it anymore.

Mary heads back to Sammy's room, to check if he's hungry, and when she gets there the room's empty except for the baby in his crib.

Mary smells rotten eggs.

Sulfur. Demonic presence.

Mary doesn't even hesitate, just grabs Sammy out of his crib, then Dean from his bed, and hurries them down to the kitchen, dumping the entire box of kosher salt in a circle around them on the floor. "Stay inside the circle," Mary tells Dean, who nods solemnly. "Hold on to Sammy."

She grabs the second box of salt, then opens the drawer with the knives John doesn't know are pure iron, and takes the stairs at a run.

Sammy's room is still empty. But there's blood on the floor.

Mary looks up, and John bursts into flames.

The entire ceiling is aflame in moments. To hell with the salt line, the immediate threat is the fire: Mary charges downstairs and the boys are gone.

Jesus Christ the boys are gone.

"DEAN!" Mary screams.

"Mommy!" Mary hears, and she runs outside, towards Dean's voice, and there he is, getting away from the burning house as quickly as his little legs can take him, thank Christ, and Sammy's in his arms.

Mary scoops up both boys and runs to the Impala, safely away from the danger zone, and throws them all in the back seat. Detroit steel isn't as good as pure iron but maybe it'll hold the demon off. Mary clings to her boys and chants.

"Crux sancta sit mihi lux; non draco sit mihi dux. Vade retro satana; numquam suade mihi vana. Sunt mala quae libas; ipse venena bibas. Crux sancta sit mihi lux—

May the holy cross be my light; may the dragon not be my leader. Go behind me, Satan; never suggest untrustworthy things to me. The things which you taste are evil; may you drink the poisons yourself.

It's an exorcism. It's the simplest one Mary knows. Mary recites it until the police come.

***

Yesterday, love was such an easy game to play, now she needs a place to hide away; she believes in yesterday...

"I should have gone back for him," Mary tells Officer Daly, weeping. She dries her eyes on the baby blanket she carries. "I should have—" She breaks off with a sob.

"You saved your children," Daly says reassuringly. "You did exactly right."

Right on cue, Sammy sets up a wail. "I'd better—" Mary says, gesturing, and Daly waves her on.

Mary finds a chair in a somewhat private corner and opens up her borrowed blouse, throwing the ever-present blanket over her shoulder and tucking Sammy underneath, shifting him about until he finds her nipple and latches on. Just like a thousand times before. Never ever like this before. John isn't here this time. John's gone, John's gone, and it's all her fault...

Dean crawls up into her lap, careful about Sammy, like a hundred times before. She cradles Sammy with one arm and holds Dean tight with the other.

"Hey Jude," Mary sings, "don't make it bad, take a sad song and make it better, remember to let her into your heart, then you can start to make it better..." She starts crying again. "Hey Jude, don't be afraid, you were made to go out and—and get her, the minute you let her under your skin, then you begin..." She trails off, unable to keep going. Sammy keeps sucking, peaceful, oblivious.

You don't know what you've got till it's gone.

***

"You and your boys can stay in our guest room until everything's settled," Kate Guenther says.

"Thank you," Mary says.

The process of moving into the Guenthers' guest room is deceptively simple. The new clothes and bag Mary bought the three of them at Goodwill go in the corner, the other bag of things rescued from the house goes in the closet, and that's it, that's all Mary needs to have with her while the house gets cleaned up. That and her boys, and John.

Lost him now for sure, won't see him no more...

***

"Hi, Janice, it's Mary," Mary says into the phone. "I just wanted to tell you that for the foreseeable future, if I'm not there or at the garage, I'll be at Kate Guenther's. Five five five seven nine one zero. Got that?"

"Yes ma'am," Janice says.

"And don't forget to double-check all the clothes for things in the pockets," Mary says. Janice screwed that up the other week; a pen somebody left in a pants pocket ruined a whole load, and she docked Janice's paycheck as much as she dared without risking Janice not being able to pay the rent.

***

There's all sorts of nonsense to deal with. What little remains of John needs to be cremated. Mary has to explain to the funeral home all about the Church of Saint Diana and the ritual Mary's church has for the cremation of the dead; the ritual is half cribbed from Catholic funeral rites, half utter bullshit. The relevant part is the scattering of salt over the corpse before it goes into the incinerator.

The house needs to be repaired. There isn't a lot of structural damage, surprisingly, given how hot the firemen said the fire was burning, but there's some. Very little in Sammy's nursery survived. Mary's got to fix a hole where the rain gets in (except there is no hole where the rain gets in, there's an attic above Sammy's nursery, but that's how the song goes), fill the cracks that run through the door, paint the room in a colorful way, keep her mind from wandering where it will go. There are places she'll remember all her life, though some have changed, some forever, not for better, some have gone and some remain; this place, this house, it remains.

Any object John's spirit might be tied to needs to be burned or purified; Mary sneaks out of the Guenthers' one night and splashes holy water and herbs and Latin all over her house, hoping she gets everything. She melts down John's wedding ring. It's silver, like her own ring. Mary adds a bit more silver so there's enough to make two pentacle charms, one to tie around Sammy's ankle, one to tie around Dean's.

***

The radio plays the Beatles. Well she was just seventeen, if you know what I mean, and the way she looked was way beyond compare, and Mary's crying before they get to so how could I dance with another when I saw her standing there?

***

Mary pours more perc into the Spencer Solitaire, thinking. Refreshing the cleaning fluid in the machines at the cleaner's isn't exactly a task that requires all of her attention.

Mary has a duty to her children, to keep them safe and to ensure they know about the dangers that await them once they're outside her reach. Mary has a duty to her family, to use the knowledge they gave her. Mary has a duty to her people, to keep them safe from the dangers they don't know about.

Mary can't go back to that life. She can't. She owes it to her boys not to let them grow up the way she did.

But the yellow-eyed demon is out there. It took John's life in payment for giving back John's life. This doesn't make sense; why would the price of a good be the return of the good?

The demon was in Sammy's room at the time. Did it do something to Sammy? Was that the price the demon wanted, the chance to do something to Sammy? Sammy was born ten years to the day after Mary made her deal, after all. Mary remembers going into the hospital at the end of April and not leaving until the middle of May because Sammy was born premature; Mary remembers the panic attack she had at the realization that maybe Sammy was the price she'd paid for John.

Sammy's seven months old and her child. Her price was never to bear a demon child. Just to give the demon permission to swing by your house for a little something, and as long as I'm not interrupted, nobody gets hurt, I promise.

John interrupted him. What did John interrupt him at?

What did the demon do to her son? What does the demon want to do to her son?

There's a demon after her family and Mary's responsibility is to keep them safe and to give them the tools to keep themselves safe. The Magical Mystery Tour is dying to take them away.

Danger in safety, safety in danger, your inside is out when your outside is in, which is the safest path for her boys?

Mary wants so badly to keep her boys safe. It's her responsibility to keep her boys safe. Please Jesus let her keep her boys safe.

And any time you feel the pain, hey Jude, refrain, don't carry the world upon your shoulder, for well you know that it's a fool who plays it cool by making his world a little colder...

A customer comes into the cleaner's and heads for the counter rather than the coin-operated machines Mary is dealing with. She goes to help her.

***

The Campbells have a tradition. Family is important, family are the only people who can be trusted, so they only hunt with family, unless there's no way to get the intel on a hunt without inviting in another hunter. But never close family: no Campbell ever hunts with someone whose death would destroy them, because there's a very real chance that that someone will die. That's how Deanna and Samuel met; they were third cousins once removed, close enough to trust but not to love. Until, of course, they broke the unwritten rule of the clan.

Mary should never have partnered up with someone whose death would destroy her.

But she has her children to look after, the garage to manage and the cleaner's to run, and a hunt to finish.

***

She thinks of him and so she dresses in black, and though he'll never come back, she's dressed in black.

***

I never meant to be raising the boys by myself, Mary writes in her journal. I don't know how. I know how to teach the boys how to spot tiny changes in a room while they're out and I know how to teach the boys how to toss a room without letting it look like anything moved. What games do normal parents play with their children?

John would know. John grew up away from all this.

I need to be John.

***

John would teach Dean and Sammy how to fix an engine, so Mary goes up to Mike Guenther one day while he's working on what he says is a simple problem with a customer's engine, while Dean reads simple learn-to-read books to Sammy and Mary watches out of the corner of her eye. "My dad always said it was a shitty boss who couldn't do everything the employees could do," Mary tells Mike. Mike's more the boss around the garage than Mary, though Mary's half owner, precisely because all Mary can do around here is administrate. "Teach me," Mary says.

"Ain't no man in his right mind going to listen to a female mechanic," Mike warns.

"So are you sane or crazy?"

Mike grins. "Crazy, ma'am."

***

John would tell Dean and Sammy fairy tales.

Fairy tales don't tell children that dragons exist. Children already know that dragons exist. Fairy tales tell children that dragons can be defeated.

Not that dragons actually exist.

"Once there was a princess," Mary tells the boys. "To keep their land safe from evil, she and her mother the queen and her father the king fought the monsters that invaded their land."

The stories always start that way.

This one continues, "One time the invading monsters were vampires, evil creatures that looked just like people except for their extra row of pointy teeth. Vampires drank blood, which was why they needed to attack people. If anyone drank vampire blood, they would become a vampire themselves, so the princess and the queen and the king had to be very careful when they fought the vampires not to let any vampire blood splash on their face.

"So the princess and the queen and the king dipped their weapons in the blood of a dead man, because that weakens vampires. The princess went alone to where the vampire nest was, dressed like an ordinary peasant girl, the kind of person the vampires would leap on to drink all up. When the vampires attacked the princess, she pulled out her knife covered in dead man's blood and fought back, and the queen and king sprang out of hiding to help her.

"Each vampire fell down almost like it was dead as soon as they were stabbed with the dead man's blood, and the princess and the queen and the king cut the head off each and every vampire, because that's the only way to kill a vampire.

"And the land was safe for another day."

These are the only stories Mary knows.

***

John would have thought of getting children's books out of the library a lot sooner than Mary did.

***

John wouldn't take the boys to church, but Mary can't not.

I believe in God, the Father Almighty, creator of heaven and earth. Creator of ghosts and monsters and demons as well as plants and animals and people. I believe in Jesus Christ, his only Son, our Lord, who was a hunter like we are. He was conceived by the power of the Holy Spirit and born of the Virgin Mary. He suffered under Pontius Pilate, was crucified, died, and was buried. On the third day he rose again, as hunters so often do. He ascended into heaven, as hunters so often don't, and is seated at the right hand of the Father. He will come again in glory to judge the living and the dead, and we'll shoot and salt and burn him when he does. I believe in the Holy Spirit, the holy catholic Church, the communion of saints, the forgiveness of sins, the resurrection of the body, and life everlasting. Amen.

Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name, because as long as thy name is hallowed it has power. Thy kingdom come, thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven, but keep in mind that we're Campbells and we don't do as we're told. Give us this day our daily bread, and customers at the cleaner's and the garage so I can keep paying the mortgage, and forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us. Lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil.

Please God deliver us from evil.

Hail Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with thee. Even if it doesn't feel like it sometimes. Blessed are you among women, even if it really doesn't feel like it sometimes, and blessed is the fruit of thy womb. They're blessings in themselves. Holy Mary, mother of God, pray for us sinners, now and at the hour of our death.

Hail Mary, full of grace... Hail Mary, full of grace... Glory be to the Father and to the Son and to the Holy Spirit, as it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be, world without end, amen.

Everything in Mary's life circles back to hunting.

***

So. What does Mary know about the yellow-eyed demon?

It killed Tom Whitshire, Liddy Walsh, Dr. Brown, Mary's parents. It killed John twice. Sam was born ten years to the day after Mary made her deal to bring John back, and John died six months to the day later. It likes her.

No more monsters or fear, I'll make sure of it.

It did something to Sammy. Mary's certain. It needed permission for something in ten years, and Sammy's what it needed permission for. Sammy's the one it's protecting by keeping Lawrence clear of supernatural activity.

...Is Sammy someone Mary should protect or someone she should be protecting Dean from?

***

Mary keeps a close eye on Sammy as he grows. She can't watch him twenty-four-seven, because she manages the cleaner's and works at the garage. But she tells Dean, "Watch out for Sammy," every time she leaves the two of them together. Even if Mary's only a few feet away, making spaghetti or helping a customer or doing paperwork (should five percent appear too small, be thankful I don't take it all) or what have you.

