Fic: A Woman Not In White
Title: A Woman Not In White
Fandom: Supernatural
Genre/Pairing: Gen, fluffy pre-series AU
Rating: PG for a little bad language
Word count: ~2500
Warnings/Spoilers: None.
Notes: Thanks to ezazahaz for the beta, and to morganoconner for the spark of inspiration! This is kind of meta in fic form, so I hope y'all like it! Mostly it's an excuse for Mary and Wee!chester fluff.
Summary: Mary's holding on hard to everything she has left.
Mary twists awkwardly on the Impala's front seat, trying to reach the cut low on her back. The charms on her bracelet jangle as she prods at the still-bleeding gash.
She's pretty sure it doesn't need stitches. It's not deep, just painful and messy, spilling blood down her blouse to soak into the top of her jeans. She slaps a bandage on it, tapes it down, tucks her shirt back in. Her jacket will cover the blood. It's a hot night, but she refuses to go home with blood where anyone can see it.
Twisting again and wincing as sore muscles pull, she manages to worm into her jacket. The Impala's really too small for this, too small for her life, but she can't get rid of it. It's the only thing she has left of John.
Her jacket in place, she checks her reflection in the rearview. Blood washed off, makeup over the bruises, a trace of perfume covering the scent of salt and lighter fluid. She looks just like she spent the night waitressing the late shift, or helping some poor woman through labor (a bulletproof excuse for late nights and irregular hours), not like she's been out digging up corpses and getting tossed into walls. She opens the car door and steps out into the night, her boots stirring up the dust in the parking lot of the Roadhouse.
The lights are off upstairs, but when Mary pushes the door open she finds Ellen sweeping up, all the chairs upside down on the tables to leave the floor clear.
"You get that poltergeist?" Ellen asks, resting her hand on the broom handle.
Mary nods. "The boys?"
Ellen nods her head at the rear door. "Asleep in the back. Finally. Sammy wouldn't go down, he kept saying he wanted to stay up until you got home."
Despite her exhaustion, Mary can't help the smile. Sammy always wants to stay up but never makes it. The spirit is willing but the five-year-old flesh is weak.
"Dean was just as bad," Ellen continues. "Wouldn't sleep until his brother did. That boy of yours has a powerful need to help people."
Mary's smile fades. She knows it's true; that's why it worries her. She bites her lip and looks at the back door.
Ellen chuckles and waves her off. "Go on. I'll pour us a drink."
"You're a saint, Ellen," Mary grins and heads for the door. Ellen knows her well enough to know that Mary comes back from every hunt wanting two things: to have a drink, and to see her children.
Mary jogs to the back, pushing through the swinging door to the kitchen and heading down the hallway to the tiny back storeroom/temporary bedroom. She slows down when she reaches it, gently turning the knob and opening the door as quietly as she can.
The storage shelves have all been pushed aside to make room for the mattress that's been laid out on the floor. It's old but clean, with faded floral sheets that are probably older than Mary is. It's not much but it means the world to her.
Sammy is curled up tight against the wall, an arm around the teddy bear that Mary got at a garage sale for a dollar two Christmases ago. Dean's lying between him and the door, an arm around his brother like Sammy is his own personal stuffed animal. The rest of the mattress is empty, the space waiting for her to get back.
She stands in the doorway for a while, watching them. The adrenaline of the hunt, the rush of heat and sweat and blood finally starts to fade as she listens to them breathe.
There is nothing in her life as hard as leaving her children in someone else's hands, and there is nothing as wonderful as coming home to them. Just the sight of her boys loosens something in her chest.
But she still isn't unwound enough to sleep. It's going to take some of Ellen's special sauce for that. She takes one last look, then shuts the door gently and makes her way back to the main room.
When she gets back to the bar, Ellen's put away the broom and she has two glasses of bourbon waiting for them.
"Ellen, I love you. You are amazing," Mary sits down heavily on a stool, sighing. Ellen just smiles and slides the glass along the polished wood into Mary's grateful hand, before she comes around the bar to sit beside her.
