Chapter Text
“You're not priests!” Max Miller shouted, the stainless steel Colt 1911 Dean treasured in his erratic grip.
“What are you doing?” Alice Miller, newly widowed, asked fearfully, Using his power, Max flung his stepmother backward. She hit her head on the nearby kitchen bench and fell to the ground, now unconscious and bleeding on the head.
“Max, calm down,” Sam pleaded. At his own insistence, he dragged Dean with him on this case to investigate the recent death of Max’s father, Mr. Miller, and while in town, his uncle died too.
Suspicious Deaths. Definitely supernatural. Sam and Dean assumed it was some kind of ghost or something.
Neither of them could have anticipated that it was Max himself. But after hearing a former neighbor speak of Max’s childhood abuse, it was clear.
Most clear to Sam, who was plagued by his own burgeoning abilities. He knew it freaked Dean out as much as it terrified Sam.
He always felt different.
He never fit in anywhere. Not even at Stanford.
Not even with Jess, who made him happiest of all. Sure, he lied to her throughout their whole relationship, but that's because he didn’t want her to leave. If she had…
Sam didn’t know what he would’ve done.
That’s why he wanted to marry her. Have children, a family of his own. A whole group of people to love him and him to love in return. Did that make him selfish?
Maybe so.
That’s why she’s dead. You killed her as much as the demon, Sam’s hateful mind would shout at him in the night.
“Who are you?” Max demanded.
“We just came to talk.”
Max scoffed, tears in his eyes. Despite having power, having killed two members of his family, he was still aggrieved. “Yeah, right, that's why you bought this!”
Fear shone in his eyes.
“That was a bad call. So was lying and pretending to be priests,” Sam gave Dean a pointed glare. “But no more lying, Max, ok? Just please, just hear me out.”
“About what?” Max demanded through gritted teeth.
Sam readied himself. “I saw your father and uncle’s death before they happened.” He knew how crazy it sounded, but he saw it all, clear and persistent in his own mind like vivid dreams.
But they weren’t dreams because both Miller men were dead. By Max’s hand no less. Or rather, his mind.
“What are you talking about?” Max yelled, looking at Sam like he was insane.
“I’ve been having visions, Max,” Sam told him. “All about you.”
“You’re crazy.”
“So, you weren't gonna launch a knife at your stepmom?” Sam indicated where Max planned to gauge his stepmother, tapping his right eye, “Right here?”
Max gaped at him, nervously clenching the gun in his hand.
“Is that so hard to believe, Max?” Sam asked. “Look what you can do! Max, I was drawn here, all right? I think I'm here to help you.”
He hoped.
Tears fell out of his eyes, “No one can help me.” Max sobbed hopelessly.
“Let me try.” Sam implored gently. “We’ll talk, just you and me. We'll get Dean and Alice out of here.”
“No way,” Dean interjected firmly. “Not happening.”
The chandelier hanging above the kitchen began to tremble violently.
“Nobody leaves this house!” Max raised his voice, getting upset.
“Nobody has to, okay?” Sam replied, “They'll just...they'll just go upstairs.”
“Sam. I’m not leaving you alone with him.” Dean said.
Sam turned around as Max hyperventilated. “You’re gonna have to, because you’re not in charge here,” Sam pointed at Max. “He is. Now tend to Alice, now and go the fuck upstairs.” He turned back to Max, imploring, “Can we talk for five minutes?”
Max heaved in and out, staring the taller Winchester down, “Five minutes.”
The chandelier stops shaking.
Dean reluctantly did as the others bade and took the unconscious woman upstairs.
Sam and Max went to the house's lounge area. As Max sat down, he stared at a letter opener, and it raised on its point and began twirling slowly.
Sam observed him quietly.
“Max, I cannot imagine what you must’ve lived through.” He began.
The letter opener froze, suspended in the air. “No,” Max’s eyes were hard and bitter. “You can’t.”
“But killing her won’t erase what happened to you,” Sam said delicately.
“She needs to die.” Max hissed.
“Did she beat you too?” Sam asked.
“No,” Max confessed, “but she stood by and let it happen. She never checked in on me, she never called the cops, she never worried about how far it could go! She’s as bad as them!” The letter opener flew into the wall.
Sam swallowed down his pity and felt disgusted at thinking how much better this made John Winchester seem by comparison.
