Can’t have been walking for decades, can’t be years, probably can’t be months, the small smooth bump of her belly is still small and smooth. Still something she can fit under her clothes to hide. She remembers what happened to the other baby, stuck on a spit and slow roasted because food’s been scarce since the world caved in. She dreams about it, vivid and clear, sharp cries and sharp smells and she clenches her fist over her stomach, enough of a maternal instinct already begun to tell her she’d do anything, absolutely anything to keep it from happening to her baby.

Bile rises in her throat and she doesn’t want to think about him, about his hot hands groping in the darkness and his delight when she started throwing up every morning, like she had food to waste. She doesn’t want to think about the other mothers and how she tried to get them to come with her but none would. Safer with him in a life they knew than out here on the road.

Dead of night when she left, dark, dark in ways the world never was before, and she almost tripped over him but the fire flared just then and she saw him and she stepped around him. She walked for minutes, hours, bare feet scraping over dead things, grass and weeds, till she hit the rough, buckled asphalt. She hasn’t left that road.

--

She knows she hasn’t always had the dreams but she can’t remember (or doesn’t want to remember) a time before. They stand out with vivid clarity, bright and clear against the muddled gray world and everything that isn’t a dream is less somehow, almost nothing. They aren’t normal dreams, those she has too but they look like the world and they’re always in shades of gray. But these dreams, two men, always the same two men, tall and taller, one so tall his head brushes the clear blue sky and that’s how she always knows it’s a dream. No one’s seen the blue sky since before. If not for the dreams, she might have forgotten the color entirely. She isn’t always sure she’s not making the color up.

She doesn’t always know what they’re doing, can’t put into context where they are, what they’re holding, what they’re riding around in (a car? does she remember cars?) but she likes them.

Hands reaching out to each other, grasping and holding, warm faces and bright smiles and other people, a rotating cast with grateful eyes and they’re helping people, always helping people. Names with the faces and she says them sometimes, like a prayer. Sam and Dean. Sam and Dean.

--

She sleeps when she’s tired, walks when she isn’t. The broken asphalt wears holes in her shoes and she doesn’t have another pair, can’t remember where this pair came from. She wraps her feet in one of her shirts, torn into pieces for this purpose; she doesn’t want the dirt and the ash in the road on her feet.

The can of vegetables (they were carrots, but they weren’t orange, not anymore) that she took from the camp is gone, even though she tried to make it last. Her belly under the baby is empty, gnawing and maybe her stomach will digest the baby instead. She rests her hand over the small bump, fingers clenching even while she tells herself it’s ridiculous. She cries anyway, salty tears making itchy tracks over the dirt on her face.

She sees the high rise buildings of a city on the horizon but she knows she shouldn’t go there. She’s been there before when she was little (littler? before her father traded her to him for baby meat), seen the places that the road spirals up into the sky, a big twisted knot of concrete against nothing, supported by nothing. Hardly anything left in the city but looters and vultures and cannibals. More of what’s out here, she reckons, only crowded on top of each other and more desperate.

--

She’s curled up in the dirt, near the stump of what used to be a tree, (they were tall and leafy once, she’s seen them in the dreams) when she hears them on the road. They aren’t trying to be quiet, they aren’t trying to hide and she sticks her head out from under the coat, slowly and carefully, eyes open just enough to peek through her lashes.

She almost misses it, shuffling footsteps across broken concrete, rocks skipping ahead of their steps, misses them, two towers of men, shoulders bumping against each other, comfortable and familiar and she hides from them but there they are, tall and taller, brushing the gray sky with their heads. They’re older, harder, than they were before but she thinks she knows them, knows who they are.

She crouches in the dirt, waits for them to pass. They can’t see her but they aren’t even looking, they aren’t even concerned and that, more than anything, convinces her it’s them. Tall walks with a limp now and taller’s got a scar obscuring half his face, the side that’s turned toward her now as he says something to the other. She’s never seen anyone walk down this road like that before, so carefree, so unafraid of everything. They were always like that.

Wants to call out but she can’t, she doesn’t really know them. How to explain she’s seen them in dreams, in her memories that aren’t her own? How to explain that she knows them better than she knows anyone, even herself. She crouches in the dirt, watches them until they’re smaller against the sky and then she follows after, pulled by something she couldn’t even explain to herself. Something she doesn’t want to think about.

She follows alongside the road and she knows how to be quiet, how to walk without sound and sometimes it’s all that’s kept her alive since before. She’s always walked with caution.