"You know you can stay if you like," Ellen says, sipping on her own glass. "Bill doesn't mind the extra help behind the bar or on hunts. And it would do Joanna Beth some good to play with kids her own age who will actually hit her back."
"You know I would if I could, Ellen." And she really means it; the Roadhouse is the closest thing to a home the boys know outside the Impala and Motel 6. But she has to keep moving. It's dangerous enough coming back to the Roadhouse as often as she does.
"Where are you headed next?"
Mary shrugs. "I'm not sure. East, maybe. Haven't been out that way in a while."
"Got a case out in Virginia that could be worth looking in to," Ellen offers. "Kids disappearing when their families are camping in the Blue Ridge Mountains."
It would have to be kids, wouldn't it. Mary takes a long sip of bourbon. It was a case with kids that got her hunting again in the first place. After the fire she would have taken Dean and Sam and run to the ends of the earth...but she can't run away from kids in danger. Not since she almost lost her own.
Ellen knows it too, the scheming bitch. She always seems to save up the shtrigas and rakshasas and rawheads for Mary. But Mary doesn't really mind; she's been well and truly dragged back into hunting, whether Ellen keeps meddling or not. At least this way it almost feels worth it.
"I'll check it out," she says. "I know a preacher near there, he knows the life. He can watch the boys for a couple of days while I go hiking."
"What are you going to tell Dean?"
Mary knocks back the rest of the bourbon in one gulp. "Not this again, Ellen."
"Hey, I'm not telling you how to raise your kids. But you can't keep this up forever -- they're going to find out eventually. Hell, even Jo is going to start talking about the monster in her closet one of these days."
"Dean's not going to believe anything Jo says. Not after that time with the soap."
"I'm serious, Mary. Sammy's still young but Dean knows something's up. How long are you going to keep covering bruises with Maybelline and telling him you're a travelling midwife?"
"As long as I can." The bourbon is starting to kick in; after a long day and a hard hunt it's enough to loosen her tongue. "I swore, Ellen. I promised myself I wasn't going to raise my kids to be hunters. I tried, I really did, I tried so hard and that son of a bitch came for them anyway."
She rests her head on the empty glass in her hand, eyes closed. She feels Ellen's hand on her back.
"I know it can't last forever. I know I need to start teaching them about salt lines and how to handle a gun, and I'll have to tell them the truth about the monsters under the bed, but I will be damned if I do it one minute before I have to."
She's already paid so much trying to keep her children away from this life, she's already given everything, and every second of childhood Dean and Sam get to keep is worth it. It has to be.
Ellen pulls the empty glass from Mary's loose grip and refills, setting it down before her. "Just don't leave it too long. Or something else might make the decision for you."
Mary shivers involuntarily and takes a drink to counteract the sudden chill. As if she hasn't thought of that possibility a hundred times. Of something getting around her, or even outright killing her, and following her trail back to Dean and Sammy. Whenever she can she leaves them with other hunters, other people who can protect them, but it isn't always possible. "Dean's almost 10. I'll tell him then. And he can look out for Sammy until he's old enough."
Ellen hums but doesn't voice any disapproval. "How do you think he'll take it?"
"I don't know." She does, though. He'll be scared for a second, and then excited, and then proud of her for doing what she does, and then he'll want to help. He'll want to help so much and she won't be able to refuse him, and then all her hard work will be for nothing.
Maybe she can save Sammy. Maybe he'll grow up and want to be a doctor or a lawyer or an astronaut, instead of a hunter. She and Dean will keep the demon off him while he runs for Congress or flies on the space shuttle.
She finishes her drink.
"I'm pretty sure there aren't any demons in space," she tells the empty glass, a little blearily.
"Okay, I think that's enough for you tonight," Ellen says wryly, retrieving the glass. "Christ, you're such a lightweight."
