Mother, do you think they'll drop the bomb?
Who: Mary Winchester and Magneto
When: Friday midday
Where: Outside the HoA
Summary: She's having a bad week. Month.
Warnings: Probable talk of violence, references to extremely bad parenting. Winchesters being Winchesters.
Insanity is the slow culmination of pressure and time. As a wise man once said, that's all it takes. Pressure, and time. Mary was an extraordinarily strong woman, who lived a life of fear and escaped, who perished in fire and came out clean the other side, but she was not superhuman. It seemed that every day since arriving in this violence-torn slum of an afterlife had been scarred by some kind of stress or pain. First was that one long night of uncertainty, of horrible vivid nightmares of events only three hours before, when she had been convinced her baby was dead and herself alone in the new world. Then there was Sam. Sam, who looked like her cousin Earl who used to show up to French class high on meth and got almost as much sleep as Earl did. As obviously not okay as Sam had been, Dean was worse by far, by entire orders of magnitude, and there was Lucifer.
Lucifer, Gabriel, Castiel, Michael, and what a trauma parade that was. She couldn't look at him without the confusing mixture of hatred, horror, and strangely compulsive love that pulled at her in ways she knew couldn't be healthy. Mary knew nothing of Heaven, cupids, or arranged love; just that she couldn't look at her husband's face and not feel something. That all was apart from the confusion of realizing her faith was something close to a sham, or the cold fear of meeting the Devil. He told her- he told her about Dean, the weight of the knowledge that her baby was just returned from Hell, and the realization that her husband, her beloved John, the man she gave everything to, had a child with another woman. Then the nightmares came right on the tail of that extra strain, and with it was extra horror. The first night, the second with its violence and dying angels, the third that was all rape and desecration and stood out still in her mind. The others, then the night that was Dean and Tom and haunted her still. There was only so much one woman could take.
So she answered the invitation of some awkward little man, a man she had thus far avoided. Any first-day hunter knew how to do research, and Chuck Shurley was trouble. Talking to Lucifer more than was healthy, mouthing off to angels, showing up beaten half to hell with broken legs and coughing up his own throat. Those old NV posts were revealing. But she couldn't quite continue to resist that invitation- come to me if you ever want answers.
So she came. Into that same old house she went, and found herself pacing in a prophet's living room while he nervously explained about visions and angels. Blah, blah, blah. It was all words to her. She could believe visions, as unbelievably creepy as it sounded. Some part of her didn't blame him; he sounded creeped-out, too. He told her about visions, about a series of books that made her give him a sharp, unhappy look that had him shrinking into his wheelchair until she took pity, and he nervously explained about characters and backstory.
Backstory.
Apparently, that's all she was. So he shoved his glasses up his nose and read from that strange thing that was apparently his NV, a shaky voice reading overwrought, crappy fiction. Her eyes were locked on the thing, with the knowledge that everything he had ever written was in that device. Everything. The key to her future, her family- their past, present, and future. The key to John, to Dean, to Sam. There was a passage- a passage about Dean, Sam, and locks on a door. Something about seals. She interrupted him, hands shaking as she lit up a cigarette, and demanded to know what the hell this was all about. Why should she care? She came here for answers, not to hear about some stupid mechanism of the goddamned Apocalypse that was just one more reason to lose all faith in her purpose and her God. It was almost funny to watch him fall over himself with apologies, and say it was really complicated, and please let him finish. He told her he knew how hard it was, and that he knew exactly what pain she must have been going through.
And then it wasn't funny anymore. There was nothing funny at all about the slow snap in her brain, or how she rounded on him and yelled, because how dare this tiny, shitless man tell her he thought he knew anything about her. How dare he? He didn't know anything. He was a small alcoholic piece of civilian who didn't know anything about her. He admitted to her face earlier that he'd had fewer visions of her than anyone else from her world, that he barely knew her at all. How could you know anything, she demanded angrily, you've never been a parent. You don't know the pain of seeing your children suddenly different than how you left them, of not knowing your own kids, of seeing your precious babies so broken they could never be fixed. The confused, almost lost way Chuck's expression crumpled just confirmed her scornful feelings.
At some point she apologized, though she didn't mean it, and he bought it. They talked a little, and he irritated her by trying to talk her down from some ledge. I am not my sons, she wanted to scream, but kept it in. Mary was stronger than that, or at least less broken to begin with. She had fewer weak seams along which to break. At some point they kept talking, and he folded his NV and put it absently on his TV stand, and made her a drink that he let her drink while he went to the bathroom.