Or searching through newspapers for mentions of other house fires with victims and six-month-old survivors. There's one in Oklahoma at the end of December. Another in Michigan in mid-February. Then the trail goes cold.

***

"Dean said five whole words to June Cookson yesterday," Cammie Cleary says on Saturday when she comes in to the cleaner's to pick up her wool suit.

"Really?" Mary says. June's the new girl in Dean's kindergarten class; her family has only been in town two months. (Since November. Since the anniversary. Mary's keeping an eye on the Cooksons.)

"Really," Cammie confirms. "'Pass the blue crayon, please.'"

"Thank you Jesus Christ," Mary says, and Cammie's eyes burn black.

Mary opens the locket on her bracelet, dumps the salt into her hand, and flings it at not-Cammie, then breaks the pentacle charm off the chain and grabs not-Cammie's arm with that same hand. The pentacle serves as an anti-possession charm or a basic devil's trap; it might drive the demon out of Cammie, it might trap the demon there, either will do. Cammie's arm smokes—blessing the bracelet worked, then. "Crux sancta sit mihi dux!" Mary says. "Non draco sit mihi dux! Vade retro satana! Numquam suade mihi vana!"

The demon starts laughing.

"Sunt mala quae libas!" Mary continues. "Ipse venena bibas!"

Nothing happens.

Mary keeps a tight grip on Cammie's arm. Okay, the Vade Retro Satana doesn't work; Mary's never actually encountered a demon that held still long enough to try it, so how was she to know? The Rituale Romanum, maybe?

"Exorcizamus te, omnis immundus spiritus," Mary begins, "omnis satanica...potestas," she remembers after too long a pause. "Omnis incursio infernalis adversarii, omnis legio, omnis—" it rhymes, there's a rhyme here, what is it? Ah! "—congregatio et secta diabolica. Ergo, draco maledicte et omnis legio diabolica, adjuramus te."

Not-Cammie is breathing hard and shaking. Mary takes a breath to run through the English translation of the Rituale in her head—yes, she can edit it down, please Jesus let the shortened version work. "Ab insidiis diaboli, libera nos, Domine. Ut inimicos sanctae Ecclesiae humiliare digneris, te rogamus, audi nos!"

Black smoke boils out of Cammie's mouth and down into red-gold glowing cracks in the floor, cracks that seal up as if they had never opened the moment the last of the smoke is through.

Cammie collapses.

Mary pries her pentacle off Cammie's arm and shoves it in the pocket of her slacks, then rushes around the counter to check Cammie's breathing. She's alive. Injured—a pentacle-shaped mark scorched into her arm, and there's blood leaking from under Cammie's shirt—but alive. Mary checks the torso injury and it's nothing life-threatening. Thank God.

Mary calls 911.

***

So there are demons in Lawrence.

You'd better run for your life if you can, little girl, hide your head in the sand, little girl, catch you with another man, that's the end, little girl...

Mary doesn't run. She can't. It's dangerous enough for a woman on her own, more for two little boys she can't leave alone.

***

I won't call my family, Mary writes in her journal. My sons will never be Campbells.

We're not the only hunters out there. Where are the others?

There's Daniel Elkins and there's Dean Van Halen. These are in fact the only hunters Mary knows who aren't Campbell blood or Campbell contacts.

Elkins didn't leave contact information when he came to fetch the Colt that Van Halen borrowed from him. Van Halen just up and disappeared the same night Mary's parents died.

***

The boys get older. Dean graduates from a toddler bed and Sammy to one. Dean loves playing with the toy doctor kit and the toy tool bench Mary bought him; Sammy tolerates being Dean's patient, and in return, Dean tolerates Sammy gleefully reading whatever age-appropriate books Mary can find. Babar. Beatrix Potter. The Berenstain Bears. Mary finally breaks Sammy of sucking his thumb.

***

Mary is cooking dinner, spaghetti with sauce and salt the way her mother always made it, keeping an ear out for the boys, and minding her own business when the room temperature drops ten degrees. Mary grabs the salt box and whirls, flinging salt around the kitchen, and the temperature rises.

Damn it all to hell: they've got a ghost.

Please Jesus let it not be John's ghost.

The salt grates under Mary's feet.

On the theory that it is John's ghost, Mary takes the urn off the mantel that night and dumps its contents in a hole in the backyard with a boxful of salt and some gasoline, then lights the whole mess on fire. Not for the first time, it occurs to Mary that this is a hell of a disrespectful way to treat human remains, especially her John. But she has no choice in the matter.

The next morning Mary comes downstairs and packs lunches for Dean and Sammy and herself and narrowly escapes getting her ear sliced off. "John, no," Mary says, feeling the beginning of a fit of hysterics she won't be able to stop. "I'm sorry. I'm sorry."

Mary takes Dean with her to the cleaner's instead of to school. That day a new customer comes in, black woman, late twenties, pretty, which is the last thing Mary should be noticing when her husband's ghost is hanging around. The customer walks straight up to Mary and says, "That ain't your husband."

"Excuse me?" Mary says.

"Missouri Moseley," the woman says, holding out a hand. "Psychic. You're thinking about your husband's ghost, and I can tell you now, it ain't him."

"Mary Winchester," Mary says. She shakes Missouri's hand. "How do you know?"

"Because your poltergeist only just moved in, and your husband's been dead a while," Missouri answers.

"So someone recently dead," Mary says, thinking out loud. "Attracted by what happened to John?"

"Maybe so," Missouri says. "Something evil in your house—that sort of thing leaves wounds."

"And sometimes wounds get infected," Mary says.

"Exactly."

Mary sticks her head in the back room. "Janice! You're in charge."

"Yes ma'am," Janice calls back.

Mary collects Dean and Sammy and leads Missouri to the house.

Whatever energy the demon left behind, Missouri has never felt it before, and she admits to hoping she never will again. Missouri only knows it's demonic energy because Mary does. How helpful of Missouri. She does, however, realize during her tour of the house that there are two spirits present: the poltergeist, attracted and angered by what happened to John, and another, much calmer, one of the spirits that just wander, lost.

"John?" Mary asks.

"Maybe," Missouri says.

"How do I send them on?" Mary says. She has imagined being a ghost a few times, and it can't be pleasant; much as she likes the idea of John sticking around, he can't help with the housework and she can't interact with him, and all in all it's better if he goes to wherever ghosts go.

"I know a purifying spell," Missouri says.

Mary takes the boys to the garage, the way she usually does after Dean gets out of school. "Hey, Mike?" she calls when the boys are comfortably ensconced in the office. "How would you and Kate feel about taking the boys off my hands for the evening?"

That night Mary helps Missouri put together the hex bags, angelica root, van van oil, crossroad dirt. Twelve of them, one for each corner of the house on each floor. The drywall can be repaired. Mary takes six bags and so does Missouri, and Missouri takes a box of salt and so does Mary, and the moment Mary punches the first bag through the kitchen wall, the poltergeist goes nuts. Fortunately there's a nice solid wood table to hide behind.

The salt gets them both through the experience alive.

***

The next morning, Mary collects Sammy and Dean from Kate Guenther and takes them home. They're barely inside the door when Sammy sets up a wail, and Mary cannot for the life of her figure out why he's upset. "Shh, shh," Mary says, juggling Sammy.

"Mommy, mommy," is all Sammy seems capable of saying. He's two, Mary thinks; he shouldn't be able to say what the problem is. It doesn't keep her from wishing he could articulate it.

Sammy stops howling the moment they're out of the house.

***

"I'm not sure," Missouri says, "but I think your boy's psychic."

"Lovely," Mary says, and immediately regrets it: this is a complication to her life, but it is Missouri's. Missouri raises an eyebrow, just enough to let Mary know Missouri knows what she's thinking, and lets Mary continue. "What did he see?"

"I don't know," Missouri says. "I only have his memories to go on. But he definitely felt like someone was mad at him, and it wasn't you or Dean."

"And only inside the house," Mary guesses.

"Mommy," Sammy interrupts. "Come see."

Mary obediently follows Sammy to the bathroom, where he has successfully pissed and crapped without making a mess. The joys of toilet training. "Oh, very good," Mary praises. Sammy beams. "Did you wash your hands?"

"Too high," Dean says, sticking his head in.

"Ah," Mary says, and picks Sammy up. When that's done, Mary resettles Sammy and Dean at the table with the paper and pencils and goes back to the next room where Missouri's waiting. "Sorry about that."

"You're a mother," Missouri says. "It's to be expected. I think you're right," she adds; "the ritual didn't work."

Mary's thought process hadn't actually gotten that far. "So we have a ghost or two trapped somewhere in the middle of the salt maze and royally infuriated." And better than even odds that it's John, despite all the measures Mary took to prevent exactly that. "Salt the house some more and burn it to the ground?" Mary suggests. That's the last resort, of course, Mary does not have the money to start over, but it's also the only thing Mary can think of with a chance of working.

"I don't think we need to go that far," Missouri says. "First let's take Sammy back to the house and find out if we're right."

***

They're right.

Damnation.

John's there, wearing the USMC T-shirt and the bathrobe he died wearing. "Why didn't you tell me?" he asks Mary, who has no answer. He tells the second spirit, "Get away from my family." Fire fills the room, and when the fire evaporates, Missouri is bruising up but alive and Sammy says the scary thing's gone.

Mary gets the broom. There's a lot of salt to sweep up.

***

"Are ghosts real?" Sammy asks that evening.

Lying to a baby psychic. Real good plan. "Yes, they are," Mary admits.

"Are monsters real?" Dean asks.

"Yes, they are."

"Could they get us?" Dean asks next.

"They won't," Mary says reassuringly. "I promise. Remember I keep telling you how to keep safe from monsters? And remember, angels are watching over you."

***

That is the last of it for years. She thinks. She hopes. She prays.

She ignores the signs of the world falling apart around her. There's a ghost in Topeka; vampires in Emporia. There might be demons in Lawrence.

Mary uses the skills Mike's been teaching her with a wrench and a welder to install a layer of iron on every wall of the basement and twin iron devil's traps set into the floor and ceiling, to go with the fifteen-year-old salt line buried around the perimeter of the property. It costs more than her share of what the garage makes in months to get hold of enough sheets and strips of iron without anybody asking questions, but it's worth it. There's iron knives and salt in the kitchen and silver dinnerware in the dining room. The place isn't Campbell-safe-house safe, but the basement is as demon-proof as one woman can get it, and the rest of the house is up to Campbell-who-might-interact-with-civilians standards.

Mary paints over the iron, pale blue with stenciled red trains and planes and cars and the nearest she can find stencils of to the black and silver Impala. She lays carpet over the floor and turns the basement into the boys' playroom.

***

Baking is a nice simple normal thing Mary can do with her boys. Let the butter soften on the counter for an hour while Mary does other things, like cook dinner, extra salt. Have Dean beat the butter and the white and brown sugar and the vanilla until he can't anymore, then take over while Sammy picks out the exact perfect eggs for the cookies. Have the boys each crack an egg into the bowl, then fish out the eggshell bits. Have Dean measure out the flour and Sammy the baking soda and salt, not minding all that much if the cookies end up too salty, because after all they're used to lots of salt. Stir in the dry ingredients and as many of the chocolate chips as the boys don't eat. Have the boys help her scoop the dough little by little onto the cookie sheet. Bake the cookies, let them cool, enjoy.

***

"Try it again," Missouri orders.

Sammy shuffles the deck and turns up one card at a time, the cards facing Missouri instead of Sam. "Red," he says. "Black. Black. Black. Red. Black. Red." He goes through the entire deck that way. Mary can't see the cards and Missouri is careful not to give Sammy any visual cues, so she has no idea how many Sammy is getting right.

At the far end of the table, Mary is drilling Dean on phonics. "Hi. Lie. My. Pie. Mommy, why's 'sigh' here?" He pronounces it with a short I and a vocal G.

"Sigh," Mary corrects, rhyming it with the rest of the words.