Mary glares at her but doesn't object. The alcohol's done it's work; she's tired enough to sleep.
"Off you go," Ellen bundles her out of her seat and shoves her none too gently towards the back door. "Good night, Mary. And thanks for ganking that spirit."
Mary waves her hand back as she heads toward her boys' room. "Good night, Ellen. Thanks for the drink."
She walks down the hall steadily -- she isn't that much of a lightweight, thank you very much -- but stops again when she reaches the storeroom. She leans in the doorway for a long time, watching her children breathe.
It brings back memories, as it always does, to watch her children sleep. Memories of the time she kissed Sammy good night, tucked Dean in, and woke up choking on smoke. The unnatural fire, the smell of sulfur. She'd grabbed her kids and run as fast as she could out of her oh-so-carefully normal house, the house with no protections and no salt lines because she "refused to live that way," whatever the hell that meant. She'd been so damn stupid.
She'd known immediately it was the demon, coming back to collect on her debt. Why it killed John, what it wants with Sammy, whether that visit settles the debt or whether it will take even more -- she doesn't know any of the answers. But she knows she can't stop moving unless she wants to find out firsthand. She may not know what it wants but she knows she isn't letting it anywhere near her children ever again.
She checks the room's protections automatically. Salt lines, hex bags, Key of Solomon on a tarp unrolled on the floor. No guns -- she's keeping them in the Impala until Sammy's old enough not to blow his head off --
but she checks on the knife she left in easy reach tucked just under the mattress edge. All safe; as safe as she can make them in this screwed-up world.
She sits on the edge of the low mattress to pull off her boots and quickly trades her bloodied clothes for fresh sweats -- no white nightgowns for her anymore. Not that she ever liked wearing them, but John --
John had a thing for her in white. He said it made her look like an angel. John had loved her and she had loved him and then he'd died because she couldn't stand for him to know the truth about who she really was.
She rubs a knuckle into her gritty, tired eyes. She should know better than to drink bourbon after a hunt, it always makes her maudlin. John is gone. But she's still here and so are Dean and Sammy, and she's going to
keep it that way even if it kills her.
Tonight though, tonight she can rest.
There's just one more thing she has to do before she can fall down into sleep. It's the one ritual she's been able to keep from the time before, the one thing she can still do for her children as if their whole world
hadn't been torn apart.
She carefully walks on her knees across the mattress and leans across Dean to gently brush a kiss to Sammy's forehead. "Good night, baby."
Sammy snuffles a bit but doesn't wake up. She runs a hand through his soft hair, rubs a thumb on his forehead. He's growing out of these pajamas already, she needs to remember to find him new ones. He's growing up so fast she can barely keep up. One day she's going to come home and he'll be taller than her.
Dean's still attached to Sam like a barnacle. She thinks about trying to separate Dean from his brother but decides to leave them be. She does try to gently rearrange them, because the way they're sleeping will end up with Dean's arm going numb by morning and they'll all pay the price. Nine years old and he has enough attitude for a teenager, plus he's smart enough to know something strange is going on even if he doesn't ask out loud.
She tries to move Dean without waking him up, but she's a little too tired and he's a little too heavy for that to work. His eyes blink open sleepily. "Mom?"
"Yes, baby, it's me." She ruffles his hair, too. She can't resist. "I just got back."
"How was work? Did the baby come out okay?"
"Uh-huh. A big beautiful girl with black hair. How was your day with Aunt Ellen?"
"Sammy and me helped her and Uncle Bill fix the window. And then Jo punched me in the head."
"Did you deserve it?"
Dean manages a sleepy frown. "Maybe."
Mary laughs quietly. "Go to sleep, Dean."
Dean obediently offers his cheek to be kissed, but when she pulls back his eyes are already closed again.
"'Night Mom," he murmurs.
"Good night, baby."
She waits until he's truly asleep, breathing deep and even but still latched on to Sammy, then she carefully leans down and presses a soft kiss just above his temple.
"Remember," she whispers into Dean's hair, "angels are watching over you."
