Disclaimer: I own everything. Not.
A/N: I finally succumbed. Expect more where this came from. But do not expect any form of coherency.
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World Without End
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On the night of her twenty-second birthday, Mary Winchester dreams of fire and flame. She dreams of a crib and a baby, tiny, so very tiny, of something dark dripping on the little boy's forehead, a baptism of blood.
She dreams of seeing this from above, of knowing that the blood does not come from the heavens but from her slit belly on the ceiling, where's she's pinned like a butterfly.
A butterfly with the wings torn off.
From her place among blood and flame she turns her head to the left and looks out the door of the nursery and down an impossibly long corridor. It goes on forever and ever in the dark and at the very end is another door and inside it stands another boy. Older than the sweet bouncing baby boy below, drinking her blood and watching her burn.
He stands on his own two feet, one hand clutching a ragged stuffed dog. She tries to tell him to run, to take the baby and run, but the flames roar in her ears and she can't make a sound. But he is looking at her anyway, sees her, pinned to the ceiling, fire and flame.
"You're burning, Mommy," he says and his voice carries to her perfectly.
Below her, more blood lands on the baby's forehead, the tiny pit-pat of falling drops strangely loud over the sound of fire. Oh please, she thinks, please, someone save my babies.
The flames lick higher, burn brighter, pain rising to a crescendo that cannot be put into words. She looks at the older boy again, tries to plead with her eyes. Run, baby, run.
No sound escapes.
"You're burning, Mommy," the child says, standing next to his brother's crib, giving the little one a finger to hold on to. The last thing she hears before her world turns to red is his innocent giggle.
Mary wakes screaming.
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With time, the dreams grow stronger and more varied. She dreams of a girl stabbed in an alley way, of a man choking on his own blood in the dark. She dreams of a couple having wild and languid sex under the stars. She dreams of war and peace and an entire world.
When Mary sleeps, her eyes open and the world awaits.
At first she thinks they're only dreams, but then a friend forgets his newspaper on her kitchen table and she finds a picture of the dead girl and a description of her murder, the murder she saw in her sleep.
When Mary sleeps, her eyes open and she sees the truth.
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But every now and again, whenever she has almost managed to forget the feeling of flames licking along her skin, the stench of fire in her hair, the choking fear of watching her unborn babies die, she dreams again of being pinned to the ceiling like a butterfly with the wings torn off.
And every time it happens, she screams.
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After six months, the dreams invade her waking world and she knows things suddenly. Knows that Joey had an accident before Carla calls her, knows that tomorrow will be rainy, knows that her third customer today will try to steal from her.
She starts answering questions before they are asked and feigns headaches often to get away from people.
She spends her free time in libraries all over the state, trying to figure out what the hell is wrong with her. People do not wake up and become psychics one day. People do not become psychics, period.
Except they do and eventually she finds them all. The stories of ghosts and monsters, werewolves and demons and vampires and spirits and psychics, people who are more than human and see more than they should.
But she knows the way she knew when Joey died, that there is more to this.
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That night she dreams the old dream of fire with a single change.
This time, before the world turns red there is a flash of another color. Gold, suddenly the whole world shines gold.
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Golden eyes and the curse of knowing what's coming before it does. Her firstborn will be called Dean and her secondborn will be called Samuel and her husband's name will be John and she will never see either of them again after the fireflameburn.
She will never patch up Sam's skinned knees and she will never help Dean with his homework.
Mary Winchester will burn, pinned to the ceiling like a butterfly with the wings torn off.
But she'll be damned to hell if she lets her babies burn, too.
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John comes into the shop two weeks before the turns twenty-three and he smiles at her in that broken, soft way that the Nam vets sometimes get. Apple pie and blood splatters. They say no-one who wasn't there can understand, but Mary is there, every night in her sleep.
She helps him pick up the things he needs and she smiles at him when he leaves, waving. John hasn't had anyone smiling at him and meaning it in a long time.
The next morning, she wakes up in Cold Oak, South Dakota.
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She finds the others, like she knew she would, finds iron and salt and a knife that were planted there for her generation. Just like she knew she would. Tools and weapons for a battle they don't even know they will fight. Not yet. Only Mary knows what's coming.
It's been twelve months since Mary woke screaming for the first time and by now, it seems she knows more than she doesn't know. Her life, from here to its burning, agonizing end is laid out before her in a scrapbook of photographs detailing every single moment, here to there. A to Z.
Mary Winchester will burn, pinned to the ceiling like a butterfly with the wings torn off.
But first she will get out of this town, kill that damned demon and live her life, one heartbeat at a time, until the very last second.