***

Mary goes for a ten-mile run every morning and comes back just as the boys are waking up. She showers, they breakfast, and Mary drives Dean to school and Sammy to Missouri's and runs errands and goes to the cleaner's. That brings her from six to nine. She spends five hours at the cleaner's, dealing with customers and paperwork and shuffling clothes through the Spencers, and stops at Jaybird's Diner the days she can afford it; nearly every day she eats a peanut butter sandwich. Then she picks Dean up from school, feeds him a snack in the car, and they both go over to the garage, where Mary bangs on engines and does paperwork until seven. She picks Sammy up from Missouri's and drives the boys home for dinner at eight. The boys go to bed soon after, leaving her time for an hour of calisthenics and journaling and weapons checks before bed. On the bad nights, she mixes herself a Bloody Mary; on the very bad nights, she drinks vodka straight.

Saturdays are harder. No side trips to the school or Missouri's, just taking the boys with her to the cleaner's and the garage, which means dividing her attention between the boys and her work. Sundays are easier, in one sense. After church, Mary stays home and chases the boys through their chores and does as much of the housework as she can manage. Doing the garden, digging the weeds, who could ask for more?

Mary doesn't care much for money (money can't buy her love), but she's got to have some (money's not heaven-sent), and she is so sick of being Lady goddamned Madonna, children at her feet, trying so desperately to make ends meet.

Mary doesn't hunt. She doesn't have time, for one thing, and though she knows she could make time, living is easy with eyes closed, misunderstanding all she sees. (There are demons in Lawrence.)

Thank God for Missouri. Mary doesn't know how she managed without her.

***

Mary worries. She knows, she saw with her own two eyes, she heard with her own ears, she knows that demons read minds. She knows the yellow-eyed demon did something to her son. It's possible, of course, that Sammy's ability is inherited, like Missouri's, but inherited from whom? There was never a whiff of the supernatural about John or his family—that's one reason she married him—and psychic ability has never run in the Campbell line. No, the demon did something to Sammy, Mary's certain. The questions are, what and why?

What does the demon intend Sammy to do with his power?

"Mommy?" Sammy asks. "Am I bad?"

"Oh, baby, no," Mary is quick to reassure him. "No no no. Why would you—" think that, she means to finish, but of course she knows. He's been reading her mind. Like demons do, adds a traitorous corner of same. "Sammy, I swear, you are not bad. You are a good person. Something bad happened to you the night Daddy died, that's all. I don't know what happened or why, and I'm afraid what killed Daddy will come back to hurt you again."

"What killed Daddy?" is Sammy's next question. Naturally.

"Go get your brother," Mary says, sighing. "I'll tell you both."

"This is a family secret," Mary makes sure to impress upon both of them. "Just like Sammy's mind-reading. No one except the three of us and Missouri knows, and you are never ever to discuss it with anyone outside the family."

Sammy's four. That's too young for secrets.

***

Sammy's first day of school goes smoothly. Far more smoothly than Dean's had. Dean had clung to Mary, terrified. Sammy looks back at Mary and Dean once, just once, and scurries on into the classroom.

***

Dean's sick. Dean is pathetic and miserable when he's sick. The way he's been throwing up, Mary can't leave him home alone. Thank Christ for the fact that she owns her own businesses and can take time off without losing pay. Not that she cuts Janice's pay when Janice needs time off, but some people pay their employees only for time worked.

The next day, Sammy's sick too. Perfect. Just what she needs. Two vomiting boys, one toilet.

The day after that, Mary is sick. Dean's recovering, thanks be, and Dean steps up to the plate marvelously. He's only eleven; he shouldn't be taking care of anyone, not even himself.

***

What do I do when my love is away? the radio sings. Does it worry you to be alone? How do I feel by the end of the day? Are you sad because you're on your own?

She works and she hunts, and of course it worries her. She's too exhausted by the end of any given day to feel anything, and she'll never not be sad over John's loss.

She gets by with a little help from her friends, and all she needs is two small somebodies to love.

Would you believe in a love at first sight?

Of course. That's what happened with her and John.

And with John and the bedamned Impala, Mary suspects.

***

Mary finally hears of a Daniel Elkins in Manning, Colorado. She takes several days off work and pulls Dean out of school for the week to bring them up for a visit.

Elkins doesn't talk to them at first. Apparently the last time he met someone named Dean, it didn't go so well. Mary's stubborn, though, and eventually Elkins points Mary in the direction of Harvelle's Roadhouse in central Nebraska. Just to get her out of his hair, she suspects.

Elkins also has some fascinating things to tell her about Dean Van Halen. "I have a chance to save my family's lives," Elkins says Van Halen said.

So he's a Campbell after all.

But he knew about the Colt, when no one Mary's met has. He knew about the yellow-eyed demon, when no one Mary's met has. He knew it was after Liddy Walsh—he might even have known it was after Mary and Sammy. (Where have they been hiding you? I like you. You've got a lot of spunk.) His mother's psychic, or so he said, and no one in the Campbell line ever has been. And Mary can recognize every Campbell cousin on sight, or could fifteen years ago, and Dean Van Halen is not one of them. He's not.

Besides, how good a psychic can Mrs. Van Halen be? She didn't know John would die. She didn't know Mary would sell out John and Sammy. If she did, Van Halen would have warned Mary about more than just her own death.

***

Ellen Harvelle is a no-nonsense woman with a golden-haired five-year-old on her hip. Bill Harvelle is a jovial man who offers Dean a Virgin Mary and laughs at his bewilderment. Ellen smacks Bill. "It's a fruit drink," Ellen explains. "It tastes a bit like spaghetti sauce. It's good."

"Spaghetti sauce is a drink?" Dean asks, awed. Ellen mixes up the tomato juice and celery salt and Worcestershire sauce, adds celery sticks, and serves Dean and Sammy. Sammy rejects the drink out of hand, so Ellen adds a splash of vodka and slides it over to Mary, who drinks it down. It's not as spicy as what Mary's used to making—she likes Tabasco Bloody Mary mix damn near straight from the bottle, with extra salt, pepper, and Tabasco sauce—but it's good. Dean devours his, which makes Mary wonder if he's been sneaking sips of her Bloody Mary mix when she isn't looking.

Good for him, if he has, because she never noticed. Good thing she keeps the alcohol in a locked cabinet too high for him, too.

Neither Harvelle has ever heard of Dean Van Halen, but they take Mary's sketch of him (the memory faded by time) and tack it up by the bar to ask every hunter who comes through here. There are more than half a dozen already present, mostly middle-aged men, Olivia Lowry and Consuelo Alvarez and Travis Zumwalt, Coralee Namm and Martin Creaser and Roy and Walt Shadler. Not a one of them has ever laid eyes on Dean Van Halen—not surprising, if he's a Campbell after all—and Mary goes home with home base phone numbers for every single one of them.

She's more likely to reach them at the Roadhouse, though. And Ellen promises to keep in touch; not least because Sammy and Jo are already bonding over how nasty Virgin Marys taste, and Dean and Jo over the scary stories their mommies tell them.

***

Consuelo Alvarez is a gunrunner. He's heard the story of Samuel Colt's gun—what hunter hasn't?—and he's hoping to mass-produce an updated version. If he can figure out how to create one of the damned things to begin with.

"Colt's gun's real," Mary tells Consuelo. "I've seen it. I don't have it and I'm not sure it works, but I've seen it." Mary points at the sketch of Dean Van Halen. "Ever seen him?"

Consuelo shakes his head.

"That's who had the Colt when I saw it. Goes by Dean Van Halen. He swore it could kill demons. Current owner is Daniel Elkins in Manning, Colorado. Don't tell him I sent you."

Consuelo nods. "So it has been done," he says. "So it can be done."

With Mary's luck, selling one's soul is involved in the production process, but she actually has reason to be hopeful on that score: why would a demon have accepted a soul in trade for the ability to kill demons?

"I'll pay you a thousand dollars for your second working model," Mary says. She pulls out her checkbook. "Five hundred now, to help with materials costs. Five hundred when you've proven you can make more than one demon-killer gun."

***

When Mary gets home, she heads straight for Missouri's. Missouri takes one look at Dean and tells Mary, "You'd best start teaching these boys to hunt. Either that or stop hunting entirely. You know they'll just teach themselves otherwise."

The next Sunday, Mary takes the boys to a shooting range and shows Dean how to hold a pistol.

***

The years pass. Mary spends the summer evenings and Sundays showing Dean and Sam how to fire pistols and shotguns and sniper rifles, how to fight with a knife and a sword and two fists and one, how to exercise, how to research, how to track, how to kill, hold that line block that kick oh Christ what is she doing to her children?

(Happiness is a warm gun.)

***

Mary celebrates Sammy's birthday and then completely forgets it's May. More to the point, she forgets what else May entails. It's been a couple years since Dean's class did Mother's Day cards as a class project, so it's not surprising that she'd forget until Sammy brings home a card with a crayon sketch of the house, the car, and a tall blonde figure and two small brunet figures in between and the words "HAPY MOTHERS DAY" inside.

They know she works all day to get them money to buy them things, and it's worth it just to have this, her son giving her everything.

"Mommy?" Sammy asks after Mary's done the appropriate cooing over the card. "When's Dean's day?"

"Oh sweetie," Mary says.

In June, it's Father's Day. Sammy comes home crying the day of the class making Father's Day cards and asks Dean why they don't have a dad.

"Because we don't," Dean snarls. "Because we're hunters!"

"Because I screwed up," Mary says. Sammy knows this story. She's told it several times before. "Because I made a deal with a demon and couldn't keep my end of the bargain." Mary fixes Dean an ice cream soda, because she won't penalize him for snapping when he's upset (Father's Day must have come up at school for him too), then one for Sammy, then goes to find paper and crayons and whispers in Sammy's ear.

That Sunday Sammy proudly presents Dean with a Dean's Day card.

***

Dean's birthday comes. Sammy has saved up his allowance to buy Dean a journal and a good pen. "Just like yours, Mom," Sammy says.

Mary peeks at Dean's journal, a few months later, and everything she's ever taught the boys is in there.

***

Mary never has time to help the boys with their homework. Dean learns how to multiply multiple-digit numbers all on his own, the names of the planets, how to draw a convincing-looking sketch of something he sees, then teaches Sammy. Mary's ashamed of herself for not being the one to teach the boys how to draw what they see. It's one of her parents' lessons that she should have passed on.

***

Coralee Namm is in the business because she was possessed once. She knows demons inside and out, literally, and she wants to end every last one of them. She's in line for what she calls a "gun of plus-one demon-killing", right behind Mary.

To her desired end, she calls on Mary for help. "Lawrence is crawling with demon sign," she tells Mary over the phone.

"Tell me about it," Mary says. She's the one who has to live through the storms, and the occasional scent of sulfur on someone who doesn't stick around long enough for her to investigate further, or who has been dispossessed by the she Mary gets there.

"Coming hunting with me?" Coralee asks.

Mary sighs. "Sure. Just let me make sure my kids are taken care of."

Now that Dean's old enough to take care of himself and Sammy both, that task is a lot simpler, but Mary still breathes easier knowing Ellen Harvelle and Missouri Moseley are both able and willing to take the boys in if something happens to Mary.

Coralee's a good hunter. Not much experience, but plenty of nerve and determination, and if she's survived as many hunts as she claims to have, she's got the touch.

***

Sometimes Mary takes the boys out to an open field just to lie down in the grass and count the stars until the sky turns blue above them. It's not for hunting. It's just because the boys enjoy stargazing.

***

Mary swings by the Roadhouse, I-70 west to Oakley and US-83 north past North Platte, Dean along for the ride. Sammy was less than pleased at being pulled out of school, so he's doing some work as Missouri's apprentice in the evenings to pay the rent for staying at her house for the week so he can stay in school in the mornings and afternoons. Missouri's giving a discount to customers willing to take a chance on the teenage apprentice, Mary thinks. She hasn't asked.

"So what do you have for me that you couldn't tell me over the phone?" Mary asks Ellen.

"House fires," Ellen says. "Point of origin on the ceiling, some form of accelerant used but the firemen don't know what. Four of them. Utah, New Mexico, Nevada, Illinois. One fatality apiece, and the strangest part is the one in Illinois where the victim's a single mother. Her baby survived."

Mary blinks. "Six months old?"

Ellen pulls a manila folder out from under the bar and passes it to Mary, who flips it open. Sure enough, Mariette Ellingboe's baby Melinda is mentioned as being six months old, completely incapable of surviving that fire on her own. A miracle, says Ellingboe's sister and Melinda's guardian.

