Note: Here it is, the long overdue installment 3 of this AU series. Sorry for the long hiatus; I had a novel to finish editing and then to publicize. So, I return to you with the latest in the ongoing tale of the Winchester clan (sorry, no time for editing so apologies for the typos). For those new to the series, it begins with "In the Wind" and rolls on from there. Reading that one first and its sequel "In The Woods" will add the necessary context to understand what is going on in this story. Cheers, my dear readers. I have missed you all. Hope you enjoy this one.

oOoOoOo

Lawrence, Kansas

March 1983

Mary Winchester clenched her fists before grabbing a pillow from the couch. She buried her face in it and muffled a frustrated scream. The sound of the family's car, an old Impala that her husband refused to consider selling for something that got better mileage and might save them some money each week, rumbled in the driveway then faded as the car took off into the rainy night. The thunder that shook the house earlier was a memory unfortunately. It had been a good cover for their shouting as they fell into yet another argument about money.

Things were tight and tough. The garage was struggling, bills were rising, and in two months' time the small Winchester family would go from three to four members when the new baby arrived. While the argument had started about finances, it ended when John put his foot in his mouth and made an ill-timed dig at his wife about her nagging being hormonal.

She made him regret that rather quickly.

Mary Campbell Winchester might be heavily pregnant and smaller framed than her former-Marine spouse, but she was anything but meek. She wondered in those moments when her temper flared and she saw nothing but red what he would do if she showed him what she knew about taking care of herself.

But those moments usually faded swiftly leaving her feeling dismal for even contemplating unearthing the twisted secrets of her youth and the vicious and deadly life her family led hunting the nasty and fanged creatures that stalked humanity both at night and in broad daylight. Given that as her alternative, an argument with her husband over the checkbook hardly seemed a reason to be upset, but she found herself venting her frustration into the pillow all the same.

She was so wrapped up in that moment that she had not heard the sound of little feet descending the stairs after having slipped out of his bed. It wasn't until her young son Dean was beside her that she noticed him.

"Mommy, why are you crying?" Dean asked in a soft and worried voice as he pawed his way onto the couch.

"Dean, honey," Mary said, drying her eyes hastily. "What are you doing up?"

"I heard a bang," he said with his wide green eyes alert and concerned. "Did the house break? I heard the wind. Is there a tomato?"

Mary smirked.

"You mean tornado," she sniffled as she kindly corrected him and started to weave yet another tale to keep him for knowing his parents were fighting. She felt she needed to do this to remove the worry from his delicate features. "No, honey. It's not that kind of storm. The house didn't break. You just heard the door. The, uh, the wind shut it really hard. Everything's okay, Sweetie. Let's get you back in bed."

He shook his head as he knelt on the cushion beside her.

"Where's Daddy?" he asked with a touch of fear as he looked around only to find his father absent from the room. "He wasn't home when I went to bed. He didn't say Goodnight."

"Well, Daddy got home late, after you went to bed," Mary replied truthfully then lied smoothly. "Then he had to go back to work."

"'Cause someone gots a sick car he needs to make better?" the child asked.

Mary's grin melted from the forced mask into a genuine smile. Dean had recently decided his father was some kind of hero. He had always been an unrepentant fan of John's, but now that John was spending a bit more time with the child to help ease the transition for when the new baby arrived, Dean's fascination with and attachment to the man had skyrocketed. Therefore, when John explained to his son that his job was to fix cars, the boy equated that skill with those of a doctor or a superhero saving people. In recent weeks, he had started asking if their car was actually the Batmobile; Mary could only assume that his next questions in the coming weeks would be whether John was actually Batman.

Mary smirked inwardly at that. Her husband had been a Marine, and a good one at that, but a man who battled dark forces in the shadows just wasn't a role she could see for him. Her father had known that much about the mechanic; it had been the only thing Samuel Campbell got right in his assessment of the man who became his son-in-law (even if it was only after the man died).

Still, Mary wasn't going to dissuade Dean's worship rationale for his father. It was a child's response to a change in his world he could not understand. John was spending time away from home lately. Usually it was to work longer shifts to help pay the bills; however, there were also the nights that Mary and John tangled with nasty words and frustrated emotions, which usually prompted John to sleep on the couch or (like this night) to leave the house entirely. The fights were getting louder and seemed unending on some days. It was as if they had forgotten why they ever fell in love in the first place. Just about the only thing the Winchesters agreed on was that it would be better to spare Dean as much of their discontent as possible. Therefore, for her part, if in Dean's mind his father would only leave to do something of vital importance, such as saved the lives of cars, then that was what Mary would let him believe.

