He felt trapped, cut off from the real world. All he could hear were the roar of flames. All he could taste was soot, and all he could smell was the bitter scent of blood. Even if he closed his eyes he could still see her eyes staring back at him, the light and life forever gone from them. Her expression would be forever frozen in a look of abject terror. He would never be able to shake that vision.
His shoulders bent under an enormous burden. It was grief, and pain, and the responsibility of caring for two small children all by himself. More than that it was his newfound knowledge. Evil did exist in the world, and it could, and would, take innocent lives for no apparent reason. Part of his burden was fear, and part of it was anger. He was already afraid. The anger would come to fore later.
At the moment John Winchester's world consisted of the kitchen table and his own misery. At first glance one might thing the unkempt man hunched over the table was drunk, or at the very least, hung over. His clothing was soiled and creased, his face remained unshaven, his hair unwashed. Beneath the hands covering them, his eyes were puffy and bloodshot. Truth be told, John had drunk a couple of beers the night before, but only in a last ditch attempt to get some sleep.
The alcohol had helped very little. He slept, but was visited by nightmares, making him toss and turn in the sweat soaked sheets. He heard Mary scream and it woke him with a cry. He lay in bed, panting for breath, momentarily disoriented. They were not in the house, the house was gone. This was an apartment. Mary was gone too. He'd only heard her scream in his dreams.
He'd turned his face to his pillow and sobbed
If his own nightmares didn't keep him awake, the children did. Sammy's routine had been disrupted. He would not sleep through the night, instead waking more than once to be changed and fed, crying bitterly until John dragged himself out of bed to take care of him. John didn't mind so much. Sammy was not the jolly baby he'd once been, perhaps feeding off his father's grief, but he still had his moments. He would laugh and coo, and play with his toes until John had to smile through the tears.
It was Dean, however, for whom he worried. John had gone out to the kitchen for another beer, trying to chase his nightmare away, when he heard the boy screaming. His anguished cries cut John to the bone.
"Mommy, Mommy, Mommy! I want my Mommy!"
He would wait, listening, until the hysterical crying began, when Dean inevitably came to his senses and realized Mommy would not be coming. Only then did John slip into his son's room and gather him into his arms until the crying stopped and exhaustion dragged the child back to sleep.
That was at night.
During the day Dean retreated into his own little world. He spoke very little, and showed no interest in anything going on around him, including eating. The normally robust and healthy child was rapidly deteriorating. He grew paler, thinner, and more withdrawn with every passing day. John did his best, but sometimes he felt as if his son were slipping away from him both mentally and physically, attempting to follow his mother into the dark.
John rubbed his face, and raised his head, checking back into the world around him; a world wherein the baby was screaming at the top of his lungs, and the television was turned up too loud.
He glanced over into the living room. Dean was sitting on the sofa watching cartoons and eating Fruit Loops from the box. Like his father he looked disheveled and forlorn. His hair needed combed, his face washed, and although it was three o'clock in the afternoon he still wore a pair of grubby pajamas. John realized they were the same pajamas he'd been wearing for the past two days.
"At least he's eating something," John thought, as he wearily pushed himself up from his chair. He had no idea how long he'd been sitting there, maybe all day. He didn't know. He didn't care.
"How long has your brother been howlin?" he asked, as he shuffled past the couch. Not expecting an answer, he didn't wait for a reply.
Dean only shrugged.
John went into his bedroom. Sammy, his clothes, and the bedding were soaked. He'd worked himself up into a frenzy during the time he'd been crying. His little face was as red as an apple, and his little hands were clenched in white knuckled fists. A snotty nose and tear filled eyes completed the picture.
"You're a mess, kiddo," John murmured. He lifted the baby from his crib, and groped around in a nearby bag for a diaper.
He came up empty. There were none left.
"Jesus wept..."
So did Sam, gulping in big hitches of air as he gathered up for another hissy fit. He had to be changed, but into what?
"Dean!" John bellowed, as he pinned the half-naked baby down to the bed with one hand and grabbed at another plastic bag with the other. All of the baby's clothes had been destroyed in the fire, but the Red Cross had donated some things...
"Dean! Come here! I need a hand."
Sam let out a screech. John grunted as he hauled the plastic bag full of baby clothes onto the bed. The bag immediately broke, spilling everything back onto the floor.
"Dean, God dammit, get IN here!"
Turning, John yelled over his shoulder, not realizing his son had quietly come into the room and was standing right behind him. Dean flinched backward under the onslaught. Almost immediately he burst into tears.
"I'm sorry!" he wailed.
Sammy's volume increased as his brother joined the chorus.
John sank to the floor at the foot of the bed, burying his face in his hands. "Oh dear God, I can't do this. I can't...Mary..."