Hasn’t been following them long, not really, not even half a day when they stop. Abandoned buildings near the road, used to be a station, gas? Something else she can’t remember but she’s seen in the dreams. One goes off behind the station, limp making long scratches in the dirt and the dead, dusty grass. The other one sits, quiet, like a meditation, legs crossed and eyes closed as he waits.

She’s pressed against the side of the building and she’s just watching, barely breathing, and she doesn’t think she should be surprised but she is, hands fluttering before he catches them in his and her throat chokes on a scream that can’t quite get past her lips.

She jerks around but he’s got her pressed against the wall, arms trapped and head up, eyes to the colorless sky and his breath, warm in her ear. Menace in his eyes but he doesn’t say anything, not yet, just bares his teeth in her face.

“I don’t… what…” She wriggles her head a little, enough that she can get a look at his face. “Dean?”

--

Propped up against the wall, she’s got an honest to whoever- what is that, canteen?- in her hands, clear clean water that tastes a little like the inside of the canteen but nothing like dirt or ash and she cries a little, salty tracks down her cheeks, lets the clean water splash over her lips and tongue and she holds it in her mouth for a while, as long as she can before she swallows.

Dean hasn’t turned away from her, hasn’t taken his eyes off her since he dropped her in the dirt where she stood. Sam handed her the water, gentle hand on her arm and he asked her if she was all right, waiting for her nod before he backed off to talk to Dean. And that’s all he does. Dean never answers, never opens his mouth, but Sam carries on a conversation all the same. Every now and then Sam’s eyes close, just drift shut and Dean touches him, hand on his face, his neck, sometimes his arm. Just soft touches that don’t mean anything to her but mean something to them. She closes her eyes, remembers those soft touches in the dreams and she smiles, muscles stretching across her face and it doesn’t feel right at first and she can’t remember the last time they moved that way. She didn’t know touches like that still existed in the world.

--

Blue sky, something with wings (a bird?) flies across it and she’s lying on the ground, soft green grass beneath her and fat white clouds drifting above her. Nothing to do, nothing to see, her fingers catch on a dandelion (she knows weeds) and the white seeds scatter in the breeze. She giggles, happy and lazy and she doesn’t startle when someone stands over her, blocking out the sun. It’s just Sam.

“You should come with us,” Sam says.

She blinks and it’s not Sam then, it’s Sam now. Blinks again and the blue sky is gone, the ground beneath her is hard packed dirt. She clenches her hand over her belly. “Come where?” she asks, sleep making her voice rough.

Snort from Dean, his eyes never leave the road. Sam doesn’t look at him, doesn’t acknowledge Dean did anything but there’s a tightness around his mouth. “What’s your name?” he asks.

“Mary.”

They both flinch at that and she doesn’t understand but she doesn’t want to ask either. Questions never brought her anything but trouble. Sam crouches down in the dirt next to her and it’s the closest he’s been. The scar marring his cheek stretches up to his eyebrow, tugging at the corner of his eye, stretching the skin just a little. Must have hurt when it happened. She shifts her gaze, meets his and she can’t look away.

“Come with us, Mary,” he says, voice low but not urgent, like he doesn’t want to scare her. “We’ve got a place. Not much, nothing is, but we’ve got food and shelter, something you’ll be needing soon.” He gestures towards her stomach and she jerks away. He knows, he knows and she remembers the other babies, their tiny bodies charred and blackened and she tries to get up to run but Dean’s got his hands on her shoulders and Sam catches her wrists. “Mary!” he says, quietly, earnest now. “Listen, Mary. You know us. You know we won’t hurt you.”

From somewhere she doesn’t understand, doesn’t know, comes the assurance that she does and she doesn’t want to trust it but she’s hungry and cold and tired and she knows, she knows he’s right. She nods, slumping in their hold. “I’ll come with you, Sam.”

Dean’s hands leave her shoulders and he comes back around Sam, between Sam and the road and his eyes don’t meet hers, he’s watching the horizon. She huddles against the wall and he isn’t like the Dean she remembers at all, but Sam hasn’t changed much. She hasn’t heard him laugh once and there’s something… older, wearier about him but he smiles still and takes her hand to help her up.

“Is it me?” she asks, looking at Dean.

He shakes his head, looking over his shoulder as she stands but Dean’s not that close, far enough away that he probably doesn’t hear Sam say, “it’s not you, he’s like this with everyone. He’s not bad, he’s just… overprotective. We’ve been through a lot.”

She knows, because she knows this life, this world as it is now, that he’s not telling the whole story.

Sam’s looking at Dean, not at her, voice still low as he continues. “We’ve just, we’ve got no support system. Not really. We’ve got a home and people there, but out on the road? It’s just us. And no one to patch us up when it’s more than we can handle. He worries.”

