The devil truly is in the details. I wanted to write a short one-off based on the season 12 sneak peek at Comic-Con. Unfortunately for my sanity, this snowballed into a massive story with multiple chapters and I've been neck-deep in this thing for more than a month. I'm excited for season 12, but I'm also extremely nervous about how Mary's resurrection will be handled because it's so incredibly complicated. Here's my take on it.

Trigger Warnings: It gets pretty violent. Nothing above show-level violence and nothing sexual. I just don't want anyone to be blind-sided.

Please let me know what you think.

Chapter 1

There are many sinister truths whispered and shouted about Sam Winchester in the backrooms of hunters' bars and over the curated weapons of trunk armories: he's the boy king, the devil's playmate, a hunter so deranged and dangerous he lays with demons.

Sam had spent years trying to swipe the slate clean, saving lives, often at his own detriment, to prove his questioned humanity. But in this moment when a blonde Brit with a tiny gun and massively distorted versions of the truth breaks-and-enters into his first-ever home—one that's still ripe with Lucifer's sadism and tainted grace—to interrupt his profound grief, Sam embraces them all.

Righteous, teeth-grinding rage and neon adrenaline create a powerful armor. The bullet that punches into the tender meat of his lower thigh barely stops his advance. Toni, all posh blazer and British elitism, actually squeaks when Sam expertly swats the gun out of her hand. She guffaws a wet, gummy grunt when Sam clocks her with his fist, not an open hand.

Guilt glints through him over hitting a woman, even a violent intruder. Some boy king.

And even strangely, the punch, one that has taken out hunters twice her size, crunches bloodily to her face, but doesn't knock her down. Sam's hand is buzzing nonetheless, and he shakes it out, advancing again.

Sam doesn't doubt that she's expertly trained, but she never offers a counterattack. She opts to skitter out of his impressive reach, clutching her bloody nose as if she doesn't want to stain her pristine blouse, glaring, almost as if she's waiting...

He'd been braced for the pain of being shot, and it hits with the gentility of a fireball, but what truly scares him is the lack of coordination that follows. His intimidating prowl rapidly becoming a drunken, weaving lurch. A decaying numbness drifts upward and out from the bleeding hole in his thigh, like a destructive fog. It hacks through the armor of endorphins with a frightening precision, replacing kinetic prowess with a scorched earth of dying muscle. His lethally long legs wither beneath him, and he stumbles badly, barely catching himself on the back of one of the library's chairs.

Bemused, Toni relaxes her stance. "If you assumed I'm some simpering bookish coward, you thought wrong. I took precautions, Sam. I…"

"P-poisoned the bullet," Sam mumbles through tingling lips.

"Precisely."

It's a paralytic, and a supernatural one at that, judging by how efficiently it takes hold, and the niggling pain that piggybacks inability to move.

The bunker dissolves into sparkles and gleams of steel gray and marbled beige as the encroaching numbness infects his limbs and settles in his chest, effecting the muscles that enable it to expel and draw in air. Gravity shoves him to the ground in a sloppy and unchecked descent. The corner of the table juts uncomfortably into his ribs on the way down. The castors of the chair make a banshee-esque scrape over the tile as it's skittered aside by the force his falling body. Sam smashes face-first into the marble floor. He flounders a bit, a pathetic flail of arms he can't feel out of sheer desperation. What he's reaching for, he's not sure. Dean is dead. Pink mist on the walls and an intrepid soul orbiting in The Empty. Castiel's been launched to the far reaches of the globe. And Sam's alone, shot, poisoned and trying to breathe with lungs that can't fully expand.

Only minutes have passed, and yet Sam can't even twitch a finger or bat an eyelid, and he can feel the warm of the blood pooling beneath his skewered, spamsing thigh, the feather-light tickle of his desperate, ragged breaths against his outflung hand. He can see the tiny balls of dust from Dean's half-assed cleaning sessions and the worn black boots of another intruder.

The second figure is all muscles and surprising size, emerges from the shadows, binds him in chains and carries him out of the bunker.

-SPN-

Dean Winchester has spent lifetimes attempting and failing to live up to the golden standards heaped upon him by family, fate and circumstance-obedient son, protective older brother and a hunter worthy of being Michael's divine sword.

