Apocrypha 11

[sophiap]

John still wonders what would have happened if Sam had done what he was told and put a bullet through his chest.

Sometimes he wonders if there's no point in wondering because Carver Edlund already wrote it all down.

The next time he is on the rack, Alastair puts the knife in his hand, then folds his fingers around the hilt. He wraps his hand around John's, holding it closed with surprising gentleness. His current meatsuit looks like a younger, shorter version of Uncle Jack.

"There's no point in fighting any more," he says, and any illusion of gentleness is gone. "It will all be over soon."

John grips the knife tightly. He licks his lips and nods.

There is no point. Whatever plan Gabriel was boasting about looks like it has died before it could get started. He hasn't seen the archangel in years, and even though Zadkiel stays nearby, she has fallen as silent as Raguel.

There's nothing more that he can do. There's not a damned thing he can do for his sons, not any more. He can't even hope that this story will end with both of them alive.

He sees Dean shoot Sam then turn the gun on himself.

He sees a yellow-eyed Sam snap Dean's neck.

They've already lost. Even Gabriel has given up.

At least the knife gives him something he can do. He knows it's stupid, he knows it's the worst thing he can do, but what else is there?

His hand tightens around the leather-wrapped hilt. Alastair draws in a breath and slides his own hand away.

"There. Now was that so hard?"

Alastair actually helps John off the blood-stained table and keeps a grip on his shoulder until John is steady on his own feet.

It's been a long time since he has stood on his own.

"Not hard at all," John rasps. He looks around the workroom. The battered steel cabinets haven't been changed in nearly a century, but they look different from this angle.

From this angle, they look full of possibility.

Alastair claps his hands together like he's a car salesman who has just sealed the deal. "Let's get started."

John nods. It still feels strange to be allowed to move of his own volition. "Let's," he says.

He stabs Alastair in the gut.

Alastair snarls and backhands John into a cabinet. The knife goes spinning off into a corner. Before John can slide to the ground, Alastair is there, jamming a knee into John's groin. He grips the sides of John's face. The almost-familiar face is bright red, and spit sprays as he rants.

"You pathetic little maggot! You festering pustule!" Alastair presses his thumbs into the corners of John's eyes. "Did you think you were the first meat-sack to try a stunt like that?"

Any satisfaction John might have felt bursts as a thumb gouges into his eye.

"Do you want to feel what she felt when she died? Do you, John?"

The pressure on his other eye lifts, and the crushing pain between his legs begins to recede. Instead of sliding down to the floor, John begins to slide up as an invisible hand grips his throat and drags him towards the ceiling.

Azazel walks in. He says nothing, but leans against a doorframe that leads into what looks like the upstairs hall of the Lawrence house. There's a flicker of a smile as Alastair slowly cuts across John's belly.

"It wasn't fast," Alastair tells him, giving the knife a final, loving flick. "She was alive when she burned. She lived for a long time."

A thin line of searing heat traces down John's spine, then bursts out to either side like wings unfurling.

Azazel continues to watch. He grins as the fire spreads and wraps itself around John.

"Did you ever wonder if she thought it was worth it, in the end?"

He hears his own skin and fat begin to sizzle and pop.

"All those years of happy bliss you two had. Were they really that happy?"

Every time the fire consumes him, he is remade. Over and over again. Even the eye that Alastair gouged out is re-created only to burst in the flames.

"You're a good man, John. A righteous man. You of all people should be able to be honest with yourself."

The flames devour him again, but before they do, John sees that Azazel has walked into the room.

"You've been here, what, nearly a hundred years. That's some kind of stubbornness."

The flames recede, then burst out again. There is movement in the hallway behind Azazel. Someone else has joined the party.

"You're a tough nut to crack, John," Azazel says. "But that shell of yours is starting to give way.

This time, when the flames die back again, John sees who is standing between his two torturers.

She looks just like she did before the fire. Her golden hair and white nightgown glow against the filth of the workroom.

"Mary..."

The fire takes him again. Mary simply stares up at him.

He knows that look.

He knows that everything he has clung to for more than a century has been nothing more than an illusion.

The illusion begins to shatter.

In truth, it had shattered a long, long time ago.

"Mary!"

She gives him one last look of tired contempt and walks out the door.



John had a hard time remembering the birth of his second child as a joyous event, but on Sam's one month birthday, the thing John remembered most was going home from the hospital exhausted to the bone yet wired with terror, feeling like he had been flayed down to the last nerve.

As bad as that was, he knew it was nothing compared to what Mary had gone through. When she had gone into labor with Dean, it took a couple of hours of 'weird twingey things' and an eventual consultation with 'What to Expect' and two girlfriends before she figured out what was happening.

This birth was heralded by a contraction hard enough to make Mary scream and clutch the back of a chair to keep from falling to her knees. Her labor was swift and violent, ending in a rush of doctors and John being hustled to the far end of the delivery room before he could think to react. He remembered this sort of quiet panic from the field hospital, the efficient chaos as a team of doctors fought in vain to save the dying man on the table next to his.

