Fanfic: Safe House, Mary Winchester
Title: Safe House
Characters: Mary, John, Dean, Sam, Uncle Jacob
Rating: PG
Word Count: 3,800
Disclaimer: I do not own Supernatural, or any related characters.
Spoilers: Pilot, In the Beginning
Warnings: Character death? The same one that happened in the pilot, so...
Beta: opheliahyde
Summary: It's a home to raise a family, a safe place, a place to start new lives. But it's been ten years since Mary signed those lives away and she wonders if they will ever be safe again.
She is three months pregnant with Sam when they find the house. It has three bedrooms, two baths, and a large back yard on a quiet street; just like every other house the realtor has shown them. When Mary walks through the door, she realizes exactly how people finally choose, what made a house a home: an immediate feeling of warmth almost overwhelms her, something comforting and real. It is the same feeling that she had when John had first kissed her, when her father had first taught her how to hold a shotgun.
Her mind drifts as the real estate agent talks, imagining her mother’s old table in the dining room, Dean playing in the backyard, maybe putting in a pool if the garage keeps going well. As John tours the master bedroom, with its en suite bathroom and large closet, she wanders across the hall. The bedroom is bright, the windows looking out at the tree-lined street. She rests her hands against her stomach.
“Mary?” John says, approaching her carefully. “Are you okay?”
“This would make a nice nursery.”
He seems surprised, then smiles and kisses her temple gently. “I take it that means you like the house.”
She turns to him, resting her head against his shoulder. “This is the one. I can feel it.”
Nodding, John wraps his arms around her, palm spread open on her stomach. “Okay. I’ll tell Lisa to draw up the paperwork.”
Mary smiles and hugs him tightly, letting the relief of the end of their search settle in. “I love you.”
His free hand cups her face gently, smoothing her blonde curls away from her face. “I love you too, Mary.”
They seal it with a kiss.
Moving is never easy, but Mary gets most of the packing done as John teaches Dean to catch a football out in their yard, watching through the windows as she unloads the china into the curio, the country pattern of her parents’ wedding a contrast to her own traditional setting.
Dean seems happy here. The neighborhood is full of kids and the park is in walking distance, with swings and slides and a jungle gym. The child in her stomach is growing at a rate that makes her think they’ll be even bigger than Dean. From outside, John catches her eye and winks before scooping up Dean, spinning him in the air. She feels at peace.
One night, she lies in bed skimming through a baby book one of the neighbors gave her as a homecoming present. She already knows what the baby will be named-Sam works for either a boy or a girl-but a middle name doesn’t hurt. When she pages through the K’s, the lamps next to the beds flicker. Her eyes are drawn there immediately as they go out again for a second.
She’s pulling her flask of holy water out of her bedside table as John stirs next to her. “Mary?”
“It’s nothing, John. I’m just…hungry. Go back to sleep.”
He chuckles as he always does at her cravings, then rolls over. It’s not more than a few minutes until his breathing falls into the deep, regular inhales of sleep.
Flask in hand, she gets slowly out of bed, going immediately to Dean’s room. Her baby is sleeping soundly, still covered as she left him. Sighing to herself, she checks the salt line at his window. It hasn’t been touched. After kissing Dean’s head and tucking him in a little bit more, she heads downstairs, chanting Latin under her breath.
The house is clear, the salt lines still intact. She shakes her head at her own paranoia before heading back to bed. When she gets settled back next to John, she feels a slight pressure on her stomach and it takes her a minute to realize that the baby is kicking. Unbidden, tears rise in her eyes as feels them within her.
She’s contemplating waking John up to feel when the light next to her bed flickers again, and she thinks she seems a dark figure out of the corner of her eye. After checking the room as thoroughly as she can, she decides that she’s just tired and overwhelmed and emotional and growing another person inside of her and what she needs is sleep.
Still, she grabs her old knife out of a shoebox where it’s shielded beneath her winter boots and puts it under her pillow. That night she sleeps restlessly, arms wrapped around her stomach to protect her child.
“Dammit!” she curses as one of kitchen lights shatters while she’s cooking dinner.
“Mary?” John calls from the living room. Carrying Dean, he comes in to see her, sighing at the broken light bulb. “Don’t worry, I’ll clean it up and put in a new one.”
She shakes her head and starts chopping the vegetables furiously. “This is ridiculous, John. That’s the third one this week. We might as well start buying them in bulk.”
“You were here during the inspection same as I,” he says, putting Dean in his booster seat as he gets out the broom and dustpan to sweep up the glass. “The wiring is old, they said we would have to replace it soon enough.”
“Right, that’s completely normal,” she says sarcastically under her breath. But he’s John, and he’s not from her world. He doesn’t know that it is completely normal-for her world. Not the world she’s trying to build.