As Dean stands in the presence of his newly resurrected mother, he's certain that he's undeserving of this miracle, especially when he riffed sarcastic family togetherness was just a ploy that he lifted from Sam's diary and Sister Sledge.

Dean had faced fanged, sulfurous beasts with less than fanfare and panic than coming face-to-face with his now wholly alive mother. His brain shorts out like an overloaded circuit, and he stands in the darkness, all knocking knees and dropped jaw, stupefied and awed as his terrified mother sidles backward, regarding her son as a stranger.

A few wasted moments buzz bye before love overwhelms his paralyzing shock. Dean lurches forward, shucking off his jacket to wrap around her shoulders. The brisk dampness of the night is a drastic difference from the humidity of the botanical garden. "It's okay," he says, voice breaking on the unspoken Mom. "You're fine, you're okay."

Except Mary Winchester had never been in a damsel, and she damn sure knew what to do in distress. Like their first meeting in 1973, Dean sees the determined jut of her jaw, feels a rush of air before he finds himself face-first in the muddy ground, face aching like it'd been punched.

His mother is enraged. "Did you get what you wanted?! From me? From my son!" She hollers, wrenching his arm expertly. The right application of pressure and Dean will need an orthopedic surgeon.
Dean's not sure if a heart can simultaneously soar and break, but his is doing the same. It leaves him lightheaded with elation and nauseous with dread. Because he has his mother back, and yet she thinks it's November 2, 1983 and doesn't recognize that the man in front of her is her son she's so worried for. "Don't be scared, okay? I just want to help you."

"There was a fire, and I need to get to my kids. Don't freakin' touch me, just get me to a phone." Mary slowly lets him go, giving him a wide berth as she searches for a weapon.

"Your kids are fine, Mary." Dean says and kicks himself when he hears how creepy that sounds.

Mary glares him at him with ever-deepening suspicion. "Don't think I don't know what you are! Exorcizamus te, omnis immundus spiritus…"

Dean climbs to his knees, beseeching. "I'm not a demon," he assures her calmly.

"Then how do you know who I am? Who are you?"

"I'll explain everything, okay? There'll be time for that later. I'm your son. I'm Dean. Trust me, I know how bonkers that sounds." Dean stands, hands held up in surrender. "You named me after your mother, Deana. You used to make me tomato-rice soup when I was sick. You sang Aerosmith songs when you cleaned the house. You always said angels were looking over me, but I don't think you knew what giant douchebags..."

"Look, I know what's possible and impossible, more than the most, and this absolutely gonzo! My Dean is four years old! You don't think I'd k-know my own..." Mary laps into stunned silence as clouds part and the unblotted moonlight sets everything aglow. Squinting, Mary takes a step closer, and Dean doesn't flinch when she searches his features for kinship.

For the little boy she left behind.

"No no no!" Mary lets out a primal scream that curdles the blood, rattles the teeth, and makes Dean wonder if she were better off in Heaven. As she sobs, he wonders what it was.

He chances a step forward, unsure of what to do and fighting a nervous breakdown himself. He wishes Sam were here. He'd toss on the charm and soft, pillowy voice, and probably pull out an embroidered handkerchief for her to dab her tears.

Suddenly, Mary claws at his shirt. "I need to see, to make sure." Dean is shocked at the invasion of privacy, but he doesn't move. Then, it dawns on him what she's looking for, and he helps, tearing open his shirt and working his out of the sleeve.

He has an oddly shaped birthmark on the inside of his left biceps, a series of sandy brown blotches that look like a constellation. When Mary gave him a bath, she used to lovingly kiss it or goofily tickle it as she dried him off. He lifts his arm and shows her the trail of smudges that's always been there no matter how many times he's been remade. Mary gapes at it, and then him directly. He stoops a bit, and she cradles his face with trembling hands. "Dean."

He can't speak, his own eyes leaking as he embraces her with all the love and longing and grief amassed from thirty-three years without his mother.

Happiness and grief, regret and shock all funnel within him in a tangled tornado of emotions that Dean can't even attempt to suss out. It weaves its way into a peculiar creature Dean nor Mary, hunters young and old, aren't yet prepared to fight.