Their baby was not breathing when he was born. He was still, so still, and five seconds went by, then ten, then an eternity, and then at last he heard the thin, angry wail of his newborn son.

Yes, the story had a happy ending, but their baby boy had come far too close to capping off a harrowing nine months of waiting and near-disaster by dying ten years to the day after Mary's parents had died.

When Mary had gone into labor earlier that morning, the morning of May fucking second, she started sobbing, and not just because the contractions were ripping through her. All the way to the hospital she kept pleading for her baby to wait another day, just one more fucking day, please, please not today of all days...

The thing John remembered more than his own terror when his son came out still and blue was the look of blank resignation on Mary's face. It was almost as if she was relieved that the worst had finally happened and she could finally stop worrying and move on to grieving.

There was little of the joy he remembered when Dean was born, not even when the baby started bellowing loud enough to rattle the ceiling tiles. The expression on Mary's face when the doctor handed her child to her wasn't what John would have expected. If he hadn't known better, he would have said it was dread. Then, the tight line of her mouth relaxed, and she smiled down at her new son. He was alive, he was well, and he could yell even louder than Dean.

"We made it," John said, and he could hardly believe it was true. He was so tired he didn't know if he should be laughing or crying. He reached out and put a hand on his son's head, marveling at the fact that he was finally here. "We all made it."

Mary gave him a look, and he knew exactly what she was thinking:

Not all of us did.

Too many people weren't here to see this child. Dad. Uncle Jack. And, of course, Mary's parents. When she'd had Dean, there were times when she got weepy when she thought of how her girlfriends had had their mothers around when they'd had their children, but it had sounded more wistful than anything. When they had taken her into the delivery room that morning, Mary started sobbing for her mother with a grief and terror so raw it scared him shitless.

He still saw traces of that fear and sadness behind her smile as she gazed down at her child.

"Why don't we name him after your father?" John blurted out before Mary could call the baby by the name they'd chosen for a boy months ago.

She was so taken aback he didn't know what to think at first. "Are you sure?" she asked, and the tremor in her voice said he'd done the right thing.

"Yeah. Besides, he doesn't really look like a 'Jack,' if you ask me."

He told himself they could use the name for their next child, but he knew better than to say so after everything they'd been through to get this one.

Mary blinked away tears and smiled without any grief or any fear as she bent down to kiss her son on his forehead.

"Well, I'm very pleased to finally meet you, Samuel Winchester," she said.

It was a perfect, golden moment, but it didn't last for long. Neither did Mary's smile.

By the time they went home, she had gone back to being silent and scared, and John had no idea what to do about it. He told himself it would pass, but weeks went by and it didn't.

It was was beginning to feel like she was keeping some big secret from him, something horrible, and she was expecting it to blow up in her face at any time.

"What the hell is going on, Mary? I've never seen you this jumpy." All he'd done was say good morning when he walked into the kitchen, and she'd nearly hit the ceiling.

"Don't sneak up on me like that," she said. She gave him a quick glare and went back to cleaning up the formula she'd spilled.

"I wasn't sneaking. I was walking into my kitchen and saying 'good morning' to my wife."

She sighed. "Why do you always get so defensive?"

"Why do you always get so touchy?" he retorted, even though he knew it probably the stupidest thing he could ask. He saw she was about to fire something back, and he held up his hands in a gesture of surrender. "Sorry, sorry. Forget I said that. Just tell me what's wrong, okay?"

"Nothing." She held his gaze for a long time, daring him to back down or to say something. He gave as good as he got, and at last she looked sharply to the side. Somehow, it still felt like he'd lost that particular battle. "It's not 'nothing,' but it's not your problem. I'm fine. I'll be fine."

"Mary..."

"Leave it alone, John."

"Fine." He poured himself a cup of coffee and went to sit out on the porch. If she wanted him to leave it alone, he'd leave it alone. What the hell was wrong with her? She kept jumping at shadows, and he had no idea what to do about it.

Hell, she wouldn't let him do anything about it.

He waited until she left the kitchen before heading back in to drop off his cup. Then he left for work without saying goodbye.

They had had spats like that before--it was hard not to, since each of them came blessed with an abundance of stubbornness--but this one (and the one the day before, and the one the week before that) felt different, for all that it was mild. What that difference was, he couldn't say.

He wished he could talk to his dad about it, or Uncle Jack, but the fact that he couldn't anymore just added to how shitty it all was.

"It's not just that I don't know how to fix it," he told Mike during their lunch break. "It's that I'm having a harder time giving a damn, you know?"

"Ah, you two will work it out," Mike said. It was meant to be reassuring, but there was a hint of doubt. That wasn't much of a surprise; back when John and Mary got serious, Mike had tried to talk him out of it.

Lately, John had moments where he found himself wishing Mike had succeeded.

When he walked in the door at the end of the day, Mary hung up the phone lightning fast even though she'd been mid-sentence when he walked in.

"Who was that?"