That makes sense, if the babies are the ones the yellow-eyed demon is after. He wouldn't want the babies dying before they've done whatever he wants them for. And Melinda was six months old to the day, Mary suspects. Just like Sammy. And Mariette probably made a deal. Just like Mary.

***

Mary sits up most nights with stacks of newspapers. She doesn't sleep a wink, her mind is on the blink, she can't afford to get up and fix herself a drink, and the mail carrier and garbage collector must hate her for all the newspapers she subscribes to. But she has to do this. For John. For all the people the demon's touched.

For her boys.

***

Mary needs backup on a hunt. She thinks she's got a lead on the demon that killed John. Only place to go is the Roadhouse, and for a change the only hunter there is Bill Harvelle.

It's not a demon at all. Her best guess, because she cannot see the thrice-damned creature, is that it's a hellhound. And it eats Bill Harvelle for supper.

Ellen damn near kills Mary, before Ellen breaks down in tears, with Mary and Jo the only people around to comfort her.

Jo's twelve. At least she'll remember Bill. Dean doesn't remember John, and Sam never had the chance to know him.

***

When Dean turns eighteen, Mary sells him the Impala for a dollar and the promise that he'll take better care of it than Mary has, and she buys a shiny new Toyota Camry. Plenty of trunk space and not as 'don't mess with me' attention-getting as the Impala.

Dean celebrates with a cross-country road trip.

When Dean comes home, he's hasn't quite missed enough school to keep him from graduating with his class. Mary and Sam are right there in the audience cheering at the start of the summer when Dean walks across the stage in his absurdly bright orange cap and gown.

Dean signs up for the Emergency Medical Science program at Johnson County Community College. Sam harasses Dean about not doing something academic. Dean smacks Sam on the shoulder and replies, "This way I can save people even when we're not hunting."

Sam shuts up.

***

Mary's fresh off a demon hunt with Coralee when they hit up the Roadhouse. Jo's not there, unusually—she's sixteen and it's a school night—but Ellen is, working the bar. Coralee takes a shot of tequila, Mary one of vodka.

Jo runs in sometime after midnight. Ellen's about ready to light into her when someone bursts inside in Jo's wake and slams to a halt two feet from the door.

Demon, then. Devil's trap.

"Mom, I'm sorry—" Jo says.

"Shut up," Mary says. "Exorcisamus te, omnis immundus spiritus—"

"Why, if it isn't Mary Campbell," the demon says. Mary tries to ignore it, continuing to chant. "Hunting again. Azazel will be so pleased."

Azazel, hm? "Ergo, draco maledicte—"

"He was afraid you'd gone soft," the demon continues.

Coralee yanks off a shoe, then a sock, and stuffs the sock into the demon's mouth.

Jo curls up against Ellen, crying, while Mary finishes exorcising the demon.

***

It's after two am by the time Ellen has first calmed Jo down from the aftermath of Jo's first try at a solo hunt, then stopped yelling at Jo for trying a solo hunt, then settled her down to sleep. It is, after all, a school night.

Coralee's gone to find a motel. So has everyone else. The Roadhouse is empty except for Ellen, Jo, and Mary.

"Azazel, is it?" Ellen asks.

Mary hasn't trusted Ellen with this part yet, but she thinks it's time she does. "A demon I ran into years ago," Mary says. "He said he liked me. Can't like me that much—he killed John and did something to Sammy. No idea what."

"One lot for the Lord and the other lot for Azazel," Ellen says.

Mary shrugs. "This is the first time I've heard the name." She toys with the hexagram charm on her bracelet. "Why would he like me better hunting? I've exorcised dozens of demons. Him I plan to kill."

"If he did something to Sam," Ellen says, "maybe it's Sam he wants hunting."

Mary feels the blood drain from her face. "And I took him hunting last month."

Hunting keeps them safe. Safe means not hunting. The song remains the goddamn same.

"Oh, honey," Ellen says, pulling Mary into a hug.

"You're acting like I'm Jo," Mary says. "Stop."

Ellen goes still, thinking. "You're too tense," Ellen finally says. "Stop me if I do this wrong." She leans in, and Mary doesn't know what's coming until Ellen's lips are on hers.

Ellen draws back. "Huh," Mary says consideringly. She's feeling warm, in a way she hasn't felt in a long time.

Ellen stands and offers Mary a hand, and Mary follows.

In Ellen's bedroom, Ellen unbuttons Mary's blouse and Mary lets her. Ellen shrugs out of her jacket and Mary slides her hands under Ellen's shirt, then up and up till the shirt's over Ellen's head. Mary reaches around behind Ellen to unhook her bra, shaking her head when Ellen tries to return the favor. Mary's bracelet charms clatter together. Mary leaves the bracelet on, and Ellen's pentacle necklace. Even here, she's a hunter before all else.

Mary kisses Ellen, long and deep and slow, exploring. Ellen's unscarred, physically. Ellen's hands find the marks from where a vampire tore into Mary's shoulder just before Mary's mother beheaded it, the marks from where a ghost threw Mary through a wall, the marks from the claws of whatever killed Bill, and Mary pulls away, gasping. "I can't do this," she says. "I'm sorry I'm sorry."

Someone to love, somebody new, someone to love, someone like you, why is this damned song in her head right now? Love, love me do, you know I'll always love you, I'll always be true...and that'd be why.

"What's wrong?" Ellen asks.

"Bill," Mary says. "John. Dean, Sam, Jo."

"Jo's asleep," Ellen says, missing the point, perhaps deliberately. "The boys aren't here."

"I know," Mary says. "I can't. I." Something is wrong and she flails for words. "Christ," she says.

Ellen raises an eyebrow, her eyes remaining brown. "Not possessed," she says.

"I know," Mary says, dumbly.

***

Mary sits Sam down and explains. Azazel. Scapegoats. ("L'azazel" in Hebrew roughly translates to "to hell with it" or "goddamnit" in English.) Everything she's just learned. How Sam can't afford to go hunting anymore.

Sam stands up and walks out without a word. When Mary goes to look, there are things missing from his room. Clothes, weapons. The kinds of things one takes on a hunt.

Sam's sixteen. The last thing he should be doing is hunting alone.

Sam has a cell phone, of course, all three of them do, but he isn't answering his.

Sam doesn't come back that night. Or the next. Dean calls Mary to reassure her Sam's all right the night after that.

(I think I'm gonna be sad, I think it's today, the guy that's driving me mad is going away...he would never be free when I was around...he ought to think twice, he ought to do right by me...)

***

Sam never does come home. Mary hears secondhand about how he found himself an apartment and a job in the town nearest the Roadhouse and conned the landlord into thinking he was eighteen. She hears secondhand about Sam's high school graduation and acceptance to Stanford. She hears secondhand about the hunts Sam goes on. She damn near hears secondhand about Dean's EMT certification, because apparently there are sides to be taken here and Dean's on Sam's.

***

The phone rings. The caller ID says 'Sam'. That's...surprising. Sam hasn't spoken to Mary since she told him about Azazel. (Somebody calls you, you answer quite slowly, a girl with kaleidoscope eyes...)

"Mom?" Sam says. "I had a dream, and Aunt Missouri said to call you."

(When I find myself in times of trouble, Mother Mary comes to me, speaking words of wisdom...)

"Oh, sweetie," Mary says, because what else can a mother do?

"It's...it's Jess. She's on the ceiling. Bleeding. Burning. Like Dad."

"Oh, sweetie. Do you need me to head out there?"

Mary starts planning a packing list anyway, and people to call to cover her shifts at the garage and the cleaner's while she handles her family emergency. The anniversary's coming, and if Sam is dreaming about his friend's death now in mid-October, Mary is spending the rest of the month in Palo Alto whether Sam likes it or not.

"Please," Sam says.

"I'll be there as soon as the roads can get me there."

***

The Camry starts making grating sounds halfway across Utah. Mary swears and pops the hood. She checks the transmission fluid and it's dark, not clear magenta. Damnation. Mary stops in the nearest town and finds a mechanic who'll take a hundred dollars to let her alone while she changes out the transmission fluid.

***

Jess is Ms. Jessica Moore, a tall young lady (with the sun in her eyes) who's planning to be an emergency room doctor. "Have you introduced her to Dean?" Mary asks.

"He hasn't been by," Sam says.

"Dean's an EMT," Mary explains to Jess. "I think you two would get along."

***

Sam's found a hunt in relatively nearby Jericho. Mary takes it, just to pass the time. There's this road that has a history of people disappearing on it, all male. A simple search of the town's newspaper archives (the Internet is a wonderful thing) turns up a suicide on a bridge in town, one Constance Welch, and Mary finds the husband and interviews him and that night digs up the remains. She never even sees the ghost.

Mary gets back to Palo Alto and finds a bar and orders a Bloody Mary, extra salt and Tabasco. That's when her cell phone rings. It's Ellen. "Get over here," Ellen says. "Your New Jersey fire case? Roy has an eyewitness who swears Felicia Tools was on the ceiling."

"Goddamnit," Mary says. She'd been hoping this spate of fires was nothing to do with the 1983 and 1994 lots.

Mary calls Sam as she heads out to the parking lot. "You're right," she tells Sam's voicemail. "It's coming back. I'm going to check if there are any people who fit the profile in the immediate area. Be very careful, Sam—we're all in danger." Mary calls Dean and gives him the same spiel.

Palo Alto has no shortage of infants born in the last few days of April and the first week of May of 2005. One or two a day, which works out to twenty-four total. How many of those have parents who had remarkable luck exactly ten years prior, though?

Mary gets so caught up in the research that she entirely forgets to check on the boys, never mind check the clock or calendar. When she heads back to Sam's apartment after running out of records to check, it's late at night, and when she gets there, firefighters are already there. Sam and Jess are safely out, with someone wearing a leather jacket who looks remarkably like Dean Van Halen.

"Dean!" Mary calls.

He turns and it's just her Dean.

"Mom, we need to talk," Dean says.

Jess survived because Sam knew not to leave her alone for a moment on the anniversary. Sam's friend Tyson Brady wasn't so lucky: he's still in the apartment, burning.

"God only knows how long he was possessed," Sam says. "I should have checked. I knew something wasn't right when he started going on benders, but I couldn't figure out what, and it never occurred to me that—"

"That demons would follow you to school?" Mary says, laughing, acid. "Sam, what have I taught you?"

Sam drops his eyes, then meets hers. "I need to come with you."

That takes Mary aback. "What? Why?"

"Brady was my friend," Sam snaps. "I need to kill what killed him. And don't tell me you weren't thinking of tracking it down yourself and hoping it could lead you to Dad's killer."

Mary hadn't been, actually. Enough people know the details of John's death that any one of them could have encountered a demon and never realized they'd passed on the information. Demons do read minds.

(There have always been demons in Lawrence.)

"What about Jess?" Mary asks.

Sam laughs bitterly. "She saw the whole thing. She's freaked out so badly she'll never notice I'm gone."

Dean puts a hand on Sam's shoulder. "I'll come with you."

Sam blinks. "What? Why?"

"Because somebody needs to keep your sorry asses out of trouble."

"What about work?" Sam asks.

"What about school?" Dean retorts.

"Boys," Mary says. "You're both adults and you can make your own decisions, but neither of you is hunting with me."

Mary knows better than to hunt with someone whose death will destroy her.

Please Jesus don't let her boys choose hunting over the lives they have.

***

"Colorado," Mary says.

"Yes," Sam says.

"Colorado."

"Yes."

"Wendigo."

"Yes."

"But it's an Algonquin story," Mary says. "The Algonquians were never in Colorado. It's like seeing a lamia outside Greece."

"Hey, we didn't know it was a wendigo when we went in," Dean interjects. "We thought it was a dead hiker."

"Jo thought it was a dead hiker," Sam corrects.

"So how did you take it out?" Mary asks.

"Flare guns," Sam and Dean say in chorus, then launch into the thrilling tale. Mary sits back and enjoys the sound of her sons talking to her again.

***

Mary shifts to spending most of her working hours at the cleaner's, and fewer and fewer working hours total. She owns the cleaner's flat out, so she gets the income from there regardless. She feels safer at the garage, all that iron about, but she can't investigate the fires if she's tied to a schedule. This is what she's been saving money for all these years. Dean's college, Sam's college, and Mary's ammo fund. Or rather, the boys' ammo fund, Sam's college, and Mary's ammo fund, because Dean has full access to what's left of his college money after his EMT certification, which is most of it.