John throws away the shards and reaches over to squeeze her hand. “Hey, you know Joe at the garage? His brother Frank is an electrician. I can ask him to look at it if you want.”
She sighs and forces a smile because John’s not the problem. John’s always been her answer to her problems. “That sounds good.”
Frank says exactly what the house inspector said. “It’s just old wiring. It doesn’t look as bad as you say it’s being, but sometimes looks can be deceiving. I’d say the sooner you replace it the better.”
Mary isn’t as satisfied with the answer as John is, and he starts crunching the numbers for the repairs needed as soon as they can work on the house without worrying about the baby. Mary decides to call in her own specialist.
“Uncle Jacob!” she says, hugging him tightly after letting into her house.
“Oh, little Mary, look at you,” he says, standing back arms length and smiling proudly. “You’re more beautiful every time I see you.”
“That’s because you never come see us enough.”
He shrugs, wrapping an arm around her shoulder. “There’s a job out there and someone’s gotta do it.” When she stiffens at the memories, he quickly adds, “So where’s John and my favorite nephew?”
“Dean is at a play date and John is at the garage. He thinks we need to replace the wiring sooner than expected, so he’s putting in more hours to pay for it.”
Jacob judges her face quickly. “And you don’t think it’s the wiring?”
Mary crosses her arms over her chest and sighs. “I…I can’t in good conscience bury my head in the sand and just think it’s that. Not with Dean here.” She looks up, hesitant to meet his eyes. “It’s not just the lights and the clocks stopping. Sometimes I think I see…shadows, figures. Like I’m being watched. Followed.”
He hugs her gently, rubbing her back. “It’ll be okay, Mary. I’ll look into it.”
Nodding, she blinks away the moisture in her eyes. “I actually have to go pick up Dean from his friend’s house. I was thinking that you could look around while I go get him.”
“Sure, of course.” He kisses her forehead. “Don’t worry, Mary. It’s going to be okay.”
Dean is falling asleep in her arms by the time she gets him home and she lays him down for a nap while she and Jacob convene in the kitchen. “Tea?” she offers, not really focusing on his answer as she gets two mugs down and starts to fill the kettle.
He waits until she’s settled with him at the table before saying, “Mary, I didn’t find anything. I searched this entire place and didn’t find any demonic signs at all, not even a speck of sulfur, which, no offense, isn’t because of your superior housekeeping skills.”
Resting her head in her hands, she says, “So I am going crazy.”
“Of course not,” he says, rubbing her back. “It’s not a new house, it needs some work. And frankly, growing up in this family doesn’t exactly breed a sense of security wherever we go. Have you been doing things to keep the house clean?”
She laughs without mirth. “Are you kidding? I ask for so much holy water that the priest thinks I’m bathing in it. I got Mom’s old Devil’s trap rug out of storage and we’re even back to buying salt in bulk again because I’ve gone crazy with it.”
Jacob raises an eyebrow. “Salting the doors and the windows? What does John think of that?”
“I just tell him that it’s an old family thing. He’s not exactly going to criticize my dead parents.” She doesn’t try to disguise the bitterness in her tone.
Reaching across the table, Jacob takes her hand and squeezes it reassuringly. “You know, your parents would be very proud of you and the life you’ve built here.”
A lump lodges itself in her throat and she struggles to swallow around it. “I know.”
“John and Dean and the baby. It’s what they would have wanted for you.”
Mary isn’t sure if she agrees with that so she just says, “Sam. The baby’s name is Sam. I’m having another boy.”
Grinning, Jacob laughs heartily. “Another boy! Oh, your dad would be thrilled.”
“And Mom would have spoiled them rotten.”
“She’d be baking every day and making Samuel taste it until even he got sick of her cooking.”
Mary smiled at the idea. “Yeah….yeah…”
Her wandering thoughts are pulled back into the present as Dean walks into the kitchen, yawning and rubbing his eyes. “Mommy, can I have animal crackers? With monkeys?”
Scooping him up into her arms, she hugs him tightly before turning to the cabinet. “Of course, baby.” As she watches him munch on his cookie, she smoothes his hair and wonders how she was possibly expected to make any decision that didn’t end in this.
May 2nd is bright and sunny. It has been every year for the past ten years. John says it’s because the world knows she’s sad and is trying to cheer her up. Mary just thinks it’s mocking her pain.
She spends most of the day in bed as she always does, but tells herself that she at least has an excuse this time, as she’s just about ready to pop. She’s already a few days late and her doctor says that if she doesn’t give birth by the end of the week, they’ll induce it.
Sighing to herself, she runs the tips of her fingers lightly over the fabric cover of her mother’s journal, tracing the letters of Deanna’s name. A little over four years ago, she had finally been able to look at them without crying, needing to read her mother’s perfected cursive while she went through Dean’s birth alone. Even the descriptions of how to kill a werewolf were comforting, and she tried not think of what that meant for their family.
