apocalypsos | Fic: Straight On 'Til Morning (Supernatural)

Title: Straight On 'Til Morning
Author: Troll Princess
Fandom: Supernatural
Rating: R
Word Count: 3.860 words
Pairing: John/Mary
Spoilers: "Salvation"
Warnings: Violence, bad language
Disclaimer: I don't own these characters, I just like playing with them.
Summary: Thirteen times Mary knows her scars are beautiful.
Author's note: AU, in which Mary survived that night.

*****

Straight On 'Til Morning

*****

What Mary Winchester remembers later of those first few weeks is a haze of pain and numbness, bandages and anesthesia, the scent of her own burning flesh that may never entirely leave her. The wound in her stomach is irrelevant, a passing darkness that's not half the worry that the seared skin across her shoulders and arms is.

Mary holds onto the memory of John at her bedside like a tiger onto her next meal, her husband always there, more constant than the furniture. He slides a chair up to her bed the first day he's allowed to see her and it never moves. The nurses crack jokes about him nailing the damn thing to the floor, about him sneaking in late at night and gluing it in place, about the chair not being moved by anyone through the sheer force of John's will from afar.

The first day she's able to think straight between the agony and the drugs, she asks him, "Did you see?"

She doesn't need to mention yellow eyes or a dark empty spot in the shape of a man standing next to Sammy's crib. John caresses her ankle with gentle, insistent circles of his thumb, raises an even gaze to her own and nods. "Yeah, I saw it, too."

After that, the burns feel like a badge of honor, a shield carrying the proud scars of war. Can't fight me, I'm still here.

*****

Mary comes home to two thrilled little boys, a stack of dirty dishes that John sheepishly apologizes for, and a house that won't ever let go of that smoky edge even if the carpenters have come and gone in her absence.

The boys want cuddles and hugs, want Mary to sweep them into her arms and snuggle their small bodies against her chest like she used to. John warns them against it with worried admonishments that Mommy's still healing. When Dean makes that sad face of his that'll melt hearts one day, Mary kneels beside him and makes the deal.

"One kiss," she says, "and later when I'm better, I'll give you a hug for every kiss you had to give me instead."

Dean responds to that by raining kisses across her face, and when the three of them dissolve with happy laughter, Mary doesn't feel the pain for days.

Two days later, Sammy curls up in her lap like a puppy, warm and soft and sweet-smelling. His pudgy fingertips trail along the ridges in her unbandaged skin with childish fascination, and he smiles up at her every so often in a way that makes her cradle the scars to her heart and never want to get rid of them.

*****

The first time John makes love to her after she comes home, he's so gentle she's tempted to warn him she's not made of glass. That she's fine, that she can take it, that hard and wild reminds her what she's here for.

His lips drift over her scars with a murmured, "I could have lost you," she doesn't think she's supposed to hear that he repeats like a holy calling.

She can wait for hard and wild, if this is what she'll get instead.

*****

"I had a bad dream," Dean says from the doorway, holding Sammy's hand with a protective grip that could ward off any evil. Sammy hovers in his shadow, small and quiet, sucking his thumb and staring up at Dean with silent gratitude well beyond his years. Mary's pretty sure just looking at them that Dean wasn't the one who had the nightmare.

John throws back the covers and they pile in like it's a heap of dried autumn leaves, pouncing as they snuggle in between their parents.

"Your feet are cold, little man," John says, and tickles the soles of Dean's feet until he dissolves into high-pitched giggles and tries to wriggle away.

But Sammy presses against his mother with thumb still planted firmly between his lips, making this soft contented noise as he closes his eyes. Beside him, Dean squeals as he tugs the covers over them all, giving Sammy a goodnight kiss on the top of his head before he lets his eyes slip shut.

When they finally all fall asleep, Mary is covered by hands both small and large. John's caressing her hip with his arm thrown over their boys, Dean's brushing her forehead from where his small hand's fallen on the pillow as he rolls in his sleep, and Sammy's still and silent with his palm resting on the pulls in the skin of her shoulder.

*****

"John?" she says, and that's when it starts.

Or at least, that's when she pictures it starting later on, as if someone watched her walk into the kitchen that night to find John at the table surrounded by newspaper clippings and hit the timer on a stopwatch. This is the way the world ends, she thinks, not with a bang but a whimper, and if she really tries, she might even be able to pretend the bang never happened.