The visit didn't last much longer; she excused herself brusquely and strode out, vowing never to come back to this presumptuous little shit of a man again. Never mind that her misaimed anger was all going onto him, completely free of the little prophet's actual fault in the matter. Fuck it. She was angry- and proud. Not worried, either. It would take him a while to realize his NV was missing, and in the mean time she had it. It stayed in her pocket until she was safely outside and ducked to the side, sheltered in its long shadow to finally take it out, unfold the damn thing, and look.
It was simple enough: do a search for "John Winchester." It took her a while to figure out how to work it, but she did it, and the results were too many to go through. So she searched Dean dad, and found- so much. She clicked on one that looked promising, then froze in horror at what unfolded. She didn't last long on that link before clicking back and skipping to another, and so it went: skipping from passage to passage, never taking in enough to get context, but always getting the feel of a piece: a dozen arguments, a dozen training sessions and conversations of denied birthdays, a particularly horrible screaming fight after Sam apparently ran away (?), and John screamed at the young Dean until Mary, just reading it, wanted to cry. There was another- a later one, with Dean sitting in an empty room over Sam's body. That soliloquy: I had one job, and I failed. I failed, Sammy. Mary had to lean against the wall just to catch her breath. Every little snippet she got, even the ones of Sam, painted an unmistakeable picture of a man who parented more by the sword and the fist than anything. Another passage she found in that infernal device- it was Dean, talking dead-eyed to someone named Bobby about the deal. Maybe then my life will have meaning. Just the thought that he had to sell himself to find any sense of self-worth, all because of the values instilled in him by his daddy, made her want to throw up.
But her curiosity still burned. Mary was rapidly realizing the answer to the question she had tried to ask of Sam and Dean: what kind of father was he? The answer was exactly what they were too kind to say: you don't want to know. And she didn't. She wouldn't have, had she had any idea. Because those weren't the children she was raising. She was raising strong, healthy, happy civilians, and John raised emotionally stunted shells who had no concept of self-worth, and for a moment she hated him. These were her babies. Her children. God, they were adults she barely knew, but they were her children. Her hands shook when she took out the cigarettes she had bought only hours before- her first smoke in six years, since they started trying for a baby, but fuck, she needed it. Her hands shook almost too much to light the lighter. Her curiosity still burned.
After hesitantly searching "Adam vessel" and finding evidence that yes, an Adam existed and yes, he was Sam's younger brother and yes, John had a child with another woman, she found herself sliding down the brick wall, NV gripped in one hand and a smoking cigarette in the other, trying not to cry. There was only so much one woman could take. She thought this stupid visit would grant her answers, but under every rock and behind every answer there was only more pain.
When: Friday midday
Where: Outside the HoA
Summary: She's having a bad week. Month.
Warnings: Probable talk of violence, references to extremely bad parenting. Winchesters being Winchesters.
Insanity is the slow culmination of pressure and time. As a wise man once said, that's all it takes. Pressure, and time. Mary was an extraordinarily strong woman, who lived a life of fear and escaped, who perished in fire and came out clean the other side, but she was not superhuman. It seemed that every day since arriving in this violence-torn slum of an afterlife had been scarred by some kind of stress or pain. First was that one long night of uncertainty, of horrible vivid nightmares of events only three hours before, when she had been convinced her baby was dead and herself alone in the new world. Then there was Sam. Sam, who looked like her cousin Earl who used to show up to French class high on meth and got almost as much sleep as Earl did. As obviously not okay as Sam had been, Dean was worse by far, by entire orders of magnitude, and there was Lucifer.
Lucifer, Gabriel, Castiel, Michael, and what a trauma parade that was. She couldn't look at him without the confusing mixture of hatred, horror, and strangely compulsive love that pulled at her in ways she knew couldn't be healthy. Mary knew nothing of Heaven, cupids, or arranged love; just that she couldn't look at her husband's face and not feel something. That all was apart from the confusion of realizing her faith was something close to a sham, or the cold fear of meeting the Devil. He told her- he told her about Dean, the weight of the knowledge that her baby was just returned from Hell, and the realization that her husband, her beloved John, the man she gave everything to, had a child with another woman. Then the nightmares came right on the tail of that extra strain, and with it was extra horror. The first night, the second with its violence and dying angels, the third that was all rape and desecration and stood out still in her mind. The others, then the night that was Dean and Tom and haunted her still. There was only so much one woman could take.
So she answered the invitation of some awkward little man, a man she had thus far avoided. Any first-day hunter knew how to do research, and Chuck Shurley was trouble. Talking to Lucifer more than was healthy, mouthing off to angels, showing up beaten half to hell with broken legs and coughing up his own throat. Those old NV posts were revealing. But she couldn't quite continue to resist that invitation- come to me if you ever want answers.
