as the music dies - SN fic - PG
Title: as the music dies
Fandom: “Supernatural”
Disclaimer: the Winchesters aren’t mine; just for fun. Title from “Careless Whisper” by Wham.
Warnings: pre-pilot
Pairings: John/Mary
Rating: PG
Wordcount: 560
Point of view: third
She was born with ebon-gray wings curving at her back. They were of a leather-like material, closer to bat wings than anything else. Daddy and Mama hid her away from the world the first dozen years of her life, only letting her out of the house at night.
Micah, her younger brother, had no wings; nor did Carolyn, three years after him.
Mama and Daddy couldn’t explain her wings, and instead acted like they weren’t there. When she was fourteen, Daddy took her to a doctor up in Maine and had them removed. She had to learn to move again, how to sit and walk and run, but Daddy told her she had a life, now, and to be happy with her freedom.
Carolyn helped Mary learn to be normal; Micah never looked at her the same. They were beautiful, he told her, the one time they ever talked about her wings. How could you get rid of them?
It wasn’t her choice, and the largest part of her wasn’t sorry they were gone.
She met John the spring after her twentieth birthday. Micah introduced them; at first, she didn’t like the uncouth man. He courted her over the span of a few months, and made her laugh. He took her to movies and the park, and even to the beach, though it was far away.
By her twenty-first birthday, Mary knew he was the one meant for her.
Carolyn joined a coven the fall of Mary’s twenty-second year. She wasn’t that powerful, not like other women of their blood, but she was very controlled. She told Mary that the wings had been a throwback to previous times, when the family had ruled the sky.
They only form on the firstborn, Carolyn said. So when you and John have children…
Teach me, Mary begged her. I don’t want my baby treated like I was.
It was a simple spell Mary learned, easily done. And Mary realized, as she stared at the night sky a few sunsets later, that she missed her wings, fiercely longed for them. She had only flown a few times, never for more than a few minutes, and she wanted them back.
She could not take the possibility away from her child. So she tweaked the magic her sister gave her, just a little bit.
Mary was twenty-four when she learned she was pregnant. She could feel the child growing in her; her babe filled her with joy. John was even more excited than she, like a boy again. She smiled when he pressed his cheek to her belly, listening for the baby.
The months passed swiftly; Carolyn and Mama visited often, Daddy a little less. Micah never came, off traveling the world.
In her dreams, Mary flew through the night sky, a laughing man she’d never seen before beside her. He had her eyes, and she knew him.
So as John’s boy grew in her womb, she wove a spell to seal his wings-her legacy-into his skin, unrevealed until nothing else could save him.
Dean was born wingless; but Mary could see the outline on his back. My darling, she whispered the night they brought him home, I wish that I could give you the sky. She held him to her breast and twirled around, vainly trying to recall how it felt to fly.
Part II