"There's something I need to talk to you about," he says. His hand rests on the clippings, his thumb sporting a black spot where one of the new mechanics at the garage accidentally whacked it with a wrench. Mary focuses on that blood bruise like she can't hear that tone in his voice. Once, he woke up in a cold sweat and blurted out, Do you ever dream of yellow eyes?, and this is what he had sounded like.

She slides into the chair opposite him and runs her fingertips over the newsprint. The words comes off on her skin, black ink smearing off a little, just something else to mark her flesh. "What is it?"

He debates what he's going to say for a long moment, scanning the clippings when he isn't looking at her.

Obituaries, headlines of murders, homes on fire. Most of the stories mourn the death of a young mother. Mary has to do a double-take with a couple of them, swearing she sees her name in the headlines.

"We're not the only ones," he says.

It's like the room temperature drops, like everything's gone gray and cold. "The thing that came for Sammy?" she asks, her voice breaking along the edges. Saying it out loud like that hurts, but not half as much as seeing that thing peering down into Sammy's crib.

It takes too long for John to shake his head. "No," he says. "Something else."

There's the gentle rasp of paper sliding across wood, and she reaches for the articles he's passing her -- something about an animal attack, tragic and wrong in the details. Too many teeth, too many claws. When Mary takes the articles, the sleeve of her nightgown rides up enough to let the warm glow of the kitchen lights settle on her scars.

"What do you want to do?" she asks, but she already knows the answer.

*****

When Mary gets to the school, Dean's already given up on crossing his arms and moping. He leans forward on the chair outside the principal's office and scuffs the heels of his sneakers off the linoleum, leaving faint black marks that grow darker with every pass of his feet. It makes a muffled squeak every time he does it, and Mary knows he's realized she's coming down the hallway when that sound cuts off like a door slamming shut.

The principal says things about a scuffle on the playground, a thrown punch, a black eye. Tommy Hawker's mother grumbles something from the other chair about a lawsuit, and Mary wonders if Delia Hawker has ever actually met a seven-year-old boy who wasn't her son.

The low collar of Mary's shirt does nothing to hide the damage to her skin. Delia keeps shooting the burns these dark looks like she thinks they're contagious, and Mary wishes. Oh, she just wishes.

She goes back out into the hallway after the meeting, and sits down on the chair next to Dean with a soft sigh. He's far too quiet, a Dean she's just not used to.

"Your father should have never shown you how to throw a punch," she says, keeping her voice light and teasing. She leans sideways, nudging his arm with her elbow and making him sway to the side, and there's that charmer of a smile that she loves.

"You're not mad?" he asks.

Blackened eyes fade to normal eventually, but it's the principle of the thing, really. "Sweetie, you know the rules," she says.

He bites his lip at that but nods, his grip on the seat tightening out of nerves. John's on a trip to Nashville this week, some questionable disappearances near an abandoned theater looking more and more suspicious with every passing day. They can both hear the words just the same as if he were here, though. We only hurt monsters, Dean. A little boy is not a monster.

"He asked me what was wrong with you," Dean says.

It's so low Mary's sure she misheard him for a long moment, but then she remembers. Last week, when she picked Dean up from school wearing a tank top and jeans with her hair flowing free, riding the warm crest of Indian summer. The few kids at the school she hadn't seen before, the ones who saw her burns and whispered as she led Dean to the car.

"And what did you tell him?"

"I told him you saved Sammy from a monster."

Mary threads her fingers through his hair, as if he's got Sammy's too-long mop of dark curls. It doesn't seem to matter. Dean relaxes just the same. "So when did you punch him?"

"When he laughed and said monsters aren't real."

Her hand stills in his hair for the briefest of instances. There's this empty place in the conversation, something between Tommy's answer and the punch, and Mary feels this stark, sudden urge to not even know what it might be.

*****

In Idaho, there's a girl who barely survived a demonic possession, who only stopped attacking them when Mary and John ran her down with the Impala and ran her down hard. When she's being rolled into the ambulance afterwards, she hears nothing and says nothing, and the dazed look on her face focuses on the crushed mass below her knee as the orderlies mutter about amputation.

Mary makes a point of wearing a tank top to the hospital when she and John stop there before they leave town, of showing off her scars like the proof of life they are.

After she leaves the hospital room, her mother tells Mary it's the first time she's smiled since the operation.

