And We Are Ashes: Chapter 3, Part 1
Nov. 27th, 2006 10:51 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
thecatevariProgress. This is doable. *sighs*
CHAPTER THREE
Things in pieces.
Broken fragments that feel like they cut his hands when he tries to hold onto them. Images, impressions.
And through it all, the sour, metallic-bile taste of fear.
A house, white and prosaic under a lour and uneasy night sky.
Suffocating summer heat and cutting, unnatural cold that freezes the sweat on his back.
Screaming.
In the window, a woman. Her terror bleeds from her just as the unnerving sense of cold seems to bleed from the thick and clotted darkness behind her.
It's like syrup, time; slow and unwilling to move. It feels like he has all the time in the world to see the darkness shift and move behind her, scuttling, unsettling, to see the shadows of the nearby tree (and why does he think it looks familiar?) carve insubstantial scars into her pale skin, to see her startle and turn, hair fanning out in a sun colored arc before she turns back, lips opening wider in a terrified 'o' of a pantomimed scream.
Stop.
Sam jerks himself awake, an almost physical twitch. His eyes open and—as usual—for the first several moments, he has no idea where he is, enclosed in an environment where nothing's familiar. Still, some habits die harder than others; he doesn't lurch upright, exposing himself as awake. Instead he lies, sweating, in place, eyes darting back and forth across the stuccoed ceiling, waiting for memory—good or bad—to come.
Mom. Jess. Dean.
It all hits him again, a many-edged shuriken that cuts and shreds his defenses, leaving him breathless and sick a second time but for different reasons. Sam closes his eyes again and puts his hand over his heart, willing it back to normal speed. He used to do this a lot when he was a little kid, prone to nightmares even then.
Those dreams, at least, had been mostly manifestations of his (so far) unfounded fears; dreams of Mom or Dean dying and leaving him all alone in the world among strangers and monsters he was too small and too weak to fight on his own. Sam would wake up in the dark and—if they were 'home'—watch Dean and Mary sleep, his hand over his chest, his heart slowly synchronizing with their drowsing breath.
Finally, the tightness of his chest eases and he sits up slowly, the fragments of his dream still strangely clear, strangely vivid in his mind. There's a pad of paper on the nightstand and a cheap motel ballpoint pen. He snags them both, turning his meager sketching skills towards drawing the clearest thing in his mind, the tree that had seemed so strangely familiar.
"Sam?" Mary's voice sounds raspy and used up; her migraine gave her a rough night. Sam had woken several times to her tossing and quiet, stifled cries of pain. He's still angry, but looking at her, crumpled and exhausted, he doesn't want to start another fight with her. Yet, anyway. Sometimes he thinks that's what the two of them were made for, fighting about one stupid thing or another.
"Yeah?" He puts the notepad to the side and stretches, his vertebrae popping noisily and pleasantly, easing some of the sense of weight from his shoulders.
"I don't want to hang around too much. Lots of miles to cover today." Her tone is careful too and Sam's shaky enough himself to feel grateful for the reprieve.
"You got a lead?" The thought propels him out of bed and across the small room to here where she's sitting. There's a pile of their old photographs in front of her and one held loosely but lovingly in her hand.
"Not exactly," she says. "More…of an idea."
"What do you mean?" He leans over her shoulder to look more closely at the picture. It's her and Dad standing together, Dad's arm curled around Mom's shoulder. She's snuggled into Dad's shoulder, looking somehow small and very feminine and not at all like the Mary he knows. But even more surprising to him is the background of the shot. "Hey," he says, tugging the picture from her hand after a moment's hesitation to let her protest or not. "Is this our old house?"
"Yeah." Mary's head tips back to look at him curiously. "Why?"
"I…" Sam frowns. "Because I had a dream about a house with a tree in the yard that looked exactly like this one," he answers hesitantly. "They rebuilt the house after the fire, didn't they?"
"I don't know," Mary answers. "We didn't…we didn't really stick around long enough to find out. After your father died…" Her lips press thin. "We didn't stick around long enough to find out," she says again, after several moments of silence. "What did you dream?"
Sam tells her the dream, as much of it as he recalls. "I think maybe there's something in our old house," he says finally. "That woman… It felt real, Mom. It felt…" he breaks off, without the words to describe exactly how it felt. "I think we should check it out."
He's surprised when Mary nods. "I wanted to head to Lawrence anyway," she admits, finger combing through her untidy hair and twisting it into an uneven knot on the top of her head. The end of it sticks up, curled at the end.
Sam's eyebrows twitch down. "What for?"
"The idea I was talking about." She sighs and stretches out her legs, curling the toes. "You were right before; Dean's trail is cold and getting colder by the day. But I'm not ready to give up on him either. I wanted to go and consult with an old friend back in Lawrence. She might have…some insight."
Sam's retort is automatic and abrupt: I thought you didn't have any old friends; isn't that what we were arguing about before? But he manages to clamp his lips down tight on it, abiding by their uneasy truce. Besides, if it helps, if it gets them closer to finding Dean and unraveling this whole mess…if it gets him closer to his revenge, then so much the better. "That sounds good," he says and it's Mary's turn for her eyebrows to kink in surprise. "Rock-scissors-paper for the first shower?"
***
"So I was thinking we should split up," Mary says, about sixty miles outside of Lawrence when they finally stopped for breakfast. "You can head by the old house and I can go visit my friend. Easy peasy."
And Sam guesses he's still plenty paranoid, the morning of careful peace between them aside, because immediately his suspicions come rushing back to the front: She's trying to get rid of you.