-SPN-

There's no celebration when Sam's naturally fast metabolism burns the paralytic out of his system. He's been subsisting reed-thin breaths for hours, and that has rendered him vaguely conscious and too mush-minded to keep track of vehicle speed or direction. As he takes greedy lungful of air, his awareness expands. Even in the darkness, he can see that he's been stuffed in the back of a pick-up truck with a hardcover top that's so low, it's as if he's lying in a violently trundling coffin.

Before Sam even has a chance to contemplate escape, the truck lurches to a stop, the engine dying. The mounting dread is a vicious living thing that leaves him nauseous and praying (to every deity except Chuck).

The cab of the cargo bed opens. A meaty hand grabs Sam's injured leg and drags him out of the darkness and into searing sunlight. The reflexive pain blots out any instinct to fight. His whimpers are muffled by a foul-tasting gag and are wholly ignored. Judging by the nonchalance of his kidnappers, Sam figures the only living thing nearby to hear him have four legs or wings.

Thanks to the blood loss, he's still merely a spectator to his abduction, watching through gritty eyes as he's hauled through an open pasture and into the derelict leavings of an abandoned farm.

He's stripped his wallet, cellphone, jacket, watch, and weapons.

His shoes and socks are removed.

His arms are cuffed behind his back and locked in chains; ankles bound to the wooden legs of a chair.

The barn, despite the rotted patches in the roof and the warped slats that allow sunlight and air to amble inside, is clean and orderly.

Toni Beville looms in front of him in her heels and wrinkled khakis, looking disappointingly healthy and composed for someone who just grappled with an experienced hunter twice her size. Whatever bruises he left have been covered in a seamless application of make-up and a treacherous simper. "I'd hoped we could have collected you in a more orderly manner, but I'm adaptable," Toni says.

Sam bites into the gag and ignores her.

"Now, let's try this again. I am from the British Chapter of the Men Of Letters. We bore witness you and your brother lay waste to your country, and while you Yanks may think we'd revel in America's demise, it's definitely a 'too big to fail' situation, so you had to be detained." She produces a tidy stack of composition notebooks.

Sam glares. His hunting journals are kept and updated the dark 'net, so other hunters can have access to life-saving Intel and lore. Those books are his personal journals, and contain the most candid thoughts about his disastrous adventure of his real life.

There are intimate revelations about Bobby and Jessica and Dean that he's never shared with anyone. Toni has studied them like a prosecutor preparing for trial, judging neon tabs extended from the pages and the stack piled in the far corner. "We have a lot to discuss so..."

The newly-restored sun is setting, and brisk air filters in through the drafty barn. Sam's only source of warmth is the rivulets of copper still snaking down his calf from his untreated leg. Toni's voice is quickly becoming an indecipherable drone of poshness, growing ever distant. As Sam's vision tints red, he knows that's passing out, and it's the only good thing that's happened to him today.

A crack splits the air, and Sam's head wobbles, his cheek burning. He blearily blinks, hissing at Toni, who is primed to slap him again, but removes his gag instead. She holds a bottle of water in front of his face. "We do not have time to coddle your afflictions, Samuel. Drink."

When Sam doesn't immediately open his mouth, she grabs a fistful of hair, yanks his head backward, and pours the water over his mouth and nose. "Drink it or drown in it," she singsongs like an evil Mary Poppins.

Sputtering, Sam opts for the former.

"I suppose we can't have to bleeding to death either." She tears open his blood-crusted pants to fully expose the puffed, swollen entrance and exit wounds. It's ugly, jagged entrance, thanks to the close range, but the bullet was a small caliber and pierced the muscle cleanly. Sam would've stitched it up without the good drugs, and returned to work within a week.

But at least she's going to bandage it. For the time since he was abducted, Sam naively wonders if maybe this is just a terrible misunderstanding, and that after hearing the unmitigated truth, they'll let him go.

Sam had spent his entire life as the dreamer and who was alienated from the family business and the actual family. John and Dean excelled at and accepted hunting because they both remembered and cherished their mother. Sam couldn't share their grief, and only grew to resent them for it for forcing him to make incredible sacrifices because of it.

