Title: Mary and the Mirror Among the Trees
Genre: Gen, PG
Characters: Mary, Sam, Dean, John
Spoilers: Through 12.06 but it's a blink and you miss it kinda spoiler. Only other real spoilers are S6.
Length: 1638
Summary: She looks up, seeing the ritual markings on the ceiling and shudders. She can feel the bruises all over her body that have come from this man who stares down at her, and yet she knows as she sees with slow dawning horror that John has died or is about to die. The things that are alive in the dark have sung out in her home.
Notes: Mary lives. Some understated death. Humans as monsters, understated domestic violence/abuse.

1.
Mary smiles down at Sammy. It’s late, and John isn’t home yet, hasn’t come thundering through the house yet, drunk or full of battle rage. Right now it is quiet.

“Come on, Dean, let’s say goodnight to your brother,” she says, and they both exhale with relief.

All is quiet now.

*~*~*

John comes home and plants himself in front of the television, a war movie he’s picked randomly off the shelf playing in the VCR--he has them all.

When he hears the commotion upstairs, it is his hypervigilance that tells him something is happening in Sammy’s room. He makes it there before Dean or Mary do.

He looks into the eyes of the stranger and he sees his own death and breathes his own sigh of relief.

*~*~*

Mary runs into the room. Sammy, Sammy, Sammy, Sammy.

She looks up, seeing the ritual markings on the ceiling and shudders. She can feel the bruises all over her body that have come from this man who stares down at her, and yet she knows as she sees with slow dawning horror that John has died or is about to die. The things that are alive in the dark have sung out in her home and all she can do is scream in response. The world is fire and she grabs Sammy and runs, runs, without looking back, because she has not seen this before but she knows monsters deep in her bones. She knows evil and things that lurk and take lives, and she has to get Sammy out of here, Sammy and Dean.

The bruises will fade and there will be moments when she even misses this man and the ways it was a simpler time.

But right now all she can do is run.

*~*~*

The three of them get into her beautiful blue car and when the engine revs to life she feels free. It’s the one thing she fought John on. She didn’t always drive it, but they kept her car. And now they can finally leave. The horror has ended. Just like that. John is gone.

He’s gone.

*~*~*

Dean is quiet. But he smiles a little, sad, but in the next few days there’s a strange relief on his face, too. “Nobody’s going to hurt Mommy, right?” he says, when they’re settled in for their first night of real sleep.

“No, Dean. No one’s going to hurt Mommy.” She pauses. “Or you.”

Dean smiles a real smile then. “I know, Mommy. The bad man is gone.”

She lets out the breath she’s been holding. “That’s right. Good night, love,” she says, tired and nervous.

She gets into bed and curls around him and Sammy. She doesn’t cry but she is shaking, a little panicked now that all the questions are over and all she has to do is continue--rebuild a life.

The dark took John Winchester and she knows what that means.

Or at least part of it. It means something. It means...something.

The question that remains is, can she outrun it? And should she?

*~*~*

2.
She’s at home in a cabin in the woods, and she thinks it will do the boys good, the fresh air and the quiet, far away from so many things. They escape to Maine, where both cabins and trees are in great supply. Sam grows, quiet and slow, in the peace of the woods, and Dean learns to climb trees and tell each apart.

They know the boundaries of their world by the boundaries of their forest. And she watches as Dean grows wild and loud in those parts of his life but quiet with her, unless he’s checking on her.

There’s less reason, maybe, to be brash and loud, and he wants to know so often, will his mama be safe?

She knows he still dreams sometimes of the man who hurt her, the man who had the rages. And Dean isn’t angry, because he knows his mother is safe and warm in the cabin, when Maine decides to have any warmth. His mama knows how to keep the heat circulating just as well as she knows that her boys need love.

Some people find her and ask her occasionally for help, and sometimes she tells Dean she’s going as far as Canada before she leaves him and Sam with friends. She tries to leave him with the right sorts of people, though it can be hard to tell who those are. Still, they’ve got a system in place for if he ever feels like anything goes weird or wrong, and he’s always been sure of one thing: his mama is coming back for him. She’s not sure who to credit with that, though she realizes gently one day that maybe pulling him from a burning building has done something to convince him.