“What they all did to you growing up, they deserve to be punished,” Sam said, thinking of the courts. It wasn’t easy, but it wasn’t impossible. Not with the right argument.
Max scoffed, “Growing up?” He lifted his shirt, revealing bruises that decorated his pale skin. “Try last week.” He spat.
Jesus, Sam thought, taking in the sight of the fresh bruises.
He couldn’t help but think Max had a point. However, even if Mrs. Miller stood by and let someone else be assaulted, it didn’t give Max the right to kill her in turn. After all, the ones who were hurting him were gone.
“My dad still hit me. Just in places people couldn't see. Old habits die hard, I guess.” Max sniffed. The man was dead, but Max still feared him.
Poor guy…
“I’m so sorry,” Sam said softly. Max looked at him like it was the first time anyone ever said that to him.
Max swallowed deeply, “When I first found out I could move things with my mind, it was a gift. My whole life I was helpless but now I had this. So last week Dad got drunk. The first time in a long time. He beat me to hell, first time in a long time. And in that moment, I knew what I had to do.”
Sam regarded him sadly, “You could’ve just left.” That's what he did.
That’s what Stanford was supposed to be. A fresh start, a reinvention. Seizing life and living it on his own terms, not somebody else’s — not John’s and certainly not Dean’s.
“It wasn't about getting away.” Max clarified. “Just knowing they were out there, it was about not being afraid. When my Dad used to look at me, there was hatred in his eyes. Do you know what that feels like?”
John was a son of a bitch, impatient as hell, barking orders like his sons were soldiers and not his children, cheap, uncompromising, bullheaded, ignorant, a drunk, and at times, suicidal.
But he never stared at his children with hatred. He’d beat his kids, sure, what man wouldn’t, but the way that neighbor and Max tell it…
Those bruises on Max’s body…
“No.” Sam told him. “I don’t.”
“He blamed me for everything. His job, his life, for my Mom's death.” Max recounted.
Sam furrowed his eyebrows. “Your mother’s death? Why would he blame you for that?”
“Because when she did it was in my nursery, while I was asleep in my crib.” Max shook his head, “As if that makes it my fault…”
Sam’s blood went cold. No way. No, no, no. That’s impossible.
Sam swallowed deeply, his tongue feeling heavy like lead. “Were you—” he stammered nervously. “Six months old at the time?”
Max's eyes narrowed paranoically. “How would you know that?”
”Because my mom died,” Sam said gravely. “In my nursery, when I was a six-month-old baby. In my crib at night. A fire burned her alive.”
“Shut the fuck up,” Max gaped. “You’re…not lying.”
“I wouldn’t lie,” Sam said, adamant. “Not about her.” Not about his mother.
“My mom died in a house fire too,” Max said. “My father always said it was because of me, because it was in the nursery.”
“It certainly wasn’t your fault, Max. But I know whose it was…”
Max furrowed his eyebrows. “It was nobody’s fault. What are you talking about?”
Sam shook his head, “Max, how do you think you got these abilities? How do you think I got my visions? Do you think it’s just an accident? Or some mutation? We’re not the X-Men; this isn’t some comic book. I wish it were, but it’s not.”
“Okay,” Max said, “you’re definitely crazy.”
“I know how it sounds. Believe me. I know. I wish I were crazy. I wish none of this was happening. I wish you never got hurt by your dad or ever lost your mom, or me lose mine. But that all happened, Max, and take it from me. Just because something seems impossible doesn’t automatically make it so. There are things about this world, Max, things that are beyond us, beyond science. Beyond anything that makes sense.”
“What are you getting at?”
“Someone was in your nursery because someone was giving you the means to develop the abilities you have right now. I didn’t start getting visions until a couple of months ago. What about you?”
“Same,” Max said cautiously.
“It must take two decades to manifest properly in us,” Sam theorized breathlessly.
It’s like the rug fell out from under him, and Sam felt totally weightless, in the worst way possible. To have the tragedy happen once at the hands of that demon, to the Winchesters, was bad enough, but to happen twice.
Fuck, he didn’t stop at two families, did he? Sam thought horrifically. The country could be littered with kids just like Sam and Max.
Did all their mothers die too? Jesus Christ.
“You’re not making any sense!” Max said.