There is a knock at the door and Dean stuck his head in before Mary said anything. “Hi, Mommy.”
She sets Deanna’s journal on the bed and smiles at her son. “Hi, sweetie.”
Dean holds up a plate with a messily made peanut butter sandwich. “Daddy thought you were hungry so I made you a sandwich.”
Mary’s heart swells with love for her boy. She helps him sit up next to her on the bed. “That is very thoughtful of you both. You wanna share this with me?”
He nods and she hands him one half of the sandwich, which John had cut diagonally just like she always did. Mary eats the happily, stroking Dean’s hair back from his face. “Hey, Mommy,” he says, looking up at her with green eyes so much like her mother’s. “When’s the baby coming?”
“I think soon, honey. He’s just a little late.”
Snuggling close to her, Dean says, “What happens when the baby comes? Am I not the baby?”
“You get to be the big boy then and help us take care of him. Sammy is gonna need a strong big brother to protect him.” She kisses the top of his head as he lays it against her stomach. For a few minutes, he stares past her and she frowns, following his gaze until she sees a dark figure out of the corner of her eye. Mary freezes, trying to convince herself that it’s simply a shadow opposite the sun of the day, but then it moves and she turns quickly.
There’s nothing there.
Dean snaps out of his reverie and kisses her stomach through her nightgown. “Don’t worry, Sammy, I’ll always be here. I’ll be the best big brother ever.”
She feels tears gathering in her eyes as Dean pets her stomach. “You are going to be the best big brother ever. I know it.”
It’s as if a levee is broken, and she’s suddenly reassured about everything. And then it breaks.
“John! John!” she calls suddenly, the plate falling from her grasp on to the floor. Dean looks at her in surprise as she hears John running up the stairs.
Pushing the door open, he looks at them, breathless. “What? What is it?”
“I think my water just broke.”
The trip to the hospital seems longer than it ever has, and the hours that follow aren’t much more pleasant. Finally, she tells John to take Dean to get some dinner-Sam wants to take a little longer. As luck would have it, she gets the chatty nurse who comes in to check her vitals. “Everything okay in here?”
Mary nods. “My husband just took my oldest to get something to eat.”
“So you’re all alone?” the nurse says, frowning. “Did someone call your family?”
“My uncle is out of town and…my parents died,” she says softly. “Ten years ago.” The punch to the stomach at the realization is something completely different than the contractions. She’s suddenly having trouble breathing when she thinks about how it was exactly ten years to the day when she lost her parents, saved John, made the deal.
The nurse seems concerned. “Are you okay? Contractions?”
Shaking her head, Mary realizes that she’s crying now, hyperventilating against the heaviness of the knowledge. She wants everything to stop, to be able to think of what it means, for everything not to be happening right now on this day. But then the contractions start again, heavier, more painful and she can’t even speak as the nurse runs to find the doctor.
Sam Winchester is born at 8:53 PM and Mary holds him first, looking at his face, trying to see Samuel and Deanna there with John’s eyes and her own light hair. She clings to him until they take him away to clean him up, then clings to John’s hand instead. It’s all too much.
John leaves to take Dean home a few hours later and, against the advice of the doctor and nurses, Mary requests to have Sam stay in her room for the night. She holds him closely as he sleeps, memorizing the face that she can’t wait to see change and grow.
Carefully, she picks up her father’s pocket watch, listening to the precise tick of the second hand. She’s never known the watch the stop and she regards it intensely as it counts down the last hour of the day. When it clicked to midnight, she clings tighter to Sam, watching the room around her for anyone that wasn’t welcome.
She stays on her guard until almost an hour after when an un-possessed nurse comes in to check on her. Mary knows how deals work; this isn’t right. It shouldn’t be this easy.
But she nurses Sam and he sleeps. She can barely keep her eyes open. After putting him in his basinet, she lays down and watching him, praying herself to sleep.
“I still can’t believe you’re not coming to Sammy’s christening,” Mary says, shaking her head at the phone.
Jacob sighs over the line. “I’m sorry, Mary.”
“You’re his godfather!”
“I really thought the invitation said 13th and even that was going to be a stretch.”
Mary peeks in Dean’s room, stretching the cord as far as she can from the base on the table. “No,” she says softly, frowning. “It clearly said November 3rd.”
“I know that now. Honestly, Mary, I wouldn’t have taken the job if I had realized, but I can’t leave now. People are being killed.”
She nods to herself. “I know, I know. It’s okay, we’ll take lots of pictures. And you’d better come visit as soon as you can.”
