The Winchesters arrived at Bobby Singer’s place a day later than they’d meant to, and he had been getting a little worried. Dean’s deal was almost due, and to say the boys were in trouble was something of an understatement; as far as he knew, Sam had not been able to find anything that would help him save his brother.
Although apparently they had found a girl. Trust those two. She climbed out of the back seat of the Impala with an awkward grace, blonde hair cut to shoulder-length, jeans and a man’s leather jacket. Recovering from injuries, Bobby thought; that was why her movements seemed a little off-kilter. Gave the junk-yard an interested look, surveying it all carefully before following the boys over to him.
“Hey, Bobby,” Dean said, looking unnaturally cheerful for a guy who’s about to go to Hell, “how you been?”
“You’re late,” Bobby retorted, ignoring the question. “Who’s your friend?” Not that he didn’t trust them, but times were strange to say the least, so he felt he had the right to be a little suspicious.
Sam started to grin. “Well…”
The girl sauntered up to them with a very familiar smile curving her mouth. Hazel-green eyes and that sharp nose… Bobby was sure he’d seen her face before. He guessed her age at mid-twenties, like Sam; but up close, she looked pretty bad, too-thin and very pale.
“I’m Mary Winchester,” she said, voice low and husky as if her throat were bruised and raw. “Nice to meet you, Mr. Singer. I’ve heard a lot about you from Dean and Sammy.”
Bobby just gaped. Out of his sight for five minutes and they show up again with a chick claiming to be their dead mother?
“Mom’s… kind of immortal,” Sam said, biting on his lower lip to keep in the laughter.
“Emphasis on the ‘kind of’,” Mary said. “It’s all a little complicated.”
“I think,” Bobby said carefully, dropping the wrench and stepping away from the car he’d been tinkering with, “I think this calls for a drink. Or three.”
“They’re spiked with holy water,” Dean told Mary cheerfully.
“I won’t even grimace,” she promised.
Mary was pretty sure Singer’s first instinct had been to ask the boys ‘Are you mad?’, but to his credit, he waited until he thought she was out of earshot.
“Jesus fuck, Bobby,” Dean hissed. “You think we don’t know what we’re doing? What would Lilith possibly gain from setting this up?”
“I don’t know,” Singer said sharply. “But listen. Immortality’s a myth, Dean. Impossible for humans. There’s no spell on earth that could grant you it, and no witch powerful enough to cast it.”
“I said kind of immortal,” Mary said, rejoining them. Singer looked a little embarrassed, but still suspicious.
“You’ll forgive me for thinking that’s crap, ma’am,” he said dryly.
“Show him John’s letter,” Mary said quietly. The boys exchanged a quick uncomfortable look – they were close to Singer, but this was too private and personal for comfort. Then Sam handed it over. Singer read it through with – surprise? Disbelief? Mary wasn’t sure. A part of her was just as reluctant as the boys to show the man John’s letter, but they needed his help, so they had to convince him she wasn’t a demon.
“I remember…” Singer said slowly. “He mentioned this once, this curse. I couldn’t figure out where he’d heard it, or why he was interested – hell, I’m not sure I ever believed the thing existed.”
Mary was all too aware of the bitter lilt to her laughter. “However. I’m the living proof of it.”
Singer eyed her curiously, and then seemed to decide to go for it. “More or less living, anyway. You look terrible.”
Same tone and look as he’d given the boys: blunt, honest, straightforward. No wonder he and John had fallen out; her husband had the same habit of telling truths you didn’t want to hear, only worse.
Mary decided she liked him. “It’s a very long story that we really don’t have time for, Singer. First I need your help if I’m going to get Dean out of this deal.”
Singer stared at her. “You know a way to break a Faustian pact?”
Mary grinned. “There’s no way to break a Faustian pact, Singer. Pacta sunt servanda; it’s a part of the whole free will thing. You want someone out of a deal with a demon, you gotta offer them a better one. And the particular genius of this plan of mine is that it effectively gets rid of two birds with one stone.”
