A/N: I don't usually write drabbles, but this just came to me the moment Mary got to see the Impala again in 12x1. And truthfully I wouldn't have even posted it if 29Pieces and Miyth hadn't encouraged me to do so. So thank you both for that and for helping me tweak some things. ^_^

"'Hi Sweetheart'"

Her first memory was a single red rose in the passenger seat, feathery thorns tickling the leather upholstery. The foot on the gas pedal was a bit too heavy, accelerating at times with a jolt, and tapping the brake too forcefully when stopping. That was okay; she was forgiving. He needed time to acclimate to her rhythms, and she needed to break in her engine.

She pulled up alongside a curb and waited while he sprinted to the door, the flower concealed behind his back. When he returned, a young woman took the place where the rose had sat. The aroma of jasmine was an odd addition to the cabin, wafting over the seats like silk, as did the woman's blond hair.

They went to a drive-in movie, though she barely remembered the film. It wasn't as though her passengers were fixated on it anyway. When they moved to the backseat, she closed the vents and let her windows fog up quickly.

Her first memory was of love.

SPN SPN SPN

She was never filthy, save that night when ash and spray from the firehoses coated her glossy sheen in a dull matte. She braced the man who had never let a single splash of mud or scratch mar her frame, holding him up by her hood as he clutched his two sons tightly against him. She waited for Mary to join them, and only after the fire was fully out and the rescue personnel began slowly picking their way through the debris did she finally understand. John's pulsing grief radiated through her chassis; little Sammy started to cry.

When John packed everything they could carry into the Impala, she snuggly cradled the two children in the backseat.

They were all each other had now.

SPN SPN SPN

Dean doted on her with as much devotion as his father had, but the hunting life was not kind to any of them. Bruises, broken bones, she shared those injuries. But just as Sam and Dean put each other back together, so did Dean for her. After the accident…she didn't like to think about that and what came of it—he tenderly rebuilt her from the frame up.

And as he devoutly looked after her, she did the same for him and Sam. That extra burst of rpm when they were fleeing an enemy, ramming her grill into a monster before it could rend one of them limb from limb.

They fought and bled together.

SPN SPN SPN

There was an angel in the backseat. He often flitted in and out, appearing out of nowhere when she was careening down the highway at seventy miles an hour. She didn't like it.

But this time he hadn't zapped in; Dean and Sam had carried him, dazed and bleeding from a warehouse, and gently deposited him in the backseat. The warmth of blood, and the heat of something else, something electric and fizzy and blue, leaked down her leather seats.

Dean and Sam kept twisting around to give the angel worried looks. "Hold on," they told him.

When Dean failed to avoid ruts in the road, she absorbed the shock and diverted it away from the backseat.

Somewhere along the line her family had grown again.

SPN SPN SPN

There was a dog in the backseat. That, she particularly didn't like. The creature smelled, and his odor was seeping into her upholstery. Dean was not going to be happy about this.

But Dean wasn't there. Hadn't been for several months. Neither had the angel.

It was just her and Sam, and her heart ached.

SPN SPN SPN

The angel didn't ride with them anymore. He had his own set of wheels. She angled a sidelong glance at the clunky behemoth of a Continental parked across from her. He deserved a better chariot than that. It didn't even have a spark, didn't recognize him as belonging to it.

No, she wanted the angel in the backseat, with the Winchesters up front; that's where they were all meant to be.

SPN SPN SPN

This was not her Dean. Fast food wrappers littered her backseat and floors; she hadn't been washed in months. And the things Dean did with those women in the back…that was not love. It was nothing like what it had been with John and Mary.

She tried calling to him, tried to purr her engine and elicit a smile, a pat on the steering wheel, a word of praise. "That's my Baby."

There was nothing.

"It's just a car."

She was utterly alone.

SPN SPN SPN

The Darkness ripped him from her arms without a fight. She clung to Sam, braced herself against the maelstrom outside that washed over her in a cloying cloud of shadow and void. She was no match for it, of course.

Yet the next time she faced down the same evil, she put everything she had into her engine, determined to keep Sam and the angel-not-her-angel from its clutches. The woman in black held out a hand and kept her paralyzed, burning rubber spewing smoke from the wheels.

Then they were away, dropped down into a cramped space she couldn't even hope to turn around in. Dean grumbled at the short, bushy-haired man about that. She was feeling rather piqued herself, but the mysterious figure who most certainly was not what he seemed, winked at her and sent her back to the garage where she belonged.

SPN SPN SPN

Grief was a familiar resonance now. She'd experienced it enough to know. She watched Dean hand over the keys to Sam, watched Sam's eyes glisten as he fiercely hugged his brother, watched the way the angel looked at the ground in utter defeat.

When it was just the two of them driving back to the bunker, Dean nowhere to be found, she knew, once again, just like that fateful night that changed everything so long ago.

She tried to pour comfort into the reverberations rumbling up from the engine, but neither Sam nor Castiel seemed to hear her, lost in their own mourning.

When they left her in the darkened garage, she curled into herself and wept.

SPN SPN SPN

She stirred when the lights flickered on and footsteps sounded across the concrete floor. Castiel had returned, but so had…

Dean.

He'd come back for her, just as he always did.

There was another with them, not Sam…

"Hi sweetheart, remember me?"

Mary Winchester leaned her arms on the open window, and the Impala would have crowed in delight had her engine been running. The woman's hair still had a faint whiff of jasmine that cascaded down across her leather.

Family.

Yes, she remembered.