“Don’t worry, Mary, I want to see that boy again.” Jacob hesitates for a moment. “Things are okay there, right? You don’t want me to come because you need help?”
“No, no, things…things are actually going really well. The house has been behaving, if that makes any sense.”
“As much sense as anything else in this world.” He groans with soreness. “I’m glad to hear it, but I have to go dig up a body, so I’m going to let you go. Give the boys hugs for me and I’ll see you soon.”
“Okay, Uncle Jacob. Be careful.” After she said her good byes, Mary hangs up the phone and ruffles Dean’s hair. “Hey, sweetie, I think it’s just about time for bed.”
Dean frowns, but stands up when Mary takes his hand. After she puts the phone back in the cradle, they head towards the nursery. “Let’s say goodnight to your brother.” She watches happily as Dean jumps up on the crib so he can give Sammy a kiss. She follows him, brushing her lips against her baby’s forehead. “Good night, love.”
When John shows up to take Dean to bed, Mary simply shuts off the lights in Sam’s room, saying a quick prayer for him. Dean is already tucked in with his stuffed rabbit when she goes to say good night to him. She kisses the top of his head. “Sleep well, Dean. And remember, angels are watching over you.”
“Good night, Mommy,” he says sleepily. “Night, Daddy.”
“Good night, buddy,” John says, wrapping his arm around Mary’s waist as they leave the room. He runs a hand down her side, fingering her nightgown. “You heading to bed already?”
Mary nods, kissing him gently. “I’m exhausted and I still have a lot of work to do tomorrow before the christening.” She tries to hide her yawn. “You’re welcome to join me, if you want.”
He smoothes her hair away from her face. “I’ve got to work on some books for the garage. You just get some rest.” Cupping her face gently, they share a deep kiss before John says, “Love you.”
“I love you too.” Mary squeezes his hand, then heads to their bedroom, sliding under the blankets and into unconsciousness.
The soft noise from the baby monitor wakes her not long after. She blinks open her eyes, listening Sammy’s cry before calling out for John. When she realizes she’s alone in the room, she rolls over, trying to wake herself up.
Then, just for a minute, she stops, a voice in her head warning her. It’s November 2nd, 1983 and she knows, somehow, not to get out of bed. It’s been ten years and sixth months, and she still remembers, still remembers everything about that day. Remembers how she promised.
Sam’s cries come louder from the monitor and her heart twists in her chest. Shaking her head, she pushes the blankets away and stands up. The promise she made to her son is more important.
Blinking tiredly, she walks to Sammy’s room and is relieved to see John standing over the crib. “Is he hungry?” When he shushes her, she just shrugs to herself.
Down the hall, a light flickers. She sighs to herself, walking towards it and tapping lightly on the sconce. After a second, it shines just how it always has. They really do need rewiring.
Mary is about to turn back to bed when she sees something downstairs standing in the corner. It’s shrouded in the darkness and she squints against the dim lighting and the blinking picture of the television. Slowly, she creeps down the stairs, trying to get a clearer sight of who or what is standing there, waiting for her.
She’s about halfway down when she realizes that John is there asleep in his chair. And if John is there, he’s not with Sammy.
Her breath is lost in her throat as she chokes out her son’s name, running upstairs to his room. She bursts through the door and the eyes turn towards her: bright yellow just as she remembered. “You!”
An invisible force pushes her against the wall and she struggles to do anything. The fight is useless as she is dragged up to the ceiling. The demon smiles at her, then tsks softly. “Oh, Mary, I hate to do this. It’s a shame to waste such beauty. You always were my favorite.”
Her stomach is sliced open and finally she can scream, the pain ripping it out of her. The demon winks and disappears and she can only stay there, staring down at her defenseless baby boy. “Sammy…” she gasps with her last breath.
She wants to stare at her son, his peaceful face her last image of him, but her eyes are once more drawn to the corner. At first she thinks it’s the demon, wants to curse and scream and tell him to leave her family alone, but it’s not. The face is calm and serene but that’s not what’s shocking her into stillness.
The lights of the room flicker and shadows of wings stretch out behind him.
John appears in the room, screaming her name. When he doesn’t see her, he settles, walking over to their little boy. She wants to tell him to go, save them, that she loves them all, but there are no more words. Then John looks up at her and his face is one that she’s never seen before, one of shock and terror and utter hopelessness, not her John, not the man who believed in love and happily ever after. Their happily ever after.
The fire consumes her but she ignores the pain, ignores everything except the need for her family to be safe. She manages to tear her eyes away from John, staring at the figure in the corner. For the first time, she meets the eyes, so full of grace and her own salvation before they’re gone and it’s just the Winchesters. Somehow, John manages to get up, takes Sammy and gets him away from the hellfire that is all that’s left of her.
Don’t worry, Sammy, she thinks, loving him with her last thoughts. Angels are watching over you.