If Bobby still had any doubts about her, they were swept away by that smirk. Every curve and line of it was the same as Dean’s.
A short while later, the Winchesters and Bobby sat in the living room, surrounded by books and mugs of coffee. Mary was staring into hers thoughtfully; when they’d all settled in, she put it down and turned to Sam.
“All right then. Let’s get started. Sammy, do you know what Azazel did to you that night?”
“How d’you mean, did?” Dean asked blankly.
Sam shifted a little, cleared his throat, glanced over at him. “He – uh – he made me – um – there’s demon blood in me.”
“What!” Dean yelled, practically jumping up. “Demon blood! Why didn’t you tell me?”
“Oi,” Mary muttered, leaning back her chair with a grimace. Singer looked equally amazed.
“You were gonna go to Hell, I didn’t want to… worry you.” Sam didn’t even yell back. Mary almost swore he squirmed, like Dean’s anger was the only thing that could make him feel bad about anything.
“Worry me?” If possible, Dean’s next yell got even louder.
Mary slammed the mug down on the table with a thunk. “Enough, she said, voice low and angry. “You can row about this later. We can row about this later; Sam, the next time you keep secrets like that from either of us I’ll kill you myself, clear? I’d have thought you’d realised by now that this isn’t something you can keep to yourself without consequences.”
If she’d been Dad, Sam would have yelled right back. But Mom had a quiet intensity to her when angry that was more than a little frightening.
Dean, on the other hand, didn’t look in the least bit intimidated. He subsided into his chair still glaring furiously, dividing it up between mother and brother.
God, Mary wished John was here. He, surely, would know how to deal with this… would be able to stop the argument before it even started.
“All right. We done with the temper-tantrums? Good.”
Singer, she couldn’t help but notice, looked amused. He tipped his mug to her, almost imperceptibly; a sort of congratulations, a bit of encouragement, like he knew what a handful they were.
Mary was almost sure he hadn’t meant for the gesture to hurt her the way it did, the idea that a stranger knew her sons better than she did.
“Do you know about Lilith? What she’s up to?”
“Broadly, yes,” Singer answered. “Takin’ your yellow-eyed friend’s place, right?”
“She’s got a contract on us, too,” Dean added.
Doesn’t everybody?” Singer said dryly.
Mary grinned. “It’s
a little more complicated than that. Lilith wants her competition out of the picture, see. She wants to able to tell her hordes that her claim to Azazel’s throne is undisputed. She can’t do that if his designated heir is still around. Her position’s still precarious. She’s not totally accepted yet, and she’ll go to any lengths to strengthen it. Demon politics aren’t so different than the human ones, you know.”
“Demons have politics,” Dean muttered with a grimace. “But if she’s so eager to get Sam out of the way, why stop to make a deal with you, Mom? Why not just saunter in and kill us all”
“She’s afraid of me,” Mary said, still grinning. It had an almost savage slant now. “They all are. It’s one of the few advantages of my… condition. They don’t know what I am, see. I’m human, true… but obviously not pure human enough to die permanently. Not to mention I’m pretty much the best there is in this business.”
Singer laughed. “That title used to be John’s,” he said.
“Tell me why I’m not surprised. John can’t lose at anything. He literally doesn’t know how.”
Mary didn’t even realise she’d used the present tense until she saw Dean look away, eyes clouding over. She knew he was dead, Mother had told her, the boys had told her
the whole story just the other night, the cabin, Azazel, the crash, their voices low and broken, but still, somehow, she couldn’t comprehend it, not really. John dead – the idea was ridiculous, because he was
John, always solid and unshakeable and
there.
She shook off the sharp sting of grief and forced her mind back to the issue at hand.
“So. The terms Lilith agreed to were these: if I bring her Sammael, she will release Dean from his contract, and has sworn an oath never to raise a hand against my bloodline again.”
“Sneaky,” Singer observed. “And dangerous. What if she’d noticed?”
Mary shook her head. “Didn’t you hear me say she was desperate? And she’s always been careless. Doesn’t stop to think things through. As a rule, she doesn’t need to. Too much raw power to back her up.”