Then again, once in a while, their child was more aware than either parent realized.

Like this evening for example.

"Was Daddy mad again?" Dean asked fearfully. "Did I leave my toys in the way again? Is that why you're crying? ''Cause I did something that made Daddy go away again?"

Mary pulled her little boy into a hug and pet his soft hair. It always disturbed her how often she and John would forget Dean was in the house when they got to the point of yelling at each other. The garage was struggling and money was tight, and now there was another baby on the way. Granted, it would be months before the newest family member arrived, but everything lately was a strain on finances and their relationship.

"No, Sweetheart," Mary said simply. "Daddy's not made at you. You didn't make him go away. He had to work. Mommy's only crying because she's feeling a little blue."

Dean's eyes lit up and a curious yet clever expression washed over his pale, freckled face.

"Oh, okay," he replied eagerly then scrambled away from her swiftly.

Mary was surprised at the abrupt reaction. Dean's typical response to any offering from Mary—good, bad or indifferent—was usually to hug her then grin in his impish way as if they shared some inside joke. He was a sensitive, warm and affectionate little boy who had a habit of wheedling his way out of trouble simply by turning on an impish charm that left her usually grinning at him rather than scolding him.

So, leaving her side so suddenly without seeking some sort of comfort or validation in the form of a hug was out of character for him. His departure seemed cold, especially since her little boy knew she had been crying. Dean did not handle his Mommy's tears well; he always seemed to fear they were his fault and would throw his tiny arms around her neck and hug her tightly as if he could squeeze the sadness from her. Before she had time to wonder further why her son had turned abruptly disinterested, the boy returned with a yellow crayon held high in his small fist.

"Here," Dean said, thrusting the brightly color stick in her face, his grin crinkling his eyes. "You can have this."

"What's this for?" she asked curiously.

"It's so you don't need to be blue no more," Dean offered with a bright but sleepy grin. "Yellow won't make you cry, Mommy. See, I made it all better now."

oOoOoOo

Sioux Falls, SD

June 1995

Yellow.

Mary opened her eyes and focused on the pale sunny shaded blooms in the vase by her bed as a long forgotten memory of a crayon offered to soothe a broken heart began to fade from her mind. She looked at the flowers by her bed. The blooms were drooping now, dropping petals as they wilted into a sorry state nearly a week after arriving. They were a birthday gift, courtesy of her sons. The buttery wildflowers plucked from the meadow beside their home were much lighter than a crayon but still brought her mind back to sunnier and earlier times.

Or maybe that was the medication.

Mary was never sure anymore. Days were hazy and seemed to drag agonizingly or simply disappear, depending on how much the pain invaded her mind. The desire for someone to just up the dose of the morphine was strong, but the idea of leaving her boys scared her more than the pain.

The cancer was already at stage four when the doctor's diagnosed her late the fall, just after Thanksgiving. What had started as a dull pain in her chest that she thought was a mixture of anxiety and a pulled muscle turned out to be something deadly.

It had been a trying year for the entire family even without her illness. Sam struggled at the hands (and fists) of a school bully during the first few weeks of the school year. Not surprisingly, Dean stepped in and put an end to it, but not before getting school officials involved and the law. Fortunately, his one close friend from school was the son of the County Sheriff. He had kept the matter from escalating, but not before there were a lot of tense moments and meetings with the Winchester parents. No sooner had that issue resolved itself than Dean found himself popular with the high school principal—namely for fighting in school with the older brother of the boy who had been bothering Sam. That resulted in a one week suspension. Upon his return after the punishment, the Winchesters were summoned to the school again. This time it was for Dean's unpermitted absence from school for cutting classes. What he had been doing during those missing hours remained a mystery to his parents, but John still suspected their neighbor Bobby Singer knew but was keeping a secret for Dean.