*~*~*

Mary won’t. She won’t raise her boys to be hunters. But the pull of it is strong. She knows how to track in the woods, and she’s known for it, and she helps when she can, boys or no boys. It’s what anyone would do.

But she won’t pass it on. Her boys are wild and free, they are woodsmen, she can feel it in her bones.

So when the Campbells come knocking and let her know she’s expected back with them, her refusal is fierce. She can sense it on the wind, that if she goes with them that is the end of any freedom she may have left, and she’s gotten herself a significant chunk, for a single mother. Anything is better than going back into a situation where she doesn’t have control--or passing that feeling on to her boys.

She stands across from her cousin and says, “No,” with such force that he backs away two steps.

She should have known somehow the Campbells would track her once she was free. But she doesn’t have to go willingly.

They leave, wheels squealing as they go, but she can feel they’ll be back, as deep as the hunt is in her blood.

When they come back, she’ll be ready.

*~*~*

She’s changing baby Sammy when she sees it in the mirror--the boys with John, or in John’s thrall, whatever a person would want to call it. She can see it in the fervor in Dean’s eyes, how he thinks his Dad is a superhero.

She knows the look, shellshocked marine turned someone with a new purpose. She knows the look of a hunter.

Fear brushes over her and prickles along her spine. She looks down at Sammy and remembers--

--the blood

--the blood on his lips and how--

--she almost forgot, she could have forgotten--

--when she shouldn’t have--

--almost letting her hunter instincts

go silent,

quiet as Dean.

She can see it in the mirror when she squints hard enough, if Sammy is with her, and it’s enough to make her Campbell blood run cold.

She never lets Sam see it on her face. But if he can do that much so young-- If he is that different, that strong so young--

Dean can tell she’s nervous sometimes, downright anxious. Sometimes he just feels it on the air, no matter what’s in his field of vision when it comes to her.

She wishes he didn’t. She wishes it so hard that she feels it on her insides, knife cuts that John never left, not permanently, that she feels all the same.

*~*~*

She meets a cousin named Margot with the same shifty-eyed look her father had all those years ago. The one that would have marked him for a hunter to anyone who knew what they were looking at.

Margot mentions Dean and Sammy one time--because of course she does, they’re looking forward to recruiting.

Mary doesn’t let Margot make it home.

She would hope that is the end, but she knows it won’t be.

*~*~*
3.

The Campbells come for her in a few nondescript black cars. They’re no fancy Impalas, and she knows right away, they come to the house and she runs, runs, runs, runs, runs, but only far enough to lead them away from Sammy and Dean.

She has everything she needs on her body, and not a single Campbell gets back in those cars.

No one saw them come and no one saw them leave.

She drives the cars in opposite directions in the woods.

It’s all in the woods, all of it, but her boys are safe.

*~*~*

In the mirror, her children are alone and starving. In the mirror, there is nothing but fear. She feels it low in her gut and shivers.

*~*~*

When Sammy is big enough to toddle and cuddle against her or Dean happily, Dean gets the idea that his weird brother needs more to cuddle. He saw something in the woods that week and he goes back and then gently carries a baby skunk into the cabin.

“This way we keep him warm, Mama,” Dean says. “The skunk. Sometimes they get cold.”

It’s the most Dean has said in quite a bit.

Sammy smiles and the skunk makes skunk noises that are remarkably like a cat if she thinks about it.

She listens to Sammy cooing at his pet as Dean goes crashing through the green again and she thinks maybe she’s done well enough for right this moment.

And yes, her family is gone. The one that wanted Sammy and Dean’s hides. But family doesn’t end with blood and it doesn’t end with cousins either.

In a way, the Winchesters will never end--it’s not their way to end like mere mortals. She doesn’t know that yet, though, and in the quiet dimness of twilight among the trees, she breathes out relief. Her boys are wild and free in the forest and nobody knows her name, not really, not well enough.