She gives Mike the iron poker and tells Carrie and Jamie to lay down the salt lines. The knife she keeps for herself. There are only the four of them and if there ever were more, they are blessedly invisible to her sight.
Before midnight, Mike tries to bash Jamie's head in and Carrie, scared, screaming, panicking, reaches out with all her new and strange senses and puts her fear into Mike until he drops the poker and his head explodes in a spray of blood, Carrie's fear etched forever on what's left of his face.
Jamie sees what she can do and he gets scared, too, and he picks up the poker before Mary understands, driving it in deep. Carrie dies, not scared but confused. She saved Jamie, didn't she?
Mary looks away as she falls, seeing her death from a hundred different angles nonetheless.
When Jamie comes after her, she's long gone.
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Into the woods, where the screams and the bare bones of past generations are, unafraid. Mary will not die here, will not die today. There is no fire in this place.
She leads Jamie north and then to the east, over the graves of so many lost chosen children. She calls their names as she passes them, reminding them of who they were and who killed them.
She runs past and they rise, seeing Jamie and inside of him, every murderer that ever lifted poker, knife, gun and rock against them.
When Jamie dies he is not scared or confused. He simply screams.
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The demon finds her at the edge of civilization, his eyes the color of gold, his grin as sharp as any blade. She looks at him, knows every word he will say, every plan he has and everything he's ever done.
She feels blood drip from her hands and she shakes her head, wildly. "No," she tells him. "I'd rather die."
He smiles and mock bows. "That can be arranged, Mary, darling. But really, such a waste, wouldn't you say?"
From his bow he rolls his eyes up to meet her gaze, golden, so golden. She meets his reptile eyes and finds herself in a far off land, dirt and sand in her mouth, a spell on her tongue, magic words to bind a magic creature, prayers to bind the devil. Memory. History. Knowledge.
Mary knows things and now she knows how to bind Azazel of the Fallen.
The words that roll of her tongue and thick and clumsy and familiar all the same.
She finds some measure of satisfaction in that fact that the skill he gave to her binds him now in his own frozen, bloody playground.
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Afterwards, Mary isn't sure how she made it out. She runs until her legs give out, finds an abandoned cabin and steals a car, drives until she almost kills herself by falling asleep behind the wheel.
She calls John Winchester from a payphone in North Dakota. "Hello," she says, "You probably don't remember me. It's me, Mary."
He remembers. He remembers her smile. "I'm sorry, so very sorry, but there is no-one else, no-one I know and I – "
She smiled at him. "What do you need, Mary?"
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They get married in spring and John says she's the most beautiful thing he's ever laid eyes on.
Mary kisses him and sees fire.
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Lawrence, Kansas.
That is home. John never asks how she got to North Dakota, or why they could never go back to Illinois. All he knows is that the girl that smiled at him on a rainy day asked him for help and he gave it and fell in love.
He is twenty-eight and Mary twenty-six when she rolls on top of him one evening on the couch and says, "What's a good name for a boy, Johnny?"
"Dean."
He says is without thinking, not quite catching on until she grins, nods and says, "Good."
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Mary calls the ambulance fifteen minutes before Dean decides it's time to enter this world.
She gives birth to him eighteen hours later, panting, breathing, more wrung out than she has ever been. John puts little Dean into her arms a moment later, smiling, crying, so proud and happy.
And Mary looks down at her child, her baby boy, her Dean, her wonderful Dean, and she realizes she cannot see his future.
Her visions are gone.
Mary is free.
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People do not stop being psychics anymore than they suddenly become psychics. Their giftcurse had to go somewhere and Mary wonders and worries where hers went, all the while soothing Dean with lullabies and midnight walks through the house.
She sees the obvious answer every time she looks into his greenish gaze, so much like hers already, but refuses to believe, refuses to even consider. A gift passed from firstborn to firstborn. Old superstitions and stories, nothing more.
She wonders if any other chosen children ever survived long enough to have children of their own.
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Weeks later she is kneeling in the back yard, weeding, little Dean safely bundled up on the porch. He gurgles loudly, laughter bubbling out of him like sunshine and she turns to look at him over her shoulder, smiling.
His eyes shine golden in the late October sun.
On the wind, she hears the rumble of laughter.
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"Mommy, why is the man with the yellow eyes so angry?"
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Golden eyes and a baptism of fire and just like that, her sons belong to Azazel, her little boys forever lost in the dark.
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Three days before Sammy's six month birthday, Dean wakes screaming.
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Mary Winchester burns, pinned to the ceiling like a butterfly with the wings torn off.
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