My Soul To Take by ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
mercuryblue144 for <user site="livejournal.c
Jun. 9th, 2012 07:10 pm![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
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spn_springflingTitle: My Soul To Take
Pairing: Mary gen
Rating: R
Any warnings: childbirth
Written bymercuryblue144 for strangeallure!
You could be done with hunting forever. The white picket fence, station wagon, couple of kids, no more monsters or fear, I'll make sure of it.
The trouble is, Mary fears, that hunting is not done with her.
She grows more and more nervous as May second, 1983 passes. Ten years to the day after her parents died, ten years to the day after she made her deal. She did her research, back in June 1973; she knows how long demon deals last. And she's pregnant: she is desperately afraid that her baby will be born on the anniversary and that it will be the price she pays for John's life. Or else the baby will be born a demon—
Holy water, she needs holy water.
"Dean?" Mary asks. "Get me some water?"
Dean toddles off and comes back with a cup that spills as he walks. There's still water in the cup, so no harm done as long as no one slips in it; John's at work, won't be home until the water's long since dried, and Mary's not getting up without effort, and Dean's closest to the floor. Nothing to worry about.
Mary carries a rosary always; she takes it out of her pocket now and drops it in the cup. "Exorcizo te creaturae aquae in nomine Deo, patris omnipotentis, et in virtute Spiritu Sancti."
(How do you make holy water?) she thinks. (Boil the hell out of it.)
Mary gulps the water down, and nothing happens. Maybe the baby's fine. Maybe it'll just take a while for the blessing to work its way through her system.
Dean puts on the TV and is quite happy to sit watching Sesame Street. "We go driving?" he asks after a segment featuring three purple Muppets and a green one singing about driving.
"Maybe later," Mary says.
She needs to pee. Again. She shoves herself to her feet and lumbers to the bathroom. There's blood in her panties, like a sudden period.
That's a bad sign. A very bad sign.
Mary pees—blood in the toilet now, too—gets her hands washed and herself decent, and opens the bathroom door. "Dean?" she calls, clinging to the door frame. "We're going driving."
"Yay!"
"Not yay," Mary says. Thank God for Mike Guenther being willing to give John a ride to work every morning so Mary can have the car in case she needs to go to the hospital.
She's not going to the hospital.
Ten years I need to swing by your house for a little something, that's all. As long as I'm not interrupted, nobody gets hurt, I promise.
This house is as warded as Mary can make it, and the car is good solid Detroit steel and has blessings from a priest, two pastors, a rabbi, a purohita. It's two hours' drive to the house outside Clay Center, which is safer than the one in Lawrence, and she's got time to burn; it was nearly midnight when she made her deal.
Mary loads Dean into the back seat of the car and waddles around to the driver's seat. She's just sitting down when the first contraction hits. They're maybe ten minutes down I-70 when the second comes; nearly to Topeka at the third. By the time they hit Manhattan, the contractions are eight minutes apart, Dean is bored of singing the Sesame Street automobile song, and Mary is rethinking the family-cabin plan (surely Manhattan has a hospital), but...the baby needs to be born somewhere safe, and Dean needs to be somewhere safe, and Mary is worth precisely jack as a protector right now.
They're coming three minutes apart when Mary pulls up to the house, and has a war happened here? The windows are shattered, there's glass all over the floor—the rug over the devil's trap's turned up, the wall's been torn open— "Be careful, Dean," Mary warns. She lumbers in, Dean at her heels. She fetches a broom from the closet and sweeps a section of floor as clear of glass fragments as she can get it, then directs Dean to fetch a canister of salt and pour it in a circle around the cleared space.
"Why, Mommy?" Dean asks.
"Salt keeps bad things away," Mary says, hating herself for telling the truth.
He's only four. He'll forget.
Mary goes herself to fetch an iron knife and a shotgun and sends Dean for towels. She strips off her panties, hikes up her skirt, and settles down on the floor inside the salt circle. Dean's on one side of her and her weapons on the other. She's as ready as she's getting to wait out labor, wait till midnight.
Almost. "Dean?" Mary asks. "In the pantry where you got the salt, there should be a jug. Bring it please?"
Dean runs off and comes back dragging the jug across the floor; it's not that much smaller than he is. Mary scoots over to lift the jug across the salt line. There's a rosary in the jug already, and Mary murmurs the blessing before she drinks some water and offers some to Dean.
"Hungry, Mommy," Dean says. Mary doesn't swear aloud: she forgot to bring food, and there won't be any here.
A day without food won't hurt him much. Will it?
Another contraction hits, worse than the ones before, and Mary clutches her knife and tries not to scream.