"No one," she said too quickly. "Just... an old friend of my dad's. You're late."

"Sorry." He went to the fridge and got out a beer even though he had just had two with Mike. They had finished up early, but they'd ended up staying a half-hour past closing just shooting the shit, and they would have stayed longer except Mike said Katie would skin him alive if he wasn't home before six.

"'Sorry?' That's it? Why didn't you call?"

"Because I didn't realize I was running that late. For God's sake, Mary, I'm only a half-hour late! Why are you making a federal case about it?"

"You were late," she said as if he'd gone simple. "I was worried."

"Well, I'm home." When was the last time they'd greeted each other with a kiss when he came home from work? He tried to remember, but the only time that came to mind was the day before Sam was born. "There's nothing to worry about."

Mary looked very much like she wanted to disagree with him. "I'll have dinner ready in an hour," she said flatly. She was shaking, literally shaking, and he had no idea why. "Go wash up."

"Okay..." John started to leave, but turned before walking out of the room. "Mary, what the hell is going on? You hung up the phone so fast when I walked in it was like it was on fire or something."

"Nothing is going on!" she said, so shrill he couldn't believe her "It was just an--it wasn't a pleasant conversation, all right? I was going to hang up anyway."

"Old friend of your father's?"

Mary nodded. Her lips were pressed together so tightly they were white. "I last spoke to him ten years ago," she whispered. "Ten years. I thought he might be able to tell me something about..."

She twisted her hands together so hard it was a wonder her fingers didn't break.

"Happier times?" he suggested, hoping that would lighten the mood.

"I'm happy now." She looked at him as if willing him to understand. "With my family."

"If you're happy, then why did you jump down my throat for being half an hour late getting home?" It was stupid, but he said it anyway. Mary's mood just didn't make any sense.

"Because anything can happen in half an hour!" she said, raising her voice enough that he took a step back. "Don't you get that? Don't you re-- Anyhow, I'm so sorry for being worried when my husband comes home late when normally he calls when he's going to be only five minutes late!"

John laughed, but it sounded wrong, even to him. "Are you kidding me? Now I'm supposed to check in? Are you putting me on a time clock?" He took a breath and forced himself to calm down. He didn't know why, but lately things that would normally make him worried on Mary's behalf just ended up getting on his nerves. "Nothing happened, Mary. I didn't wind up dead in a ditch somewhere, okay? Everything's fine. The kids are fine. What the hell is wrong?"

"That's not the point, John!" she yelled. "That's not the point at all!" She stormed upstairs and she heard a door slam. Five minutes later, John thought about going to check on her, but in the end decided it wouldn't do him any good.

An hour or so later, when she still didn't come downstairs, John made a couple of tuna sandwiches. He and Dean had dinner in front of the TV. He told Dean it was a treat, and he thought that maybe Dean even believed him. Still, the boy was suspiciously compliant when bedtime came.

When he went up to bed, their door was closed in a clear signal that he was more than welcome to sleep on the living room couch.

When he went up the next morning to get dressed, he opened the door only to find no one in their bed. Mary had even made the bed already.

"What the hell?" he muttered. The couch was near the foot of the stairs, so he would have heard her come down--it wasn't like he had slept soundly.

She had probably gone to Sam's room to feed and change him, he thought groggily. He became un-groggy very quickly when he saw there was no sign of Mary or Sam in the nursery.

He rushed to Dean's room, flinging open the door in a panic. Dean was there. So were Mary and Sam, all huddled up together on Dean's bed. Mary cracked an eye open but didn't say anything. John eased the door shut and went back to their room to get ready to work. He left before the three of them came downstairs.

This was just a rough patch, John told himself. Every couple he knew went through them, so it was about time he and Mary had their turn. Three days later, though, things didn't show any sign of smoothing out.

When he told Mike about it, Mike just rolled his eyes and said it was nice to know that the Winchesters weren't the damn Cleavers after all.

"You're about right on schedule for the seven-year-itch, you know? Plus, she just had a kid." There were times when Mike acted like his three years' seniority as a parent made him an expert.

"She wasn't like this after Dean," John pointed out.

Mike shrugged. "And Katie was a mess for months after Amy was born, but she didn't have a problem after Erin. My money's on the baby blues."

John winced. Mike was probably right. Things had been so touch and go throughout the pregnancy, and it was like all the worry Mary had been trying to hold at bay for all those months came out along with Sam.

That morning, a flickering light over the kitchen table had her jumping back and shrieking like she was about to be electrocuted.

John had laughed, because it was funny, like something out of a cartoon. But Mary had just looked at him as if he'd walked up and slapped her, and then she just sort of folded into her chair, head in her hands so that he couldn't see if she was crying or not.

"Go to work, John," she'd said when he tried to apologize for laughing. "I'm tired. That's all. I'm not mad at you. Just... go away. Please."

He had left as ordered, slamming the door behind him.