Thanksgiving rolled around with Mary feeling worse, which didn't get better once she knew why. The holiday was a quiet and miserable affair in the former church turned family home that year. Mary and John were trying to hold themselves together as they came to terms with her diagnosis. Sam was pouting that everyone in school thought he was a baby because his older brother had stepped in like a bodyguard, and Dean appeared mad at the world since he was on lockdown needing prior approval for his every move outside of their home and often receiving a chaperone anytime he did leave.

But once the news of her illness was broken to the boys, everything changed. Things had gone quiet and still in the house. John growled orders at his sons to help around the house. When Mary took to her bed, possibly for the rest of her days, in May, each stepped in to play nurse as much as they were capable.

Mary's days, whether they languished in pain or disappeared into an unconscious blur, were growing short. The hospice nurse was at the house most of the day, whenever John or Bobby could not be around. Mary had only two requests for her final days: That she spend them in her home rather than the hospital and that she never be alone in the house with her children. She knew she would die soon and did not want either of her sons to be the one to find her when she did pass. She blinked back her worry over that happening as she let her eyes settle on two pain-filled glassy, green orbs staring back at her. The sharp ache she spied there made her physical pain seem like nothing, and it crushed her heart into a tiny, cold ball to see it. Dark circles scarred the pockets under his eyes and his face was drawn and pale. His brother and father wore matching expressions anytime they were in the room with her.

She looked up from her yellow flowers to see Dean by her beside.

"Morning, Mom," he said softly. His voice, as it always was with her lately, was a combination of phony control and forced casualness.

"Sweetie," Mary said weakly. "What time is it?"

"About 7:30," he said. "Sam just finished his breakfast. He'll be in to say hi just before he goes to meet his bus. Do you need anything?"

"For you to go to school," Mary commanded as best as she could.

"It can wait," Dean said. "Besides, it's exam week. I'll get the same grades for the year whether I take any of them or not."

"Baby, don't do this," Mary sighed. "I want you to listen to me."

Her chest heaved as she deflated tiredly in the bed. Dean stood patiently waiting for her eyes to open again as she worked her jaw in an attempt to continue speaking. If it took her hours to get out another word, he would remain in place without flinching or sighing. Class schedules didn't matter; detention for being late again didn't matter either; hell, school as a whole just didn't matter to him. Never had and that wasn't changing. Particularly now.

What did matter was time—his mother's time, or more precisely, her time with them. With him.

There was so very little of it left.

Sure, he told Sam that the doctors were still doing their best and that Mom was a fighter. He said those things, nice little lies to keep the kid from falling apart, but Dean never believed them. He hadn't believed even when they were first told their mother was sick and that the doctor was doing everything he could to cure her. Dean had known before his parents said anything that something was wrong. He could feel it in his gut. There was a colder chill in the air, a darker shade to the night, a deeper moan to the wintery winds.

They broke the news two days after Christmas, as if that wasn't going to somehow ruin the feeling of the season. Dean tried not to be mad about that; he understood why they did it. It was for Sam. He was still a kid, and he needed to be protected from the bad stuff that lurked in the shadows and that could jump you when you weren't looking.

That's what cancer did.

It snuck up from the shadows and blindsided a person. It dragged his mother down and beating her senseless from the inside. Dean hated cancer; he hadn't thought much about hate or killing anything in his life, not seriously anyway (except maybe that thing that chased him and Sam in the woods the previous summer and nearly killed Bobby), but when he heard the words "stage four cancer" and his mother's name in the same sentence (words that came from her own mouth), he wanted blood.

Cancer was a living thing. He'd read that—the only time he had willingly looked up something in a book that wasn't part of a homework assignment or have anything to do with a car. He had read a lot about cancer since hearing those words. Cancer was a living thing, a bunch of cells, that grew rapidly and without regard for the body hosting them. They killed their hosts like the most vicious and uninvited guests in the universe.

And Dean wanted them dead. Every last cell. Everywhere.

But he couldn't kill them. It seemed, for his mother anyway, nothing could.

So all he could do was watch as it ate her alive from the inside. He watched her struggle. He watched her suffer, and (soon he knew—within a few weeks or perhaps sooner) he would watch her die. She would leave him, this time for good.

But for now, he watched, and he waited for her words. She swallowed slowly and dryly as her eyes focused on his, then hers crinkled slightly in the corners, the way they had in his earliest memories and the way they had up until just after Christmas. The return of that, a little smile in her eyes, swelled a lump in his throat as he took her hand and crouched beside the bed, leaning close to hear her soft voice.