***

"In the lake?" Mary repeats, wincing. "How did you burn the bones?"

"Didn't," Dean admits. "Peter seems happy enough to leave Andrea and Lucas alone now that his killers are dead."

"I can't feel Peter anymore," Sam says.

***

There's a blood relationship between Mariette Ellingboe and Mirian Carey. Fourth cousins at a remove. It's a distant relationship, but it's there.

***

"You boys did what?" Mary demands.

"Beat a demon," Sam says again. "It wasn't hard!" he hurries to say. "We cornered the demon with holy water and used the Rituale Romanum and it worked like magic."

"Thank Christ you survived," Mary says. It's half order, half prayer.

"Mom..." Sam begins. "He knew about Brady."

"Every demon I've ever met knew about your father," Mary says. "Demons gossip. And demons lie."

***

"Did you hear?" Ellen says. "Your boys took out a whole damn American folktale in Ohio."

"Oh?" Mary asks.

"Bloody Mary," Ellen answers. "Seems the story got started with just one ghost, and Sam and Dean dealt with her."

"Nobody tells me anything," Mary grouches. "Do they think that now they've got the Demon Hunter merit badge they don't need to tell me about ghost hunts?"

***

There's a house fire in Arizona, one victim and a six-month-old survivor. Sulfur traces at the scene. Some form of accelerant was used but nobody has any idea what; nothing natural, Mary knows.

***

"Ma'am," says the uniformed police officer at the door, "we regret to inform you that your son Dean is dead."

"That's not possible," Mary says. "I was just talking to him the other day."

"He was shot to death in St. Louis last night," the officer says.

Mary lets out a sob, then visibly pulls herself together. "I want to see him."

It's a five-hour drive straight east on I-70, then a bit of wandering around until she finds the morgue where they're keeping the body. Mary's seen corpses before, of course, but nobody here knows that, and it's easy enough to show herself steeling up to touch the body's cheek. The skin is the wrong texture to be human and it detaches too easily. Shapeshifter, then. Mary gags and hurries over to the sink, where she lets herself be seen forcing herself not to throw up.

***

Mary's phone rings on her way out of the morgue. The caller ID says 'Dean'. "Sam, thank Christ," Mary answers. "I was so worried—tell me where you are, teddy bear, I need to see you."

There's rustling on the other end of the line, and then Sam speaks. "Google says there's a Starbucks on Market Street a few blocks from you. I'll meet you there."

"Market Street Starbucks," Mary repeats. "Okay. Love you."

"We love you too, Mom," Sam says. "See you."

***

Dean being legally dead complicates things. Mary has to deal with funeral expenses for a shapeshifter corpse—cremation, of course, and Mary insists on being there and on doing a mostly-faked-up ritual first, just like she did with John; "I'm an ordained minister of the Church of Saint Diana, to which my son belonged," Mary tells the funeral home. "This is how we handle the dead."

Mary tosses the ashes into the motel dumpster.

Dean being legally dead also means all that money is now Mary's again. Mary transfers it straight into the account of Sam's she still has her name on, so the boys can continue to use it. If something happens to Sam, Dean's in trouble; guns cost a whole lot of spending money. He does know how to play poker and pool, though; they should be able to get by somehow.

***

A ghost in Iowa. A curse in Oklahoma, and "it should have killed us, Mom," Sam says. "I don't know why we're alive."

"I'm just glad you are," Mary answers.

Mary passes on a ghost hunt in Illinois because the boys are closer to it than she is, and they pass with flying colors. Then there's a Norse god, of all things, in Indiana, and a rawhead in Idaho.

That one ends with Sam's frantic call to Mary saying Dean's dying, and Mary's world begins to fall apart.

I'm gonna do whatever it takes to get him better.

No no no no nonononono...

The one thing that gives Mary hope is the fact that she never told the boys how to summon a demon.

Of course, it's always possible that Azazel has been following them and will know exactly when to pounce.

'Anything' turns out to be 'a faith healer', thank Christ, and also another hunt. Life's funny that way. Then a ghost in Missouri, and then Sam calls Mary with another dream vision.

It involves Jim Miller. Husband of Claudia Miller and father of Max, victim and infant from the 1983 fires.

Mary orders Sam and Dean away from the case and goes to investigate personally.

Damn shame Miller's dead; he was a good source of information once he was drunk enough. Roger Miller doesn't want to talk at all once Mary lets on that she heard from someone 'at church' that Jim had suicided. Naturally. Alice Miller is more cooperative, but she knows absolutely nothing about Jim's death and certainly wouldn't know anything about Claudia's. Max doesn't want to talk either.

Sam calls that evening with another vision. This one, Roger Miller dies. Maybe it's nothing to do with Azazel at all, Mary thinks; maybe it's just a ghost after the family. Mary starts treating it like an ordinary hunt: research, research, and more research.

Mom always did say a hunter's best weapon was a library card.

Then Sam calls with a third vision, in which he sees Max kill Alice. Mary hustles over to the Miller house and gets there just in time to interrupt, then shoots Max without blinking—

—and Max stops the bullet.

Max steals the gun, telekinetically, damn it, Max is possessed, or has demon powers, and Mary tries to talk him down but nothing works and Max shoots and Sam knocks Mary to the ground.

Where did Sam even come from?

Sam's gone again when Mary looks up, and there's a bullet in Max's head.

Alice starts screaming.

***

"I had another vision," Sam explains later, over the phone. "You died. I couldn't let you die. I don't know what I did," he adds. "I don't know."

"Freaked me out good," Dean puts in. "He just kind of collapsed."

"Astral projection?" Mary wonders. They've dealt with that before; it's not, to the best of Mary's knowledge, a demonic ability. Thank Christ. Sammy's not demon-touched. Just psychic.

***

Mary goes back to dry-cleaning and chasing ghosts and wild geese. There's a house fire in New Jersey with one victim and a six-month-old survivor. The boys take on a gang of crazies in Minnesota.

Mary gets a call, later, from Deputy Kathleen Hudak. "I'm speaking in my capacity as a private citizen, not as a member of the Hibbing sheriff's department," she says. "Your son Dean's alive. I thought you should know."

"I do," Mary says. "Thank you for telling me, and thank you for not turning him in."

"He and Sam solved a great many missing persons cases for us," Hudak says. "Including my brother's. I owe him."

***

"Mom, I think you should see this," Dean says on the phone. "The victims both got torn apart in rooms locked from the inside, and they were both from Lawrence."

That doesn't sound like bait for a trap at all. Mary goes to Chicago anyway, because the boys are already there, and she'd rather the trap close on her than them.

Mary gets there in time to see a young blonde take a swan dive out a window. She meets the boys just outside the building, and Sam rides with her on the way back to the boys' motel room to fill her in: she's a girl named Meg, someone Sam met hitchhiking in Indiana (she asks when Sam was hitchhiking, and Sam declines to answer), and she's a witch who appears to be in contact with Azazel and who wants Mary dead.

So she's finally made enough of a nuisance of herself.

***

The boys take on a tulpa in Texas, a shtriga in Wisconsin, a ghost in New York. Mary sees signs of demonic presence picking up around Salvation, Iowa; she was too late in Arizona and New Jersey and California, and she won't be too late this time.

Then Daniel Elkins is killed by vampires.

Elkins still has the Colt, last Mary heard, so Mary goes to investigate his house and finds the boys beat her there and the vampires took the Colt. Three Winchesters against a nest of vampires: goody. Three Campbells could manage a nest just fine, though, and her boys are still alive, so they're competent enough hunters that Mary needn't call in anyone from the Roadhouse.

The Colt does work on vampires. Whether it works on demons, Mary doesn't know. Dean Van Halen thought so.

***

They have to drive through Nebraska to get from Colorado to Iowa, so they stop at the Roadhouse.

Consuelo Alvarez is dead, Ellen tells Mary. Fire at his gun shop. Destroyed a selection of guns and left the rest untouched, which frightens the hell out of the fire marshal because fire hot enough to have destroyed one gun should have at least damaged them all, and Consuelo died before the fire started.

Not a single hunter in the bar is suicidal enough to join the Winchesters on this hunt.

Mary's phone rings. It's Meg. She wants the Colt. Great. She's with Coralee Namm. Even better. Mary closes her eyes and says, "I haven't seen that gun in thirty years."

Mary doesn't open her eyes until the sounds of Coralee's death have faded.

***

When Mary wakes up, she's possessed. It feels...there's no comparison, really, to anything in Mary's experience. Was this what her father felt, before he died? A spectator in his own body, able to see what he was doing, as Mary can see herself giving instructions to other demons, but not to do anything about it, as Mary can do nothing?

Where's her bracelet? The pentacle charm on her bracelet, the anti-possession charm, where is it?

Exorcisamus te, Mary begins, omnis satanica potestas, and her passenger just laughs.

***

When Sam and Dean walk in, Sam takes one look at Mary, tied to the bed and faking unconsciousness, and says "That's not her. She's possessed."

Good, Sam.

Mary's passenger yanks Mary free and uses mind powers to pin Sam and Dean both against the wall.

"Mom," Dean says. "Mom, please. Fight it."

Mary has been doing exactly that, but with the strength of her sons' desperation she finds herself able to shove the demon out of her body.

Thank God.

They beat a hasty retreat to the safety of the Impala, heading for the safety of Mary's basement.

Christ you know it ain't easy, you know how hard it can be, the way things are going, they're going to crucify me.

***

A semitruck plows into them.

***

Mary takes a month off from the cleaner's while she and the boys recover. Dean's more worried about the Impala than about himself; she took some nasty frame damage in the crash. Sam's annoyed about his laptop. Mary's mad because that was, she's ninety percent confident, the demon who killed John, and she couldn't tell the boys that until after it was too late for shooting her with the Colt to do them a damn bit of good.

Mary gets a pentacle tattooed on and insists the boys do the same.

***

The first place Mary goes when she's feeling healthy enough to get back to work is the Roadhouse. Once there, Mary asks to look at the sketch she left of Dean Van Halen years ago, just to remind herself what he looks like.

"Oh my God," she says when Ellen pulls it out.

It's Dean. It's her son Dean. Shapeshifter? Something else disguised as Dean from forty years later? Somehow, Dean was there years before he was born, to warn Mary. To save Mary? Did he know the price would be John?

That explains why there have been no leads on his whereabouts. Explains the psychic-mother story, too, the stalking John, the total lack of surprise at Mary's skill: Dean knew the future because he'd lived it, and he couldn't admit that the journal he had was one of Mary's own, now could he?

So much for Mary's plans of tracking down Van Halen and his mother and interrogating them. Mary makes a note to tell Dean to warn her younger self about her death and John's—this is all making her head hurt.

Fortunately for Mary's sanity, Ellen has a job ready to go. Evil killer clowns, apparently.

It turns out to be a rakshasha, which apparently hopped a boat with immigrants from India. Lovely. Can't monsters stay on their own home turf?

***

The radio plays the Beatles. Now I'm stepping out this old brown shoe, baby I'm so in love with you, I'm so glad you came here, it won't be the same now, I'm telling you...

Some days Mary wishes she'd never heard of the Beatles. Even decades later, just hearing one of their songs can choke her up.

***

The boys call her to warn her away from Gordon Walker, advice Mary didn't really need, because she knows Walker's crazy. Then, just when Mary's beginning to settle back into domesticity, a revenant pops up in Lawrence. Mary calls Ellen to deal with it, because Mary's still in hot water with the locals over her last hunt with Coralee.

***

"I had another vision, Mom," Sam says. "This man, he walked into a gun store and shot the clerk and himself. The funny thing is, he was saying he hates guns."

The moment Mary hears that Ash has traced the bus line in Sam's vision to Guthrie, Oklahoma, she hits the road.

Guthrie, Oklahoma: home of Andrew Gallagher, infant in one of the 1983 fires.

Sam and Dean beat her there. Sam pulls the fire alarm, saving the gun store clerk, but the man Sam saw shoot the clerk walks in front of a bus.

Mary tracks down Andrew Gallagher and finds herself explaining all about Azazel and the fires and the mind powers and she tries to stop herself but she can't.

Sam intervenes. Sam, apparently, is immune to other psychics' power. Strange that it never came up with Missouri.

Sam has another vision, and this one comes true moments later. The victim's name is Holly Beckett and she's Andy's biological mother.

That breaks pattern.