"Anyhow, it happens. Katie and me, we've had our moments, but it all worked out okay," Mike said, shrugging and ducking back under the hood of Tom Eldredge's Ford pickup. "You'll get it figured out."

Still, it was fucking exhausting when every conversation managed to turn into a misunderstanding no matter what he did. When Mary had told him to 'go away,' for a second it had sounded like sweet escape.

Maybe one day, he would get in the Impala--just him and the boys--and he'd keep on driving and never stop. He could just write off the Mary Campbell chapter of his life as a mistake and make a fresh start. It was tempting, sorely tempting, but John hated to lose at anything.

Things didn't get any better the next day, or the next, but John told himself it would probably just take time.

Two weeks passed, then a third, and Mary kept going around like she expected one of them to set off a tripwire, and John kept finding reasons to put in more hours at work.

On Sam's one-month birthday, John came home and found Mary pouring out a container of salt by the front steps.

"It's because of the slugs, John!" she said when he confronted her. She threw the empty cylinder at him, hitting him in the chest hard enough to get an oof. "Don't you dare bark at me like I'm one of your stupid Marines, and do not use the f-word where Dean can hear you! What is wrong with you?"

John stalked away without another word. That had sounded so much like the Mary from middle school, the one who openly despised him, that he didn't trust himself not to say something else childishly cruel. He had already said too much.

"What the fuck do you think you're doing, Mary Alice?"

It was the sort of thing he would have said when he was a kid, and it had come out of his mouth too easily just then.

What the hell was wrong with him? What was wrong with them?

That night over dinner, when Mary bent her head to say something to Dean, the lamplight flashed gold in her hair in a way that just a few months ago would have made his breath catch in his throat and his mind go blank with just how much he loved her.

This time, though, it was just lamplight and it was just hair. Whatever magic had been there was gone. He didn't remember any kind of fading away leading up to that point, just the feeling that someone had flipped a switch when he wasn't looking and things had changed.

He didn't feel horror or dismay, just a sort of numb weariness when he realized he wasn't sure he loved her. In fact, it was hard to believe he ever had. More and more, the way he and Mary had fallen in love (so hard, so sudden) was beginning to sound like just another one of Uncle Jack's stories.

It felt like something that had happened to someone else if it had ever happened at all.

When Mary realized he was staring at her, she looked up and met his eyes. She didn't say anything, but John knew she was wondering the same thing he was:

Who are you? Why are you even here?

Why am I?



He no longer knows what is real and what is false.

The visions become less extreme. More real. Harder to fight against. He is so played out that all Azazel needs to do is give his mind a little nudge, and his own fears and memories roll along all on their own.

There are the times when Sam is never born. He dies in the womb and takes Mary with him.

Mary's scream wakes him and he runs upstairs, only she's not on the ceiling, she's kneeling by Sammy's crib and keening over her dead son. After that, John can only remind her of her son's death, and she takes Dean and walks out on them, never to come back.

He goes upstairs because something is wrong, and there's no Sam and no Mary. When he goes to Dean's room, Dean is gone. All that is left is a note on the kitchen table: Mary has left and she is never coming back. John is not to try to find her.

She never loved him. That is the one truth behind all the illusions, behind all the false memories.

It was never real.

It was only a means to an end. His boys were important. He wasn't. Neither was she.

Whatever they had was a sham.

He was a pawn, and so was she.

This was never his story. Never their story.

When he returns to Limbo, nothing happens. Raguel circles below him, and Zadkiel drifts morosely alongside him. None of them has anything to say to the others.

They hang there for a year with no interruptions. Alastair doesn't pull him in from interrogation. Raguel doesn't get any challengers.

By then, John has given up trying to talk to her. Since that one time when she spoke with two different voices, she has remained silent.

John almost starts to wish that Alastair would put him on the rack again. That would be better than replaying everything he ever believed about Mary and seeing it for the lie that it is.

Then, without warning, Gabriel returns.

Hi, guys. Miss me?

Raguel lunges at him, snarling. Gabriel skitters back to a safe distance

I'll... take that as a yes?

Zadkiel swoops at him, and in her nonsense, John thinks he can hear the kind of demand he used to get from Sam on occasion.

Where were you?

It used to anger him, when he would hear it upon coming back to his motel room at two in the morning, desperate for painkillers and a shirt that wasn't sticky with his own blood.

"I thought you were never coming back!"

It always sounded like an accusation. What he had never heard was the fear at being left alone.

He wonders how much of the fear he hears now is Zadkiel, and how much is Michelle. He wonders if there is any difference at this point.

I had work to do, Gabriel says with a shortness that sounds familiar. John used to say much the same thing once upon a time.

There's a sense of the archangel taking a deep breath, and then he is back to his old self again. Mostly. He seems much smaller, now.

Anyhow, how's tricks? I'm guessing you haven't taken the knife.

He tells Gabriel he hasn't. It's not quite a lie, but he's being as truthful with Gabriel as Gabriel has been with him--only to a point.

Good. Keep it that way. I'm guessing the pressure's on.

Yes.