"Sorry," Mary eventually said as her eyes peeked open once more.

"Sleeping in again, huh?" Dean chided lightly as he did what he could to put some confidence and charming arrogance into his tone. "You're becoming a bad example for me, Mom. I'm gonna start to think this is how adults behave then I'll never make it to school on time. Actually, that's probably a good idea. Every year I get stuck with an earlier period for history with Mr. Phelps. No good ever comes of me showing up in that man's class."

Mary scoffed thinly as she pursed her lips in a mild scolding. Her bony, dry hand squeezed his slightly as she looked into his soft green eyes and watched as he held back the hint of tears she spotted there so often—tiny glistening drops of heartbreak that were her fault but that he would never allow to see the light of day, torturing himself silently as he donned a mask of callous teenage arrogance that was so very far from who he truly was on the inside.

"You will go to your history exam today and do your best," she said finally as whatever she had intended to say slipped from her mind as a more pressing matter rose there. "Baby, you need to promise me something."

Talking was hard most days. Drawing enough breath to get out the words was a chore she did not feel up for most of the time. Adding any sort of volume to her voice was nearly an impossible task. Thankfully, Winchester men seemed to be good at taking hints and signals without needing much verbal direction. She credited that spidey sense more to their father than their mother. John was apt to scold and correct the boys with a single, stern look or command them with a cutting glance. They usually rolled with it and met his expectations. She was grateful they were able to take her cues as well. The fatigue in her bones was mighty, and the pain was crushing even with the medication

"Anything," Dean nodded earnestly.

"School," Mary replied. "You have to finish school."

"Really?" Dean blinked. "Attendance is your big concern? I've only got three days left in my sophomore year. After Friday, they can't give me any more detention for nearly three months. That's not me making things up. I asked Mr. Phelps if he could front-load punishment for the next year, and he said no. He seemed kind of pissed about that so it must be true."

"Dean," she sighed as she held back an unexpected yet achy chuckle.

Leave it to her first-born to make her laugh when she was in this condition and about to have a serious discussion with him, one that should have happened a year earlier when both were in a better frame of mind. However, better times and better chances were not going to come up, she knew. She could feel the end nearing each day no matter how badly she did not want to see it, and she could not look away anymore.

"College, Dean," she said in a breathy voice. "Promise me you will do your best in school for the next two years so you can go to college. I never got to do that. I wanted that, for you and Sam. Your father and I had a savings account for both of you. We started when you were born."

"Uh, maybe it's just me, but I don't think saving money for that is a good idea," he pointed out. "We're broke, always. What say we cash in my account and do something wild like get a better water heater so I can take a hot shower once in a while, and we can scrub Sammy's girlie hair clean with something other than ice water."

Mary offered him a flat expression, mostly for the jab at his brother's preferred way of wearing his hair. Dean and John were of the same opinion that the youngest of the Winchester clan needed a pair of clippers taken to his mop, but Mary liked his messy locks. They were hardly long enough to call them girlie, and she would fight John tooth and nail (should she find that strength again) if he ever suggested the boy get a Marine regulation cut. In truth, between the two boys, Dean was the one who spent more time on his hair. She had watched him in his room, spiking it just so and making sure it was sufficiently stylish, in a way that reminded her more of a girl primping for a date than a man, but she never said so. Her sons were both handsome boys, but Dean was the teenager. Despite his claims to the contrary, his appearance was something that mattered to him.

"Those first accounts we set up are long gone," Mary said in a weak but flat tone to match his own. That the money had gone first to private investigators to find her sons when they disappeared from their beds on Halloween Night in 1983 wasn't worth mentioning to him, nor was the fact that the other chunk of that money had gone to weapons, fake IDs and ammo when she began hunting again after their disappearance. "We started new accounts again when you and Sammy came home to us. It isn't much, but it's our promise to you. So now I need a promise from you."

Dean sighed and shook his head. Certainly agreeing and lying to her in that moment would have been best, but he couldn't do it. She always knew when he was lying—from his real reasons for sneaking out of the house to why he got suspended, she always knew every false word that had tumbled over his lips. She might not know the truth behind the story, but she definitely knew when he wasn't giving her the real story.

"Mom, I'm not a student," he said. "I'm no good at school. I'm not smart. Sam can have my money. He's good at school. He deserves to go to college."