“About you?”

Sam smiles, looks down at her again. “About everything. But yeah, about me. He doesn’t like what the end did to me.”

“What did it do?”

She knows because she’s looking for it, the darkness that descends over his face, clouding his eyes. Nothing good. “Another story for another time,” he says. Dean’s at his shoulder again, hand on his arm and Sam’s face is clear again, like nothing ever happened. It scares her and it makes her wonder.

Dean jerks his head toward the road, clear indication and Sam nods. “Yeah,” he says, shouldering his bag. He’d tucked her meager rations inside one of the pockets earlier.

She watches as Dean’s hand slips from Sam’s shoulder, down his arm until his fingers catch Sam’s. She recognizes the gesture, some of the emotions behind it, even if she doesn’t understand the desperation with which Sam grips back, white knuckles against Dean’s brown skin.

--

The road hasn’t changed, dirt and ash and broken up concrete and the husks of cars littering the landscape. One foot in front of the other and she watches carefully to make sure she doesn’t put her foot down on anything sharp. So it’s all the same, and it’s all completely different.

Sam talks as they walk, an unceasing stream of chatter and noise and it doesn’t seem to matter that Dean won’t (can’t? she’s beginning to wonder…) contribute, or that she doesn’t have much to offer in casual, polite conversation. Sam stops every now and then and Dean stops with him, fingers still clutched tight in Sam’s and Dean brings his other hand up, palming Sam’s cheek or gripping his shoulder as Sam’s face hardens, darkens, and his eyes screw shut.

“What’s he doing?” she asks once, the first time, but she didn’t really expect an answer from Dean, and she didn’t get one.

Minutes later they’re moving again and Sam’s one-sided dialogue picks up like it never stopped and it’s just another mystery, another thing she doesn’t understand.

--

They don’t see anyone else all day, but Dean never seems to drop his guard and she’s grateful that someone else is watching out. She’s tired and hungry and it all seems like too much right now and just as she decides she won’t walk anymore, can’t walk anymore without falling over, Sam stops and says “we’re here.”

Here doesn’t look like anywhere at first, another gutted and abandoned building on the side of the road and she doesn’t care much, she lets her knees buckle beneath her like they’ve been wanting to do for hours and she would have ended up in the dirt, anywhere, doesn’t matter, but Dean catches her before she drops.

“Not out here,” Sam says. Dean plops her back down on her feet and moves around her towards where Sam crouches in front of a pile of rubble against the house. They set the items aside: twisted metal, the bottom half of a toilet and a ripped mattress. Beneath that is a door. Dean opens it and it’s dark down there, steps leading under the house. Sam goes down them first, crouched so he doesn’t hit his head, and Dean pulls her in and Sam stands at the bottom, beckoning her downward. Dean tugs the mattress back over, fingers inching it into place through a crack in the door and when he’s apparently satisfied he’s covered enough of it, he closes the door behind them and in the dark she can hear him fiddling with something, locking it behind them? It’s dark, darker than it is even at night and then she hears Sam shuffling across the floor. “Watch out,” he says.

How to describe what happens next? She’s seen light in her dreams, watched them walk into a room and flip a switch so casually (and she wonders now whether they knew then they were taking simple things like that for granted), but these aren’t dreams and the sun behind the clouds has never shone as brightly as the bare bulb swinging from a string in the middle of the room. When she opens her eyes and the spots stop dancing before them and she looks around, it’s nothing like the rooms she’s seen them in before.

It’s small, Sam could spread his arms out and touch both walls with his fingertips, but it’s got a bed (Sam calls it a cot) along one wall and shelves (and shelves and shelves) of cans on the other and she doesn’t know the writing on them, but she understands the pictures of food. More than she’s ever seen in one place in her whole miserable life and she stands before them, hands out and shaking, like she’s worshipping at an altar (and who’s to say she isn’t?) and runs her fingers over each one.

She’s on her knees, legs finally given out beneath her, fingers clutching a can of beets and she doesn’t know she’s crying until Sam reaches out and smoothes his fingers over her cheeks. “It’s okay, Mary.”

“I just, I’ve never-”

“I know. You want some beets? I’ve never liked them, really, but you take what you get these days.” As he talks he takes the can from her, opening it with his knife, careful so he doesn’t spill any of the juice inside. “Here,” he says, handing it back. He holds her elbow, pulling her up to let her sit on the bed. “You sleep here, we’ll take the floor.” It doesn’t even occur to her to protest and the beets smell delicious and she eats them quickly, hungrily, like if she doesn’t eat them as fast as she possibly can someone will come and take them away, take her away from this place with a bed and more food than she could ever eat. She drinks the juice at the end and wipes her pink stained fingers on her shirt.