Even though he can't see it, he can tell that Gabriel blinks in surprise.

That bad, huh?

It's all John can do not to laugh. That bad? He sees his children's deaths over and over. One of these days, he'll take the knife for real. It's inevitable.

Don't! Not now! There's no pretense at coolness or humor. You can't! That is the one thing you cannot do!

But why? Why shouldn't he give in? None of this means anything anyway.

Don't be a fucking idiot, John. Gabriel comes in too close, too fast, and Raguel surges up. There's a press of power from Gabriel and Raguel stops cold. Stop it, Rags. I mean it.

For the first time, John feels something like fear from Raguel.

Don't. Give. In. You'll ruin everything, Gabriel says.

What does it matter? Everything is already ruined.

A slit opens in the red, and the angels draw back out of sight as Alastair pulls him back into the workroom.

Mary watches impassively as Alastair slices away his flesh bit by bit. At the end, she is the one who holds out the knife to him, hilt first. His eye is drawn to the fall of her nightgown, how the neckline drapes just so, marking the perfect spot for him to plunge the blade...

He looks away and doesn't take the knife.

Was any of what they had real?

It's so hard to remember.

Mary never loved him.

When did it all go so wrong?

How much of it was real, he demands when he returns to Limbo.

How much of what was real? Gabriel asks impatiently. Do you think Azazel is any closer on moving with his plans?

I don't know! Now tell me. Mary... was any of it real?

Why are you asking me?

John doesn't know. He doesn't even know what answer he wants Gabriel to give him.

Okay... Why did you even doubt it in the first place? Gabriel asks with a pointedness that seems very strange.

Again, John doesn't know. Azazel lies, but so many of his lies are rooted in the truth.

Dig deep. Not just to this whole doubt thing. You'd have that anyway. Doubt is what relationships are about, and I know, because I've had a few hundred in my lifetime. Look deep into your heart.

Gabriel being that cheesy is surprising enough to knock John out of his funk.

Gabriel sighs. I meant literally, dumbass. Look deep into your heart. There should be a scar or something there.

Okay....

John looks.

At first glance, there is plenty of physical damage, and he realizes that he would have been gone in a year or two even without Azazel.

Go deeper.

He looks deeper.

There is a scar, just as Gabriel had said. A literal scar that persists despite the number of times his body has been torn to bits.

Closer.

He looks closer.

It's a symbol in an language he thinks he should know how to read. Even though it persists, something about it reminds him of a filament in a burnt out bulb.

What does it say? he asks Gabriel.

It's Enochian, so it's pretty long and complicated. Rough translation, "John and Mary, sitting in a tree, K I S S I N G."

John doesn't believe him.

I said it was a rough translation. Basically, you and Mary were played and played good. Your bloodlines needed to come together, and my brother was even willing to fuck around with death to make that happen. Cupid's arrow ain't just a metaphor, bucko.

A fragment of story flickers through his memory. A snowy night. A car the color of sweet cream. Two people who never would have met under ordinary circumstances locking eyes and falling in love.

You think that pisses you off? Just wait, there's more...

He scoots up real close to John, and he tells Raguel to mind her own business if she hears screaming.

Honestly, I have no idea why she's taken to you like this. Normally it's all smite, smite, smite with that one. Hey, lookit me! I'm the vengeance of the Lord!

He feels something press against his forehead. It feels like a hand and it feels like a supernova.

What are you doing?

Giving a loose tooth a little nudge. Hold on, this'll only hurt a lot.



It wasn't that they fought all the time. That wasn't the problem. John wasn't entirely sure what the problem was, and he got the feeling that Mary didn't, either.

June went by, and then July, and the jumpiness that had made Mary seem like a different person began to subside.

He wasn't sure what had been eating at her, or why it had stopped, but it mattered less than it would have just a few months ago.

"I know I've been kind of a wreck lately," Mary said at dinner one Sunday out of the blue, just after pointing out that Sam would be three months old on Tuesday. "But I think everything'll be okay, now."

"That's good," John said. Why bother saying any more? Mary wasn't about to offer up any explanation as to why she'd been on a knife's edge for so long or what happened to change it--if anything had changed. When Mary had made that declaration, it didn't sound like she was trying to convince him.

He knew better than to dig any deeper, because those conversations never ended well.

"Nice to know you care," she said with a bright sarcasm he was coming to hate. They ate the rest of their dinner in strained silence, with Dean looking back and forth at each of them fearfully as if wondering when the yelling would start.

They both made a point of being perfectly civil throughout the rest of the meal. After all, the didn't fight all the time.

When they did fight, it always seemed to be over stupid things.

Sometimes they fought because when John wanted to put his feet up for just ten stinking minutes after a long day at work, he didn't appreciate being made to feel like a layabout. Mary said she didn't appreciate him acting as if looking after a newborn and a hyperactive toddler and keeping the house clean and having dinner on the table for her poor, overworked husband didn't count as work.

