Tuesday: Shapeshifters

[brumeier]

Hi! I’m brumeier, and today we’re exploring our wild sides! Today's theme is SHAPESHIFTERS! Prompts can be anything, so long as it involves someone (or something? Hmm.) that can change from one form to another, however you want to interpret that.

Just a few rules:No more than five prompts in a row

Comments

Fill

[nagi_schwarz]

Mary knows that this is her fault, that the demon came to her house to collect on the bargain she made, the bargain for John Winchester and a normal life. She knows that if the world believes she is dead, the price will be paid. The thing about being a shapeshifter is that she can access the memories of anyone whose form she's ever taken. There are a hundred lives in her head, a thousand useful skills that will make hunting so much easier.

Because she will have to go back to hunting to make sure her boys are safe. She needs to kill the thing that killed John Winchester, and she needs to train her boys to the ways of things that go bump in the night.

Having someone's memories doesn't tell Mary how they will act in the future. That's where her impersonations always fell apart to someone who knew her alias too well. But she takes John's form anyway - let the world think Mary is dead, let the Campbells leave her boys alone - and she takes his car and she takes their boys and she drives.

She doesn't know how to be John, doesn't know how to handle the jumble of jungle combat memories in his head. But no one can know who she is, so she shrugs on John's jacket and his bravado. She never lets the boys talk about her, because she doesn't think she can handle talking about herself in the third person, not that much. She is sure she's being too hard on the boys, too tough on them, in her effort not to be soft, not to be mistaken for anyone but John Winchester, ex-Marine.

But they have to learn. She teaches them things other hunters don't know, things she learned from the doctor that time she sprained her ankle, and that linguist the time her father needed translation help, and that seamstress when she convinced her mother to let her go to prom. Her boys learn to research and hunt and kill and survive with nothing but each other. She knows her disguise won't last forever, and they will need each other.

She knows the beginning of the end has arrived when Jessica Moore is murdered by a demon.

She is grimly satisfied when she sees the look on old Azazel's face when he leans in to seal the deal with a kiss and it's not really John Winchester he's kissing.

Old prophecies, so literal, so sexist. They can torture her forever, and she will never break the first seal.

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[untldeathtakeme]

this.was.fantastic. Mary taking care of her boys! I really liked the line about shrugging on John's jacket and his bravado, lovely mental imagery. Well done!

RE: Re: Fill

[nagi_schwarz]

Thanks! Someone once posited the theory that Michael!John raised the kids, and that's why he was such a lousy parent. So I thought...why not shapeshifter!Mary.

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[4bdnsn0wflake]

This was really cool.

Great fill!

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[nagi_schwarz]

Thanks! I wanted to try something new.

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[daria234]

This is terrific.

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[nagi_schwarz]

Thanks!

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[cyanidesympathy]

Oh shit, this was great! LOVED the twist at the end! Thank you!

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[nagi_schwarz]

Thanks, and welcome! It was a pretty cool prompt :)

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[brumeier]

This is just amazing! So well done, and an interesting way to skew canon. Mary is so badass!

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[nagi_schwarz]

Thanks! I was inspired by the badassery that is Mary Winchester in the current season of SPN. I cannot recall the last time a woman who was so thoroughly fridged at the beginning of a story got rescued so well.