Characters: Mary, John, Dean, Sam, Uncle Jacob
Rating: PG
Word Count: 3,800
Disclaimer: I do not own Supernatural, or any related characters.
Spoilers: Pilot, In the Beginning
Warnings: Character death? The same one that happened in the pilot, so...
Beta: opheliahyde
Summary: It's a home to raise a family, a safe place, a place to start new lives. But it's been ten years since Mary signed those lives away and she wonders if they will ever be safe again.
She is three months pregnant with Sam when they find the house. It has three bedrooms, two baths, and a large back yard on a quiet street; just like every other house the realtor has shown them. When Mary walks through the door, she realizes exactly how people finally choose, what made a house a home: an immediate feeling of warmth almost overwhelms her, something comforting and real. It is the same feeling that she had when John had first kissed her, when her father had first taught her how to hold a shotgun.
Her mind drifts as the real estate agent talks, imagining her mother’s old table in the dining room, Dean playing in the backyard, maybe putting in a pool if the garage keeps going well. As John tours the master bedroom, with its en suite bathroom and large closet, she wanders across the hall. The bedroom is bright, the windows looking out at the tree-lined street. She rests her hands against her stomach.
“Mary?” John says, approaching her carefully. “Are you okay?”
“This would make a nice nursery.”
He seems surprised, then smiles and kisses her temple gently. “I take it that means you like the house.”
She turns to him, resting her head against his shoulder. “This is the one. I can feel it.”
Nodding, John wraps his arms around her, palm spread open on her stomach. “Okay. I’ll tell Lisa to draw up the paperwork.”
Mary smiles and hugs him tightly, letting the relief of the end of their search settle in. “I love you.”
His free hand cups her face gently, smoothing her blonde curls away from her face. “I love you too, Mary.”
They seal it with a kiss.
Moving is never easy, but Mary gets most of the packing done as John teaches Dean to catch a football out in their yard, watching through the windows as she unloads the china into the curio, the country pattern of her parents’ wedding a contrast to her own traditional setting.
Dean seems happy here. The neighborhood is full of kids and the park is in walking distance, with swings and slides and a jungle gym. The child in her stomach is growing at a rate that makes her think they’ll be even bigger than Dean. From outside, John catches her eye and winks before scooping up Dean, spinning him in the air. She feels at peace.
One night, she lies in bed skimming through a baby book one of the neighbors gave her as a homecoming present. She already knows what the baby will be named-Sam works for either a boy or a girl-but a middle name doesn’t hurt. When she pages through the K’s, the lamps next to the beds flicker. Her eyes are drawn there immediately as they go out again for a second.
She’s pulling her flask of holy water out of her bedside table as John stirs next to her. “Mary?”
“It’s nothing, John. I’m just…hungry. Go back to sleep.”
He chuckles as he always does at her cravings, then rolls over. It’s not more than a few minutes until his breathing falls into the deep, regular inhales of sleep.
Flask in hand, she gets slowly out of bed, going immediately to Dean’s room. Her baby is sleeping soundly, still covered as she left him. Sighing to herself, she checks the salt line at his window. It hasn’t been touched. After kissing Dean’s head and tucking him in a little bit more, she heads downstairs, chanting Latin under her breath.
The house is clear, the salt lines still intact. She shakes her head at her own paranoia before heading back to bed. When she gets settled back next to John, she feels a slight pressure on her stomach and it takes her a minute to realize that the baby is kicking. Unbidden, tears rise in her eyes as feels them within her.
She’s contemplating waking John up to feel when the light next to her bed flickers again, and she thinks she seems a dark figure out of the corner of her eye. After checking the room as thoroughly as she can, she decides that she’s just tired and overwhelmed and emotional and growing another person inside of her and what she needs is sleep.
Still, she grabs her old knife out of a shoebox where it’s shielded beneath her winter boots and puts it under her pillow. That night she sleeps restlessly, arms wrapped around her stomach to protect her child.
“Dammit!” she curses as one of kitchen lights shatters while she’s cooking dinner.
“Mary?” John calls from the living room. Carrying Dean, he comes in to see her, sighing at the broken light bulb. “Don’t worry, I’ll clean it up and put in a new one.”
She shakes her head and starts chopping the vegetables furiously. “This is ridiculous, John. That’s the third one this week. We might as well start buying them in bulk.”
“You were here during the inspection same as I,” he says, putting Dean in his booster seat as he gets out the broom and dustpan to sweep up the glass. “The wiring is old, they said we would have to replace it soon enough.”
“Right, that’s completely normal,” she says sarcastically under her breath. But he’s John, and he’s not from her world. He doesn’t know that it is completely normal-for her world. Not the world she’s trying to build.