Fandom: Supernatural
Genre/Pairing: Gen, fluffy pre-series AU
Rating: PG for a little bad language
Word count: ~2500
Warnings/Spoilers: None.
Notes: Thanks to ezazahaz for the beta, and to morganoconner for the spark of inspiration! This is kind of meta in fic form, so I hope y'all like it! Mostly it's an excuse for Mary and Wee!chester fluff.
Summary: Mary's holding on hard to everything she has left.
Mary twists awkwardly on the Impala's front seat, trying to reach the cut low on her back. The charms on her bracelet jangle as she prods at the still-bleeding gash.
She's pretty sure it doesn't need stitches. It's not deep, just painful and messy, spilling blood down her blouse to soak into the top of her jeans. She slaps a bandage on it, tapes it down, tucks her shirt back in. Her jacket will cover the blood. It's a hot night, but she refuses to go home with blood where anyone can see it.
Twisting again and wincing as sore muscles pull, she manages to worm into her jacket. The Impala's really too small for this, too small for her life, but she can't get rid of it. It's the only thing she has left of John.
Her jacket in place, she checks her reflection in the rearview. Blood washed off, makeup over the bruises, a trace of perfume covering the scent of salt and lighter fluid. She looks just like she spent the night waitressing the late shift, or helping some poor woman through labor (a bulletproof excuse for late nights and irregular hours), not like she's been out digging up corpses and getting tossed into walls. She opens the car door and steps out into the night, her boots stirring up the dust in the parking lot of the Roadhouse.
The lights are off upstairs, but when Mary pushes the door open she finds Ellen sweeping up, all the chairs upside down on the tables to leave the floor clear.
"You get that poltergeist?" Ellen asks, resting her hand on the broom handle.
Mary nods. "The boys?"
Ellen nods her head at the rear door. "Asleep in the back. Finally. Sammy wouldn't go down, he kept saying he wanted to stay up until you got home."
Despite her exhaustion, Mary can't help the smile. Sammy always wants to stay up but never makes it. The spirit is willing but the five-year-old flesh is weak.
"Dean was just as bad," Ellen continues. "Wouldn't sleep until his brother did. That boy of yours has a powerful need to help people."
Mary's smile fades. She knows it's true; that's why it worries her. She bites her lip and looks at the back door.
Ellen chuckles and waves her off. "Go on. I'll pour us a drink."
"You're a saint, Ellen," Mary grins and heads for the door. Ellen knows her well enough to know that Mary comes back from every hunt wanting two things: to have a drink, and to see her children.
Mary jogs to the back, pushing through the swinging door to the kitchen and heading down the hallway to the tiny back storeroom/temporary bedroom. She slows down when she reaches it, gently turning the knob and opening the door as quietly as she can.
The storage shelves have all been pushed aside to make room for the mattress that's been laid out on the floor. It's old but clean, with faded floral sheets that are probably older than Mary is. It's not much but it means the world to her.
Sammy is curled up tight against the wall, an arm around the teddy bear that Mary got at a garage sale for a dollar two Christmases ago. Dean's lying between him and the door, an arm around his brother like Sammy is his own personal stuffed animal. The rest of the mattress is empty, the space waiting for her to get back.
She stands in the doorway for a while, watching them. The adrenaline of the hunt, the rush of heat and sweat and blood finally starts to fade as she listens to them breathe.
There is nothing in her life as hard as leaving her children in someone else's hands, and there is nothing as wonderful as coming home to them. Just the sight of her boys loosens something in her chest.
But she still isn't unwound enough to sleep. It's going to take some of Ellen's special sauce for that. She takes one last look, then shuts the door gently and makes her way back to the main room.
When she gets back to the bar, Ellen's put away the broom and she has two glasses of bourbon waiting for them.
"Ellen, I love you. You are amazing," Mary sits down heavily on a stool, sighing. Ellen just smiles and slides the glass along the polished wood into Mary's grateful hand, before she comes around the bar to sit beside her.