In all the fires so far, it's been a biological parent who died. But the fatality in Andy's fire was Marissa Gallagher, no blood relation.

More interesting is the fact that Andy has a twin brother. Who is not a fire child. And who is psychic. Score a point for the 'the demon chose children who are inherently psychic' theory. But who only began going on a killing spree because the yellow-eyed demon told him to. Score a point for the 'the children are psychic because of something the demon did' theory.

***

Jo goes on a hunt with the boys in Philadelphia, and Ellen nearly has a coronary. The boys get caught in Baltimore, and Mary nearly has a coronary.

***

"You boys what?" Mary demands.

"Are you going to get like this every time you hear we've tangled with a demon?" Dean asks.

"I'm your mother. It's my job. What happened?"

When Dean gets to the word 'deal', Mary goes stiff and silent. When Dean gets to the part of the story where he makes a deal with the crossroads demon, Mary explodes, "What the fuck?"

Dean is shocked into silence.

"No deals," Mary orders. "Not ever."

***

Sam and Dean miss their weekly phone call, and Mary is worried sick until they call to tell her they're all right. Demonic germ warfare. Wonderful. What will they think of next?

Someone kills Scott Carey. That's the fourth and last of the 1983 fire babies. And God only knows what's happening to the rest of the 1983 psychics. She worries for Sam.

Sam calls to reassure Mary he's all right, almost as if he heard Mary's thoughts from several states away. He says he did no such thing, but Gordon Walker did try to kill him. Another of the 1983 psychics saved him. Then she disappeared, leaving behind her fiancé's corpse and the scent of rotten eggs.

Mary makes plans to kill Gordon Walker.

***

The boys face a ghost in Connecticut. Mary starts to track instances all over the country where people Sam's age, like Ava, flip out and kill everyone in the room before disappearing. There's a disconcerting number of them. There's a pattern to them, too. Ava, for example. She was born on November twelfth, 1982. On November twelfth, 1972, Ava's parents won a substantial amount in the Illinois lottery.

Or take James Hauser III, suspected of murdering his girlfriend and best friend the night of his sulfur-stained disappearance. He was born on January twentieth, 1983. On January twenty-second, 1973, James Hauser Jr proposed marriage to Mae Macfarlane, who until that very moment had been living in poverty with James III's half-sister Dora.

So except for the fires that never happened when James III and Ava were six months old—the dog that didn't bark—they both fit the pattern every one of the fire babies does.

***

Mary gets hauled in for interrogation after the boys' fool stunt with the bank.

Then there's angels in Providence. Angels killing people in Providence. Angels who turn out to be just another ghost. Felony is to felon as gluttony is to glutton: God is an iron.

Mary encounters a demon in Lawrence and the demon gets the better of her. When she wakes up, the Colt is gone.

The whole episode with the Trickster is hilarious from Mary's point of view. Not so much from the point of view of the sodomized frat boy or the dead people.

There's a ghost in Nevada and two werewolves in San Francisco. Ghosts in Hollywood and a ghost in Arkansas and her damn fool sons have to get themselves arrested to get inside the prison where the latter ghost is.

Then Mary trips over a djinn and wakes up in a world where John is still alive.

John is alive, Sam is a law student at Stanford with an engagement ring on a medical student's finger, Dean is an EMT living with a nurse a few blocks from home. It's the perfect life. But Ava Wilson and Cassandra Tessler and Ruthanne Elward and Jeffrey Mittman and all the rest are still missing, their families and friends still bloodily dead. There was another fatal accident on February 20 on Highway 41 in Nevada, an accident that wouldn't have occurred had Sam and Dean been there to distract the ghost. Our Lady of the Angels in Providence has a much thinned flock. The list goes on.

Damn Campbell family duty all to hell anyway.

Die in a dream and you wake up.

***

"Mom, Sam's gone."

"What?" Mary asks.

"He just, he walked into this diner, and five minutes later everybody in there's dead and he's nowhere to be seen and there's sulfur everywhere."

"Oh my God," Mary says. "Oh my God."

Sam's a fire baby. Of course Azazel would come for him.

Mary drives out to the Roadhouse in hopes Ellen's heard something, but of course there's nothing. No signs of demonic activity anywhere in the country, except in a ring around southern Wyoming, and that's much too large an area to search.

But there is something the demons want in Wyoming. Something inside what looks, from Ash's map, to be a devil's trap covering a large chunk of the state. Ellen volunteers to come with Mary to investigate in Wyoming. It's killing Mary not to be looking for Sam, but Dean's doing that, and Dean, like it or not, is a competent hunter.

Dean calls again. "Mom, I had a vision. Like Sam's. A ghost town. A bell with an oak tree on it. Sam."

"Cold Oak, South Dakota," Ellen says when Mary relays this.

"You go there," Mary tells Dean. "Find Sam, make sure he's all right, and get the hell out of there."

"Yes ma'am."

"Don't sass me."

"Yes ma'am."

There's nothing in Wyoming but railroad tracks.

Dean calls again. "Mom, Sam's dead."

Mary whips the car around and drives straight to Cold Oak. Most of the way to Cold Oak. The boys meet Mary partway there. Both the boys.

"I made a deal," Dean says. "I know how stupid it was, I know you're going to kill me, but I couldn't just...leave him."

Mary remembers that feeling. Mary knows, too, exactly how far a slightly older Dean was willing to go to save Mary.

Mary punches Dean anyway.

There's still something the demons want in Wyoming, but there's no way of knowing what it is. Not without going to look. Sam tells them on the way all about Ava and Lily and Jake and Andy, especially Ava and Jake. Then they get to the cemetery dead center of the devil's trap and wait.

Jake comes. Mary knows it's Jake because he says he killed Sam. Mary shoots him.

Jake has the Colt. Mary reclaims it. Every bullet that was there when Mary had it last is still there, numbers and all.

They're barely outside the devil's trap when Azazel jumps them. Sam fights him on a psychic level, but Sam's not nearly as strong as Azazel is, and Sam collapses.

Azazel sets Ellen afire and threatens to do the same to Sam and Dean if Mary doesn't march right back to the cemetery and open the crypt with the Colt as key.

Mary shoots him. Tries to, anyway. He's behind her when the bullet gets to where he was when she fired.

Mary, reluctantly, obeys him.

Enough black smoke to be hundreds of demons floods out of what must be a devil's gate. Mary can't close it alone. Thousands of demons.

When will she learn to just let her family die?

Ellen's her family too, though. And Ellen has a daughter and almost has two sons, and somebody has to make sure Dean's all right in hell. Mary nominates herself.

When Mary drives up to where she left the boys and the demon and Ellen's ashes, she fires the Colt through the windshield. Azazel never sees it coming.

Mary collects Ellen's ashes into a ziplock bag and drives the boys back to close the devil's gate.

Mary ditches the boys at a bar to celebrate and finds a dirt road, then a crossroads. A photo of herself, some yarrow conveniently found at the nearest health food store, a couple other things in a little box, and ten minutes later Mary has negotiated herself a one-way ticket to hell in one year in return for Ellen Harvelle's life.

Ellen punches Mary.

Mary takes Ellen home and they discover the Roadhouse is gone. Ash is dead. So are a handful of other hunters, most too far gone to identify.

***

Mary drives Ellen up to Duluth, where Jo is. It's six hours from the former location of the Roadhouse to Des Moines, seven more from Des Moines to Duluth, so they stop in Des Moines for the night. Ellen keeps stony silence the entire trip there when she's not on the phone with Jo, who's supposed to be working tonight but family's more important.

Mary goes into the motel and asks for two queens, since Ellen's still in shock and probably shouldn't be alone. She comes back to the car and opens the passenger door. Ellen gets out under her own power and mutely follows Mary to the room.

The moment the door has closed behind them, Ellen shoves Mary up against the door and lands another solid punch to Mary's face, then one to the gut, doubling Mary over. "You idiot," Ellen snarls. "How could you?" Then she's kissing Mary like there's no tomorrow.

There really...isn't a tomorrow, is there. Not for Mary.

Mary goes with it, stripping off Ellen's jacket and shirt as Ellen does the same with Mary's blouse and bra. Mary's never actually done this before, not with a woman, not since the first try with Ellen went so horribly awry.

Carpe diem, right?

Mary kisses Ellen's lips and cheek and neck. She gets to the bra strap and breaks that; Ellen can yell at her later. She nibbles and sucks on Ellen's breast as Ellen caresses both of hers. Mary drops to her knees and opens Ellen's jeans with her teeth, a skill she's surprised to discover she hasn't lost. Ellen hauls her up and over to the nearer bed; Ellen kicks her jeans off on the way, then drags Mary's off.

Ellen's so soft. Cotton padding, iron frame.

They've both got their panties off when Mary realizes she has no idea what comes next. With John, she could go for sucking his cock or riding it. Or letting him eat her out. Mary could try that; it can't be that hard. Mary rolls to be on top of Ellen, then kisses her way from Ellen's breastbone to the join of her legs, savoring the flavor of Ellen's skin, something she hasn't tasted in a long time. Mary licks around the labia, then around the nub, then dips her tongue into the opening. The taste is utterly unfamiliar, a little sour, a little bitter, but not bad, and the more Mary licks, the more liquid there is to lick up. Mary keeps at it until Ellen convulses in orgasm.

Ellen gets Mary off with her fingers—Mary's too distracted by the sensation to pay attention to the details; it's been so long—and Mary collapses onto the bed half on top of Ellen.

They sleep, and the next morning, they drive to Duluth.

***

Mary helps the boys out with a hunt in Nebraska, the Seven Deadly Sins of all things, and they meet Isaac and Tamara there. Tamara survives. Isaac doesn't. Mary's lucky to. It's thanks to the nameless young hunter with the demon-killing knife that any of them do.

Mary hears from Dean about a changeling hunt in Indiana, and from Sam about the demon he met there. Mary threatens to kill Sam again if he even contemplates trusting the demon, even for such a desperate cause as saving Dean and Mary from hell. Sam hastily changes the subject to Dean's girl in Indiana and to Dean's girl's son Ben.

Mary takes a trip up to Cicero, Indiana. "My name's Mary Winchester," she tells the woman, Lisa. "I'm Dean's mother. I heard a rumor that I have a grandson?"

"It's not true," Lisa says.

Sam gets kidnapped and tortured by friends of Gordon Walker's. Mary tracks them down and kills them. No one screws with her family, and she needn't concern herself overmuch with morality anymore; she's going to hell no matter what she does.

While Mary's involved with that, the boys tangle with demons again in Ohio, then the ghost of a comatose girl in New York, then the Flying Dutchman in Massachusetts, except it's not the Flying Dutchman, it's some other ghost ship. Dean won't shut up about this girl Bela, who sounds like bad news.

Then it's vampires in New York and it's Gordon Walker again. Sam kills him. He doesn't sound sorry when he tells Mary. She's only sorry she didn't get the chance to do it herself.

The gods of Christmas in Michigan, which must have been entertaining, then witches in Massachusetts. The demon Ruby turns up again, and Mary has to admit she's not all bad when Sam says she saved Dean's life. (She won't desert me, she's an angel sent to me, she's got the devil in her heart, no, no, this I can't believe, she's gonna tear your heart apart, no, no, nay will she deceive...) But then she might just have an ulterior motive, or some purpose she plans to turn the boys to that requires them to be alive.

Mary finds a hunt in Pittsburgh, people going to sleep and never waking up, and investigates. One of the fatalities is a psychology professor at Carnegie Mellon, studying the effects of Silene capensis on dreams. Mary talks to one of the people in the study, Jeremy, and doesn't take the beer he offers. She does run her hands through her hair, probably pulling out one or two hairs, that always happens; she only realizes it's a mistake when she falls asleep and can't wake up.

She's facing down herself with black eyes.

Mary is going to die. She is going to become a demon—Ruby told Dean everyone who goes to hell becomes a demon—and for what? For Ellen, who still hates her a little for Bill's death? To protect Dean, who's a grown man who doesn't need to hide behind Mommy's skirts? How does she know she'll be able to protect Dean in hell, anyway? Sam's next birthday will come and go and Dean will die, and the next day Mary will die, and she will never see her sons again. She and Dean both will become what they hunt.

This is the single stupidest thing Mary has ever done.

Mary's dream slides sideways into John on the ceiling, then Ellen in John's place, and sticks there until Dean comes for her.