If the demon comes today they are utterly defenseless. Mary and Dean and the baby because she cannot stand up to save her life right now, and John, who is surely home by now and has found her gone, because she's not there to help him.
Another contraction, and Mary's bleeding, and she might pass out. Maybe. She hopes not. Another contraction. Another.
Mary clings stubbornly to consciousness and the sound of Dean screaming. Fear or hunger or boredom, she doesn't know which and doesn't care: it's an anchor. She'll regret putting him through this. Later.
Finally, the baby comes.
The holy water is still beside her, of course, and the iron knife in her hand; she cuts the baby's umbilical cord as close to the skin as she dares, and dampens a towel with holy water and cleans as much of the blood off the baby as she can. Nothing sizzles or smokes. Her baby's just her baby, nothing more or less. His skin's pink, he cries loudly when poked, Mary counts his pulse while timing with her watch and it's over a hundred beats a minute, all good signs.
Thank God.
There's a lot of blood, though. A lot. Mary's not sure she can get up, and fairly sure that if she tries to drive she'll crash the car.
What if she dies here? No one knows where she is—how will anyone find Dean and the baby? How will anyone know to look?
John must be frantic. But he has no idea where to find them.
Oh God. Oh God it's her life that the demon wants in exchange for John's. She is going to die here, now, ten years to the hour after John's death.
In that case, there's something she needs to do first. A priest would be better, but there's only herself. Mary takes the holy water and pours a little over the baby's forehead, three times, saying "I baptize you in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit."
There. Her baby's soul is safe.
The baby wails: cold, probably, or hungry. Mary wraps him in a clean towel, then struggles with the top half of her dress, then gives up and tugs the dress off entirely in order to let the baby suckle. One of the three of them should get some food.
Dean's settled down to whimpers. Mary cradles the baby with one arm and holds Dean close with the other. If she's going to die, she wants at least to have some of her loved ones there when she goes. She can't have Deanna or Samuel or John, but she can have Dean, and she can have this child. Sammy. The baby's name is Samuel, for his grandfather.
And if the demon's going to kill her like he killed her parents, well, that's what the iron knife beside her is for. Might not kill him, but it'll sure as hell hurt.
"Now I lay me down to sleep," Mary murmurs. "I pray the Lord my soul to keep. Angels watch us through the night, and keep us safe till morning light."
She dreams of angels.
She's still alive the next morning. This surprises her. Dean's in a fitful sleep, but wakes when Mary tries to get up. "Mommy?" he asks.
"It's all right, sweetie," Mary says. "We made it through. Say hi to Sammy. He's your brother."
"Hi, Sammy," Dean says, tentatively touching Sammy's tiny hand.
Mary puts Sammy down to slide her dress back over her head. It's pretty much ruined, from all the blood—it really is a marvel that she's alive, never mind functioning—but it's all she's got, and it would be nice to get home without being pulled over for public indecency. She needs to know if John's all right.
Mary gives Dean careful instructions on how to hold Sammy, then parks the two of them in the back seat of the car and gets into the driver's seat.
Somehow they make it home.
John storms out of the house the moment the car rumbles into the driveway. Mary has barely opened the car door when John is demanding, "Where the hell have you been?"
"It's okay, John," Mary says, tired. "We're all right. Hungry, that's all. I forgot food." She presses herself into John's arms, the full length of her against him, something she hasn't been able to properly enjoy for months.
"The baby?" John asks.
"A boy," Mary says. "Healthy and strong. His name's Samuel. Dean's being an excellent big brother." She pulls away to open the back of the car, take Sammy from Dean, and hand him to John.
They're safe. It's May third, 1983; her deadline has come and gone, and they're all alive, and they're safe.
Pairing: Mary gen
Rating: R
Any warnings: childbirth
Written by
mercuryblue144 for strangeallure!You could be done with hunting forever. The white picket fence, station wagon, couple of kids, no more monsters or fear, I'll make sure of it.
The trouble is, Mary fears, that hunting is not done with her.
She grows more and more nervous as May second, 1983 passes. Ten years to the day after her parents died, ten years to the day after she made her deal. She did her research, back in June 1973; she knows how long demon deals last. And she's pregnant: she is desperately afraid that her baby will be born on the anniversary and that it will be the price she pays for John's life. Or else the baby will be born a demon—
Holy water, she needs holy water.
"Dean?" Mary asks. "Get me some water?"
Dean toddles off and comes back with a cup that spills as he walks. There's still water in the cup, so no harm done as long as no one slips in it; John's at work, won't be home until the water's long since dried, and Mary's not getting up without effort, and Dean's closest to the floor. Nothing to worry about.