John throws away the shards and reaches over to squeeze her hand. “Hey, you know Joe at the garage? His brother Frank is an electrician. I can ask him to look at it if you want.”
She sighs and forces a smile because John’s not the problem. John’s always been her answer to her problems. “That sounds good.”
Frank says exactly what the house inspector said. “It’s just old wiring. It doesn’t look as bad as you say it’s being, but sometimes looks can be deceiving. I’d say the sooner you replace it the better.”
Mary isn’t as satisfied with the answer as John is, and he starts crunching the numbers for the repairs needed as soon as they can work on the house without worrying about the baby. Mary decides to call in her own specialist.
“Uncle Jacob!” she says, hugging him tightly after letting into her house.
“Oh, little Mary, look at you,” he says, standing back arms length and smiling proudly. “You’re more beautiful every time I see you.”
“That’s because you never come see us enough.”
He shrugs, wrapping an arm around her shoulder. “There’s a job out there and someone’s gotta do it.” When she stiffens at the memories, he quickly adds, “So where’s John and my favorite nephew?”
“Dean is at a play date and John is at the garage. He thinks we need to replace the wiring sooner than expected, so he’s putting in more hours to pay for it.”
Jacob judges her face quickly. “And you don’t think it’s the wiring?”
Mary crosses her arms over her chest and sighs. “I…I can’t in good conscience bury my head in the sand and just think it’s that. Not with Dean here.” She looks up, hesitant to meet his eyes. “It’s not just the lights and the clocks stopping. Sometimes I think I see…shadows, figures. Like I’m being watched. Followed.”
He hugs her gently, rubbing her back. “It’ll be okay, Mary. I’ll look into it.”
Nodding, she blinks away the moisture in her eyes. “I actually have to go pick up Dean from his friend’s house. I was thinking that you could look around while I go get him.”
“Sure, of course.” He kisses her forehead. “Don’t worry, Mary. It’s going to be okay.”
Dean is falling asleep in her arms by the time she gets him home and she lays him down for a nap while she and Jacob convene in the kitchen. “Tea?” she offers, not really focusing on his answer as she gets two mugs down and starts to fill the kettle.
He waits until she’s settled with him at the table before saying, “Mary, I didn’t find anything. I searched this entire place and didn’t find any demonic signs at all, not even a speck of sulfur, which, no offense, isn’t because of your superior housekeeping skills.”
Resting her head in her hands, she says, “So I am going crazy.”
“Of course not,” he says, rubbing her back. “It’s not a new house, it needs some work. And frankly, growing up in this family doesn’t exactly breed a sense of security wherever we go. Have you been doing things to keep the house clean?”
She laughs without mirth. “Are you kidding? I ask for so much holy water that the priest thinks I’m bathing in it. I got Mom’s old Devil’s trap rug out of storage and we’re even back to buying salt in bulk again because I’ve gone crazy with it.”
Jacob raises an eyebrow. “Salting the doors and the windows? What does John think of that?”
“I just tell him that it’s an old family thing. He’s not exactly going to criticize my dead parents.” She doesn’t try to disguise the bitterness in her tone.
Reaching across the table, Jacob takes her hand and squeezes it reassuringly. “You know, your parents would be very proud of you and the life you’ve built here.”
A lump lodges itself in her throat and she struggles to swallow around it. “I know.”
“John and Dean and the baby. It’s what they would have wanted for you.”
Mary isn’t sure if she agrees with that so she just says, “Sam. The baby’s name is Sam. I’m having another boy.”
Grinning, Jacob laughs heartily. “Another boy! Oh, your dad would be thrilled.”
“And Mom would have spoiled them rotten.”
“She’d be baking every day and making Samuel taste it until even he got sick of her cooking.”
Mary smiled at the idea. “Yeah….yeah…”
Her wandering thoughts are pulled back into the present as Dean walks into the kitchen, yawning and rubbing his eyes. “Mommy, can I have animal crackers? With monkeys?”
Scooping him up into her arms, she hugs him tightly before turning to the cabinet. “Of course, baby.” As she watches him munch on his cookie, she smoothes his hair and wonders how she was possibly expected to make any decision that didn’t end in this.
May 2nd is bright and sunny. It has been every year for the past ten years. John says it’s because the world knows she’s sad and is trying to cheer her up. Mary just thinks it’s mocking her pain.
She spends most of the day in bed as she always does, but tells herself that she at least has an excuse this time, as she’s just about ready to pop. She’s already a few days late and her doctor says that if she doesn’t give birth by the end of the week, they’ll induce it.
Sighing to herself, she runs the tips of her fingers lightly over the fabric cover of her mother’s journal, tracing the letters of Deanna’s name. A little over four years ago, she had finally been able to look at them without crying, needing to read her mother’s perfected cursive while she went through Dean’s birth alone. Even the descriptions of how to kill a werewolf were comforting, and she tried not think of what that meant for their family.