Why that thought and why the sudden certainty of it, Sam doesn't know, but it's a bit of a stretch to keep his voice casual and say, "Even without a shapeshifter in the mix, I don't think it's such a great idea to split up, Mom. It's no big deal. We can just stick together. Unless there's some reason to?"
Mary shakes her head. "No. I just figured you'd be bored, listening to your mother ramble on about old memories and stuff that happened before you were born."
"Yeah, but you also said that she might be able to tell us something about Dean and where he is and what happened to him," Sam points out, mixing his stewed, glazed apples around with his fork. "I'm willing to be bored if it gets us closer to finding him."
Mary shrugs. Is it too studied, too nonchalant? Sam feels like he could get eyestrain from scrutinizing her every move, let alone the strain to his brain. And still, as ever, no clear answers are forthcoming. And no real way to pry them out of her. He and Mary may not have gotten along for most of his life, but he hates this creeping sense of regarding her as an enemy, an opponent, a nemesis. "I was just thinking of ways to minimize the time we spend there," she says.
"Yeah, but neither one of us know what we're going to find at the old house," Sam observes. His bag is shoved under the table and he taps it idly with his toe, the way he does a hundred times a day when it's out of his sight. Dean's journal is inside. "It could be something related to Dad, Jess and the demon."
Mary's vague frown deepens. "I don't see why it would be, but you're right. Whatever it is, I really don't want you running into it by yourself. Which reminds me; we need to have a talk fairly soon about your powers."
Sam stabs an apple chunk with a particularly loud clink of fork on ceramic and Mary sighs. "Look, I know you don't like talking about it, or even acknowledging it, but you're different, Sam. These…these powers are not going to go away and you're going to have to deal with them. Right now, you're bleeding energy and shining like a flare in the darkness, broadcasting to every dark thing that loves to feed on the light."
Startled and stung by a thought, Sam looks up. "Is that why Jess…?"
For a moment, Mary looks sorry she brought the topic up at all. "It's complicated," she says evasively, fiddling with her thick ham steak.
"What about our life isn't?" Sam asks, some of his anger beginning to bleed through again, soaking into old ruts. "But whatever," he says, backing off it yet again. Whatever is in their house creeps him the fuck off and the last thing he wants is to have to worry about it and Mary at his back. "Fine."
"Sam—"
"I said fine," he says sharply. "If you don't want to talk about it, then don't talk about it, but don't expect me to be happy. That's… It's too much to ask."
Mary's whole face seems to tighten but she nods. "Fine," she agrees. "Truce?"
For now, Sam thinks. "Yeah. Truce."
***
Sam can practically feel Mary mentally gearing up as they stand in front of the door of their rebuilt house, 'putting the schmarm on', as she used to say when they were younger. In the harsh daylight, he can see there really are threads of black mixed in the blonde of her hair, more of them than he remembers from his last look.
The closer they've gotten, the more taciturn and irritable she's become, turning up the radio to levels that would've had her using her quiet, dangerous 'I mean it' voice if it were Sam or Dean committing such an infraction. As it was, he leaned a little out the open window to drown it in the white noise of the wind and wished for earplugs.
The door opens and the woman from his dream appears in the gap, so exact that for a moment, he can't breathe. It was different dreaming about Jess. He knew her, loved her, lived with her. There was no part of her face or body that was a stranger to him. This, however is a stranger; someone he's never met before, someone who's clearly never met him, given the look of polite puzzlement on her face.
"Hi," Mary says, the start of one of her many personas firmly in place like a hard shell, "we're here from…"
Sam interrupts. "My name is Sam Winchester. This is my mom, Mary. I know this sounds a little weird, but this used to be our old house. And we were passing through and I was wondering if it would be too much trouble for us to take a look around? See the old homestead?" He puts on his most winning smile and then wonders, with a swift pang of worry, whether it's really charm or some manifestation of power like Mary's.
The woman looks nonplussed a moment, but not alarmed. Certainly less alarmed than Mary. Then, hesitantly: "Winchester?" she asks. "That's strange. I think I found some of your old pictures in the attic the day before. Come on in."
"Pictures…of ours?" Mary says, sounding numb as she steps through the door. Sam hesitates on the threshold, unsure if his sense of foreboding is the remnant of his dream or something he senses from the house itself.
Yeah, Mom; I think we need to have that talk soon, all right.
The woman's name is Jenny, she introduces them to her two kids before going upstairs and bringing down a musty smelling box full of photos, both framed and unframed. Sam lets Mary take over the bulk of the talking again, aware that Jenny will regard the older woman as a better confidant than a twenty-two year old, even without Mary's persuasive gifts. He alternates between listening to them and going through the box's contents.
Mary's college diploma is in here, in what looks like a custom made frame; on the back, in very small letters, are the initials M & J. Mary and John.
Jenny brings them plastic cups of apple juice—her son, the toddler, is something of a juice fiend, Jenny explains—and he smiles his thanks. "I just needed a fresh start," she's saying to something Mary asked ('What made you move here', he thinks) and Sam looks at his mom just in time to see something in her expression soften and change to make her look more like the woman in the pictures in front of him and the one he saw in the picture in the motel room.
"Yeah," she says, in a tone Sam can't identify, "I know what that's like."
Jenny's daughter Sari comes to sit next to him at the table with her own glass of juice, a mournful look in her eyes. "I don't like it here," she announced.
"Oh?" Sam asks, putting aside a picture of a very pregnant Mary sleeping in a hammock with a sunhat pulled down over her face. "How come?"
"There's something in my closet," Sari tells him, nodding.