Mary carries a rosary always; she takes it out of her pocket now and drops it in the cup. "Exorcizo te creaturae aquae in nomine Deo, patris omnipotentis, et in virtute Spiritu Sancti."
(How do you make holy water?) she thinks. (Boil the hell out of it.)
Mary gulps the water down, and nothing happens. Maybe the baby's fine. Maybe it'll just take a while for the blessing to work its way through her system.
Dean puts on the TV and is quite happy to sit watching Sesame Street. "We go driving?" he asks after a segment featuring three purple Muppets and a green one singing about driving.
"Maybe later," Mary says.
She needs to pee. Again. She shoves herself to her feet and lumbers to the bathroom. There's blood in her panties, like a sudden period.
That's a bad sign. A very bad sign.
Mary pees—blood in the toilet now, too—gets her hands washed and herself decent, and opens the bathroom door. "Dean?" she calls, clinging to the door frame. "We're going driving."
"Yay!"
"Not yay," Mary says. Thank God for Mike Guenther being willing to give John a ride to work every morning so Mary can have the car in case she needs to go to the hospital.
She's not going to the hospital.
Ten years I need to swing by your house for a little something, that's all. As long as I'm not interrupted, nobody gets hurt, I promise.
This house is as warded as Mary can make it, and the car is good solid Detroit steel and has blessings from a priest, two pastors, a rabbi, a purohita. It's two hours' drive to the house outside Clay Center, which is safer than the one in Lawrence, and she's got time to burn; it was nearly midnight when she made her deal.
Mary loads Dean into the back seat of the car and waddles around to the driver's seat. She's just sitting down when the first contraction hits. They're maybe ten minutes down I-70 when the second comes; nearly to Topeka at the third. By the time they hit Manhattan, the contractions are eight minutes apart, Dean is bored of singing the Sesame Street automobile song, and Mary is rethinking the family-cabin plan (surely Manhattan has a hospital), but...the baby needs to be born somewhere safe, and Dean needs to be somewhere safe, and Mary is worth precisely jack as a protector right now.
They're coming three minutes apart when Mary pulls up to the house, and has a war happened here? The windows are shattered, there's glass all over the floor—the rug over the devil's trap's turned up, the wall's been torn open— "Be careful, Dean," Mary warns. She lumbers in, Dean at her heels. She fetches a broom from the closet and sweeps a section of floor as clear of glass fragments as she can get it, then directs Dean to fetch a canister of salt and pour it in a circle around the cleared space.
"Why, Mommy?" Dean asks.
"Salt keeps bad things away," Mary says, hating herself for telling the truth.
He's only four. He'll forget.
Mary goes herself to fetch an iron knife and a shotgun and sends Dean for towels. She strips off her panties, hikes up her skirt, and settles down on the floor inside the salt circle. Dean's on one side of her and her weapons on the other. She's as ready as she's getting to wait out labor, wait till midnight.
Almost. "Dean?" Mary asks. "In the pantry where you got the salt, there should be a jug. Bring it please?"
Dean runs off and comes back dragging the jug across the floor; it's not that much smaller than he is. Mary scoots over to lift the jug across the salt line. There's a rosary in the jug already, and Mary murmurs the blessing before she drinks some water and offers some to Dean.
"Hungry, Mommy," Dean says. Mary doesn't swear aloud: she forgot to bring food, and there won't be any here.
A day without food won't hurt him much. Will it?
Another contraction hits, worse than the ones before, and Mary clutches her knife and tries not to scream.
If the demon comes today they are utterly defenseless. Mary and Dean and the baby because she cannot stand up to save her life right now, and John, who is surely home by now and has found her gone, because she's not there to help him.
Another contraction, and Mary's bleeding, and she might pass out. Maybe. She hopes not. Another contraction. Another.
Mary clings stubbornly to consciousness and the sound of Dean screaming. Fear or hunger or boredom, she doesn't know which and doesn't care: it's an anchor. She'll regret putting him through this. Later.
Finally, the baby comes.
The holy water is still beside her, of course, and the iron knife in her hand; she cuts the baby's umbilical cord as close to the skin as she dares, and dampens a towel with holy water and cleans as much of the blood off the baby as she can. Nothing sizzles or smokes. Her baby's just her baby, nothing more or less. His skin's pink, he cries loudly when poked, Mary counts his pulse while timing with her watch and it's over a hundred beats a minute, all good signs.
Thank God.
There's a lot of blood, though. A lot. Mary's not sure she can get up, and fairly sure that if she tries to drive she'll crash the car.
What if she dies here? No one knows where she is—how will anyone find Dean and the baby? How will anyone know to look?