There is a knock at the door and Dean stuck his head in before Mary said anything. “Hi, Mommy.”
She sets Deanna’s journal on the bed and smiles at her son. “Hi, sweetie.”
Dean holds up a plate with a messily made peanut butter sandwich. “Daddy thought you were hungry so I made you a sandwich.”
Mary’s heart swells with love for her boy. She helps him sit up next to her on the bed. “That is very thoughtful of you both. You wanna share this with me?”
He nods and she hands him one half of the sandwich, which John had cut diagonally just like she always did. Mary eats the happily, stroking Dean’s hair back from his face. “Hey, Mommy,” he says, looking up at her with green eyes so much like her mother’s. “When’s the baby coming?”
“I think soon, honey. He’s just a little late.”
Snuggling close to her, Dean says, “What happens when the baby comes? Am I not the baby?”
“You get to be the big boy then and help us take care of him. Sammy is gonna need a strong big brother to protect him.” She kisses the top of his head as he lays it against her stomach. For a few minutes, he stares past her and she frowns, following his gaze until she sees a dark figure out of the corner of her eye. Mary freezes, trying to convince herself that it’s simply a shadow opposite the sun of the day, but then it moves and she turns quickly.
There’s nothing there.
Dean snaps out of his reverie and kisses her stomach through her nightgown. “Don’t worry, Sammy, I’ll always be here. I’ll be the best big brother ever.”
She feels tears gathering in her eyes as Dean pets her stomach. “You are going to be the best big brother ever. I know it.”
It’s as if a levee is broken, and she’s suddenly reassured about everything. And then it breaks.
“John! John!” she calls suddenly, the plate falling from her grasp on to the floor. Dean looks at her in surprise as she hears John running up the stairs.
Pushing the door open, he looks at them, breathless. “What? What is it?”
“I think my water just broke.”
The trip to the hospital seems longer than it ever has, and the hours that follow aren’t much more pleasant. Finally, she tells John to take Dean to get some dinner-Sam wants to take a little longer. As luck would have it, she gets the chatty nurse who comes in to check her vitals. “Everything okay in here?”
Mary nods. “My husband just took my oldest to get something to eat.”
“So you’re all alone?” the nurse says, frowning. “Did someone call your family?”
“My uncle is out of town and…my parents died,” she says softly. “Ten years ago.” The punch to the stomach at the realization is something completely different than the contractions. She’s suddenly having trouble breathing when she thinks about how it was exactly ten years to the day when she lost her parents, saved John, made the deal.
The nurse seems concerned. “Are you okay? Contractions?”
Shaking her head, Mary realizes that she’s crying now, hyperventilating against the heaviness of the knowledge. She wants everything to stop, to be able to think of what it means, for everything not to be happening right now on this day. But then the contractions start again, heavier, more painful and she can’t even speak as the nurse runs to find the doctor.
Sam Winchester is born at 8:53 PM and Mary holds him first, looking at his face, trying to see Samuel and Deanna there with John’s eyes and her own light hair. She clings to him until they take him away to clean him up, then clings to John’s hand instead. It’s all too much.
John leaves to take Dean home a few hours later and, against the advice of the doctor and nurses, Mary requests to have Sam stay in her room for the night. She holds him closely as he sleeps, memorizing the face that she can’t wait to see change and grow.
Carefully, she picks up her father’s pocket watch, listening to the precise tick of the second hand. She’s never known the watch the stop and she regards it intensely as it counts down the last hour of the day. When it clicked to midnight, she clings tighter to Sam, watching the room around her for anyone that wasn’t welcome.
She stays on her guard until almost an hour after when an un-possessed nurse comes in to check on her. Mary knows how deals work; this isn’t right. It shouldn’t be this easy.
But she nurses Sam and he sleeps. She can barely keep her eyes open. After putting him in his basinet, she lays down and watching him, praying herself to sleep.
“I still can’t believe you’re not coming to Sammy’s christening,” Mary says, shaking her head at the phone.
Jacob sighs over the line. “I’m sorry, Mary.”
“You’re his godfather!”
“I really thought the invitation said 13th and even that was going to be a stretch.”
Mary peeks in Dean’s room, stretching the cord as far as she can from the base on the table. “No,” she says softly, frowning. “It clearly said November 3rd.”
“I know that now. Honestly, Mary, I wouldn’t have taken the job if I had realized, but I can’t leave now. People are being killed.”
She nods to herself. “I know, I know. It’s okay, we’ll take lots of pictures. And you’d better come visit as soon as you can.”
“Don’t worry, Mary, I want to see that boy again.” Jacob hesitates for a moment. “Things are okay there, right? You don’t want me to come because you need help?”