"Honey, you are very smart," she asserted. "You're very good at the things you want to be good at, Dean."

"Yeah, well, mothers are supposed to think like that," he said. "It's like how you think Sam's crappy poetry is good, and those ugly things he makes in art class are pretty. You're not really a good judge of what we're good at when you think about it, Mom."

Mary took a deep breath and measured the conviction in his voice. He was keeping his tone quiet, but he believed every word he was saying. She wasn't worried about his lack of appreciation for his brother's creative skills. To the contrary, the one thing that never worried her about Dean was his opinion of and devotion to his little brother. When she was gone, she knew Sam would be well taken care of. The young boy had two determined individuals in the house looking out for him and one living just a mile down the road who would do the same.

What worried her was who would take care of Dean. She knew he did not think himself worthy of anyone taking that job. His lack of faith in himself and his future made her ache and hate her disease even more. There simply wasn't enough time with him to undo all the damage a decade without a parent to love him and take care of him had done. John relied on Dean and treated him more like an adult, entrusting him with much of Sam's care simply because Dean had long ago proven he was reliable for that and good at it. To some, it might look like a burden to saddle a 16-year-old with those duties, but from John it was a vote of confidence. For Dean, it was the only thing he felt he was good at normally. Still, that left Dean without anyone to do the same for him and no confident voice in his ear letting him know that he was more than just Sam's keeper.

Mary might not have a lot of time and strength left, but what she had she wanted to devote to a good and deserving cause and she could think of no better recipients of her final efforts than her sons.

"Honey, Mr. Phelps believes in you," she said as she named his history teacher, who at times Dean portrayed in conversations as his arch nemesis.

The man had been on Dean's case for two years, dogging his nearly every step at the high school, seeming to be the one who monitored all of his study halls and who always got him for history class. The man also was the assistant coach of the baseball team and always seemed to catch Dean's every move. While the teenager was suspicious of it, Mary was not. There was more to Phelps than Dean would ever know, and she was grateful the man (and his warden like presence) were on her son's case whenever she was not there to watch over him.

"Mom, Mr. Phelps is a 100 years old and senile," Dean scoffed, taking his normal insulting approach toward the man. "He hates me and is counting the days until I drop out or get kicked out for good. I mean, there's a reason I get nearly all my detentions from him."

"There is, and you're choosing not to see it," Mary countered as she struggled to stay awake. "For the record, he's only 60. Dean, he wouldn't pay such close attention to you if you weren't worth his time. He's a brilliant man. He holds a doctorate in history from Notre Dame."

Dean snorted his lack of agreement on the man's interest in him. He also rolled his eyes at the lack of wow-factor he felt on the man's education and intelligence. In his mind, anyone who was brilliant and had a big, bad degree from a top university shouldn't be teaching at a rundown high school in Sioux Falls, South Dakota.

"If he's so damn smart, doesn't it kind of beg the question what the hell he's doing here teaching delinquents like me in the first place?" Dean wondered.

"He wants to make a difference, and you're not a delinquent," Mary persisted.

"My school record and certainly Principal Carlson disagree," Dean replied. "I've read all of his complaining letters to you. You know I open them and read them before you see them, right?"

She smiled slightly. She hadn't known for certain, but she had suspected. Dean's ability to have counter arguments and excuses ready as she and John began their lectures was always suspicious to her. Not that she didn't believe he could think quickly on his feet; on the contrary, doing that was half of his problem with the school officials.

"Principal Carlson is a…," she began and paused as she searched for the appropriate term.

"Bureaucratic douche bag?" Dean offered in her silence.

"Say windbag, please, in the future," she said without disagreeing with him. "He knows nothing about you so his opinion is irrelevant. You're very smart, Dean. You just never give yourself the chance or the credit you deserve. Promise me that you will do that whether I am here or not."

He shook his head vehemently. He had accepted, in theory, that she was leaving but to hear her acknowledge it was not something he was ready for. That would mean she had accepted her fate and that she was ready to go. He couldn't accept that. It meant the end had virtually arrived, and time had run out finally.

"Don't say that," he begged. "You can't leave."

"Baby, I know this is hard," Mary swallowed slowly as a prickle of tears pinched at her eyes.