John must be frantic. But he has no idea where to find them.
Oh God. Oh God it's her life that the demon wants in exchange for John's. She is going to die here, now, ten years to the hour after John's death.
In that case, there's something she needs to do first. A priest would be better, but there's only herself. Mary takes the holy water and pours a little over the baby's forehead, three times, saying "I baptize you in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit."
There. Her baby's soul is safe.
The baby wails: cold, probably, or hungry. Mary wraps him in a clean towel, then struggles with the top half of her dress, then gives up and tugs the dress off entirely in order to let the baby suckle. One of the three of them should get some food.
Dean's settled down to whimpers. Mary cradles the baby with one arm and holds Dean close with the other. If she's going to die, she wants at least to have some of her loved ones there when she goes. She can't have Deanna or Samuel or John, but she can have Dean, and she can have this child. Sammy. The baby's name is Samuel, for his grandfather.
And if the demon's going to kill her like he killed her parents, well, that's what the iron knife beside her is for. Might not kill him, but it'll sure as hell hurt.
"Now I lay me down to sleep," Mary murmurs. "I pray the Lord my soul to keep. Angels watch us through the night, and keep us safe till morning light."
She dreams of angels.
She's still alive the next morning. This surprises her. Dean's in a fitful sleep, but wakes when Mary tries to get up. "Mommy?" he asks.
"It's all right, sweetie," Mary says. "We made it through. Say hi to Sammy. He's your brother."
"Hi, Sammy," Dean says, tentatively touching Sammy's tiny hand.
Mary puts Sammy down to slide her dress back over her head. It's pretty much ruined, from all the blood—it really is a marvel that she's alive, never mind functioning—but it's all she's got, and it would be nice to get home without being pulled over for public indecency. She needs to know if John's all right.
Mary gives Dean careful instructions on how to hold Sammy, then parks the two of them in the back seat of the car and gets into the driver's seat.
Somehow they make it home.
John storms out of the house the moment the car rumbles into the driveway. Mary has barely opened the car door when John is demanding, "Where the hell have you been?"
"It's okay, John," Mary says, tired. "We're all right. Hungry, that's all. I forgot food." She presses herself into John's arms, the full length of her against him, something she hasn't been able to properly enjoy for months.
"The baby?" John asks.
"A boy," Mary says. "Healthy and strong. His name's Samuel. Dean's being an excellent big brother." She pulls away to open the back of the car, take Sammy from Dean, and hand him to John.
They're safe. It's May third, 1983; her deadline has come and gone, and they're all alive, and they're safe.
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Date: 2012-06-09 11:22 pm (UTC)This telling of things makes a lot of sense, given the jimmying with the dates. And that last line is killer.
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Date: 2012-10-29 10:03 am (UTC)no subject
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Date: 2012-06-10 12:30 am (UTC)Where is the nearest bridge, I want to jump from it ;n;
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Date: 2012-10-29 10:04 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-06-10 01:18 am (UTC)So painful that she thought it was all over.
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Date: 2012-10-29 10:04 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-06-10 03:24 am (UTC)So heartbreaking from the very beginning! This is really lovely, the (ultimately thwarted) desperation of it. I really enjoyed the line where Mary figured Dean would forget about the salt, because he was only four. Asajfhaklj Winchesters! ;_;
Great job~
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Date: 2012-10-29 10:04 am (UTC)no subject
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Date: 2012-06-10 07:16 am (UTC)Such a terrifying situation...man, the thought of her dying there and leaving Dean and Sam alone in the middle of nowhere. D: And I'm sure she still would have preferred the demon taking her own life over harming her boys. Her relief at the end of it all is especially heartbreaking. :'(
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Date: 2012-06-10 09:47 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-10-29 10:04 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-06-10 10:04 am (UTC)I love everything: the story, the style, the little details. Mary doing her research and always trying to protect her family. Dean helping his mommy, but still being a four-year-old instead of a precocious child, who knows and can articulate everything. Mary drinking holy water and baptizing Sam herself to keep him safe. And of course the last line just about killed me.
Thank you so much ♥
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Date: 2012-10-29 10:04 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-06-10 01:23 pm (UTC)I loved this. I think you really got that scary backbone Mary showed the few times we saw her in the series, that scary determination. Thank you for the great read!
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Date: 2012-06-17 01:23 pm (UTC)Really liked it :)
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Date: 2012-10-29 10:04 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-06-30 05:25 am (UTC)I felt like I was there, in her mind, watching the whole thing--so visceral. And terrifying. And ultimately heartbreaking.
Wow, so nicely done.
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Date: 2012-10-29 10:04 am (UTC)