John said he never said that. Mary said it wasn't about what he said or didn't say. It was about what he did or didn't do. Didn't he ever think that she might like ten minutes of peace after her long day?

If Mary wanted help with the boys, he said, then maybe she should stop telling him he was doing it wrong when he tried. She told him that if he wanted to help, maybe he should start listening to her when she told him what kind of help he needed.

They fought because Dean had figured out that if one parent said no, the other might say yes.

They fought over what music to listen to in the car, what to have for dinner, or what to watch on TV.

Finally, one argument ended with him slamming the door and walking until he'd reached Mike's house. He was so out of it he was lucky he hadn't stepped in front of a bus. By the time he reached Mike's house, he couldn't even remember why they'd been fighting.

In the end, it didn't really matter, did it?

Mike greeted him with an ice-cold beer. "Mary called thinking maybe you'd be over here. Things are bad, huh?"

John took the beer gratefully. He would probably take the second one just as gratefully. "Things are bad."

Mike shook his head. "Katie'll let Mary know you're here."

"That's fine." It wasn't, though. Not fine at all.

John didn't think Mary would be calling to tell him to come back. He was feeling more than a little superfluous to needs at the moment.

Still, he called the next day. He had to think things over, he said and he was just calling to let her know that. She reminded him that he had two boys who needed their father, and he said that he didn't need reminding of that, thank you very much.

She waited for him to say something else, but what he wanted to say he couldn't put into words.

She hung up on him.

That night, John stared up at the Guenthers' rec-room ceiling and wondered why it was he couldn't just say that he loved his boys more than anything else in this world, loved them so much it felt more like fear than love. He wanted to say he was afraid he'd never see them again, that she'd take them away, that something would happen...

Dean, with eyes so much like Mary's, and a wicked, wicked grin. Sam, who even though he couldn't talk yet, had a look about him like he already knew so much more than John could ever hope to know.

John could already see how Dean was like him in some ways and maddeningly unlike him in others, and at times he felt as if looking into Sam's still-unfocused eyes was like looking into a mirror.

He'd had them such a small part of his life that losing them terrified him more than mortars, more than tripwires, more than the dreams that had him waking in a cold sweat because someone had told him he was supposed to be dead.

The thought never quite came together, but he wondered if maybe this was what Mary had been feeling the past few months, even if he didn't understand the why.

John called her as early as he dared the next morning, but that call didn't go much better than the first one. Mary kept waiting for him to say the right thing, and John kept waiting for some hint as to what that might be. Or maybe he was waiting for her to say it was over.

When he hung up, he had a sudden memory of how resigned she had looked when Sam come out so still and so blue.

They had had their share of fights over the years, but they always found it easy to apologize, easy to see what needed to be put right. The work needed to put things right wasn't always easy, but there was never any question that it was worth it. Not like now.

He had been so in love with her. She had been so in love with him. What had happened? Where had it gone?

That night, John stayed at work until six. He got in his car at five thirty, but he didn't leave the parking lot. He just sat there in the Impala, twisting his wedding ring around and around his finger, studying it as if he'd never seen it before. The love he had once felt for Mary Campbell now seemed like a madness. Like a storm. Like an all-consuming fire. Like something so big he shouldn't even try to fight it.

But then it was gone. Just like that. Sam was born, the clock struck twelve, and the spell was broken. The fire went out.

So what was left? Or had there even been anything there to begin with?

He twisted his ring and he looked through his memories, and so little of what he saw seemed real. Even that first, nervous date seemed like a strange dream. Now, like a vivid dream in the clear light of morning, it seemed completely nonsensical. Illogical.

John stared through the windshield and looked at every memory of Mary five, six, a hundred times.

Everything looked so different in the absence of that burning, burning light. They looked different enough that it took him much longer than it should have to see that some of the things he saw were real.

That strange little girl, coming up to to talk to him when no one else would. "I'm sorry about your mom", she said soft as a whisper. The leaves shone fire-gold behind her and he truly saw them and her for the first time ever. "I really am."

At the time, he wished she hadn't run off right after.

Now, he wondered what might have happened if he'd gone after her.

"Give her five minutes, son, then go looking."

He looked through his memories some more. It turned out that maybe she hadn't gone all that far after all.

He had seen her again, mussy and golden in her prom dress, looking up at his window and laughing merrily at his surprise. She had known he had look to see where she had gone, and she had waited for him to look before turning and running home.

She kept showing up over and over again, in little moments. A wry smile in the morning when both were too tired and undercaffeinated to exchange words. The grateful look when he got up in the middle of the night to check on Dean or Sam. Leaving him alone after his father had died, but always tapping on the door five minutes after he'd sequestered himself to let him know where she would be if he needed anything. Little things. Lots of things.

He had seen her again in the exhaustion after Sam's birth, in the look she had given him when he offered the gift of a name that had the power to take away the sting of the past.

Once he saw that, he began to see that not everything over the past few months had been bad. Worse than normal, but not bad.

Maybe he had been too blinded by the after-image of illusory flames that had flared up and burned out so suddenly that he just couldn't see the warm, steady glow of a well-banked fire for what it was.