John's hand rests large and warm and there on her shoulder, and he says, "She'll keep it up, you'll see," like he can suddenly see the future.

*****

"Mommy, can I bring a friend over?"

Sammy's got that earnest look on his face again, that hopeful wanting-to-be-normal expression Mary will never stop giving into. Being normal enough seems to work for him most of the time, if he can trade off time at the firing range with time in a library. And Mary would leave him there, would just let him stay in a nice, safe place surrounded by all the books she can give him. But the memory of yellow eyes keeps her scared, and the daily sight of the shiny stretch of her flesh tells Sammy why she stays that way.

"Sure, if you're careful," she says. "This friend got a name?"

"Uh-huh. Her name is Sahara, like the desert. She's new, and Mrs. Wallace told us all kinds of neat stuff about the Sahara because they have the same name." His eyes get wide with barely contained energy when he talks about school, and not even Dean's teasing deters him anymore.

Unable to resist, she rumples his curls and says, "You ask her over whenever you want, Sammy."

A day later is when Mary gets the phone call. When she answers the phone to the sound of faint crying, she wonders briefly if someone's called the wrong number before a quiet voice says, "Mrs. Winchester?"

"Yes?"

"I'm Sahara's mother," she says, her words shaking. "Your son ... he ... thank you."

The phone clicks off.

Mary doesn't get it but her stomach sinks just the same. She spends the rest of the day waiting for what's coming, knowing what the future holds even before Dean and Sammy pound through the kitchen door after school with a little girl in tow. She immediately bounds over to Mary's side and holds out her arm, flashing a smile bright enough to drag anyone's gaze away from the pressure bandages disappearing behind her T-shirt.

"Hi, I'm Sahara," she says, "Just like the desert."

Mary can't help but smile. "So I've heard."

The three of them, Dean and Sammy and Sahara, crowd together at the kitchen table with their homework, because homework comes first whether you like it or not. For once, Dean keeps from begging to go clean his new gun first, and for that much at least, Mary's more than a little grateful for Sahara's visit.

When Sahara runs off to the bathroom, Sammy tugs at Mary's jeans and waits for her to bend down, then leans forward and whispers in her ear like it's a national secret.

"Mommy, I think Sahara's pretty," he says.

The breath chokes off in Mary's throat, and she covers the moment it takes to draw air into her lungs again by dragging a fingertip in a tickling sweep along the slope of Sammy's nose. "You know what, sweetie? I think so, too."

*****

Dean and Sammy are too big for walking into their parents' bedroom and asking to stay in their bed when the nightmares come, but they find their own ways to cope. Sammy's favorite involves a tub of fudge ripple ice cream and a bottle of strawberry sauce, and when Mary or John find the remnants of either in the garbage can in the morning, they know what's gone on in the night.

One day, they come downstairs to find Sammy still slumped over at the kitchen table, head resting on his folded arms.

Mary and John exchange a look but say nothing. Mary drops the ruined carton of ice cream and empty bottle of strawberry sauce into the garbage as John grabs onto Sammy's shoulder and shakes. "C'mon, kiddo, get up," he says, and it takes a minute but Sammy finally responds.

As soon as his gaze latches on Mary, he flinches.

"I had a nightmare," he says, like it weren't patently obvious.

John nods, squeezes his shoulder, waits for more.

"I had a dream you didn't live through the fire," he says, unable to take his eyes off his mother.

John makes this odd hoarse noise in the back of his throat, but Mary just takes Sam's hand and brushes the hair away from his eyes with a gentle touch. "Oh, Sammy," she says, "you don't have to worry about that."

*****

It's Maine this time, with John staying behind to work while the three of them drive up there like some twisted family outing. Dean skips out on football camp ("Yeah, like this isn't more important, Mom") and Sammy ("It's Sam, Mom") lugs along enough books to start his own book drive out of the trunk.

The boy they save from the spirit torturing his family looks up at her while he lies broken and bleeding on the floor of his living room, staring up at her like she's some sort of avenging angel with a ..45, and maybe she is.

Maybe she really is.

*****

The drive from Lawrence to Palo Alto takes five days, which means five days of Dean kicking the back of John's seat on purpose even though he's supposed to be too mature for that behavior and five days of Sam playing tricks on Dean like he's storing up for the time they'll be separated from one another. Mary and John restrain their laughter for the moments when the boys aren't around, when Dean and Sam are off in their own motel room torturing one another and John's got the chance to trail kisses along the slope of her neck with a little privacy for once.