“The supernatural don’t make sense, Max!” Sam argued. “When you’ve been living your life normally and they suddenly come in and uproot your lives, it never makes sense. But that’s what our powers are, Max! They’re supernatural because people can’t do stuff like move things with their mind or have visions that actually come true. That just doesn’t happen, but it’s happening to us.”
“Supernatural?” Max scoffed.
Here we go…
“As in demonic Max.” Sam sighed. “A demon broke into both our homes, infiltrated our nurseries and killed our mothers in the process. My dad just wouldn’t let it go. He was obsessed with it. He got a psychic in the house to confirm what normal people couldn’t see. My mother was killed by a demon, burning on the ceiling that destroyed our house.”
Max widened his eyes, standing up sharply. “My mother…my dad always talked about her burning on the ceiling too.”
Sam nodded. “Yeah. The demon’s MO.”
“Demon?” Max shook his head. “No…demons aren’t real.”
“Yes, they are,” Sam said grimly. “I wish to God they weren’t, but they are. And one killed our mothers. Ruined our lives.” He shrugged.
“Why?”
“That’s what I want to figure out,” Sam said. “But one thing’s clear. You and I are a part of something, Max. There could be others out there, like you and me. Others who lost their moms when they were just infants, in bizarre, supernatural house fires. Others who have powers.”
Max mulled it over, but only one thing remained on his mind.
“Maybe. But I don’t care about that.” His eyes drifted to the ceiling, up to the second floor where his stepmother was.
Sam regarded him in dismay. “Max—”
“This is the only way.” Max threw Sam abruptly into a nearby closet, moving an entire, cluttered bookshelf to stop the hunter from escaping.
“No, Max. Don’t do it. If you kill her, you’ll be as bad as they were,” Sam shouted helplessly from the closet.
“But the fear is still here inside me; it won’t go away. Not until I kill her too!” Max cried, sobbing. “I’m sorry.”
Sam could hear him go up the steps. “Max! Max!”
Dean was in danger. Sam could see it play out in his head. His older brother, the determined fool, would place himself between Max and his stepmother like a shield and wouldn’t back down.
Which meant that Max would kill him first.
“No…” Sam fumed, scrunching up his eyes while his head pounded. “NOOOOOO!”
He had five really bad fevers growing up. None of them made his head or his body feel like this.
He heard a big tumbling noise.
He opened the door.
The bookshelf was obliterated, pieces of wood lodged in the walls, dozens of pages strewn about in a mess.
Sam was floored.
But he didn’t hear a gunshot.
Yet.
Sam ran up the stairs, but as he reached the room where the others were, he found a fourth person nobody could’ve anticipated.
The room suddenly reeked of sulfur.
This stranger, standing at about five feet eight, with a curvy, slightly overweight build, large breasts, curly black hair, deep brown eyes, and olive skin, was a demon.
“Hey, Max.” She greeted calmly with steely eyes. “What’s up?”
Max paused, gun floating in the air. Dean was tense and angry, filled with hatred for demons. Alice was bewildered, entirely clueless about what was going on. Sam froze, breathless at seeing a demon up so close.
The scent of sulfur made him sick.
“Who are you?” Max demanded nervously, “How do you know my name?”
“The same way I know Sam’s.” The demon looked right at him, and Sam’s heart stopped. ”Hey, Sam.” She winked at him.
Dean’s eyes hardened, his body twitching.
“Careful now, Dean,” the demon said pointedly, giving him a devilish smirk. “Any sudden movements, and you might just be gunned down, or are you so empty-headed you forgot you got a gun pointed at you?”
Dean was pissed. He hated that this bitch knew his name. And Sam’s. But he’d never seen her before. And by the looks of it, neither did Sam. So how? How did this stranger know their names? Did she know about their father? About John?
Dean was afraid.
“I said, who are you?” Max demanded loudly.
The demon held up her hands. “My name is Marion. Though I’ve never cared for it, but whatever one I would’ve gotten before I forgot long ago…”
“How did you get in here?” Max questioned venomously.
“Folk like me don’t go through the front door…” Marion explained ominously. “We kinda just let ourselves in,” making Alice tremble with fear, “anytime, any day. Y’all could just be going about your day, sleeping in your beds, and there we are, watching you…I’ve actually been here all day. You just couldn’t see me until now. Until I let you see me…”
“Max, she's a demon!” Sam warned.
“That I am. That is one hundred percent true,” Marion said. “You can tell by the smell of sulfur, which is an interesting story, but I figure that nobody cares about that right now.” She stared at everyone in the room, noting the tension. “Moving on...”