“OK,” Sam said. “So… look. I don’t understand how you’re going to give her me, but not?”
“Sammael, not Sam,” Dean said slowly, feeling his way through it. “It’s not natural. The blood, the demon blood, it’s like – it’s a sort of… of alien entity?”
God, she was proud of him.
“You know the fairy-tale about
the Snow Queen? The one by Hans Christian Anderson?”
Dean sat forward, eyes bright with excitement, and she knew it had clicked. “You mean the boy? Kay, right? The one with the-“
“-shard of the Devil’s mirror in his heart,” Mary said, nodding.
“Dude,” Sam said. “Snow Queens?”
“Sammy, come on. You don’t remember that?”
“I remember the story. Why do you?”
“There was a whole book of them! I used to have to read them to you all the frickin’ time.”
“You did?”
“Yes! Every single day. Dad wasn’t allowed near it.”
“…huh.”
“I can not believe you don’t remember that.”
“Sorry. But, uh… how’s it relevant?”
Mary smiled at them. The idea of John not being allowed to read Sam stories made her giggle inwardly; he’d always been the one to read to Dean. And her. She loved his voice; his deep warm drawl had been one of the first things she’d noticed about him. “Well, the story is about a boy who gets a shard of an enchanted mirror in his heart, right? After that, he’s only able to see the bad in people, their worst traits. Azazel did something very similar to you, Sam.”
“Alien entity, Sammy,” Dean said, sounding almost gleeful. “John Hurt moments, coming up!”
“You can’t be serious!” Sam said, sounding horrified.
“There’s not gonna be any blood involved, ya eejit,” Singer said with an eye-roll.
“Oh, there probably will, actually. But nothing’s going to explode out of your chest, Sam, I promise you. Nothing corporeal, anyway.”
Dean snickered. Sam just stared at his mother, still disbelieving. “I – Mom – I’m not possessed, you know.”
“I know, Sammy. Possessions are easier to get rid of, believe me.”
“But then-“
Mary leaned over the table towards him. “In giving you his blood, Azazel put a shard of himself inside you, Sam. A splinter of demon that latched on to you, gave you certain abilities, forged a connection between him and you, and probably between you and the other kids as well. But it’s not you, do you understand? They aren’t your abilities. They may well have latched on to some latent psychic power of your own – I wouldn’t be surprised if both of you had a gift or two – but the point is that Azazel forced them on you.”
“But how does that make me two different people?” Sam protested.
“It doesn’t. But what you need to understand about this… this splinter of demon you’re carrying around with you is that it’s a parasite, Sammy. The whole trick to what Azazel did to you is that it grows. You understand? It feeds on you. On your… your negative emotions, if we’re going to be new age-y about this. It feeds on your pain, and your fear, on guilt and anger. All these things make it stronger, see. Eventually, if you let it, it will be powerful enough to swallow you whole, to become you. A demonic version of Sam Winchester that has no humanity left, no compassion or mercy or love. To all intents and purposes, you become a demon as surely as if you’d spent a thousand years in Hell. And the really genius part? Technically, you’d still be human. No exorcism, no Devil's Trap, no salt or iron could stop you.”
Sam was staring at her wide-eyed and pale. “That’s what happened to Jake, and Ava,” he said quietly. “It took them over, and they…”
“They had to want it,” Mary said. “They had to invite it. That’s what free will is. A choice.”
“Could Dad have known this?” Dean asked softly. “About Sam turning into a demon?”
“He knew enough to summon Azazel,” Mary said quietly. “The last person to discover his name was my Father.”
Dean nodded slowly,
lost in thought. Mary wondered briefly if John had said anything to him, hinted at this.
“How did you know about it, Mom?” Sam asked suddenly. She smiled faintly. “Father guessed some. This isn’t the first time Azazel has tried something like this.”