Jenny breaks off her conversation with Mary to say tiredly, "Ah, Sari…not this again."
"Well there is," Sari insists. "It's made of fire and it lives in my closet and it scares me!"
Sam glances at Mary at the mention of fire. He doesn't expect, however, for Mary to go pale and her hand to jerk, almost jittering the glass out of her fingers and onto the floor. Unthinkingly, he reaches out and steadies her wrist. The looks she gives him is weird, wild, like she doesn't even recognize him at all. After a second, she tugs away, not quite sharply and sets her cup down with a firm plunk of plastic on wood. She pushes the chair back and says to Jenny, "You know, you've been really great and we've already taken up so much of your time."
"Oh, no," Jenny says hastily, "it's been great having the opportunity to talk to grown-ups again. Please. You don't have to rush away on my account."
"Well, Sam and I have a previous appointment," Mary says, kicking Sam discreetly and viciously in the shin. He bites down on his yelp and shoves back from the table too, standing up. "And we're probably already going to be late."
"Oh," Jenny says again, clearly disappointed. Sam feels a pang of sympathy. His first few months at Stanford had been miserable and lonely; he knew full well what it was like to start over from scratch with no friends in a wholly new life. "Well, I can walk you to the door."
Mary's smile is distracted and seems almost crooked on her face as they ramble towards the front door. Sari grabs his hand and he bends down to her eye level. "You do believe me, don't you?" the little girl asks anxiously. "I don't like it here. I wish we could go home."
Sam's always felt sort of awkward around children; he pats her on the shoulder stiffly unsure of what kind of reassurance he can give. "Don’t worry," he says. "I'm sure it'll go away soon and then things will be better."
"Promise?" Sari whispers.
"Sam," Mary says shortly from the open door. "Come on. We're already late."
Sam ruffles Sari's hair and stands up. "Yeah," he says, hoping it's the truth. "Promise."
"What the hell was that?" he asks Mary in a hissing undertone, once they're more or less alone on the sidewalk and walking towards the Impala.
"What?" Mary asks, for all the world like the last five minutes haven't happened. "I'm just hungry and I wanted to get lunch before going to see Missouri."
"I'm sure Jenny would have made us both lunch if you'd given her half a chance," Sam says. "I think she's a little starved for someone to talk to. But you ran out of there like your ass was on fire."
Mary points at him. "Language, young man."
"I learned it from you," Sam points out.
"That just means you need to do as I say and not as I do," Mary says, climbing into the Impala and starting her up with a loud, swaggering rumble.
"Mom," Sam says, clambering in his side. "C'mon. What's going on?"
"Nothing," Mary says with innocence so false he can see through it like Saran Wrap. "Geez, Sammy. You've always been such a worrywart."
"Don't do that," Sam says. "Don't try to make this about me. Didn't you hear what Sari said? 'A monster made out of fire. That can't be coincidental."
"Sure it can," Mary says, pulling out from the curb. "Lots of creatures manifest themselves through flame or the appearance of flame…"
"Okay, but here?" Sam demands. "And after I start dreaming about the place. Come on. Mom. This is important."
"I'm not saying it's not, Sam, but what exactly do you want us to do? Go back in there, guns blazing, and shoot up the place?"
"Well, no." Sam deflates a little, sinking deeper into the chair and leaning his head against the seat back tiredly. His eyes feel dry and almost swollen in the sockets and he wonders how much sleep he's actually gotten. "But we can't just leave Jenny and her kids in there if they're in danger."
"Of course not," Mary agrees. "But so far, we haven't seen any sign that they are in danger and without knowing what we're dealing with, there isn't a whole lot we can do. We don't want to be the Winchesters that cried wolf. We need to do some research first."
Sam can't really argue with her logic, as much as he'd like to and even though he thinks she's hiding something. Something more than the usual, at any rate. "Fine," he says and waves a hand. He sounds ungracious, but he doesn't really care. He's been gracious all day and with precious little encouragement. "Let's do some research."
"Okay," Mary says. "But after lunch." She glances at him and looks almost apologetic. "I really am hungry."
***
"Mary?"
Both Sam and Mary's heads jerk up at the sound of her name, said in that tone of voice, like the speaker's just discovered something. The woman standing by their table in the diner is short and plump, pretty for all her light brown hair is starting to be streaked with white and there are light crow's feet at the corners of her eyes.
"Oh, good gracious, Mary. It is you!" She looks both shocked and excited, a sentiment Sam can understand when he looks at his mom and sees the swift gamut of emotions that cross her face, most of them unreadable other than her initial shock and the slightly awkward pleasure when Mary smiles and gets to her feet.
"Cathy," Mary says warmly and encloses the other woman in a hug.
If he didn't think Mary would smack him one on the back of the head, Sam would let his mouth drop open like it wants to.
"It's been so long."
"Twenty-two years, pretty much," Mary agrees with only a trace of stiffness, probably only audible to someone who's spent nearly every waking hour with it.
"Yes," Cathy says, with a small, regretful sigh. "A very long time. Gosh, it's good to see you. You mind?" She indicates the table and starts shoehorning in on Sam's side. Hastily, Sam scoots over. "Hi," she says brightly to him. "Now…are you Dean or are you little Sammy?"
"I'm Sam," he says, feeling his ears flush hot. It never really occurred to him that they might run into someone who knew the Winchesters way back when. When we were a family, he thinks and the bitterness of the thought takes even him by surprise.
"Yes," Cathy says with a brilliant smile. "Of course you are. Because the last time I saw you, you were small enough to be tucked under my arm like a football; of course you'd turn into the handsome giant in front of me."