This fire comforted, but it didn't blind and consume. It was hearth and home and the touch of a familiar hand. It was laughing at a joke that you knew a certain someone else would like even if you thought it was corny. It was a passion that felt familiar and a friendship that would always feel surprising. It was loving someone and liking someone and knowing that whatever happened, you would have each other's back.

He knew this, and the fact that he had seriously thought about throwing it all away as worthless scared him to death.

What he didn't know was what Mary felt, and getting out of the car and walking back into the garage and making that call was one of the most frightening things he had done in his entire life.

"Are you done thinking?" she said sharply when he said 'Hi, Mary.' There wasn't even a hello.

"Yes." He tried hard not to snap back, no matter how scared he was. Yes, she could get on his last nerve. She could bring out the worst in him at times, and he in her. That might not ever change. But there was so much more besides that, even though he had only seen the bad in the past few months. Now he wanted a chance to get to know all the good he might have missed over the past ten years because he was so blinded by other things. "I am."

"And?" It was a challenge. It was a plea.

John had no idea what to say, let alone how to say it.

"I want to come home," he said.

"Then--"

"Wait," he said, cutting off what he knew would be a sharp 'then just come home.' "Do you want me to come home. None of this stuff about the boys needing their dad, because you know I would never, ever abandon them."

His voice rose even though he didn't mean it to.

"I know that, John," she said in a quiet, defeated voice that broke his heart.

He had never thought that having his heart broken could come as such a relief. He thought again about how quiet and scared she had been, and he wished he could go back and fix it.

"Things, uh, things have been kinda rough, I know. We haven't been that nice to each other recently." There might be more fights, there might be blame, but that didn't matter. He hoped he could say what he needed to say and that she would be able to hear it.

"No, we haven't," she agreed, and he almost told her that none of this was her fault, that it was all his, because she sounded so damned miserable. It would have been false, though, as false as the flames that no longer seemed real.

"So let me try asking that another way. This has nothing to do with the boys. This is about you, and about me. Us. Do you want me to come home?"

Her silence was long enough to make him worry.

"I think so?" she said with an uncertainty that he rarely heard from her. "I've been thinking about that a lot, the past few days."

"So have I." He had no idea how this conversation would end, and he braced himself for the words that could break him. "I think we can make this work, Mary. I really do. I want to make it work."

"Yes." It was a sigh, a prayer. It told him that she had been bracing as hard as he had, maybe even harder. "So do I. Making it work's going to be work, though."

The fact that he instinctively bristled at an accusation she didn't make just confirmed her statement. "For both of us," he said, hoping like hell that didn't come across as defensive or accusatory. He took a breath and paused long enough so he could put words around what he was thinking. "But if it's the both of us, together, though, we can make it work. Hell, we can do anything."

To his surprise, he heard a snort of laughter on the other end of the line. "Sorry, I shouldn't laugh, but that sounds almost like you're doing some cheesy rewrite of our wedding vows."

"Maybe I am," he said, because it was kind of true.

"Well, our anniversary is in two weeks. It'll be nice to really celebrate." There was real laughter, now, and a lightness that had been missing since she went into labor on the tenth anniversary of her parents' deaths. "Maybe I don't have to worry any more."

She sounded a little doubtful, though.

"Worry about what?"

"Nothing," she said, sharp with that old defensiveness, but she was quick to apologize. "Just... a lot of old stuff got dredged up the past few months and, well, maybe I don't have to worry quite so much any more. John..."

He heard a sound on the other end of the line that made him think maybe she was trying not to cry. For the first time in what felt like a long time he wished he could be at her side. He might not be able to fix what was wrong, but at least he could be there.

"It's okay, Mary." He meant it. "You don't have to talk about it if you don't want to."

There was another long silence. "Thank you," she whispered. "Maybe someday, but... I'm sorry about everything, and yes, I know it's not all my fault, but a lot of it is, and... I can't really explain it, but I was so worried about my family that I almost wrecked it."

"But you didn't," he pointed out.

"So you're coming home? Tonight?"

While she hadn't actually given an answer to his original question, he knew what the answer was all the same. The eagerness in her voice had him smiling broader than he had in a long time.

"Yup. Why don't I pick up something for dinner on the way home?"

On the way home. That sounded good.

"Not pizza. Please not pizza," she groaned and it was his turn to laugh because he knew everything was going to be okay.

No, that magical first love that had lasted so long might have faded, but he had a feeling something better had been left in its wake.

It had been there for a while, for all that it still felt new. John didn't know all that much about what it would look like tomorrow, a year from now, or fifty years from now, but he knew it was real.



Reality was a sharp impact and a flare of pain. The world turned upside down.

"Hang on!" Deacon yelled. He pressed down on John's wound.

John tried to tell him to stop but he couldn't speak.

Deacon pressed down harder. "Just a little longer, so don't you dare crap out on me now, Marine!"