"Then don't go," Dean continued to shake his head. "You told me that you died inside when you couldn't find me and Sammy all those years. Well, we're here now so you can't leave us yet. Without you…"

Her eyes burned with the tears he would not let fall, but she could feel his hand shaking in hers yet his grasp remained gentle. And that was the truth about her boy that so few people knew. He could be brusque and abrupt; he could be crass and rude, but he was as sensitive as his little brother and perhaps a whisker gentler. There was a softness to Dean that pointed those who could find it to the truth about him: He was all heart.

Sam was a thinker, a pondering child, who most thought of as kind and thoughtful. And he was those things, in abundance, but his first reaction to most everything was what he thought about it. His brother, however, was always about how something made him feel. That his feelings were rarely hostile or aggressive was something most of the world would never expect because he had them all fooled by the mighty armor that he forged during a decade of playing the role of parent and bodyguard to his baby brother.

"You have your father and Bobby to…," Mary began as she tried to assure him.

"We need you," Dean pleaded softly on strained vocal cords. "I need you."

"Dean, please," she sighed. "I'm too tired to fight."

"You want to leave me again," he said in a small voice as he stared at his hand clasping hers. "Please don't. I'll be better. I promise. I'll stop arguing so much. I'll listen to you and do what you say. I'll…"

"Promise me you'll do your best and graduate so you can go to college, Baby," she urged.

Dean's shoulders slumped as he nodded slowly. He would give her the truth, not some half-baked lie. If these were her last words from him, he vowed they be true and from his heart.

"I'll make sure Sammy goes," he vowed. "I'll work extra jobs to see that he can afford it. I swear."

"I'm not worried about your brother," Mary replied in a pleading tone. "Sam's always believed he would do great things because he knew that you always believed in him. Your father and I weren't there to do that for you when you were little. I want you to know that no matter what, no matter where I am, that I believe you can do anything, Dean. Now, I want you to prove me right. Honey, if you love me, you will do this. You will promise me, and you will make good on your word."

He lifted his uncertain eyes to meet hers and felt his heart sink. Truth was sour and bitter, in his mind, and he never found that it made him feel better or free or anything that those damn clichés claimed it would do.

"We both know I'm never going to be the valedictorian or the top of my class in anything except detention," Dean said. "Mom, I know you'd prefer it if I was more like Sammy, but I can't be like him; I'm not that good."

"That's not what I want," she explained. "You just need to be Dean Winchester. Not Sam's brother. Not John's son. Not Bobby's shadow. Just be Dean. Trust me, Sweetie, Dean Winchester is impressive and exceptional all on his own. You can do it. You have such a strong mind and an amazing will. You are tough and clever, and you have an amazingly big heart. Honey, you've proven that you can do what is hard and that's why I know you can do what I ask. Now, promise me."

Dean clenched his jaw and felt his mind reeling. She was talking like some afternoon talk show therapist—something he attributed to the forest of pill bottles on the table beside the bed—and staring at him with those crinkled eyes. It was like acid on his skin, burning him and making his eyes water. He looked squarely at her and did what he did best: challenge.

"I'll do all of that if you promise me you won't leave me," he said as he knelt by her bed with his head close to hers.

"Honey, my body can't keep going like this," she sighed. "I've fought all I can."

Dean shook his head in refusal.

"Promise me," he said firmly in the same way his father gave him unwinnable ultimatums.

Mary sighed deeply as she felt her fatigue and the medication haul back on her senses and start to drag her back into the hazy oblivion where she spent most of her days.

"Dean, I don't want to leave you," she said. "I would stay if I could. I will stay with you as long as I can, but I need you to do what I ask no matter where I am. Swear to me that no matter what happens to me, you will not give up on yourself. I want you to have a life with choices that I never had, with opportunities I never got. I know I'll fight harder to stay with you if you do this for me and, if I have to go then I'll rest easier knowing you are doing your very best, always, no matter what, even if I don't get better."

"But… but if you're not here, then…," he began to sputter, stopping only when she dropped his hand and gently touched his cheek with her cold and bony fingers.

"Then you have to work even harder because I won't be nagging you directly every day to stick to your promise, but I will be watching you, Baby," Mary said. "Dean, I will know. Those angels I say are watching over you will have me shouting over them. And just so you know that I am still watching, I will send one of them to kick your ass if you even think of quitting or giving up."

oOoOoOo

A/N: More to come…