Sam doesn't know what to say and he glances at Mary in a little bit of panic, hoping to be rescued. However, Mary looks just about as shell-shocked as he feels, turning one of her French fries around and around in the puddle of ketchup on her plate.
"And you, Mary!" Cathy says, sparing him herself. Sam breathes a quick and silent sigh of relief. "How have you been? What have you been doing with yourself? You know, I was just talking to Jenna the other day and I said to her, 'You know, I really miss Mary Winchester sometimes, Jen' and she looked back at me and said, 'You know, Cath, I know exactly what you mean. Oh!" Both Mary and Sam jump a little at Cathy's excited exclamation. "I should give her a call, tell her to come on down. She'll just shit a brick."
Sam is trying to reconcile Cathy's high voice and 'golly-gosh' language with 'shit a brick' when Mary throws out a hand. "Don't do that," Mary says quickly.
Rummaging through her purse—presumably in search of her cell phone—and disgorging half it's contents onto the table, Cathy pauses, confusion printed across her pretty face.
Mary backpedals. "Well, Sam and I aren't here for very long and we really don't have a lot of time for visiting. We were just going to grab some lunch and get moving."
"Oh." Cathy nods wisely. "Well. That makes sense. Still, as long as you're still eating, we could sit down and have a nice meal together, right? It's been way too long." She raises her hand and waves at the waitress. "Yoo-hoo! Judy? Get me a ham and cheese, hon, will you? And an iced tea. Great. Thanks."
She turns back to the Winchesters and Sam quickly looks down, doing his best to look really interested in his pork tenderloin sandwich.
"You know, you'd never know it now, but your mother and I used to be just the best friends," Cathy says, tugging on his arm and completely undeterred by his subterfuge.
"Oh yeah?" Sam says indistinctly through a mouthful. He chews it a little more and swallows.
"Oh sure. We went to the same school, all of us. And then we used to work at the library together, too. And Don—that's my husband, Don—used to hang out with your Dad all the time…"
"You knew my Dad?" A moment later, Sam could smack himself in the forehead. Of course Cathy knew John.
"Oh, sure," Cathy agrees. Judy, the waitress, arrives with Cathy's grilled ham and cheese plate and iced tea. "Don served overseas too, during the war, so they had that in common, though I think your Dad always had a bit of snobbery that Don was only regular Army and not a Marine like him." Her smile takes any potential bitterness out of the words. She shakes her graying head. "Gosh, your dad was sure proud of you boys. He had all these plans about the things he wanted to do with you and how Dean was going to be a Major League baseball star and you were going to be a famous doctor or lawyer or something like that…"
"Lawyer," Mary says softly, churning her straw up and down through the ice of her soda.
"Yes!" Cathy claps her hands together. "That's what it was."
Sam lets his sandwich fall to his plate, disregarded. "I didn't know that."
"Well," Mary says, with a rueful and fond sideways crook to her mouth. "No reason you should."
"And such a shame," Cathy says, reaching out to put one hand over Mary's. Sam, who once saw his mother stick a fork through the palm of a guy in a bar that got too grabby with her, tries again not to faint from shock when Mary turns her hand over to clasp Cathy's small, delicate hand. "You're still wearing your ring," Cathy observes, nodding toward the scuffed and thinned band. "Never remarried?"
Mary's mouth purses up and her eyes seem brighter, more intense than they did a moment before. She shakes her head. "No," she admits. "Never really had the time. Never found anyone I liked that much."
"You still miss him, don't you?" Cathy says sympathetically, squeezing Mary's hand.
Mary laughs shakily. "Oh, just about every day."
Cathy squeezes again and nods, her own eyes dewy before she turns to a rapid and businesslike consumption of her food, chattering on the whole time about Mary and their shared job at the local library and John and Don and her three kids, Marnie, Elizabeth and Bill.
It's more than Sam's ever heard about John. Neither Mary nor Dean have ever been given much to reminiscences and though Sam sometimes had felt so hungry for anything to connect him to the father that so shaped his life and choices that he thought he'd starve to death, his remaining guilt and conviction that he's to blame had silenced him most of the time.
So many stories. So few of which he's heard anything of.
He learns that John made a mean barbeque and a better potato salad than Cathy's own mother, may she rest in peace. He almost dies laughing when Mary and Cathy tell the story of four year-old Dean and six-year old Marnie's "marriage" and how Dean had come glumly home and announced to all and sundry that he'd 'knocked Marnie up' and would have to quit pre-school and get a job. He finds out that his parents met because John had almost run Mary down in the Impala while she was sunbathing on the lawn of the house she'd rented with someone named Jenna and someone named Gretchen and that he'd spent the rest of the summer re-sodding the grass and doing various bits of handy-work around the place in repentance.
"He looked so gleeful when he got out," Mary says with a reminiscent laugh. "'I knew I'd get it started!' he said." She rolls her eyes and laughs again. "I should have known then," she says. A moment later, Sam sees her eyes change as her memory follows that line to the end and the pain comes rolling back in like a dark tide.
"Mom," Sam says. "We should go. It's getting late."
He feels embarrassed and uncomfortable with the gratitude he sees in the look Mary turns to him and it's only a few minutes before they're throwing down money and hugging and kissing goodbyes. Cathy pulls him down into a bear hug that's startling in its fierceness and kisses him hard on both cheeks. "You take care of your mom," she tells him.
"I try," Sam says judiciously, "but most of the time, it's the other way around."
Cathy laughs. "Well. That's Mary for you; baddest Momma Bear in the whole forest."