He heard the thrum of choppers overhead. Deacon's face began to gray out along with everything else.

"Just a little longer!" Deacon's voice grew shrill even as it faded into the gray. "God damn it, John, don't you fucking do this to me!"

John barely felt the whip and sting of dust as the choppers drew near earth.

This had happened. So had many other things. He remembered an impact, but nothing else. How had he gotten here? Mortar, right? Wait, no... was it a mine?

It didn't matter. Either way, it was over.

He heard footsteps over the whupwhupwhup of slowing chopper blades.

"Significant passenger side intrusion! Unresponsive. BP is one-eighty over sixty, heartrate ninety-five, ninety-five!" Someone was at his side, and he felt a pressure around his arm and on his throat.

It wasn't Deacon. Where was Deacon?

Another voice cut through the chaos. "Tell me if they're okay!"

Sam... That was Sam. This wasn't Vietnam, so why were there helicopters? Where was Dean?

Sam kept shouting. "Are they even alive?"

John's arm went cold with pain as he was jostled and lifted. He was aware of one paramedic at his head, another at his feet as they ferried him towards the chopper. Someone else fell into step alongside them, keeping pace even though he seemed unhurried.

"A semi plowed into your car, in case you were wondering," this new person said. He sounded both bored and annoyed. John wished Deacon would come back instead. "Both you and your older son have extensive injuries. Potentially fatal, in his case. It's a difficult call under your family's particular circumstances. Difficult even for me."

John looked up, even though he was fairly sure his eyes were closed. A gaunt old man in dress blues climbed into the chopper alongside him.

Harry? No. This man was far older and far more skeletal. He was also the most sober person John had ever seen in his life.

The dress blues he knew from decades of nightmares shifted into an undertaker's black suit. The man's hands folded over the head of a sturdy, elegant cane. John's gaze was drawn to a large ring with a square, white stone.

"You were meant to die thirty-five years ago," he informed John. "But there was interference."

John laughed bitterly. He remembered how this went. He was dead, and it was messing with the paperwork.

"You have no idea," the man drawled. "There is a certain amount of leeway given for the inevitable bargains and deals and miracles, but this has gone far beyond the pale. What I'm trying to figure out is why."

"Why..." John asked. "Why didn't Sam kill the demon?"

The man snorted in contempt. "Sentiment, no doubt. That's the way it is with you humans. The point is, you should be dead. So should Dean. Rather, he shouldn't even exist. Someone is meddling, and I have my suspicions as to who that is. As I said, I do not know why. Yet. I am far more restricted in my agency than you might surmise. There are, however, ways. And I am very, very patient."

He reached out and rested the flat of his ring on John's forehead.

"I know who you are," John whispered. "So, it's over?"

"Don't be melodramatic," Death said. "I'm giving you another extension. After thirty-five years, the damage is more than done, so a little longer shouldn't matter. Besides, let us just say that your unique nature should give you some advantages. It lets you slip through the cracks, shall we say."

Death smiled, or at least the corners of his mouth lifted.

"Or maybe it's more accurate to say that you can slip between the lines. Oh, yes. I am aware of those penny-dreadfuls of yours, although I don't believe many of the other players in this drama are. I shall be watching you with great interest, John Winchester. It goes without saying that I will also be watching your sons."

John tried to tell him to stay the hell away from his boys, but the chopper was landing and he was drifting back towards true consciousness.

Death sighed. "I do wish I could see into those memories of yours. So many answers to so many questions... I suppose you and I will learn them when you're dead."

But that would be too late.

"It's only too late when the story is completely over," Death said. He vanished just as the chopper landed at the hospital.



Once he comes down from the white-hot high of the pain, John realizes that Gabriel could probably give Alastair a few lessons.

Now what do you see?

He sees Dean, older and sadder and wiser. He hears his own voice telling Dean certain things. About bloodlines. And manipulation. And Destiny.

It's the same voice that told him how to pull the curtain across his mind. It's the same voice that told him how physical torture paved the way for the dissolution of the soul. It's his own voice, but he isn't the one speaking.

That, in case you didn't know, was my dear brother Michael. You would have remembered this all on your own sooner or later, but from what you're telling me, I think time's running out. That means it was time to give you a nudge.

John is still listening to the memory. Dean is saying something about Mary, and how she'll forget the warning he gave her not to go into the nursery...

She could have been saved.

This all could have been avoided.

Yes. It could have, Gabriel says, and he knows better than to joke around. Even Raguel shrinks back.

Now that's what I want to see, Gabriel says. That's some damn fine righteous fury. And here you doubted that you really loved that woman? Please.

"Her name is Mary." His voice--his actual voice--rings throughout Limbo for the first time.

Yes! Yes! That's it!

He remembers that prayer she used to say. He knows what it means, now.

He doesn't much appreciate Gabriel's cackling.

He knew the angels had interfered. He had never imagined how much. He had never known how high the stakes were.

Well, he knew now, and he clung to that knowledge like an anchor even though there was nothing he could do about it.

Part 12