She came in out of the rain, pushing a bicycle, the old fashioned kind with big whitewall tires and a basket on the front. One of the tires was flat. The basket was full of books already swelling from the soaking they'd received. She'd been at the library. The pop-up shower had taken her by surprise.
John and Vince had taken a break from their work to have coffee and watch the rain pour down from the gutters. It was mid September and the rain brought with it the first hint of fall. As they stood there they'd marked the ragged figure's progress as she'd pushed the bike down the road toward them. Vince started another pot of coffee, for the warm air preceding the storm had now become chill and she was wearing shorts. She could probably use the warm beverage. They didn't recognize her until she pushed the bike into the garage and clawed the long, stringy strands of her wet hair away from her face.
"Do you have a phone I can use?" she asked.
They'd gone to high school with her. She had been the unattainable girl, the head cheerleader, the quarterback's girlfriend - although in Maribeth Copeland's case she'd dated the center instead. She was as as smart as she was beautiful, graduating valedictorian. Her father was a pediatrician, her mother was a prominent member of Lawrence's society set and sold real estate to rich people.
John's mother was a waitress, his father was a drunk. Dyslexia nearly cost him a diploma. Maribeth Copeland was as far out of his reach as Pluto.
He handed Maribeth a cup of coffee and pointed her toward the office. "It's in there," he said.
"Thanks."
Her bike caught his eye from where it leaned against the bumper of the shop's battered old tow truck. "Do you, uh...want me to fix that?" In case she might balk at the idea, he added, "on the house," and he smiled.
It was the smile that won her over. She would tell him later she'd never in her life seen such a sweet and honest smile. It dimpled his cheeks and lit up his eyes and if he'd told her at that moment to jump off the highest building in town she would have done it.
"Sure," she said instead. "I'd like that. Thank you."
While he patched the hole in her tire, John couldn't help but overhear her on the phone. It didn't take long to realize who she was talking to - her boyfriend, the ex-center from Lawrence's high school football team. Like Maribeth he came from that other world. Everyone expected them to get married. He was in law school. Unlike John and Vince he'd never set foot in 'Nam, or eaten macaroni and cheese three times a day when there was nothing else. Where John was dark haired and dark eyed, Scott Douglas was as blue eyed and blond haired as Maribeth. Their children would be little clones of themselves.
If they got that far. From the sound of her voice, Maribeth was none to happy with her fiance at the moment.
"I'm at Guenther's."
"Can't it wait? I'm cold, I'm drenched."
"I don't believe you! Jesus, Scott!"
"No. No, don't bother."
She hung up the phone with a bang.
After a moment she came out into the garage bay and stood in the open door, staring out into the parking lot at the road beyond. Rivulets of water ran down from the road into the unpaved parking lot of the garage, turning it into a slick, shallow pool of mud. She drank her coffee and shivered. John watched her for a moment before rising from where he knelt beside the bike to offer her his coat.
At first he felt foolish. The coat was old and threadbare, and covered in greasy black smudges from where he'd been leaning over grimy car engines. His hands were dirty too, save where he'd scraped his knuckles trying to get a bitch of an alternator out just that morning. There were clean spots there, beneath the band-aids.
She was wearing a pale pink shirt. Her shorts were khaki. She wouldn't want an old, filthy mechanics coat no matter how cold she got. He understood the dividing lines between the haves and the have nots. She had, he had not.
John blushed, and waited for the rejection.
Much to his surprise, it never came. Instead she thanked him and pulled the coat around her with the hand not holding her coffee mug. She turned the worn, faux-fur collar up around her face, snuggling down into it for warmth. Her eyes were bright, her expression one of gratitude.
"Thanks," she said.
"Sure." He nodded toward her bike. "I'm almost done, but it doesn't look like this rain is gonna let up any time soon."
Her tone was bitter and still tinged with anger. "No," she said. "It doesn't."
John hesitated.
She turned her head to look at him. Her eye caught his and held it when he might have looked away. Even with her hair hanging around her face, soggy and limp, and her makeup running down her cheeks like black tears, she was the most beautiful thing he'd ever seen. They stared at each other for a long, breathless moment, before she looked aside. It made him bold.
"Do you need a ride home?" he asked.
Maribeth looked up at him once more. "I don't want to take you away from your work.."
"Oh, that's okay. I mean..." he found himself melting again, smiling shyly as he put both hands in his pockets and shrugged. "The name on the sign is Guenther's, but half it is mine. I can take a few minutes off I guess..."
She laughed. "Why didn't you put your name on the sign too?"
"They charged by the letter. We could only afford one, and his name is shorter than mine."
"What's yours?"
"Winchester," he said hastily, realizing that before he offered her a ride home, he might have introduced himself. "John Winchester."
"I'm..."
"Maribeth Copeland, I know."
There was a momentary, and very awkward silence as their eyes met again.
"Call me Mary," she said softly.