“Why are you here?”
“I’m here for you, buddy,” Marion said cheekily. “Like I said, I've been here all day and you ain’t exactly been quiet, so I heard just about everything. Sounds like you took matters into your own hands,” the demon said with pride, turning Sam and Dean’s stomachs. “I’m impressed. I see a lot of myself in you…”
Max was repulsed.
“But clearly that’s not what you wanted to hear.” Marion’s eyes shifted towards the stepmother, Alice, who couldn’t stop trembling.
“So, Max, you want this bitch to be dead?”
Max’s eyes returned to his stepmother. “Yes.” He confessed wholeheartedly.
“Her death would grant you peace?”
“Yes.”
“Not gonna—” Dean tried to say, but was unexpectedly pinned to the nearby wall, shocking Alice further.
“Dean!” Sam was then pinned to the wall outside the room too. But Max didn’t do anything further to the Winchesters.
It was the demon, Marion. She had her hands outstretched, holding the brothers in place. “This ain’t about you boys!”
Max looked at her incredulously.
“See, I’m helping you out. That’s all I wanna do, Max. I wanna help.”
“You wanna help me kill my stepmother?”
“If that’s what you want. If that’s what you need.” Marion said.
“Why?”
Marion’s face darkened. “Because I know what it's like to be beaten all the time. To be denied any semblance of dignity or respect. I know what it's like for everyone to see it and nobody to care how badly you’re treated. To want to make them stop, no matter how bloody it’s gotta get.” Her face became rigid, haunted, showing the monster within. “I know, Max. Better than anyone.”
Max held her eyes, which turned black as night. But he wasn’t afraid. Not of her.
“But before we make the bitch go bye-bye, the least she can do is apologize.”
Alice stopped shaking.
“Apologize? Me?” The woman said shakily. “For what?”
“Are you kidding me?” Max shouted. Tired of being unheard, of being unseen, of being mistreated.
Of being helpless.
Max choked her telekinetically, on instinct. Alice grabbed her own throat by reflex, suffocating.
“You stood by and let them hurt me! You never lifted a finger to help me! You never said anything. You never tried to help me!” Max bellowed, his face turning red, spit flying out of his mouth with rage, “Fuck you! Fuck you! Fuck you! Fuck you!”
“Why should I apologize?!” Alice bit back with ragged breath. “You knew your father, and in twenty years, you never stopped antagonizing him! It was your fault! You never learned your place!”
Sam, Dean, and even Marion widened their eyes.
Max shook his head. “You bitch.”
“Devil child. He should’ve killed you.” Alice choked out.
“Wow,” Marion said as Max trembled with fury. “Alright then.” She twisted her right hand and snapped her fingers.
Alice Miller’s head exploded by Marion’s sheer force of will, appalling the Winchesters, Max included. He and Dean were splattered with the remains of Alice’s head.
“Fuck!” Dean shouted.
Max twitched in horror at what Marion did.
“What?” Marion feigned innocence. “You wanted her dead. I made it so. You’re welcome.”
“Leave.” Max hissed.
“I will. But you’re gonna have to run now. Your dad and uncle were explained away, but her head was combusting like that…that’ll attract more of these two,” Marion pointed at Sam and Dean. “And they won’t be so accommodating to you. Hunters like them…they kill and ask no questions. They don’t care. They just like to feel big and bad in a world out to get ‘em.”
Max flexed his arms aggressively in the demon’s direction. “I said leave!” Marion’s hair flew at her back, but other than that, she barely flinched.
She cackled with glee, and Max was befuddled. “What?”
“That’s cute, kid.” Marion jested. “Real fuckin’ cute. But you’re gonna have to keep at it if you wanna take on something like me. No offense, but where humans rank in the supernatural totem pole is right at the fuckin’ bottom. You’re basically cockroaches. Why do you think it was so easy to kill your family?”
Max scowled. “It wasn’t easy.”
“One more thing Max,” Marion said forebodingly. “What Sam was sayin’ about that demon was true. The thing about him is he’s real fuckin’ old.” Marion flashed her black eyes again. “Most demon folk have black peepers like mine. But he has yellow ones. He’s a special breed. He and his kind, and the ones with pure white eyes, they’re the rarest and the most dangerous. He’ll come for you. Sam, too, in time.” Her eyes drifted upon Sam’s immobilized form.