She finally puts a stop to the pranks at the truck stop in Utah where Dean makes the clerk think Sam stole a candy bar and Sam retaliates by gluing Dean's shoes to the floor in the men's room when he goes to take a leak.

It's almost like your average, everyday family road trip, if you can ignore the stop they make in Nevada to salt and burn the graves of a pair of mischievous gunslingers.

Undead cowboys, she thinks with a mental roll of her eyes as she falls asleep in the passenger seat of the Impala afterwards. I could have sworn I was supposed to be in the PTA by now.

Sam's apartment is a single on purpose, no one to complain or question when they secure the hell out of the place. Sam and Dean lug in books and clothes, furniture and bedding, and somewhere else in the apartment John stocks the place with weapons while Mary carves sigils into the windowsills in the living room.

"You know, I can take care of myself," Sam says as he dumps a pile of blankets on the floor like the teenage boy he still is.

He looms over her with that easy grin of his, taller than John or Dean like he had to beat them physically somehow and it was the only way his body could come up with. Mary's spent the past few years feeling like a child in her own home, her men so damn big they swallow up the empty space in the rooms they enter like they're gorging themselves on it.

She finishes digging into the windowsill with the point of her blade and traces her fingertip over the symbols. The signs for protection, for good luck, for warding off evil. She's pretty sure she's imagining it when they warm to her touch.

"I know, love," she says, "but it's either this or I call you every ten minutes to make sure you're okay."

"Mom ..."

"I get to worry about you more than your brother and father do." Her words strike the air like an encyclopedia slamming down on a tabletop, and Sam's smile fades a little. "And they don't like this at all, but they haven't seen you from where I have."

The words she doesn't say -- I saw you from on high, while my blood rained down on you -- hang in the air, harsh and bright like a fluorescent glow.

Before they leave, Sam hugs them all but lingers in her embrace, and when his fingers brush in a comforted slide over the ruined skin visible over the edge of her collar, she tries to pretend it's not on purpose.

*****

It's hilarious when Kate or Alice or any of the other women she knows ask her what her exercise secret is. Mary knows "Last week, John and I ran at breakneck speeds for a mile and a half to escape a werewolf" wouldn't go over so well, but that doesn't stop her from being horribly tempted to say it to them anyway.

The burns aren't the only scars anymore, just the biggest and the brightest in a set only rivaled by the ones that clutter the bodies of her husband and sons like testaments in blasphemy. Once, the four of them killed time after a day of double exorcisms and Thanksgiving dinner watching Jaws for the thousandth time, and when Quint and Hooper compared their scars, Mary thought of what her family could do with a competition and couldn't stop laughing with morbid amusement for ten minutes.

John against her at night is all heat and pressure and strength, lips trailing over her skin and cock thrusting into her in a dizzying dance. He always fucks her like he'll lose her tomorrow, like the next hunt will be their last, and maybe that's a good thing. Maybe it's the best thing.

Afterwards, their fingers memorize each other's skin in flickering touches like a sick sort of Braille, shaping the scars with their tongues.

Mary knows they could find each other in the dark like this, just from the beloved memories of their flaws.

*****

Burn units are all the same, and why John and Dean think Mary will run from this one is beyond her. She stalks into the hospital with fierce intent, a mama lion intent on protecting her cub. Doesn't matter, really, if the cub's not hers just yet. She will be.

Hell, if this doesn't make Jessica one of Mary's own in every way that counts, Mary's not sure what does.

The nurses watch her walk off the elevator with a strange sort of awe and respect, her jacket off, her T-shirt low-cut and tight enough to make the point it always does at times like this. John and Dean trail behind her slightly, part of them expecting her to crack, most of them knowing she won't. Not now.

Sam sits in a chair in the waiting room, long limbs sprawled everywhere like he's forgotten where to put them. He hasn't slept in far too long, Mary can see, and he still smells faintly of smoke and flesh on fire.

When his mother steps into his line of vision, he bursts into tears before she can even get her arms around him.

"It's okay, love," she says. Her fingers thread through his dark hair, and she whispers, "You saved her, Sammy. It's going to be okay."

And the best thing of it is that it is. It really is.