“So now what?” Singer asked quietly. “If this shard of demon inside Sam is what you’re going to trade for Dean…”
“There’s a way to separate them,” Mary said. “Like drawing a splinter – I can reach in and pull it out. But what I’m going to need after that is a curse-box strong enough to hold this thing, and that won’t be easy to find. I saw the ones you made for John in Black Rock, and they’re not enough.”
“Somehow I get the impression you already know where to find one,” Singer said.
Mary laughed. “My Father used to make them. But how we’d find them now is another question.”
"Do I need to do anything?” Sam cut in. “To get it out, that is.”
“You need to want it out,” Mary told him. “And you need to trust me inside your head.”
Dean whooped. “Sam doesn’t trust anyone inside his head,” he declared.
His brother threw a balled-up paper at him. “If this is what it takes to save your sorry ass, then I’ll do it,” he said.
“Charming, boys.”
Dean sat studying his brother for a minute before looking over at her. “There another way?”
“Dean!” Sam shouted, but their mother simply nodded.
“Sure there is. I could put the same curse on you that Mother laid on me. It would bind your soul to earth and keep it out of Lilith’s clutches, but frankly, I advise against it. It’s only another form of imprisonment, you know, putting up with pain and fear and death and the horrors only humans can inflict on each other over and over instead of just once. Gets kinda lonely, too. The only good thing ever came out of it for me was John. And, consequently, you two. Which is quite a bit, I admit… but still.”
“So where, exactly, are we going to find this curse-box?” Sam asked, glaring at Dean. “I mean, if it’s… oh, no.”
Dean began to grin. “Two birds with one stone. C’mon, it’ll be fun. Introducing her to Mom,
if nothing else.”
Mary wasn’t sure if that was a compliment or not. “Introducing who to me?”
“Bela Talbot,” the boys chorused.
“The girl who stole Father’s pistol while you two were… what, exactly?”
“Dreamwalkin’,” Dean said, still cheerful. “Mercenary who sells occult items for lots of money. Last time we heard from her, she had a place in New York. After that, she contrived to get us arrested, and…yeah. Complicated. But you can find her, right?”
Definitely a compliment, Mary decided. “Of course I can, love. Let me just go outside and fetch my genie costume.”
Dean tilted his head off to one side the way he’d used to at four whenever he thought someone was having him on.
“Mom. Please.”
Mary gave in. “I’ll need something that belonged to her, or that she touched at one time, so we’ll have to go to New York… but yeah. After that, we’re all good.”
Dean started to smirk.
They left South Dakota the next day. Singer had offered to come, just in case, but neither Mary nor the boys wanted anyone else around for any length of time right now, so they’d found what they needed in his library and left with promises to come back as soon as Dean was free.
Now, the Impala was rumbling down the highway, headed east. Sam had fallen asleep in the passenger seat, and Mary was driving. Dean leaned forward over the back of the front seat, hooking his elbows over it, chin on his hands right next to her.
“You OK?”
“Yeah, I’m good. Mom-“ he hesitated, not looking at her, tired eyes fixed on some point in the distance ahead.
“Anything you wanna know, love.”
“Our grandfather didn’t know about this – about Sam, did he? You just didn’t want Bobby to know the whole story.”
“You should drop that ‘dumb small-town mechanic’ act more often,” Mary said, tapping her thumbs lightly against the steering wheel. “No, I didn’t. I’m not very trusting with information about myself. You, John, and Anansi are the only people besides Mother to know anything about me.”
“You’ve got powers like Sam’s, haven’t you?”
“Not exactly. They’re Mother’s legacy, so that makes them mine. Exclusively. I’m just like you, Dean; I’ve just got a few more… talents.”
Dean hmmed and pursed his lips in thought. Mary reached over and gave him a little push backwards. “Go to sleep, love. I’ll wake you up when I get tired.”
Dean quirked an eyebrow at her. “Which will be when?”
“Oh, I don’t know. Never?”
She watched him curl up on the back seat in the rearview mirror; awkward, cramped, but he managed, eyes falling shut almost instantly. Mary could see John in his hands, his nose, the line of his jaw, and she smiled at him sadly before turning her attention back to the highway and the black night they were racing through.