"That she is," Sam agrees.
| |
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CHAPTER THREE
Things in pieces.
Broken fragments that feel like they cut his hands when he tries to hold onto them. Images, impressions.
And through it all, the sour, metallic-bile taste of fear.
A house, white and prosaic under a lour and uneasy night sky.
Suffocating summer heat and cutting, unnatural cold that freezes the sweat on his back.
Screaming.
In the window, a woman. Her terror bleeds from her just as the unnerving sense of cold seems to bleed from the thick and clotted darkness behind her.
It's like syrup, time; slow and unwilling to move. It feels like he has all the time in the world to see the darkness shift and move behind her, scuttling, unsettling, to see the shadows of the nearby tree (and why does he think it looks familiar?) carve insubstantial scars into her pale skin, to see her startle and turn, hair fanning out in a sun colored arc before she turns back, lips opening wider in a terrified 'o' of a pantomimed scream.
Stop.
Sam jerks himself awake, an almost physical twitch. His eyes open and—as usual—for the first several moments, he has no idea where he is, enclosed in an environment where nothing's familiar. Still, some habits die harder than others; he doesn't lurch upright, exposing himself as awake. Instead he lies, sweating, in place, eyes darting back and forth across the stuccoed ceiling, waiting for memory—good or bad—to come.
Mom. Jess. Dean.
It all hits him again, a many-edged shuriken that cuts and shreds his defenses, leaving him breathless and sick a second time but for different reasons. Sam closes his eyes again and puts his hand over his heart, willing it back to normal speed. He used to do this a lot when he was a little kid, prone to nightmares even then.
Those dreams, at least, had been mostly manifestations of his (so far) unfounded fears; dreams of Mom or Dean dying and leaving him all alone in the world among strangers and monsters he was too small and too weak to fight on his own. Sam would wake up in the dark and—if they were 'home'—watch Dean and Mary sleep, his hand over his chest, his heart slowly synchronizing with their drowsing breath.
Finally, the tightness of his chest eases and he sits up slowly, the fragments of his dream still strangely clear, strangely vivid in his mind. There's a pad of paper on the nightstand and a cheap motel ballpoint pen. He snags them both, turning his meager sketching skills towards drawing the clearest thing in his mind, the tree that had seemed so strangely familiar.
"Sam?" Mary's voice sounds raspy and used up; her migraine gave her a rough night. Sam had woken several times to her tossing and quiet, stifled cries of pain. He's still angry, but looking at her, crumpled and exhausted, he doesn't want to start another fight with her. Yet, anyway. Sometimes he thinks that's what the two of them were made for, fighting about one stupid thing or another.
"Yeah?" He puts the notepad to the side and stretches, his vertebrae popping noisily and pleasantly, easing some of the sense of weight from his shoulders.
"I don't want to hang around too much. Lots of miles to cover today." Her tone is careful too and Sam's shaky enough himself to feel grateful for the reprieve.
"You got a lead?" The thought propels him out of bed and across the small room to here where she's sitting. There's a pile of their old photographs in front of her and one held loosely but lovingly in her hand.
"Not exactly," she says. "More…of an idea."
"What do you mean?" He leans over her shoulder to look more closely at the picture. It's her and Dad standing together, Dad's arm curled around Mom's shoulder. She's snuggled into Dad's shoulder, looking somehow small and very feminine and not at all like the Mary he knows. But even more surprising to him is the background of the shot. "Hey," he says, tugging the picture from her hand after a moment's hesitation to let her protest or not. "Is this our old house?"
"Yeah." Mary's head tips back to look at him curiously. "Why?"
"I…" Sam frowns. "Because I had a dream about a house with a tree in the yard that looked exactly like this one," he answers hesitantly. "They rebuilt the house after the fire, didn't they?"
"I don't know," Mary answers. "We didn't…we didn't really stick around long enough to find out. After your father died…" Her lips press thin. "We didn't stick around long enough to find out," she says again, after several moments of silence. "What did you dream?"
Sam tells her the dream, as much of it as he recalls. "I think maybe there's something in our old house," he says finally. "That woman… It felt real, Mom. It felt…" he breaks off, without the words to describe exactly how it felt. "I think we should check it out."
He's surprised when Mary nods. "I wanted to head to Lawrence anyway," she admits, finger combing through her untidy hair and twisting it into an uneven knot on the top of her head. The end of it sticks up, curled at the end.
Sam's eyebrows twitch down. "What for?"
"The idea I was talking about." She sighs and stretches out her legs, curling the toes. "You were right before; Dean's trail is cold and getting colder by the day. But I'm not ready to give up on him either. I wanted to go and consult with an old friend back in Lawrence. She might have…some insight."
Sam's retort is automatic and abrupt: I thought you didn't have any old friends; isn't that what we were arguing about before? But he manages to clamp his lips down tight on it, abiding by their uneasy truce. Besides, if it helps, if it gets them closer to finding Dean and unraveling this whole mess…if it gets him closer to his revenge, then so much the better. "That sounds good," he says and it's Mary's turn for her eyebrows to kink in surprise. "Rock-scissors-paper for the first shower?"
"So I was thinking we should split up," Mary says, about sixty miles outside of Lawrence when they finally stopped for breakfast. "You can head by the old house and I can go visit my friend. Easy peasy."
And Sam guesses he's still plenty paranoid, the morning of careful peace between them aside, because immediately his suspicions come rushing back to the front: She's trying to get rid of you.