“No, no, things…things are actually going really well. The house has been behaving, if that makes any sense.”
“As much sense as anything else in this world.” He groans with soreness. “I’m glad to hear it, but I have to go dig up a body, so I’m going to let you go. Give the boys hugs for me and I’ll see you soon.”
“Okay, Uncle Jacob. Be careful.” After she said her good byes, Mary hangs up the phone and ruffles Dean’s hair. “Hey, sweetie, I think it’s just about time for bed.”
Dean frowns, but stands up when Mary takes his hand. After she puts the phone back in the cradle, they head towards the nursery. “Let’s say goodnight to your brother.” She watches happily as Dean jumps up on the crib so he can give Sammy a kiss. She follows him, brushing her lips against her baby’s forehead. “Good night, love.”
When John shows up to take Dean to bed, Mary simply shuts off the lights in Sam’s room, saying a quick prayer for him. Dean is already tucked in with his stuffed rabbit when she goes to say good night to him. She kisses the top of his head. “Sleep well, Dean. And remember, angels are watching over you.”
“Good night, Mommy,” he says sleepily. “Night, Daddy.”
“Good night, buddy,” John says, wrapping his arm around Mary’s waist as they leave the room. He runs a hand down her side, fingering her nightgown. “You heading to bed already?”
Mary nods, kissing him gently. “I’m exhausted and I still have a lot of work to do tomorrow before the christening.” She tries to hide her yawn. “You’re welcome to join me, if you want.”
He smoothes her hair away from her face. “I’ve got to work on some books for the garage. You just get some rest.” Cupping her face gently, they share a deep kiss before John says, “Love you.”
“I love you too.” Mary squeezes his hand, then heads to their bedroom, sliding under the blankets and into unconsciousness.
The soft noise from the baby monitor wakes her not long after. She blinks open her eyes, listening Sammy’s cry before calling out for John. When she realizes she’s alone in the room, she rolls over, trying to wake herself up.
Then, just for a minute, she stops, a voice in her head warning her. It’s November 2nd, 1983 and she knows, somehow, not to get out of bed. It’s been ten years and sixth months, and she still remembers, still remembers everything about that day. Remembers how she promised.
Sam’s cries come louder from the monitor and her heart twists in her chest. Shaking her head, she pushes the blankets away and stands up. The promise she made to her son is more important.
Blinking tiredly, she walks to Sammy’s room and is relieved to see John standing over the crib. “Is he hungry?” When he shushes her, she just shrugs to herself.
Down the hall, a light flickers. She sighs to herself, walking towards it and tapping lightly on the sconce. After a second, it shines just how it always has. They really do need rewiring.
Mary is about to turn back to bed when she sees something downstairs standing in the corner. It’s shrouded in the darkness and she squints against the dim lighting and the blinking picture of the television. Slowly, she creeps down the stairs, trying to get a clearer sight of who or what is standing there, waiting for her.
She’s about halfway down when she realizes that John is there asleep in his chair. And if John is there, he’s not with Sammy.
Her breath is lost in her throat as she chokes out her son’s name, running upstairs to his room. She bursts through the door and the eyes turn towards her: bright yellow just as she remembered. “You!”
An invisible force pushes her against the wall and she struggles to do anything. The fight is useless as she is dragged up to the ceiling. The demon smiles at her, then tsks softly. “Oh, Mary, I hate to do this. It’s a shame to waste such beauty. You always were my favorite.”
Her stomach is sliced open and finally she can scream, the pain ripping it out of her. The demon winks and disappears and she can only stay there, staring down at her defenseless baby boy. “Sammy…” she gasps with her last breath.
She wants to stare at her son, his peaceful face her last image of him, but her eyes are once more drawn to the corner. At first she thinks it’s the demon, wants to curse and scream and tell him to leave her family alone, but it’s not. The face is calm and serene but that’s not what’s shocking her into stillness.
The lights of the room flicker and shadows of wings stretch out behind him.
John appears in the room, screaming her name. When he doesn’t see her, he settles, walking over to their little boy. She wants to tell him to go, save them, that she loves them all, but there are no more words. Then John looks up at her and his face is one that she’s never seen before, one of shock and terror and utter hopelessness, not her John, not the man who believed in love and happily ever after. Their happily ever after.
The fire consumes her but she ignores the pain, ignores everything except the need for her family to be safe. She manages to tear her eyes away from John, staring at the figure in the corner. For the first time, she meets the eyes, so full of grace and her own salvation before they’re gone and it’s just the Winchesters. Somehow, John manages to get up, takes Sammy and gets him away from the hellfire that is all that’s left of her.
Don’t worry, Sammy, she thinks, loving him with her last thoughts. Angels are watching over you.