She doesn’t know what to do with the can afterwards. She’s always thrown them on the ground behind her but she can’t do that here, with Sam and Dean spread out on the floor and she can’t for a minute tell where one ends and the other begins, they’re wrapped in each other so tightly. She lays down on the cot, head towards the edge so she can watch them, see them. She clutches the can to her chest, feels the sharp edge catch on her coat and she watches Sam’s head rise and fall on Dean’s chest until she can’t watch anymore and she falls asleep.

--

She doesn’t know what wakes her later, the light is out but she isn’t scared of this darkness. Furtive movement on the floor and she’d recognize those sounds anywhere, she remembers them from the camp and for a moment she thinks she might throw up, red and pink beets down her shirt and on the cot. Sweat beads on her forehead and drips off her nose, stings in her eyes and she clutches the can, sick and shaking and then she remembers that it isn’t him, not anymore, it’s Sam and Dean. She breathes slowly, in and out until her stomach stops churning and she doesn’t blame them, can’t when they’re grabbing at any comfort they can. Soft sighs and a wet slick and she can hear Sam’s muffled whispers over it all. Nothing coherent, just yes and please and Dean’s name, a prayerful litany in the dark. A muffled groan and then it’s quiet and Sam says “I know, me too,” quietly and clearly and then “I don’t know, we’ll figure it out.”

She listens but they don’t say anything more and it’s quiet and their breath evens out again, asleep.

She realizes, as she drifts off to sleep again herself, that Dean never said anything.

--

Sam takes the can from her in the morning and adds it to a pile in the corner. She fiddles with her sleeves, hiding her hands as she says, “he can’t talk, can he?” It’s not really a question and Sam probably knows it.

He looks towards the door, Dean left not a minute ago and he never said where he was going but Sam said he was checking the area. “Surveillance,” he said, like she knows what that means.

“He could once, couldn’t he?” she says, though she knows. She’s heard his voice in the dreams.

“Yeah, yeah he could.” Sam’s face is shuttered and closed and it’s not a face she’s used to seeing, not something Sam usually is.

“Is it more about the end? When it messed you up?”

He nods. “I can still hear him though. In his mind.”

“What?”

“It’s how we found you. I have… abilities.”

“What kind of abilities?”

He doesn’t answer, instead a can of beets floats off the shelf, lands in his outstretched palm and he offers it to her, smiling a little when she doesn’t reach out to take it but it isn’t a happy smile. She can tell the difference. “Other things too,” he says. “I had some of it, before, but after it got stronger. A lot stronger.”

“Can you hear me? In my head?”

“If I concentrate.”

She thinks of the time on the road, of the darkness that crosses his features, of the grimace of pain twisting his scarred face when his eyes squeeze shut. “Does it hurt?”

“Sometimes.”

She isn’t really sure, but she thinks it’s more than sometimes. “Who was Mary?”

“My mother.”

“Did she die, at the end?”

A pause, and she touched on something there. “No, she died long before.”

“Why were you looking for me?”

He cocks his head to the side a minute and doesn’t answer. He looks like he’s listening. “Not for you,” he says shortly. “I thought it was you at first, but when we got closer I knew.” He scoots closer to her, at her feet hanging off the cot. “It’s your baby, Mary. He was calling me.”

She can’t control the flash of panic at his words, the instinct to run away as fast as she can and her muscles clench, her feet jerk and catch him in the chest but she doesn’t move, doesn’t go anywhere because she knows she’s safe. She knows her baby is safe. She knows. And then she remembers what he said. He was calling me. A quiet thrill shoots through her and the thought comes to her that what’s growing inside her will one day be more than just an idea, more than just a lump under her clothing. “He?” she asks, hand clutching her belly. He. A boy. “How do you know?”

He shrugs. “Just do.”

“He’s been sending me the dreams, hasn’t he?”

“I think so.”

And that scares her, just a little and she wonders what he’ll be like when he’s born, when he grows up, how she’ll handle a baby that can call out to Sam from inside her. More than human? Less than? She wrinkles her nose and wonders what that makes Sam. “What is he?” she asks.

She thinks Sam knows what she’s really asking. “He’s a person,” he says. “Or will be, when he’s done growing.”

“This is more about the end, isn’t it?”

He smiles again, still, but it changes and it’s happy now, so happy he almost hurts to look at and there’s something she hasn’t seen in a long time, something like hope in his smile. “No, Mary,” he says. “Not the end. It’s the beginning. You’ll see.”