Why that thought and why the sudden certainty of it, Sam doesn't know, but it's a bit of a stretch to keep his voice casual and say, "Even without a shapeshifter in the mix, I don't think it's such a great idea to split up, Mom. It's no big deal. We can just stick together. Unless there's some reason to?"
Mary shakes her head. "No. I just figured you'd be bored, listening to your mother ramble on about old memories and stuff that happened before you were born."
"Yeah, but you also said that she might be able to tell us something about Dean and where he is and what happened to him," Sam points out, mixing his stewed, glazed apples around with his fork. "I'm willing to be bored if it gets us closer to finding him."
Mary shrugs. Is it too studied, too nonchalant? Sam feels like he could get eyestrain from scrutinizing her every move, let alone the strain to his brain. And still, as ever, no clear answers are forthcoming. And no real way to pry them out of her. He and Mary may not have gotten along for most of his life, but he hates this creeping sense of regarding her as an enemy, an opponent, a nemesis. "I was just thinking of ways to minimize the time we spend there," she says.
"Yeah, but neither one of us know what we're going to find at the old house," Sam observes. His bag is shoved under the table and he taps it idly with his toe, the way he does a hundred times a day when it's out of his sight. Dean's journal is inside. "It could be something related to Dad, Jess and the demon."
Mary's vague frown deepens. "I don't see why it would be, but you're right. Whatever it is, I really don't want you running into it by yourself. Which reminds me; we need to have a talk fairly soon about your powers."
Sam stabs an apple chunk with a particularly loud clink of fork on ceramic and Mary sighs. "Look, I know you don't like talking about it, or even acknowledging it, but you're different, Sam. These…these powers are not going to go away and you're going to have to deal with them. Right now, you're bleeding energy and shining like a flare in the darkness, broadcasting to every dark thing that loves to feed on the light."
Startled and stung by a thought, Sam looks up. "Is that why Jess…?"
For a moment, Mary looks sorry she brought the topic up at all. "It's complicated," she says evasively, fiddling with her thick ham steak.
"What about our life isn't?" Sam asks, some of his anger beginning to bleed through again, soaking into old ruts. "But whatever," he says, backing off it yet again. Whatever is in their house creeps him the fuck off and the last thing he wants is to have to worry about it and Mary at his back. "Fine."
"Sam—"
"I said fine," he says sharply. "If you don't want to talk about it, then don't talk about it, but don't expect me to be happy. That's… It's too much to ask."
Mary's whole face seems to tighten but she nods. "Fine," she agrees. "Truce?"
For now, Sam thinks. "Yeah. Truce."
Sam can practically feel Mary mentally gearing up as they stand in front of the door of their rebuilt house, 'putting the schmarm on', as she used to say when they were younger. In the harsh daylight, he can see there really are threads of black mixed in the blonde of her hair, more of them than he remembers from his last look.
The closer they've gotten, the more taciturn and irritable she's become, turning up the radio to levels that would've had her using her quiet, dangerous 'I mean it' voice if it were Sam or Dean committing such an infraction. As it was, he leaned a little out the open window to drown it in the white noise of the wind and wished for earplugs.
The door opens and the woman from his dream appears in the gap, so exact that for a moment, he can't breathe. It was different dreaming about Jess. He knew her, loved her, lived with her. There was no part of her face or body that was a stranger to him. This, however is a stranger; someone he's never met before, someone who's clearly never met him, given the look of polite puzzlement on her face.
"Hi," Mary says, the start of one of her many personas firmly in place like a hard shell, "we're here from…"
Sam interrupts. "My name is Sam Winchester. This is my mom, Mary. I know this sounds a little weird, but this used to be our old house. And we were passing through and I was wondering if it would be too much trouble for us to take a look around? See the old homestead?" He puts on his most winning smile and then wonders, with a swift pang of worry, whether it's really charm or some manifestation of power like Mary's.
The woman looks nonplussed a moment, but not alarmed. Certainly less alarmed than Mary. Then, hesitantly: "Winchester?" she asks. "That's strange. I think I found some of your old pictures in the attic the day before. Come on in."
"Pictures…of ours?" Mary says, sounding numb as she steps through the door. Sam hesitates on the threshold, unsure if his sense of foreboding is the remnant of his dream or something he senses from the house itself.
Yeah, Mom; I think we need to have that talk soon, all right.
The woman's name is Jenny, she introduces them to her two kids before going upstairs and bringing down a musty smelling box full of photos, both framed and unframed. Sam lets Mary take over the bulk of the talking again, aware that Jenny will regard the older woman as a better confidant than a twenty-two year old, even without Mary's persuasive gifts. He alternates between listening to them and going through the box's contents.
Mary's college diploma is in here, in what looks like a custom made frame; on the back, in very small letters, are the initials M & J. Mary and John.
Jenny brings them plastic cups of apple juice—her son, the toddler, is something of a juice fiend, Jenny explains—and he smiles his thanks. "I just needed a fresh start," she's saying to something Mary asked ('What made you move here', he thinks) and Sam looks at his mom just in time to see something in her expression soften and change to make her look more like the woman in the pictures in front of him and the one he saw in the picture in the motel room.
"Yeah," she says, in a tone Sam can't identify, "I know what that's like."
Jenny's daughter Sari comes to sit next to him at the table with her own glass of juice, a mournful look in her eyes. "I don't like it here," she announced.
"Oh?" Sam asks, putting aside a picture of a very pregnant Mary sleeping in a hammock with a sunhat pulled down over her face. "How come?"
"There's something in my closet," Sari tells him, nodding.
Jenny breaks off her conversation with Mary to say tiredly, "Ah, Sari…not this again."