"You know you can stay if you like," Ellen says, sipping on her own glass. "Bill doesn't mind the extra help behind the bar or on hunts. And it would do Joanna Beth some good to play with kids her own age who will actually hit her back."
"You know I would if I could, Ellen." And she really means it; the Roadhouse is the closest thing to a home the boys know outside the Impala and Motel 6. But she has to keep moving. It's dangerous enough coming back to the Roadhouse as often as she does.
"Where are you headed next?"
Mary shrugs. "I'm not sure. East, maybe. Haven't been out that way in a while."
"Got a case out in Virginia that could be worth looking in to," Ellen offers. "Kids disappearing when their families are camping in the Blue Ridge Mountains."
It would have to be kids, wouldn't it. Mary takes a long sip of bourbon. It was a case with kids that got her hunting again in the first place. After the fire she would have taken Dean and Sam and run to the ends of the earth...but she can't run away from kids in danger. Not since she almost lost her own.
Ellen knows it too, the scheming bitch. She always seems to save up the shtrigas and rakshasas and rawheads for Mary. But Mary doesn't really mind; she's been well and truly dragged back into hunting, whether Ellen keeps meddling or not. At least this way it almost feels worth it.
"I'll check it out," she says. "I know a preacher near there, he knows the life. He can watch the boys for a couple of days while I go hiking."
"What are you going to tell Dean?"
Mary knocks back the rest of the bourbon in one gulp. "Not this again, Ellen."
"Hey, I'm not telling you how to raise your kids. But you can't keep this up forever -- they're going to find out eventually. Hell, even Jo is going to start talking about the monster in her closet one of these days."
"Dean's not going to believe anything Jo says. Not after that time with the soap."
"I'm serious, Mary. Sammy's still young but Dean knows something's up. How long are you going to keep covering bruises with Maybelline and telling him you're a travelling midwife?"
"As long as I can." The bourbon is starting to kick in; after a long day and a hard hunt it's enough to loosen her tongue. "I swore, Ellen. I promised myself I wasn't going to raise my kids to be hunters. I tried, I really did, I tried so hard and that son of a bitch came for them anyway."
She rests her head on the empty glass in her hand, eyes closed. She feels Ellen's hand on her back.
"I know it can't last forever. I know I need to start teaching them about salt lines and how to handle a gun, and I'll have to tell them the truth about the monsters under the bed, but I will be damned if I do it one minute before I have to."
She's already paid so much trying to keep her children away from this life, she's already given everything, and every second of childhood Dean and Sam get to keep is worth it. It has to be.
Ellen pulls the empty glass from Mary's loose grip and refills, setting it down before her. "Just don't leave it too long. Or something else might make the decision for you."
Mary shivers involuntarily and takes a drink to counteract the sudden chill. As if she hasn't thought of that possibility a hundred times. Of something getting around her, or even outright killing her, and following her trail back to Dean and Sammy. Whenever she can she leaves them with other hunters, other people who can protect them, but it isn't always possible. "Dean's almost 10. I'll tell him then. And he can look out for Sammy until he's old enough."
Ellen hums but doesn't voice any disapproval. "How do you think he'll take it?"
"I don't know." She does, though. He'll be scared for a second, and then excited, and then proud of her for doing what she does, and then he'll want to help. He'll want to help so much and she won't be able to refuse him, and then all her hard work will be for nothing.
Maybe she can save Sammy. Maybe he'll grow up and want to be a doctor or a lawyer or an astronaut, instead of a hunter. She and Dean will keep the demon off him while he runs for Congress or flies on the space shuttle.
She finishes her drink.
"I'm pretty sure there aren't any demons in space," she tells the empty glass, a little blearily.
"Okay, I think that's enough for you tonight," Ellen says wryly, retrieving the glass. "Christ, you're such a lightweight."
Mary glares at her but doesn't object. The alcohol's done it's work; she's tired enough to sleep.
