A/N: Written for week 1 of SPN Hiatus Creations on tumblr. Prompt: In Memoriam.
The demon came. He came like he said he would, and Mary hadn't stayed away. She hadn't listened to that hunter who told her not to leave her room that night, and she hadn't let the demon be. How could she? The demon was in her youngest son's room, and Mary found him over his crib.
Adrenaline rose up in her, the powerful rage of mothers she'd heard so much about added on to the years of perfectly honed skills of being a hunter. All of her was set on one goal: protect Sammy.
But there was no hope of fighting.
She registered the demon, the adrenaline coursed through her, and then she was on the ceiling, bleeding from her stomach, the wound deep, an agony she hadn't known before, droplets falling onto her son's head. She'd screamed as the attack fell on her and blood bloomed a deep crimson on her nightgown. There were hurried footsteps drawn by her screams. John. And the demon fled, but then a fire was set to her body.
The hungry tongues of flame licked at her skin, peeling it away in excruciating strokes, and the torment of death was upon her. Unable to move, unable to scream, Mary could only watch as flames encroached on her and her home, and John grabbed Sam and ran back in to stare at her.
The fire raged, and he made a run for it.
Mary was left alone to die, the fire eating her. She didn't know what killed her, whether it was suffocation and the way her throat swelled up and she choked on the smoke from her own body that smelled like meat left on a grill for too long, or if her body went into shock from pain and her organs failed, or if it was blood loss from leaking capillaries, or whether the fire had sped up decomposition. But she died.
She died, her body no longer whole, but hot and ruined, one with fire and ash.
Mary didn't feel herself die, not like she had the first time. The first time she'd bled, she'd burned. But this time she'd been alive, and then… death. She was left, a spirit, staring down at this boy she loved, not hurt, but confused, and her body was wholly gone. Ash. Just ash.
She tried to reach out to Jack, to call his name, but he didn't hear her, and in truth she knew her work on Earth was done. Maybe it was never meant to be: just a gift to her son from God's sister. Mary did feel anger then, that her life was treated as little more than a bartering tool, something that wasn't her own, that could be handed around, and passed from one realm of existence to another, from one state of being to the next. And she was dead again, and at the hands of a boy who hadn't meant it.
When the Reaper came to take her, for a time Mary stood and just watched, stared at the ash that had been her.
Perhaps she was always meant to be ash in the end. The fire set to her body by Azazel. This destruction from Jack.
What was Mary but ash?
There was a sense of failure, of unfinished business in her death, like she was leaving her family behind. But she supposed that was her legacy: to leave her family behind. She would always leave her sons behind, but they would go on without her. It was their job. And it had been her job to do the best that she could. Not a perfect mother, no, not at all, but she'd loved them. Was that enough?
"Where to?" she asked the Reaper.
In the back of her mind she considered Hell. Surely that's where a mother who abandoned her sons went, a mother who worked with her son's torturers went (though she'd rationalized that to herself time and time again). Perhaps that's where a mother who didn't stick around went, though she was trying to be a person first, to stick herself back together so her family wouldn't be left clinging on to the fragmented pieces of her as she fell apart.
But she'd done good too. She'd fought monsters, she'd looked after Jack, she'd made her sons smile at times, she'd saved people. She'd done good for herself.
Maybe, just maybe, that was enough, and the judgement of her soul would be just and forgiving.
Forgiveness was what Mary needed.
"John is waiting for you."
Mary smiled at the answer, staring at the ashes of herself, and then she let the Reaper lead her into the light, to John. Her husband welcomed her with a kiss, and Mary's Earthly cares were washed away, and she was ash no more.