"Well there is," Sari insists. "It's made of fire and it lives in my closet and it scares me!"
Sam glances at Mary at the mention of fire. He doesn't expect, however, for Mary to go pale and her hand to jerk, almost jittering the glass out of her fingers and onto the floor. Unthinkingly, he reaches out and steadies her wrist. The looks she gives him is weird, wild, like she doesn't even recognize him at all. After a second, she tugs away, not quite sharply and sets her cup down with a firm plunk of plastic on wood. She pushes the chair back and says to Jenny, "You know, you've been really great and we've already taken up so much of your time."
"Oh, no," Jenny says hastily, "it's been great having the opportunity to talk to grown-ups again. Please. You don't have to rush away on my account."
"Well, Sam and I have a previous appointment," Mary says, kicking Sam discreetly and viciously in the shin. He bites down on his yelp and shoves back from the table too, standing up. "And we're probably already going to be late."
"Oh," Jenny says again, clearly disappointed. Sam feels a pang of sympathy. His first few months at Stanford had been miserable and lonely; he knew full well what it was like to start over from scratch with no friends in a wholly new life. "Well, I can walk you to the door."
Mary's smile is distracted and seems almost crooked on her face as they ramble towards the front door. Sari grabs his hand and he bends down to her eye level. "You do believe me, don't you?" the little girl asks anxiously. "I don't like it here. I wish we could go home."
Sam's always felt sort of awkward around children; he pats her on the shoulder stiffly unsure of what kind of reassurance he can give. "Don’t worry," he says. "I'm sure it'll go away soon and then things will be better."
"Promise?" Sari whispers.
"Sam," Mary says shortly from the open door. "Come on. We're already late."
Sam ruffles Sari's hair and stands up. "Yeah," he says, hoping it's the truth. "Promise."
"What the hell was that?" he asks Mary in a hissing undertone, once they're more or less alone on the sidewalk and walking towards the Impala.
"What?" Mary asks, for all the world like the last five minutes haven't happened. "I'm just hungry and I wanted to get lunch before going to see Missouri."
"I'm sure Jenny would have made us both lunch if you'd given her half a chance," Sam says. "I think she's a little starved for someone to talk to. But you ran out of there like your ass was on fire."
Mary points at him. "Language, young man."
"I learned it from you," Sam points out.
"That just means you need to do as I say and not as I do," Mary says, climbing into the Impala and starting her up with a loud, swaggering rumble.
"Mom," Sam says, clambering in his side. "C'mon. What's going on?"
"Nothing," Mary says with innocence so false he can see through it like Saran Wrap. "Geez, Sammy. You've always been such a worrywart."
"Don't do that," Sam says. "Don't try to make this about me. Didn't you hear what Sari said? 'A monster made out of fire. That can't be coincidental."
"Sure it can," Mary says, pulling out from the curb. "Lots of creatures manifest themselves through flame or the appearance of flame…"
"Okay, but here?" Sam demands. "And after I start dreaming about the place. Come on. Mom. This is important."
"I'm not saying it's not, Sam, but what exactly do you want us to do? Go back in there, guns blazing, and shoot up the place?"
"Well, no." Sam deflates a little, sinking deeper into the chair and leaning his head against the seat back tiredly. His eyes feel dry and almost swollen in the sockets and he wonders how much sleep he's actually gotten. "But we can't just leave Jenny and her kids in there if they're in danger."
"Of course not," Mary agrees. "But so far, we haven't seen any sign that they are in danger and without knowing what we're dealing with, there isn't a whole lot we can do. We don't want to be the Winchesters that cried wolf. We need to do some research first."
Sam can't really argue with her logic, as much as he'd like to and even though he thinks she's hiding something. Something more than the usual, at any rate. "Fine," he says and waves a hand. He sounds ungracious, but he doesn't really care. He's been gracious all day and with precious little encouragement. "Let's do some research."
"Okay," Mary says. "But after lunch." She glances at him and looks almost apologetic. "I really am hungry."
"Mary?"
Both Sam and Mary's heads jerk up at the sound of her name, said in that tone of voice, like the speaker's just discovered something. The woman standing by their table in the diner is short and plump, pretty for all her light brown hair is starting to be streaked with white and there are light crow's feet at the corners of her eyes.
"Oh, good gracious, Mary. It is you!" She looks both shocked and excited, a sentiment Sam can understand when he looks at his mom and sees the swift gamut of emotions that cross her face, most of them unreadable other than her initial shock and the slightly awkward pleasure when Mary smiles and gets to her feet.
"Cathy," Mary says warmly and encloses the other woman in a hug.
If he didn't think Mary would smack him one on the back of the head, Sam would let his mouth drop open like it wants to.
"It's been so long."
"Twenty-two years, pretty much," Mary agrees with only a trace of stiffness, probably only audible to someone who's spent nearly every waking hour with it.
"Yes," Cathy says, with a small, regretful sigh. "A very long time. Gosh, it's good to see you. You mind?" She indicates the table and starts shoehorning in on Sam's side. Hastily, Sam scoots over. "Hi," she says brightly to him. "Now…are you Dean or are you little Sammy?"
"I'm Sam," he says, feeling his ears flush hot. It never really occurred to him that they might run into someone who knew the Winchesters way back when. When we were a family, he thinks and the bitterness of the thought takes even him by surprise.
"Yes," Cathy says with a brilliant smile. "Of course you are. Because the last time I saw you, you were small enough to be tucked under my arm like a football; of course you'd turn into the handsome giant in front of me."