So she came. Into that same old house she went, and found herself pacing in a prophet's living room while he nervously explained about visions and angels. Blah, blah, blah. It was all words to her. She could believe visions, as unbelievably creepy as it sounded. Some part of her didn't blame him; he sounded creeped-out, too. He told her about visions, about a series of books that made her give him a sharp, unhappy look that had him shrinking into his wheelchair until she took pity, and he nervously explained about characters and backstory.
Backstory.
Apparently, that's all she was. So he shoved his glasses up his nose and read from that strange thing that was apparently his NV, a shaky voice reading overwrought, crappy fiction. Her eyes were locked on the thing, with the knowledge that everything he had ever written was in that device. Everything. The key to her future, her family- their past, present, and future. The key to John, to Dean, to Sam. There was a passage- a passage about Dean, Sam, and locks on a door. Something about seals. She interrupted him, hands shaking as she lit up a cigarette, and demanded to know what the hell this was all about. Why should she care? She came here for answers, not to hear about some stupid mechanism of the goddamned Apocalypse that was just one more reason to lose all faith in her purpose and her God. It was almost funny to watch him fall over himself with apologies, and say it was really complicated, and please let him finish. He told her he knew how hard it was, and that he knew exactly what pain she must have been going through.
And then it wasn't funny anymore. There was nothing funny at all about the slow snap in her brain, or how she rounded on him and yelled, because how dare this tiny, shitless man tell her he thought he knew anything about her. How dare he? He didn't know anything. He was a small alcoholic piece of civilian who didn't know anything about her. He admitted to her face earlier that he'd had fewer visions of her than anyone else from her world, that he barely knew her at all. How could you know anything, she demanded angrily, you've never been a parent. You don't know the pain of seeing your children suddenly different than how you left them, of not knowing your own kids, of seeing your precious babies so broken they could never be fixed. The confused, almost lost way Chuck's expression crumpled just confirmed her scornful feelings.
At some point she apologized, though she didn't mean it, and he bought it. They talked a little, and he irritated her by trying to talk her down from some ledge. I am not my sons, she wanted to scream, but kept it in. Mary was stronger than that, or at least less broken to begin with. She had fewer weak seams along which to break. At some point they kept talking, and he folded his NV and put it absently on his TV stand, and made her a drink that he let her drink while he went to the bathroom.
The visit didn't last much longer; she excused herself brusquely and strode out, vowing never to come back to this presumptuous little shit of a man again. Never mind that her misaimed anger was all going onto him, completely free of the little prophet's actual fault in the matter. Fuck it. She was angry- and proud. Not worried, either. It would take him a while to realize his NV was missing, and in the mean time she had it. It stayed in her pocket until she was safely outside and ducked to the side, sheltered in its long shadow to finally take it out, unfold the damn thing, and look.
It was simple enough: do a search for "John Winchester." It took her a while to figure out how to work it, but she did it, and the results were too many to go through. So she searched Dean dad, and found- so much. She clicked on one that looked promising, then froze in horror at what unfolded. She didn't last long on that link before clicking back and skipping to another, and so it went: skipping from passage to passage, never taking in enough to get context, but always getting the feel of a piece: a dozen arguments, a dozen training sessions and conversations of denied birthdays, a particularly horrible screaming fight after Sam apparently ran away (?), and John screamed at the young Dean until Mary, just reading it, wanted to cry. There was another- a later one, with Dean sitting in an empty room over Sam's body. That soliloquy: I had one job, and I failed. I failed, Sammy. Mary had to lean against the wall just to catch her breath. Every little snippet she got, even the ones of Sam, painted an unmistakeable picture of a man who parented more by the sword and the fist than anything. Another passage she found in that infernal device- it was Dean, talking dead-eyed to someone named Bobby about the deal. Maybe then my life will have meaning. Just the thought that he had to sell himself to find any sense of self-worth, all because of the values instilled in him by his daddy, made her want to throw up.
But her curiosity still burned. Mary was rapidly realizing the answer to the question she had tried to ask of Sam and Dean: what kind of father was he? The answer was exactly what they were too kind to say: you don't want to know. And she didn't. She wouldn't have, had she had any idea. Because those weren't the children she was raising. She was raising strong, healthy, happy civilians, and John raised emotionally stunted shells who had no concept of self-worth, and for a moment she hated him. These were her babies. Her children. God, they were adults she barely knew, but they were her children. Her hands shook when she took out the cigarettes she had bought only hours before- her first smoke in six years, since they started trying for a baby, but fuck, she needed it. Her hands shook almost too much to light the lighter. Her curiosity still burned.
After hesitantly searching "Adam vessel" and finding evidence that yes, an Adam existed and yes, he was Sam's younger brother and yes, John had a child with another woman, she found herself sliding down the brick wall, NV gripped in one hand and a smoking cigarette in the other, trying not to cry. There was only so much one woman could take. She thought this stupid visit would grant her answers, but under every rock and behind every answer there was only more pain.