text;

[momchester]

[Anyone who knows and talks to Mary knows that she doesn't really like texting. So the fact that this is text- it's unusual.]

Dean Winchester is gone from Siren's Port. He disappeared earlier today.

If anybody wants to find me, I'll be at the Newcomer Memorial.

[Most likely drunk. Her marriage dissolved even more this week, talk about an awful month.]

[Private to Castiel | added several hours later]

Hi. Just wanted to drop you a line and ask how you're doing.

Comments

[action]

[failedparenting]

[John will be there. He's not completely drunk, but he's on his way. The flask in his coat pocket is certainly getting a workout.

He says nothing as he sidles up next to her, but he offers her his flask.]

[momchester]

[In response (to him, not the flask) she just draws her arms tighter around herself, folding inwards instead of looking at him. For a long minute it seems like she's not gonna acknowledge him at all, but there are tears shining on her previously dry cheeks as she stares at Dean's name carved on the Memorial.

Dean Winchester. Like a dead man's name on a veteran memorial. Like he's never coming back.

When she opens her mouth to speak, the first breath comes out as a sob, and she has to fight to get every word out with even a facade of calm.]

I- I don't. [A breath. It doesn't help; she's crying in earnest now under the strain of everything.] I don't think it's too much to ask to want to know your own son. I really don't.

[failedparenting]

[He puts a shaking hand on her knee (she probably wouldn't appreciate anything more than that from him, anyway) and gives it a reassuring squeeze.]

Do you want me to tell you about him?

[momchester]

[That gets a deep hitching breath that comes so close to becoming a sob that would send her reeling, but she manages to get a grip at the last second and steady herself. As much as she can anyway, or just pull herself back from the brink.]

Yeah. I- I didn't get to see him learn to read.

[failedparenting]

[Good. Concrete suggestions. That he can deal with.]

He was slow at it. I don't think his teachers gave him the time of day, you know? So he took it into his own hands. [He pauses for a moment to take a quick nip of whatever he's got in the flask.] He taught himself how to read Dr. Seuss in kindergarten. He tried to teach Sammy too, but then he just drooled all over the books.

[momchester]

[Mary can't speak for a moment, she just shakes her head with a tearful smile.]

He always watched out for Sam, didn't he?

[failedparenting]

Yeah. Yeah, he did.

[John looks away from Mary to stare intently at the memorial. There's something unpleasantly familiar about it, seeing the name of someone he loves carved into a memorial.]

Did a better job than I ever did.

[momchester]

[For Mary it's different. The loss doesn't feel real to her yet. There's no closure until she's staring into a pyre watching the body burn away- a hunter's funeral. That's how she knows death and moving on. At this point it's just a thin, empty, formless feeling of loss.]

You kept them together. You raised a hunter who went to Stanford.

[failedparenting]

No, I didn't.

[He shakes his head adamantly. He's never been involved in anything remotely impressively academic, even indirectly.]

He did that all on his own. Hell, he probably could've graduated high school early if I wasn't dragging him all over God's green earth.

[momchester]

You must've done something. Sam told me you did the best you could.

[failedparenting]

Sam? Really?

[Eyebrow quirk.]

Must be lawyer for "fuck all".

[momchester]

He was being honest.