Sam kills Jeremy, freeing Mary from the dream.

The boys go on their way—but the Colt's gone again. Dean rants about Bela, who they apparently called for help acquiring African dream root.

Mary hears the boys have been arrested the same time she hears the boys have been killed, and she drives straight from home to the Roadhouse to weep in Ellen's arms. That's where she is when her cell phone rings: it's Sam with reassurances. Mary insists they come by the Roadhouse so she can see they're all right for herself.

A week later, Sam calls with an incredible story about time loops and the Trickster. Incredible, that is, if Mary didn't already know time travel was possible.

Mary reminds Dean that when he goes back in time, he's to warn Mary to save herself and John both. It'd be easily done.

The boys take on a ghost in Idaho and a crocotta in Ohio in between research, research, research, all to save Dean and Mary from hell. Theophilus of Adana: neither Mary nor Dean will recant, and that's the only way anyone's found to save them, and they end up no less dead. Mary isn't bothering to do any research Sam doesn't specifically ask of her. There are ways out of hell. For all Mary knows, the devil's gate in Wyoming is open again.

Bela, Dean discovers when one of Ellen's contacts, Rufus Turner, calls her, is Abigail Marshall of Great Britain, and she fits the 'remarkable luck ten years prior' pattern of people who deal with demons. In Bela's case, it's the deaths of her parents ten years before, almost to the day. Bela's contract, she says, is held by Lilith, same as Dean's, same as Mary's.

Bela dies bloody, and Mary burns the body. Is that what Dean will look like when he's dead? Is that what she will look like?

Sam summons Ruby, who admits to knowing that the demon holding Mary's and Dean's contracts is Lilith. Sam's psychic abilities might just be able to kill Lilith, except for one minor detail: Sam's never tried to kill a demon with his mind.

Conveniently there's a demon in a devil's trap in Mary's living room.

Ruby doesn't die.

Mary knocks Sam out and locks him, Dean, and herself in the basement with three days' worth of food and water and a bucket to pee in.

Dean dies screaming.

Mary dies screaming.

Mary's worst fear, the very worst, has always been losing her family. Now they're all lost to her.

The demon wearing Sam's face introduces himself as Malthus. He starts simple, by violating Mary with the handle of a knife. It's nothing she wasn't expecting. It hurts. Jesus Christ and all the saints, it hurts.

The first time Malthus offers Mary the knife in exchange for getting off the rack, she takes it. She plunges it into Malthus's chest and runs.

Dean, Dean, where's Dean? Please God, if God listens to the prayers of the damned, let her find Dean.

She can't find Dean.

She can't find the way out.

She wanders, lost.

Forty years in the desert. She counts. It's hard to be sure she's keeping track of the days properly; hell doesn't really have a light-dark cycle like earth does. Sometimes it's blazing bright for weeks on end. Sometimes nobody can see a thing for a month. Even when no one is actively torturing her, hell is torture. And when one's counting from zero to fifteen thousand, it's entirely possible to lose track more than once.

Mary thinks it's been fifteen thousand days, so more than forty years, when bright lights invade hell. Mary runs toward them. Maybe they're angels come to rescue her. But they've been and gone by the time she gets to where they were.

The lights come back. Mary runs toward them again.

"Fear not," proclaims one of the lights, a reassurance Mary doesn't really need. "I bring you good tidings of great joy—" and she, somehow Mary's sure it's a she, grabs Mary by the shoulder and the next thing Mary knows she's digging out of a box in the ground.

It's dark and cool. Night, slight breeze. She's wearing jeans and a blouse, carrying a knife and a lighter and wearing her silver charm bracelet, the one that replaced the one she lost.

She's standing on her own grave.

Next to the simple wooden cross marking her grave is another one, also showing the signs of someone having dug out of it. So Dean got out too. As what?

No phone. But on the edge of the artificial clearing is a house, and Mary knows this house: it's a Campbell safe house. She showed the boys years ago. There'll be a phone in there, and more weapons.

Mary slices the back of her arm with a silver knife, then an iron one. Nothing happens. She tastes salt, and all she tastes is salt.

If she's a demon, shouldn't she be vulnerable to salt and iron?

There is indeed a phone, and Mary calls Sam first. The number's disconnected. She tries Dean's, which is also a no-go. Then Ellen.

"The boys warned me you'd call," Ellen says.

"Oh?" Mary asks.

"Apparently angels rescued Dean from hell because they want something from him, and his condition was that they pull you out too. And they've both changed their phone numbers, so they figured on you calling me."

"Ah." Mary gives directions to the safe house. "Come get me?"

Ellen drives up in Mary's Camry. Mary drives her back to Ellen's home base in Minnesota while Ellen updates her on what she knows of what the boys have been up to: Olivia Lowry's dead, Ellen knows that much, and Ellen and the boys damn near didn't escape alive. The boys dealt with a shapeshifter in Pennsylvania. Dean took his little jaunt to the past that Mary had managed to forget about. Travis Zumwalt died helping the boys deal with a rugaru in Missouri. Dean came down with ghost sickness, and Ellen laughs a little while telling the story. Mary is unamused.

Dean calls Ellen when they're just crossing the border to Minnesota. Mary snatches the phone. "Dean! Thank God you're all right."

"Literally, apparently," Dean says. "Castiel—he's the angel who rescued me—he says God has plans for me."

Well that isn't ominous at all, when compared to Azazel's plans for Sam.

"I told the angels I wouldn't go along with their plans unless they rescued you too," Dean says. "They weren't happy."

"Thanks," Mary says.

"Don't mention it." Dean hesitates a long moment. "Mom...they said some things about Sam. About what he's becoming. He spent the summer with Ruby, Mom. God wants Sam to stop using his powers."

"Have you talked to Missouri?" Mary asks. Mary is not exactly the local expert on psychic abilities.

"She says something's different about Sam's aura but she doesn't know what. She can't even tell me if it's good or bad."

"Think maybe watching his only family die might have screwed with his head a bit?" Mary asks. "Let me talk to him."

Sam, when he picks up the phone, says only "Hi, Mom."

"What were you thinking?" Mary asks neutrally.

"I was thinking, if I couldn't rescue you, I could at least get revenge," Sam says. "Ruby's been showing me how to do that."

"Sam, love...stop. Please. We're here. Dean's right next to you and I'll be there as soon as I can. There's no need to avenge us."

"Mom, I can exorcise demons with my mind now. The Colt kills the victim. So does Ruby's knife. My way, they survive."

"All right," Mary says. "But don't hurt yourself, and don't trust her, and don't lie to your brother."

There's a puff of sound on the line, as if Sam was about to say something but stopped.

"How did I know you were lying to your brother?" Mary fills in. "I'm your mother. It's my job."

***

The apocalypse. The seals of the fucking apocalypse.

Mary is nowhere near qualified for this. Neither are the boys. Neither are Ellen and Jo. But it's the five of them and whatever other hunters they can scrounge up against the apocalypse.

Dean's deal with the angels was over a seal in West Virginia. There's an incident in Washington State with a wishing well, in which Sam dies and promptly gets better, or at least that's what Sam thinks happens. Ruby tips them off about a girl who can hear angels escapes from a mental hospital and takes up residence in Mary's basement because the demons want her alive as badly as the angels want her dead.

Castiel and Uriel, whom Mary tries to attack at first sight because they look like demons, try to kill Anna, and Anna banishes them.

Mary feels a lot safer knowing Anna's method of banishing angels. When it comes to Sam, she doesn't trust anyone, even angels.

Mary calls up Missouri to come see what's the deal with Anna. Missouri's grouchy about it, because only years of experience with psychic attack kept her from being blinded last time the boys asked for help, but she comes. And it turns out Anna's an angel.

Go figure.

Anna lost her powers, though, or rather threw them away, and now if any of them are to survive, she needs to get them back. Not that Mary would be all that unhappy if Ruby didn't survive, but Ruby does seem to be on their side. So it's research and more research until Sam finds a meteor over Kentucky to go with the meteor over Ohio nine months before Anna's birth, and the 'meteor tree' in Kentucky where Anna's grace apparently landed.

It's not there. Naturally. Back to Lawrence they go, because Mary's basement is still the safest place there is and there are still demons after Anna. Sam's not confident enough in his ability to exorcise demons to take on more than one at once.

Castiel and Uriel find them and so do a demon called Alastair and two minions, and Uriel has Anna's grace with him. What the hell. Angels are supposed to be warriors, warriors are supposed to be strategists and tacticians, and that was just stupid of Uriel. But it works for them, because Anna recovers her grace and blows the demons away, and the angels stop caring about the Winchesters the moment Anna's no longer there.

Ruby leaves. Mary hits the road. She's not after anything in particular, since she doesn't know the signs of a seal about to break, so she hunts everything she can find: ghost, ghost, goblin, ghost, cockatrice, ghost, ahuizotl. The boys keep Mary up to date on their cases: ghost, ghost, werewolf, ghost, creepy twin feral people they thought were a ghost, warlock, ghost, siren. Sirens aren't supposed to be found outside the Mediterranean area. But one was in Bedford, Iowa, turning her boys against each other.

That must have been one seriously sexy siren, for her boys to fall over their own asses over a woman.

Mary hears after the fact that she tipped the boys off to people failing to die in Wyoming. (That state again. The worst things always happen in Wyoming.) She hears, too, about the boys being suicidally stupid, with help from a contact of Missouri's, Pamela Barnes, because Missouri doesn't know how to astral travel and Sam never got the hang of doing it on cue. Pamela's lucky to make it through the experience alive, because demons attacked the boys while their souls were apart from their bodies with only Pamela guarding them. Mary chews the boys out good for that one. The seal is saved and Alastair is captured, so it's a win, but it was pure luck that got them through it, and none of them can rely on luck.

The first Mary knows of what happened to Dean in hell is after Dean is kidnapped by the angels to interrogate Alastair about who's been killing angels. As though torture is suddenly an effective means of extracting information from demons, who became demons by getting accustomed to being tortured every damn day.

No wonder so much effort went into keeping Mary from finding Dean. The demons wanted Dean to be a torturer. Maybe the angels wanted the same thing.

Mary misses the days when she could tell her sons "angels are watching over you" and mean it, sincerely, in a 'the powers of heaven are here to protect you, for reasons that have nothing to do with their own motives' kind of way.

Alastair nearly escapes. 'Nearly' only because Sam killed him. With his brain. Mary had thought Sam had stopped using his psychic abilities; the boys hadn't met any demons in months. Apparently not. And it seems Uriel was the one killing angels, because Uriel turned on his own; Anna kills him.

Dean is in the hospital for three months recovering.

The boys vanish when Dean's finally released, and Mary's frantic and despairing by turns for three weeks until Dean calls and explains about the angel kidnapping memory stunt. The phrase "Zachariah is a world-class dick" comes up several times.

Sam calls while on the road to bring Castiel's vessel to Mary's house for safekeeping. Won't that be a barrel of fun. Mary gets the joy of explaining to Jimmy Novak exactly why he can never go home.

There have always been demons in Lawrence. Some of them find Jimmy.

Sam kills them all.

Sam thinks, and Mary agrees, and Dean hates to agree, that Sam's ready to kill Lilith. Not out of revenge for Dean and Mary, though that's certainly part of Sam's thinking. Because the apocalypse needs to end before it gets started.

That's the thing, though. It's already started.

Sam finds evidence of Azazel's presence in Maryland in 1972. Right before all the deals started. So whatever Azazel wanted the surviving fire baby for, wanted Sam for, it started there. Mary gets chills.

Sam, Dean, and Mary head out to Ilchester, Maryland and wait for Lilith in the abandoned chapel where it all started.

When she comes, it's over quickly. But her blood spills in a pattern on the floor. A pattern that summons a bright light, brighter by far than those that rescued Mary from hell.

An archangel.

Lucifer.

Fuck.

They run.

Sam collapses. Mary and Dean haul him out between them. The light explodes behind them and rocks the car as they flee.

How do they hide from an archangel?

Sam, when he wakes, is full of apologies. "Shut up, Sam," Mary and Dean say in chorus.

Sam hurries them to a grocery store, where he buys olive oil. "Something I learned from Ruby," he says. "Hex bags. They should hide us from demons and angels both."

Ruby herself isn't answering phone calls.

