Chapter Text
14 SEPTEMBER
COLORADO SPRINGS, COLORADO
The wind whipped against her cheeks, while she trudged through the gloomy forest, a storm enraging both around and inside her. The only thing keeping her on her feet, oblivious to hunger and exhaustion, was the thought of revenge—a feeling she had never imagined could take hold of her. Blessed was the day John Winchester left behind his diary in Cheyenne, Wyoming. His last traces suggested that he and his two sons were headed to Colorado Springs, Colorado, to hunt a ghost. So she was there, headed to the cemetery.
The cemetery was bitterly cold—the kind of chill that wormed beneath your skin and held on tight. John Winchester's foggy breath hung in the air with each hurried step, flashlight sweeping erratically across the gravestones. Hearing faint noises, she hid in the shadows behind a cluster of bushes, gaze fixed on him. John's voice echoed, chanting religious mantras against the ghost.
“Use the rock salt!” he demanded of the eldest son.
The kid stood slightly behind the taller man. He wore faded dark gray jeans and a light gray hoodie that hung too loose on him, sleeves rolled to wrists. Tufts of sandy-blond hair stuck out in uneven spikes, like he hadn’t bothered to fix it after pulling the hood down.
After a moment of hesitation, he confessed. “I lost my gun...”
“What do you mean?” John growled, anger cloaked in an icy tone and a menacing glare. The focus on the spell he had been practicing shattered like glass.
The boy flinched and stepped back cautiously. “I...I can't find it.”
The restraint in John's demeanor broke and fury boiled. He moved forward in a controlled menace, but it was then that the ghost seized the moment—it lunged directly for John's youngest son.
A piercing, terrified scream tore through the air—then abruptly stopped. An eerie, suffocating silence that seemed to stretch endlessly, far worse than cries for help.
John's voice ripped the stillness through the darkness. “Sammy!”
He rounded a row of graves and came to an abrupt halt. Sam was on his knees in the dirt beneath the angel statue, gripping the skirt of a girl standing over him. Her arm was extended, gun pointed forward. In front of them, the ghost burned in a flash of brilliant silver light before fading into smoke. She lowered her hand to rest it reassuringly on Sam’s shoulder, while she tried to catch her breath.
John faltered mid-step. For a moment, he couldn't breathe. He squinted into the dim moonlight. “...Mary?”
Moonlight traced her features and the resemblance was eerie. She had the same angelic aura that exuded courage.
Sam clutched her tightly and croaked out through tears. “Dad—she saved me.”
Each step forward felt like a battle against instincts, which screamed for him to keep distance. The beam of the trembling flashlight danced across the worn earth as he motioned for Sam to come to him. “Who the hell are you?”
Then a warm, alluring voice, tinged with sickly sweetness, emerged: “Do I look like your wife?”
John's throat tightened. “My late wife...” he managed. “I—I can't believe it. You look almost the same, except for your hair.”
“I'm not your Mary.”
Suspicion flared in John’s gaze. He muttered out: “Christo.”
She gave a faint smirk and stepped under the trembling cone of light from the man’s flashlight. “I don't look like a demon, do I?” she challenged before she opened her eyes for him to see. Hazel greeted him—devoid of blackened darkness. Ordinarily human.
John held the shotgun low, the barrel pointed at the ground but primed for action. He stared at the girl, who protected Sam. “You're going to tell me who you are,” he demanded, “and how the hell you knew how to take down that ghost.”
She smiled—the kind of confidence that stood out amidst the tombstones. “Funny,” she tilted her head. “You don’t even recognize your own handiwork.”
John's brows knitted together in a flicker of confusion.
Her hand slipped from Sam’s shoulder. For a fleeting moment, the child instinctively edged behind her—a trust effortlessly granted to her, one John struggled to keep. She moved onward, boots crunching in the gravelled path through the silence that hung between them. “You left your diary in a diner and I picked it up. You wrote your informations, your notes, your researchs, your drawings and your hunts all down like breadcrumbs and I followed the trail. It became my own personal bible.” There was a faint gleam of bitter mania. “That's how I knew what to do tonight.”
John’s grip on the shotgun tightened until knuckles went white. “You're telling me you learned how to hunt monsters... from scraps in a diary?”
“It doesn’t matter how I learned. What matters is that I know enough to survive—but not enough to protect others,” she leaned forward. “Teach me. Properly. We share the same desire for revenge against those who have hurted our loved ones. Don’t let me fight blind.”
A chill crept down John’s spine—she mirrored wounds he'd buried deep that had never fully healed. He inhaled deeply. He needed that diary: in there was a collection of hunts in all those years, but there were also intimate thoughts and the few moments he managed to spend with the children. He couldn't let her walk clean.
Finally, he lowered the shotgun. After a long silence, he nodded once. “Fine. I'll train you, but in return, you watch their backs. You protect them. They come first—always. You put their lives before yours. That’s the deal.”
The fire in her smoldered. “I can do that.”
The wind stirred still through the graves, seeming to carry the weight of unspoken truths.
John secured the shotgun, but concern gnawed at him like the thick fog over the ground. He looked around, then turned attention to the kids. “We’re done here. Time to go home.”
He reached out and grabbed the eldest's arm, dragging him towards the car. In a stern growl, he threatened him. “Where you and I are going to have a talk.”