The youngest Winchester was an innate academic who liked security and his weapon of choice would always be knowledge and history over rock salt and shotguns. So when he discovered that he was a legacy of a storied and secret organization founded to preserve and protect priceless supernatural information and archives, he finally found his place within family, and was able to accept hunting as his profession. Toni had to know from reading his journals that he was a good person and a proud Man Of Letters.

The second his eyes lock on the blue-orange flame extending from the tip of a blowtorch, all of Sam's short-lived an reluctant hope dies. He struggles against his unyielding bonds. "Toni, don't."

His arms are handcuffed behind his back so cinched so tightly he can't even flex his wrist without the metal cutting into it. He does it anyway.

She's heating a rubber-handled spoon over the flame, and soon it's vibrant, humming orange. Dignity be damned, Sam pleads. "I'm cooperating! I will tell you everything you want to know. Please don't do this! We're on the same side! PLEASE!"

Toni makes a vulgar sound of disgust. "I am on the side of justice, of faith...of humanity! The only thing worse than a villain is a villain who fancies himself a hero."

When she presses the smoldering spoon over the puncture in his leg, Sam howls, body shuddering against it. Plumes of smoke dance upward, carrying the unforgettable scent of his own cooking flesh. The torment overrides even autonomous functions, and he stops breathing. His guttural screams veer into inaudible octaves of pure misery. The pain doesn't end when she stops to re-heat the spoon. It reverberates through him in pulsing neon waves that make his teeth chatter.

Toni shifts in leg, and repeats the process for the exit wound. He vomits, hoping to get her in the splatter, and hates that he's still conscious.

Through it all, Toni's never demonstrates a scintilla of remorse. When she's finished, she leaves the wound uncovered and smoking, the holes sealed with burnt blood and crusted flesh that looks like over-seared steak.

She produces syringe and an unlabeled vial of drugs. "I believe we have bloody work to do."

-SPN-

The first memory Dean has of riding in the Impala with his mother is thirty-three years after her fiery death.

The mother is twenty-nine and the son is thirty-seven.

Dean strangles baby's steering wheel in an attempt to ground himself as pterodactyls swarm in his stomach.

Beside him, Mary clings to the doorhandle of the passenger seat, possibly in an attempt to do the same. She hasn't spoken in twenty miles, and Dean's doing everything he can do endure the palpable tension. She's in shock, and is entitled to it. He focuses on the road and getting back to the bunker. Every ounce of his being into not thinking about when climbed out of his own grave missing four months and a little brother.

Sam.

He dials him without taking his eyes off the road, working from muscle memory. Sam, of course, doesn't answer. "First rule: Answer you damn phone. I ain't dead. Call me NOW."

"Is John...alive?" Mary idly wonders, still staring aimlessly.

Dean grimaces. "No," Dean replies softly. "He's not."

Mary sniffles beside him, wiping her eyes. Dean feels like the an ass when he realizes he's never asked her if she's hungry or thirsty. He's about to when she theorizes, "the fire killed them then?"

His eyebrows climb. "What? Oh, no! He passed 'bout nine years ago. On the job, saving me."

"On the job? What do you...?"

Dean waits until he has her full attention to declare, "He was a hunter. He fell into the life after you...ya know, and raised us in it." It's everything she didn't want for him and Sam, but he's not ashamed. Mary doesn't break down this time. She just looks dazed and angry. "I'm proud of what I do. Dad wanted to his revenge, his justice, but it became a hell of a lot more than that. We saved a lot of lives on the way. In your honor."

Mary scoots away from him, bending until her head is thunks against the door, shutting him out. And Dean decides to stop at the first decent motel they find, so she can rest and process before heading to the bunker.

When she's shivering and silent six tense miles later, Dean reaches blindly in the backseat, proud in a relatively clean hoodie. "You can slip into that until we can get you some real clothes, okay?"

She presses her face into the gray cotton, breathing in the scent of girly shampoo and after-shave. The sleeves slip comically over her hands and the sweatshirt puddles in her lap. It's not much smaller than the billowing pink nightgown. Dean's mouth climbs upward.

"This is like wearing a blanket," she sighs, her voice is light as if she wants to laugh, but doesn't remember how. "Is this yours?"

For the first time since reuniting, Dean feels the unblemished happiness that should accompany such a miracle. "Nope," he beams. "It's Sam's."