***

Saint Michael the archangel, loyal champion of God and his people, I turn to you with confidence and seek your powerful intercession. For the love of God, who made you so glorious in grace and power, and for the love of the mother of Jesus, the queen of the angels, be pleased to hear my prayer. You know the value of my soul in the eyes of God—and here is where Mary stumbles in reciting the novena, because Mary is a creation of hell. Her soul has got to be one of the least valuable ones out there. But Michael the archangel is the only one, bar God himself, who might be able to kill Lucifer, and God doesn't intervene.

But gods do.

***

Mary uses a Wiccan summoning ritual, because she doesn't speak Hindi, or Bengali or Tamil or really anything spoken in India except English, and though she can translate Greek and Sumerian she doesn't have time. Doing things the Wiccan way also allows for cross-pollination between traditions, which saves time. It isn't quite May and it's just past full moon; maybe this ritual will serve for Beltane and the Esbat both. She flat refuses to work skyclad. Broom to sweep the dirt and negativity out of the area. Candles to the north, south, east, west, center. Circle of salt, bowl of water, and air takes care of itself. Knife, a sharp one, new because everything Mary can find on the Internet suggests a knife used for purposes other than ritual simply Won't Do. It's an ordinary kitchen knife from Walmart, because Mary doesn't have time to find a proper boline. Mary sweeps her kitchen floor clean with the new broom, then picks up the box of salt and pours a clockwise circle, then walks around the inside of the circle two more laps, chanting "Cast the circle thrice about to keep the evil spirits out." Then light each candle, east south west north center, calling on an element as she does, air fire water earth spirit. Minerva Kali Guanyin Ishtar Sekhmet.

Mary cuts her forearm. Free-will blood sacrifice. It'll annoy Guanyin, but the others are all warriors.

You say you got a real solution, well, you know, we'd all love to see the plan, you ask me for a contribution, well, you know, we're all doing what we can...

Mary thanks the goddesses for coming in a numb voice, since as far as she can tell none of them ever came at all. Apparently Kali can't be bothered speaking to anyone who isn't Hindu, nor Guanyin to anyone who isn't Chinese. The peoples who worshiped Minerva and Ishtar and Sekhmet are, except for a few neopagans here and there, long gone, so it wouldn't surprise Mary overmuch if the goddesses were dead too.

***

Mary meets Ellen and Jo in Colorado to deal with a demon problem that turns out to be no such thing. War, the Horseman of the goddamned Apocalypse, and why is he wasting his time in Colorado when there's Darfur? Hell, if he went anywhere with a big red button, he could end the world all by himself. It makes no sense. But separating War from his ring ends his power over the town, and not a moment too soon.

Just because the apocalypse has started doesn't mean the usual run of creatures aren't there. There's vampires in Pennsylvania, demons in Oklahoma, a petty god in Ohio (Paris Hilton, seriously?), more demons in Nebraska, a witch in North Carolina.

The boys go on another weeklong disappearing streak, and Mary's so terrified that somebody's caught up to them...well, it turns out somebody has. The Trickster. Also known as the archangel Gabriel. Mary hadn't even thought of him; he's a messenger, not a warrior, but he could be a warrior. If he were willing to help. Which he's not. It's Gabriel, in fact, who informs Sam and Dean that they're Lucifer's and Michael's destined vessels or what-the-fuck-ever, and from the sound of it, Gabriel was astonished to learn that the boys hadn't already known that.

Neither of her boys will do it, of course. Mary isn't sure that's wise of Dean, but she's right there with Sam refusing point blank to help Lucifer along.

There's a ghost in Ohio, another in Pennsylvania. It's like the apocalypse is ramping up all the spiritual activity.

Then Mary hears thirdhand through Bobby Singer that the Colt's with a demon named Crowley. No one can find him, of course. But then they're the Winchesters, and a simple summoning ritual works just fine.

The damned thing isn't loaded when Mary gets hold of it. Crowley tosses her a bundle of bullets and vanishes.

Sam and Dean go into Carthage, Missouri alone. Mary hates it as much as Ellen and Jo do, more, but Gabriel made it clear that Mary's boys are immortal until they take up their 'destined' roles. So they can take all the suicide missions they like and they'll come out smelling of roses, but anyone going in with them is likely to end up dead.

Mary ends up going in anyway, a one-woman rescue mission armed only with a hex bag and an angel-banishing sigil. Which actually works on Lucifer, much to her astonishment.

The boys get themselves locked up in a mental hospital to deal with a wraith, then take care of a ghost in Massachusetts with bonus Teen Witch, plural, and swapping bodies of all the absurd things. Mary would have paid to see that, had it been her boys swapping bodies instead of Sam with an asthmatic celiac teenager. But there being a bounty on Dean's head is the last thing Mary needed to know.

Then there's Anna. Mary hears after the fact that she tries to kill Sam, succeeds, in fact, in killing Sam, and gets herself killed by Dean moments later, only for Sam to wake up perfectly healthy moments after that. Mary's very glad she missed that part, and very glad, too, that now the boys have a weapon guaranteed to work on an angel, because God knows Mary's Colt doesn't. Not on archangels, anyway.

People rise from the grave in Lawrence, much to Missouri's dismay, because one of them is her late husband. By now Lawrence is used to strange shit, though (there have always been demons in Lawrence), and it's a hell of a shooting spree Mary and the boys and Ellen and Jo go on.

The boys meet Famine in Texas. Sam attempts to exorcise him, which works only because Famine, apparently, eats human souls, and nobody likes having their guts explode.

Roy and Walt Shadler catch up to the boys in Virginia. Mary hears of this after the boys are alive again. Mary skips out on hunting the supernatural for a while to track and kill Roy and Walt Shadler. Damn shame, too; they were good hunters.

Then there's a pack of demons in Minnesota and the Sacrament Lutheran Militia. Mary smells something wrong when the prophet Leah Gideon insists that a great many harmless things are in fact very harmful—drinking and premarital sex among them; if those imperiled one's immortal soul, Dean wouldn't have gone to heaven when Walt killed him—and has them banned from Blue Earth. Sam smells something wrong earlier. Mary looks up the Enochian exorcism in one of the books she carries with her now and has a fit of laughter when she discovers it means "go get blown by a goat", but that means Leah isn't a prophet after all, she's just running a scam like every other televangelist out there. They don't kill her; they can't figure out how.

Dean does a runner. Sam catches up to him in Cicero, Indiana.

Mary goes back to Lawrence for a break from all this shit, for values of 'break' that include 'keeping suicide watch over her idiot elder son', and happens to be in the backyard when John rises from the grave. She grabs him by one hand, her iron knife by the other, and has it pressed to his throat before he can blink. "What are you?" she demands.

"Mary, Mary, it's me," John says. "It's me, it's John, put down the knife—"

"What are you?"

"It's me, it's just me, you won't believe this but the angel Zachariah brought me back to life so I can help the archangel Michael end the apocalypse—"

Mary hustles him inside and into the basement.

The basement's ringed by hex bags. The angels won't be able to find John here.

Except for how they do. Sam's watching John sleep when John disappears.

Castiel slips into Dean's dream to tell him the angels would still rather Dean than John, which is useful as far as it goes, because Castiel tells them where to find John. He's only a little ways north of Lawrence.

The experience of rescuing John drills it into Dean's head that anything to do with Michael is bad news. Mary has to take a few hours just to have a sobbing fit: she believed in...and John's gone again.

Kali finally answers Mary's prayers in a roundabout way: she and a posse assembled from several different pantheons kidnap Sam and Dean for use as bargaining chips. Mary hears about this secondhand as usual. But at least now she knows Kali cares about stopping the apocalypse. And Kali's the only one of the gods Kali assembles who survives.

Gabriel left a dying message to the boys saying the Horsemen's rings would open a back door into Lucifer's cage. That makes not a damn bit of sense to Mary; she'd rather keep praying to Kali, and to Sekhmet, Ishtar, Minerva, Guanyin, any mother goddess or warrior goddess who might possibly listen to a warrior mother's prayer.

Hell knows God isn't listening.

The boys go off chasing Pestilence cross-country. They meet up with Crowley and with the demon who killed Brady.

Sam calls Mary with his insane plan to say yes to the devil. Mary says a flat no. But that does give Mary an idea.

Mary changes her prayers.

Sam kills Brady's killer. Mary's glad.

The boys track Pestilence to a nursing home and come back with his ring. Mary doesn't ask how they survived; she doesn't really want to know.

Crowley finds Mary and offers her Death's location in exchange for her soul. Mary turns him down. She's had enough of deals.

Besides, there's no shortage of omens gathering in Chicago.

Dean volunteers for that little excursion. Sam and Mary beeline to the Niveus Pharmaceuticals distribution center to head off the Croatoan-infected swine flu vaccine. En route, Sam tries to talk Mary into letting him say yes to Lucifer. Mary talks him around to her plan instead.

Death gives Dean his ring.

Mary's prayers are answered. She may be sick of deals, but she strikes one with Kali and Minerva and all of them.

Mary goes to Detroit, where Lucifer told Sam back in November that Sam would say yes in May. It's May. The deal is, Mary says yes—if John's an acceptable substitute vessel for Michael, Mary's an acceptable substitute vessel for Lucifer. "The world's ending no matter what we do," she says. "All I want is to see John one more time. This is the only way I can do it."

"You're lying," Lucifer says. "You think you can beat me."

Lucifer snaps her neck.

Like a phoenix from the ashes Mary rises. She has the strength of a dozen goddesses, billions of souls worshipping those goddesses, strength lent her by the goddesses themselves, and it's enough to hold Lucifer. "Yes," Mary says, and that and Mary's newfound strength trap Lucifer in Mary's body.

Nothing you can do that can't be done. Nothing you can sing that can't be sung. Nothing you can say, but you can learn how to play the game.

Now all Mary can do is sit and wait.

Lucifer takes control of Mary's body. Mary can't stop him. Or she thinks she can, but she doesn't know for how long. So she lets him. She prays to Kali, the only one of Mary's goddesses who's a familiar face to Mary's boys, asking her to relay to them where Lucifer's going: Stull Cemetery, Lawrence, Kansas.

Michael meets Lucifer there.

The boys meet Mary there.

Sam uses his psychic power to hold Lucifer in place while Dean opens the gate to Lucifer's cage. Sounds of laughter and shades of life ring through Mary's opened ears. Why Sam's laughing, Mary doesn't know.

Jai guru deva om. Victory to God divine. Except victory to God, here, means victory to Michael, and that's the last thing the world needs.

Michael takes the offensive. It's almost a flashback to a more innocent time, John taking the dangerous thing (a knife when Dean was four, the rings now) away from Dean, scolding him, Dean defiant (Dean was a stubborn four-year-old, is an even more stubborn man). Sam just folds up like paper, unable to hold against two archangels, and Mary has no idea whether he's dead or alive.

"Mom?" Dean asks. "Mom, are you in there?"

"Oh, she's in here, all right," Lucifer snarls. "And she's gonna feel the snap of your bones! Every single one!" Lucifer punctuates the statement with punches. Michael isn't watching, for some reason. Maybe he wants to spare John the pain. Maybe he's gone to get Raphael for backup. That would make sense, Mary thinks; two against one is much more likely to end in Michael's favor than one on one.

"Mom, please," Dean says. "Mom, don't you let him kill me."

That and Mary's goddesses' strength give Mary the power to take back the wheel without risking that Lucifer will break free. Mary twists Lucifer's power to teleport her within arm's reach of Michael, folds herself into John's arms one last time, palms Michael's sword, and stabs them both.

***

Mary turns off her mind, relaxes and floats downstream. It is not dying. It is not dying.

In Mary's dream, the boys look so young.

"Once there was a princess," Mary tells the boys. "To keep their land safe from evil, she and her mother the queen and her father the king fought the monsters that invaded their land."

The stories always start that way.

When my life is through and the angels ask me to recall the thrill of it all, then I will tell them, I remember you.

Listen to the color of your dreams. It is not living. It is not living.

***

Mary wakes.

It's dark and cool. Night, slight breeze. She has her silver bracelet with its salt-filled locket, her iron knife, and her lighter. She's wearing the jeans and blouse she remembers wearing last.

She's standing on her own grave.

It feels like ice is slowly melting; it feels like years since it's been clear. Here comes the sun; here comes realization. She was dead, again. She's alive, again. She has a purpose.

Mary looks around: no one in sight. First order of business, find the boys. Second, find a hunt.

She's got work to do.