Written for the SPN Writter's Lounge Wednesday drabble. Mary's thoughts through her life. Spoilers for 4.03.
Fear of Choice
It was worse than being dead. It was worse than non-existence. It was a faint presence that was barely there, it was being aware of who she was and that her family was somewhere out there, but never be able to know where they were, how well they were, if they still remembered her, if she was still loved. It was hell on earth; it was her penitence for her mistakes.
Mary was born without a choice.
Well, that wasn't exactly true. Mary had a choice, but it was always a choice between painful and heart breaking.
She was born in a family of hunters but she never wanted to be one. She had a choice. She could choose to embrace the family business and hunt with her father and mother, become a hunter herself, like their fathers and mothers had been before. It pained her to let go of a normal life, a safe life, but it was a choice.
Or she could choose to leave it all behind, become an orphan with no origins and no point of return and start it all over again, far from there, far from family. And that would just break her heart.
Mary loved John with all of her heart. She had a choice there too. She could tell him who she really was and risk watching him walking away, or she could suffer her own bleeding heart and lie to him, day after day, after, after day.
She could pretend to be a normal girl, with a normal life and live in the illusion that their love would weather through any obstacle, any doubt, any problem.
John would be happy like that and she would be happy with him. For him.
A demon with sickly pale, yellow eyes, stole any and all choices from her.
She became an orphan, but she couldn't leave her hunter ways behind; she had her normal life, but it was all an illusion, a trick of light and mirrors; she kept her past from John and doomed John's future to become her past.
The demon with the yellow eyes offered her a choice too. She could live alone, or she could live in fear.
She chose fear.
And for ten years, John's solid presence by her side was enough to keep the fear at bay. For four years her life was picture perfect, with a loving, devoted husband by her side and the most beautiful child calling her 'mommy'. And she almost forgot the fear. Almost forgot the lack of choice.
Ten years before she'd met a man. A hunter. Dean, like her son.
The strange connection that she had immediately felt with him, the strange feelings of protection that grew so fast in her heart as soon as she looked in to his sad, green eyes, were the only reason why he hadn't completely vanished from her memories. Those had been hard, painful and frightening days that she would give anything to forget, but the memory of Dean still remained.
He gave her a choice too. A warning to be heeded ten years in to the future, a choice that sounded so silly and pointless when it left his lips that it too would've been forgotten if it weren't for the tears in his eyes.
Mary could stay in bed and play normal, or she could get up and fight her fears.
She chose to fight. And died trying. She wished that had been the end, but it wasn't.
It wasn't just her straight, blond hair and easy laughter that Dean got from her; it wasn't just her eyes and curiosity that Sammy got from her. Her lack of choice was passed on as well.
Dean and Sam weren't born without a choice. The choice was taken from them when one was four and the other was just a baby. The night Mary died.
Mary could see them now and if she had a body, she would be crying. Not tears of sadness, because she was sure she'd spend all of those when she was still alive; but tears of joy this time.
Her boys had become men. Not just men, because that was nothing but normal growth that bared no trouble in itself but to allow for nature to follow its usual course. Not, they had become good men. Hunters. Saviours.
And Dean, the hunter of all those years ago, had become Dean, her son.
She'd known it all along. She had never realized it. She knew the instant that she died. Past and present were the same and such different concepts. All there was now was facts and feelings.
And she was feeling proud. Hopeful. Guilty.
Once, a long time ago, she had turned to a perfect stranger and had willingly opened her heart, sharing her deepest fears and desires of having a normal family, of escaping the hunting life and never, never see her children dragged in to it.
The tears in his eyes that she hadn't understood then, were plain and painfully clear now. The choices that she'd made, the choices that she'd stolen from her sons and her husband, the choices that none of them ever had; those choices were not important.
She could see it now in the men that her sons had become; she could see it now in the repercussions that their lives would have for the whole world, for Mankind.
With a smile and an apology in her lips, Mary understood now that it was never about the choices. It was all about the consequences.
And even though she could now see all the heartache and pain that was instored for her two beautiful boys, she knew that it could never have been any other way. Her choices that were no choices at all were just the connecting dots to a much, much bigger picture.
And in the end, when they could all be together again, they could finally afford to make a choice of their own and be happy.
The end