Sam doesn't know what to say and he glances at Mary in a little bit of panic, hoping to be rescued. However, Mary looks just about as shell-shocked as he feels, turning one of her French fries around and around in the puddle of ketchup on her plate.
"And you, Mary!" Cathy says, sparing him herself. Sam breathes a quick and silent sigh of relief. "How have you been? What have you been doing with yourself? You know, I was just talking to Jenna the other day and I said to her, 'You know, I really miss Mary Winchester sometimes, Jen' and she looked back at me and said, 'You know, Cath, I know exactly what you mean. Oh!" Both Mary and Sam jump a little at Cathy's excited exclamation. "I should give her a call, tell her to come on down. She'll just shit a brick."
Sam is trying to reconcile Cathy's high voice and 'golly-gosh' language with 'shit a brick' when Mary throws out a hand. "Don't do that," Mary says quickly.
Rummaging through her purse—presumably in search of her cell phone—and disgorging half it's contents onto the table, Cathy pauses, confusion printed across her pretty face.
Mary backpedals. "Well, Sam and I aren't here for very long and we really don't have a lot of time for visiting. We were just going to grab some lunch and get moving."
"Oh." Cathy nods wisely. "Well. That makes sense. Still, as long as you're still eating, we could sit down and have a nice meal together, right? It's been way too long." She raises her hand and waves at the waitress. "Yoo-hoo! Judy? Get me a ham and cheese, hon, will you? And an iced tea. Great. Thanks."
She turns back to the Winchesters and Sam quickly looks down, doing his best to look really interested in his pork tenderloin sandwich.
"You know, you'd never know it now, but your mother and I used to be just the best friends," Cathy says, tugging on his arm and completely undeterred by his subterfuge.
"Oh yeah?" Sam says indistinctly through a mouthful. He chews it a little more and swallows.
"Oh sure. We went to the same school, all of us. And then we used to work at the library together, too. And Don—that's my husband, Don—used to hang out with your Dad all the time…"
"You knew my Dad?" A moment later, Sam could smack himself in the forehead. Of course Cathy knew John.
"Oh, sure," Cathy agrees. Judy, the waitress, arrives with Cathy's grilled ham and cheese plate and iced tea. "Don served overseas too, during the war, so they had that in common, though I think your Dad always had a bit of snobbery that Don was only regular Army and not a Marine like him." Her smile takes any potential bitterness out of the words. She shakes her graying head. "Gosh, your dad was sure proud of you boys. He had all these plans about the things he wanted to do with you and how Dean was going to be a Major League baseball star and you were going to be a famous doctor or lawyer or something like that…"
"Lawyer," Mary says softly, churning her straw up and down through the ice of her soda.
"Yes!" Cathy claps her hands together. "That's what it was."
Sam lets his sandwich fall to his plate, disregarded. "I didn't know that."
"Well," Mary says, with a rueful and fond sideways crook to her mouth. "No reason you should."
"And such a shame," Cathy says, reaching out to put one hand over Mary's. Sam, who once saw his mother stick a fork through the palm of a guy in a bar that got too grabby with her, tries again not to faint from shock when Mary turns her hand over to clasp Cathy's small, delicate hand. "You're still wearing your ring," Cathy observes, nodding toward the scuffed and thinned band. "Never remarried?"
Mary's mouth purses up and her eyes seem brighter, more intense than they did a moment before. She shakes her head. "No," she admits. "Never really had the time. Never found anyone I liked that much."
"You still miss him, don't you?" Cathy says sympathetically, squeezing Mary's hand.
Mary laughs shakily. "Oh, just about every day."
Cathy squeezes again and nods, her own eyes dewy before she turns to a rapid and businesslike consumption of her food, chattering on the whole time about Mary and their shared job at the local library and John and Don and her three kids, Marnie, Elizabeth and Bill.
It's more than Sam's ever heard about John. Neither Mary nor Dean have ever been given much to reminiscences and though Sam sometimes had felt so hungry for anything to connect him to the father that so shaped his life and choices that he thought he'd starve to death, his remaining guilt and conviction that he's to blame had silenced him most of the time.
So many stories. So few of which he's heard anything of.
He learns that John made a mean barbeque and a better potato salad than Cathy's own mother, may she rest in peace. He almost dies laughing when Mary and Cathy tell the story of four year-old Dean and six-year old Marnie's "marriage" and how Dean had come glumly home and announced to all and sundry that he'd 'knocked Marnie up' and would have to quit pre-school and get a job. He finds out that his parents met because John had almost run Mary down in the Impala while she was sunbathing on the lawn of the house she'd rented with someone named Jenna and someone named Gretchen and that he'd spent the rest of the summer re-sodding the grass and doing various bits of handy-work around the place in repentance.
"He looked so gleeful when he got out," Mary says with a reminiscent laugh. "'I knew I'd get it started!' he said." She rolls her eyes and laughs again. "I should have known then," she says. A moment later, Sam sees her eyes change as her memory follows that line to the end and the pain comes rolling back in like a dark tide.
"Mom," Sam says. "We should go. It's getting late."
He feels embarrassed and uncomfortable with the gratitude he sees in the look Mary turns to him and it's only a few minutes before they're throwing down money and hugging and kissing goodbyes. Cathy pulls him down into a bear hug that's startling in its fierceness and kisses him hard on both cheeks. "You take care of your mom," she tells him.
"I try," Sam says judiciously, "but most of the time, it's the other way around."
Cathy laughs. "Well. That's Mary for you; baddest Momma Bear in the whole forest."
"That she is," Sam agrees.