“Just wanted to warn you.”
She disappeared in a flash.
Sam and Dean slumped down from the walls, their bodies free, Alice Miller’s headless body at their feet.
“Max.”
“Go,” Max said, resolute. “Get out of here.”
“But Max—”
“I’m not going with you. And I don’t trust you. You lied, pretended to be priests. So fuck you.” Max warned, covered in his stepmother’s blood. “Stay the fuck away from me.”
Sam looked at him sorrowfully.
Max thrust the gun right back at Dean’s chest, and it went off, a bullet lodged into the wall.
“Go!”
Dean glared at the man, gripped his gun tight but Sam went to him to avoid anything else from happening. “Let’s go.” Sam dragged his brother out of the room and out of the house, his heart sinking at the fact that Max gave him the cold shoulder.
But Sam didn’t blame him. This is why he didn’t like to lie. Sure, did it make things harder for them as hunters to get to the truth of what was getting people killed when it was supernatural, sure? But it burned bridges.
If Sam had been able to be honest from the beginning, things could’ve been different.
“What the fuck was that about?” Dean demanded once they were back in the car, Max’s house shrinking in the rearview mirror. He scrubbed the blood from his hands, jaw tight, disgusted and unnerved by the day’s events.
“What do you mean?” Sam replied, morose at having to leave Max behind. He hated the visions he was having, what it meant to have them, this otherness that lurked within his being like a shameful secret. Meeting Max, knowing he had abilities, and that he had a similar background to Sam…it helped. It eased the burden on the younger Winchester, but now that Max made it clear he wanted nothing to do with him…
He felt untethered as he had all his life.
Because neither John nor even Dean, tried as he might, could ever assuage the anxieties that weighed heavily upon his soul. Fears that haunted him for as long as Sam could remember.
Of fire, damnation, evil, and red eyes.
It’s what always prompted Sam to cleave to faith, to God.
He heard the gospel from Father Martin. How Jesus died on the cross to redeem all sinners. That no sin was too great to forgive, so long as you repented. So long as you opened up your spirit to the Heavenly Father and his Son.
It’s what got Sam to fall on his knees and pray for protection, for mercy.
For safety.
“You kept wanting to talk to the kid.” Dean huffed out angrily. “I told you it wasn’t safe.”
“He killed his father and uncle out of self-defense. He showed me the bruises. They were fresh. He got beaten up as recently as last week by his old man.” Sam shook his head. “And I thought our dad was bad.”
“Hey,” Dean barked, “our dad is nothing like that.”
“He’s no fucking saint.”
Dean shook his head. “You shouldn’t talk about him like that.”
“Well, excuse me if I’m not grateful for the beatings or the brainwashing.” Sam snapped.
“He trained us to be safe!” Dean reminded him. It was hardly the first time. “You know what’s out there, Sam!”
“Doesn’t make what he did right.”
“If he hadn’t raised us the way he did, we would’ve died a long time ago. Like it or not, you know I’m right.” Dean said.
“I’m worried about him.” Sam shared.
“Who, Max?” Dean scoffed.
“Yeah, Max.” Sam said, “he’s alone. Exposed. You heard what that demon said. Yellow Eyes will come for him.”
“Max made his choice,” Dean said adamantly, not sparing the troubled man a second thought. “And about that demon…how the fuck does she know our names?”
“She said it was the same way she knew Max’s.” Sam shrugged.
“Yeah, but I ain’t like you guys,” Dean argued.
“You mean you’re not a freak.” Sam frowned bitterly.
“That’s not what I meant,” Dean said firmly.
“You might as well have,” Sam said quietly.
Silence settled over them, heavy and suffocating as the Impala roared down the road away from their latest debacle.
Dean stared straight ahead, jaw clenched. Sam stared out the window, seeing Max’s haunted eyes in the forefront of his mind. He felt something inside him shift — a quiet, terrible understanding. Max hadn’t been born a monster. He’d been forged into one.
And Sam… Sam wasn’t sure how much longer he could keep pretending he wasn’t on the same path.
Dean couldn't protect Mrs. Miller, and Sam couldn't reach Max.
He hoped the other man would find his way and find peace.
But the fact of the matter was, he'd never see Sam again.
And the younger Winchester felt lost and adrift, wondering if he'd ever feel right again.