Hello! So, I BETA'd this story and rewrote it. not many has changed apart from some extra plotlines that seemed cute at the time but illogical now. Have fun reading and tell me what ytou think!
Prologue 'Bloody Mary'
John fell down, panting. He clasped his shotgun with sweaty hands.
"Goddamn it." He cursed, never before had a hunt gone this horribly wrong.
The shadow-monster-thing ducked up from behind and he felt it breathing in his neck. If it could breathe.
John didn't care, as long as he could kill the monster it was fine. He cocked his shotgun with one, fluent movement.
He felt a hand on his left shoulder. A small hand. A warm hand.
"Don't be afraid John," a soft voice said. It was voice he recognized.
"M-Mary?" He turned around.
There she was, in a long white dress, with her long, blonde hair waving in the wind that wasn't there.
"John, my dear," the girl smiled and cupped his face in her hands.
That's what she was, a girl, John realized, the same girl he met on the market in Kansas. The small girl he fell in love with the first moment he saw her. He felt tears well up in his eyes, but he tried to blink them away.
"M-Mary?" He swallowed the lump in his throat
She stroked his harsh, unshaved cheek with her soft hand.
"Is it really you?" he asked with a trembling voice.
She softly grabbed his hand and placed it against her face: "Do I feel real?"
John leaned in, felt the warmth of her breath, the smell of her skin. She smelled real, she felt real.
His lips softly brushed hers.
A sting in his back. John felt warm blood gushing down his side. He cocked his gun, filled with rock salt, pushed Mary away and blindly shot behind him.
But, years of hunting had left little room for chance. He had barely pulled the trigger, but he already knew he had hit something.
There was a blinding flash that left him blinking, but the shadow seemed to be gone. And Mary did too.
John crawled back to the wall, panting. For the first time in his twenty years of hunting, he felt panicked, worried and so alone.
He roared. Frustrated. Angry. Anxious.
"MARY!"
He fell silent, staring into the darkness, when he heard soft sobbing.
John lifted his head from his hands and looked around the warehouse. There was the little girl, the Mary from the market, sobbing in a corner. He crawled over to her.
"Are you okay?" he asked soft, stroking a lock of hair out of her face.
She slapped his hand away: "Who are you? Leave me alone! Who am I? Where am I?"
Her voice had changed, the softness had disappeared and she sounded afraid.
"I am John Winchester," John didn't know why he told her his real name and his full name, but it felt natural. "You are in a warehouse in Leakesville, Mississippi. I don't know who you are and how you got here, but I promise I'll help you. What's your name girl?"
"I, I don't know." The girl started to sob again. John wrapped his arms around her and this time she didn't push him away.
She really does smell like Mary, John couldn't help himself thinking. Maybe she is a creation of the Demon that killed her. Maybe something went wrong and the kid came to life.
Impossible.
John picked up the girl and carried her out of the warehouse, into his pick-up.
"Hold on for a second, I forgot my shotgun." He smiled.
The girl said nothing, she just fastened her seat belt.
John ran back in, grabbed his gun and threw it in his trunk.
When he jumped back into the car, he saw how the girl was rubbing her arms, shivering.
John quickly took off his sweater and handed it to her: "You must be cold in that little dress."
The girl took the sweater a little puzzled, but pulled it over her head anyway.
"Thank you Sir." She said a little shyly.
"John, please."
He parked his truck in a spot a little too far away for his liking, but there was this dick-head in a Porsche that nicked the place right in front of his apartment.
"We'll sleep here tonight, tomorrow we go to the police station to find out who you are."
"I know who I am." The girl whispered.
They entered the room and she hesitantly sat down in a big chair near an empty fireplace. She tucked her bare feet under her dress.
John walked over to her: "Then who are you?"
She looked him in the eyes: "Who do you think I am?"
He couldn't resist her, the blue eyes, the blonde hair. She wasn't like Mary, she was Mary.
"You remind me of somebody that I used to know." He said.
"I remind you of the person you loved the most." She ruffled with her dress and suddenly looked him in the eyes. "I'm sorry John, but I'm not Mary."
"You need a name." John swallowed the giant lump in his throat that had magically reappeared after the girl had smashed any hope he might've had about getting Mary back. "I- I need to call you something."
"I don't know any names. Tell me about you." The girl studied his reaction curiously.
"Well, I am John Winchester. Born and raised in Lawrence, Kansas and, uhm, I met a girl at a market. Her name was Mary. I fell in love with her the moment I saw her. It took her a while to fall for me though, but it was real, what we had was true. We married and had two beautiful sons, Dean and Sam. When Sam was six months old, Mary died..." He couldn't say it, not after what happened this night. It stung too much to say it as coldly as he'd practiced it.
"It wasn't an ordinary death, was it?" the girl asked.
"It is complicated." John shook his head. "She burned for no good reason, and I am out for revenge."
"And this evening you came too close..." The girl absentmindedly said.
It was silent for a while. John was trying to figure out what the girl had meant with her last sentence, when she suddenly spoke again.
"Jennifer."
"Who is Jennifer?" He frowned.
"That's my name." She shrugged casually. "There's a gap coming with it. A cold gap I need to fill."
John smiled, puzzled: "Good, let's go to sleep."
He got up and grabbed some extra blankets from the closed "I'll take the couch."
She shook her head: "John?"
"Yes, M- Jennifer?"
"Can you give me a blanket and build me a fire and let me sleep in the chair?"
"Why would you want that?" He asked her.
"Because I need to think."
"Okay, that's fine." John gave the girl a few blankets and tucked a pillow under her head.
And before he'd even built and lit the fire, she was already fast asleep.
The next morning, when John woke up, the girl was still sitting in the chair, staring into the grey ashes of the fire.
"Good morning John." She said.
"Good morning Jennifer." He replied. "You hungry?"
"No."
"Okay, well," John didn't know what to do with that answer. Surely she must be hungry by now?
He got up and got dressed quickly. The girl never even moved, didn't even take her eyes off the fireplace.
"I'm going out." John announced.
Jennifer turned around, her stone cold eyes marked with fear: "You're leaving me?"
"Just for an hour or so." John replied, smiling encouragingly. "I'll get you something decent to wear. It's January you know."
"I didn't."
John smiled. He wrote something down on a slip of paper: "I'll put my phone number next to the phone. Call if anything happens."
She went back to staring at the ashes again and nodded, absentmindedly.
"I'll be back." He promised.
"You'd better." The girl smiled. It looked a little forced to John, but it was more emotion than he'd seen from the girl yet.
John stepped outside, into the bright sunlight. He took his cell phone out of his pocket and clicked on the message box:
(31.15, -88.55)
CALL ME WHEN YOU ARRIVE. NO EARLIER.
COME QUICK.
He opened contacts, searched for his son Dean in the list and pressed send.