"Off you go," Ellen bundles her out of her seat and shoves her none too gently towards the back door. "Good night, Mary. And thanks for ganking that spirit."
Mary waves her hand back as she heads toward her boys' room. "Good night, Ellen. Thanks for the drink."
She walks down the hall steadily -- she isn't that much of a lightweight, thank you very much -- but stops again when she reaches the storeroom. She leans in the doorway for a long time, watching her children breathe.
It brings back memories, as it always does, to watch her children sleep. Memories of the time she kissed Sammy good night, tucked Dean in, and woke up choking on smoke. The unnatural fire, the smell of sulfur. She'd grabbed her kids and run as fast as she could out of her oh-so-carefully normal house, the house with no protections and no salt lines because she "refused to live that way," whatever the hell that meant. She'd been so damn stupid.
She'd known immediately it was the demon, coming back to collect on her debt. Why it killed John, what it wants with Sammy, whether that visit settles the debt or whether it will take even more -- she doesn't know any of the answers. But she knows she can't stop moving unless she wants to find out firsthand. She may not know what it wants but she knows she isn't letting it anywhere near her children ever again.
She checks the room's protections automatically. Salt lines, hex bags, Key of Solomon on a tarp unrolled on the floor. No guns -- she's keeping them in the Impala until Sammy's old enough not to blow his head off --
but she checks on the knife she left in easy reach tucked just under the mattress edge. All safe; as safe as she can make them in this screwed-up world.
She sits on the edge of the low mattress to pull off her boots and quickly trades her bloodied clothes for fresh sweats -- no white nightgowns for her anymore. Not that she ever liked wearing them, but John --
John had a thing for her in white. He said it made her look like an angel. John had loved her and she had loved him and then he'd died because she couldn't stand for him to know the truth about who she really was.
She rubs a knuckle into her gritty, tired eyes. She should know better than to drink bourbon after a hunt, it always makes her maudlin. John is gone. But she's still here and so are Dean and Sammy, and she's going to
keep it that way even if it kills her.
Tonight though, tonight she can rest.
There's just one more thing she has to do before she can fall down into sleep. It's the one ritual she's been able to keep from the time before, the one thing she can still do for her children as if their whole world
hadn't been torn apart.
She carefully walks on her knees across the mattress and leans across Dean to gently brush a kiss to Sammy's forehead. "Good night, baby."
Sammy snuffles a bit but doesn't wake up. She runs a hand through his soft hair, rubs a thumb on his forehead. He's growing out of these pajamas already, she needs to remember to find him new ones. He's growing up so fast she can barely keep up. One day she's going to come home and he'll be taller than her.
Dean's still attached to Sam like a barnacle. She thinks about trying to separate Dean from his brother but decides to leave them be. She does try to gently rearrange them, because the way they're sleeping will end up with Dean's arm going numb by morning and they'll all pay the price. Nine years old and he has enough attitude for a teenager, plus he's smart enough to know something strange is going on even if he doesn't ask out loud.
She tries to move Dean without waking him up, but she's a little too tired and he's a little too heavy for that to work. His eyes blink open sleepily. "Mom?"
"Yes, baby, it's me." She ruffles his hair, too. She can't resist. "I just got back."
"How was work? Did the baby come out okay?"
"Uh-huh. A big beautiful girl with black hair. How was your day with Aunt Ellen?"
"Sammy and me helped her and Uncle Bill fix the window. And then Jo punched me in the head."
"Did you deserve it?"
Dean manages a sleepy frown. "Maybe."
Mary laughs quietly. "Go to sleep, Dean."
Dean obediently offers his cheek to be kissed, but when she pulls back his eyes are already closed again.
"'Night Mom," he murmurs.
"Good night, baby."
She waits until he's truly asleep, breathing deep and even but still latched on to Sammy, then she carefully leans down and presses a soft kiss just above his temple.
"Remember," she whispers into Dean's hair, "angels are watching over you."